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Posted on 03/06/2003 10:26:04 AM PST by swarthyguy
There is absolutely nothing trivial about the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (who will be referred to as KSM for the sake of convenience in the rest of this article) in Rawalpindi day before yesterday. It is the culmination of six months of painstaking monitoring and many close misses by US federal agencies in conjunction with Pakistani authorities. Some typically overenthusiastic news reports have described KSM as al-Qaeda’s ‘number three man’ while others habitually given to interpretations that diminish or denigrate the achievements of the Coalition have already begun a revisionist campaign to brand KSM as ‘over the hill’ or a sacrificial pawn by the ISI or al-Qaeda to keep American pressure in check.
In order to make sense of these claims we must understand (a) the goals of the Bush Administration in the war on terror and (b) KSM’s history and role in al-Qaeda<
The Bush administration for it’s part has done a very poor job of articulating its priorities and the thinking behind them in the seventeen months since the terrorist atrocities of 11 September. From all the accounts this author has encountered he must conclude that this has been because the Administration itself struggled mightily to place the attacks and their implications in context, even as it has consistently remained unwilling to allow such difficulties to become an excuse for a weak or non-existent response.
Some of the initial statements including the infamous ‘dead or alive’ declaration made by President George W. Bush, have continued to shaped our understanding of American strategy long after US Government thinking has evolved past it. Part of the problem has been that most of us have so enjoyed caricaturizing Bush that it has generally been unable to see beyond the purely superficial. Careful examination suggests that while he is far more impetuous in his statements than in the formation and execution of policy. The other half of course is the character of the Bush team. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc are all highly opinionated individuals who see domestic and international disagreement as inevitable obstacles that can best be negotiated by forcing acceptance in the aftermath rather than permission beforehand.
On an intellectual and emotional level Rumsfeld (and through him Bush and the cabinet) has been greatly affected by Roberta Wohlsetter’s masterful analysis of the intelligence and policy failures that led to surprise at Pearl Harbor. Thomas Schelling’s quote from the introduction to his book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision sums it up:
“There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable…The danger is in a poverty of expectations, a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely”
The Bush administration has consistently refused to formally accept any such judgment, but many key figures have in their own ways admitted that it was exactly such a failure that allowed 9-11 to happen, and the knowledge must weigh heavily on them.
The most important determination after 9-11 starting with President Bush was not to catch Osama bin Laden dead or alive, but to ensure that the American government never again failed to protect its citizens from catastrophic attack because of the poverty of expectations.
The only threat that rated above ‘conventional’ terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda on September 10 was the threat from Weapons of Mass Destruction. Given how wrong the American government was about al-Qaeda, it is understandable why Bush may feel that no cost is too high in reducing American exposure to ‘rogue’ states with access to such technologies and a grudge against the United States. The assistance provided by Iraqi intelligence to al-Qaeda on chemical and biological weapons while basic is a very clear illustration that such risks are not merely within the realm of bad fiction. Many of the al-Qaeda figures responsible for training the terrorists are also under Saddam Hussein’s protection in Iraq. The ‘academic’ advice provided by two former Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission scientists to bin Laden in 2001 on radiological bombs and Chemical and Biological Weapon (CBW) dispersal also highlights transfer risks.
So where did the capture of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda apical figures stand among the emerging Coalition priorities after 9-11? This author would say it has been number three in the last eleven to twelve months, well after mitigating the WMD threat, and disrupting further al-Qaeda attacks on Coalition targets at home and abroad. To put it cynically it would be far, far more politically disastrous for Bush or Blair to have their citizens die by the hundreds in further ‘conventional’ or other attacks than to have bin Laden alive and free in some madrassa on Pakistani tribal land.
Within the United States in the early days after 9-11 Attorney General John Ashcroft under instructions from Bush shifted the FBI’s counter-terrorism priorities from criminal conviction to prevention through surveillance, analysis and detention.
US intelligence community priorities outside North America changed once the high intensity phase of Operation Enduring Freedom wound down in April of 2002. Al Qaeda for its part successfully conducted eight terrorist attacks between May and November of 2002, killing an estimated 253 people, 202 of them in the horrific bombing of a nightclub in Bali last October. A number of other attacks in Europe and elsewhere, including the use of chemical weapons were foiled through the cooperation of law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world.
In short it became quickly clear that al-Qaeda’s capacity to mount exceedingly lethal attacks had not yet been attrited to the point that it was safe to concentrate on decapitation, especially given the complexities involved in getting full cooperation from the Pakistan Army and the ISI. In the last few months a broad effort has resulted in the capture of a number of senior operational figures in the last six months including Omar Al-Farouq, the Kuwaiti chief of operations in Southeast Asia, Abd’al Rahim al-NashirI the chief of Gulf operations and naval terrorism expert. Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi the Yemen operations chief was killed by a UAV airstrike. In addition dozens of their closest aides and assistants, the men who could best replace them have also been captured, or in some cases eliminated. Al-Qaeda’s terrorist networks were well developed but the numbers of operatives capable of planning and mounting attacks in third countries is limited, and thanks to the loss of secure facilities in Afghanistan they can no longer be quickly and easily replaced.
This is especially true of KSM, who had been involved with the world of international jihad for 17 years, at least 11 of them directly involved with al-Qaeda’s terrorism from its failures to its most dramatic success. Along with nephew Ramzi Yousef he stood out in terms of his cultural capital, i.e. his ability to become either Gulf Arab or Pakistani as the situation demands, and a Western education that gave them a dangerous familiarity with our ways. This was a man who helped al-Qaeda forge and maintain the kinds of alliances with extremist groups (especially in South East Asia and South Asia) that gave al-Qaeda the long reach that defined them as global rather than a regional threat. These organizations depend on al-Qaeda for funds, expertise and in some cases targeting guidance and even the actual suicide attackers. KSM provided that vital link, coordinating timing, allocating funding and providing advice and seconding al-Qaeda personnel such as bomb-makers and suicide bombers. He has continued to actively perform these functions from within Pakistan as evinced by message traffic and interrogations.
His loss is a blow that al-Qaeda can fully recover from in two to five years, if we allow them the time. For now in conjunction with domestic vigilance Europe, North America and South East Asia should be considerably safer, although any attacks that are already close to ready will not be affected. Pakistan is also less likely to experience al-Qaeda suicide bomb attacks such as those seen in Karachi, though local extremist gunmen will probably attack American personnel in retaliation as seen in several instances through the 1990s. East Africa and the Middle East with a much more robust al-Qaeda presence will remain dangerous.
So what can the Coalition do with the time that it has won for itself so meritoriously? After the war in Iraq our decision-makers ideally should comprehensively review progress in the war on terror and re-examine priorities. It would be a terrible shame if the neutralization of al-Qaeda’s strategic leadership was neglected because of any over-dependence on either Musharraf’s promises or his skin. Dictators come and go, but opportunities to permanently cripple terror threats are much rarer; one Tora Bora was more than enough.
Longer term we must be willing to ask ourselves what can be done to mitigate Pakistan’s nurture of domestic Islamists, a magnet and a shield for those who are willing to kill in their war against the West. While the joint operations that resulted in the arrest of figures like Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al Shibh and KSM indicate that there are people and institutions in Pakistan willing to assist in the fight against terrorism, it can not be forgotten that these figures and those still at large could not have remained free for this long without deep as well as wide support in powerful Pakistani circles.
Musharraf is an opportunistic survivor, not a friend or an ally we should hang all of our hopes on. Optimists would be mistaken in assuming that the ISI and Pakistan Army are now more willing than before to deliver bin Laden and those closest to him. Benazir Bhutto’s unpopular rendering of Ramzi Yousef in 1995 and Nawaz Sharief’s extradition of Mir Aimal Kansi in 1997 did little on their own to end the Pakistani establishment’s willingness to support or host terrorist movements bent on attacking the west. In fact the record shows that in the last decade every American victory against terrorism in Pakistan has been followed by vicious and fatal attacks by Pakistani terrorists on Americans. Attacks that are rarely ever solved by Pakistani authorities. Attacks that seem to kill a disproportionate number of American intelligence personnel. A rather curious coincidence.
Bump to you, Allan.
I still say that if they do choose to deliver bin Laden, they could do so in a Zip-Loc[tm] sandwich bag.
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