Posted on 09/28/2001 5:31:48 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Summary -- Given the intercontinental nature of the threat of terrorism, standard coalition warfare will not win the battle. A coalition will limit the ability of the United States to operate covertly on foreign soil, but Washington cannot simply go it alone. A two-tiered strategy is required. On one level, the coalition will have its uses and will provide cover. But on another level, the United States must control its own intelligence war.
Analysis -- The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not the first action of al-Qa'ida against the United States. The group has been linked to previous attacks in Yemen, Tanzania and Kenya, and there is also evidence of contingency plans for attacks in other parts of the world.
It is therefore obvious that al-Qa'ida operates on an intercontinental basis. It must move personnel, materiel and most important, money, between continents. It must pass information intercontinentally. It must work with indigenous elements that can be located anywhere. Thus, even if al-Qa'ida were crushed in Afghanistan and all of its forces were liquidated in North America, the group would remain a threat. Its ability to regenerate command and control systems and continue operations might go on unabated.
Al-Qa'ida's Global Structure
There is every reason to believe that al-Qa'ida's structure was created with this in mind. Osama bin Laden undoubtedly studied the failures of Communist organizations in the 1970s -- such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy and the Red Army in Japan -- along with the failures of various Palestinian groups. He understood some key weaknesses in their processes and organization:
The European groups in particular developed a national locus. They cooperated with other groups but remained confined to small theaters of operation, making them predictable and vulnerable. The groups tended to operate under a centralized control system, with a layered cell system providing security. This meant that the cells were linked. More important, it meant taking out a layer of cells at the top or near the top could disable these organizations. Most of these groups moved into a dependency relationship with state intelligence services. Because of this relationship, they were constrained in their operations. It also meant that penetration of the state intelligence organization could lead to their own liquidation.
In STRATFOR'S view, bin Laden conducted what was in effect a "lessons learned" process and created an entity -- a better term than "organization" -- that was fundamentally different.
Al-Qa'ida was created to be inherently trans-national. It does not have a direct national center of gravity. Even the bases in Afghanistan have redundancy elsewhere. Al-Qa'ida's operatives are trained to diffuse on a global basis. Bin Laden has created what appears to be a non-hierarchical cell system. To be more precise, his organization is "flat," consisting of self-contained but geographically diffused task forces that come together geographically for operations -- but which, if captured, can neither compromise other task forces nor disrupt the command and control structure. Each group appears to have its own command and control structure that maintains intermittent contact with central command and is able to operate for extended periods without contact. Bin Laden has tried to avoid dependency on state intelligence services in general, and he appears to have been extraordinarily careful not to become the captive of any one such service. In particular, he is not financially dependent on any one source although he might accept support from multiple sources. He has also maintained liaisons with other like-minded groups on a global basis without integrating them into his core operating system. Therefore, there can be extensive evidence that bin Laden worked with any number of intelligence services and organizations without demonstrating that he was a creature of those services.
In short, bin Laden has tried to create an organization that defies all of the common sense and learned lessons of Western intelligence services. He apparently has tried to diffuse every aspect of his organization, from command and control to geography. Ironically, bin Laden appears to have absorbed contemporary managerial theory about empowering employees, being nimble, being global and above all, being a learning organization.
This renders defeating bin Laden extraordinarily difficult:
He operates on an unpredictable global basis. He keeps relatively few agents for a global operation, making them easy to camouflage. He allows his operatives to cooperate with any useful entity, from intelligence services to insurgent groups, without ever creating a dependency. He has a highly diffused, self-contained support system built around money previously deployed around the globe -- in many cases turned into cash months or years before -- and which is able to secure resources in host and target countries. Success against one element will not destroy or destabilize other elements.
Most important, bin Laden appears to trust his forces -- or at least be willing to accept betrayal or incompetence as the price of a secure global operation. It is this diffusion that creates the challenge.
Mounting an Intercontinental Counterattack: The Blind Man and the Elephant
Given the operational structure of al-Qa'ida, a great many national intelligence and security organizations have important information about the group. It is almost certain that no single organization knows everything of substantial importance. It is always difficult to know when there is more to learn. Therefore, each intelligence organization may genuinely believe it knows everything there is to know because it feels it has gathered all the information within its area of interest and operations, and because that information -- as designed by al-Qa'ida -- does not appear to lead elsewhere.
For example, the Israelis, who carefully monitor operations in their area, have noted very real contacts between al-Qa'ida and Iraqi intelligence, anti-Israeli groups in Lebanon and among the Palestinians. Similarly, Russian intelligence has evidence of al-Qa'ida's presence in Chechnya and other Central Asian republics. In each case, there is a tendency to see that particular presence or relationship as either the whole or the definitive part of al-Qa'ida. Like the legend of the blind man and the elephant, each intelligence agency sees the part that it touches and imagines that to be the whole.
There is also a political interest involved here. Al-Qa'ida affects and threatens a large number of countries, each of which wants that particular manifestation broken. By representing a particular piece of al-Qa'ida as the center of gravity of the organization, they hope to induce the United States to structure its strategy in such a way that they receive maximum benefit. The Israelis would like the main thrust of the counter-attack to be against Palestinian movements. The Russians would like to see the main thrust directed against anti-Russian movements, and so on.
Thus a dilemma is embedded in the American intercontinental strategy. The war that the United States must prosecute is essentially an intelligence war, designed to locate and destroy al-Qa'ida in a number of countries. In order to do this, the United States must create a coalition of intelligence and security organizations to provide the United States with information, operational forces on the ground ready to act on the intelligence and the right for U.S. covert forces to take fairly extreme actions on their soil.
The U.S. intelligence community must resist both political and conceptual pressures. In some sense, the political pressures are easiest to resist because they are fairly easy to understand. The conceptual pressures will be harder to resist because most will be based on very real evidence of al-Qa'ida collaboration with this country or that organization. The analytic piece -- in which the host country makes the case for this being the center of gravity that must be attacked and destroyed -- will be harder to resist. This is particularly true because there is now a terrific crisis of confidence within U.S. intelligence. An intelligence organization that has failed massively and publicly tends to submit to allied organizations that have not failed -- or to be pressured into submission.
These are only some of the dangers that the sort of intelligence coalition Washington seeks to build would face. Even more explosive are the limits of the intelligence war on non-U.S. soil and who controls that war. In the North American theater, operations tend to be less of a military nature and more of a police matter. That means that, ultimately, criminal law defines operations. Unless al-Qa'ida's attacks continue and intensify, it is hard to imagine a situation in which a state of emergency is declared that effectively suspends the criminal code.
In a police action, particularly in the United States, the first requirement is not the apprehension of the criminal, but rather the protection of the rights of citizens. The governing principle is that it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted. In warfare, the reverse is the case. In destroying enemy forces, it is accepted and expected that innocent bystanders also will die. The notion of guilt or innocence is not really relevant to warfare.
Within the United States, the first principle will continue to pertain. The rules of U.S. operations overseas will be much more complex. In the intercontinental intelligence war, proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt simply will not surface. There will be no judges and juries. Intelligence operatives will have to make decisions -- sometimes in split seconds -- concerning who will live and who will die.
In discussions about removing limits on state-sponsored assassinations, American thinking has focused on countries like Afghanistan or Iraq. In these countries, intelligence operations are a subset of military operations, and the same rules ultimately apply. The situation is fundamentally different in Germany or Japan. The expectation there is that those theaters will operate by the same rules as North America: local forces will have control and the legal system will continue to govern.
The Intelligence War
The opportunities for rifts within the emerging coalition are enormous, particularly as the memory of Sept. 11 fades a bit over time and if al-Qa'ida refrains from further actions. Thus, the United States eventually must make a fundamental decision, similar to the decision Israel faced in the 1970s. If it accepts the inevitable strictures and political manipulation of allies, the ability to deal decisively with al-Qa'ida will decline dramatically.
If it is to have a chance of success, the United States must be able to act decisively and quickly, regardless of political considerations -- and also, by definition, operate in a sphere not only beneath proof beyond a reasonable doubt but also in which innocent people will certainly become casualties.
Israel consciously decided that destroying certain groups like Black September was necessary, even if it meant turning Europe into an intelligence battleground and even if, on occasion, inevitable mistakes led to civilian casualties. This is a critical choice the United States faces. It is a choice that cuts against the grain of the coalition warfare strategy Washington is following. In a sense, it is almost unthinkable that U.S. agents would begin killing French citizens on French soil. But given the flexibility and speed that al-Qa'ida has shown, and given the limits that rules of evidence place on intelligence operations, it is difficult to imagine another strategy.
This is reflected in the pursuit of money as well as suspects. Clearly al-Qa'ida has developed a system intended to make it difficult to track its money movements and impossible to seize all of its assets in one fell swoop. Diffusion and redundancy have been applied here as well. International banking authorities will cooperate against obvious targets. But we suspect that the processes al-Qa'ida uses to move money make the target set far from obvious. Deep access to private banking information is clearly required.
Some countries might be prepared to provide it. Other countries, understanding that this level of information would give U.S. intelligence tremendously important commercial information unrelated to al-Qa'ida, will be quite hesitant to provide unfiltered information. And information that is filtered by a nation-state can obviously be tainted in many ways.
There is also the question of what to do with secret bank accounts and cover corporations that represent the primary source of income for some countries. There are more than a few of these. The Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man are obvious locations, but countries like Belize also come into play. In breaching the wall of confidentiality, two things will happen. These countries will lose a source of income and will therefore resist. Depositors and incorporators in these countries, many of them wealthy and powerful people around the world, will not be happy to have their screens breached; they will resist and do so effectively.
The larger the coalition becomes in the intercontinental theater, the more constraints will be placed on U.S. intelligence operations and the lower the probability of success will be. On the other hand, given other U.S. interests, it is difficult to envision a war in which the United States simply turns the territory of other allies -- even NATO allies -- into battlefields, or single-handedly overturns the delicate politics behind the balance between public banking and client security. The fact is that the United States cannot afford a wholesale onslaught against all targets as they present themselves. Nor can the United States create a coalition that will permit such an onslaught.
What is possible is cooperation with allies on one level while a very selective and very covert war is carried out, with full deniability, on another level. There cannot be indiscriminate violence. There can be discriminating and intermittent violence. The problem is that al-Qa'ida has deliberately tried to lower the value of every piece of its organization so that the loss of any single one will not be fatal. But al-Qa'ida does not consist of supermen. Members must communicate and move around, and certainly some operatives are more trusted, have more knowledge and are more important than others.
The task is to identify those operatives and either capture them -- questioning them rigorously, as the saying goes -- or kill them. This is a global operation, and it cannot be shared with a coalition. Information can flow only one way: from allies to U.S. intelligence operations. On another level, the coalition can function -- harassing al-Qa'ida, capturing and trying lesser members, tying up money and so on.
In other words, a two-tiered war is required. The public war is a law enforcement challenge, much like what will happen in North America. A very secret war, perhaps never confirmed, that limits itself to extremely high-value targets and makes as few mistakes as humanly possible also must be waged. The coaliton will be able to tolerate a small number of such operations, widely scattered in time and space, of which all sides deny knowledge. It cannot tolerate wholesale warfare.
For this form of warfare to be effective, the "sensor to shooter" cycle must be dramatically compressed. Targets will have to be rapidly evaluated, information transmitted to the field, the operation planned and carried out -- all with suitable margins of safety relative to secrecy, deniability, collateral damage and above all, significance.
This is the challenge the U.S. intelligence community faces right now. It comes in the midst of a terrible crisis of confidence within that community. One is reminded of the U.S. Navy's mindset after Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, it was the Navy as an institution that had to be relied on to carry out the war in the central Pacific, and it is the CIA, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and the rest that will have to carry out this war.
The Analysts' War
Whatever the previous failings of U.S. intelligence, it remains the only global intelligence system capable of waging the intercontinental war. Most important, it is the only intelligence service whose interests coincide with the United States. It is the only horse we have to bet on.
It is not clear that personnel was the problem in the intelligence community leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks. Nor is it clear to us that the problem was the lack of human intelligence. Certainly there may be personnel problems, and there may be a lack of human intelligence. But there is a deeper problem.
The intelligence community is obsessed with collecting information. The largest entity in terms of budget, the NSA, is dedicated entirely to collections. Collections are fine, but their value is limited severely if what is collected is not read and understood. What is the value of collecting every phone call in Afghanistan if there is no one to listen to those calls -- or even those calls that a computer designates as critical because of some variable -- and there is no one to put them together with other bits of information?
The overwhelming focus of the U.S. intelligence community is collection and sourcing. Analysis accounts for a small fraction of the intelligence budget. In the sensor to shooter cycle, the key element will be the interface between sensor and shooter -- and that will be the intelligence analyst. He must operate with extreme speed, substantial stores of knowledge and vast leaps of intuition, as well as comprehensive databases. He also must have the ability to task both the sensors and the shooters.
Using the analyst as the operational pivot goes against the entire culture of the intelligence community, where analysis and operations are kept carefully apart. In a global intelligence war -- in which, for instance, information from the Philippines must be linked to information from Chase Bank in Manhattan, in time to find and shoot someone in Lima -- restructuring the intelligence community, streamlining it to fight this war and integrating all the components into a seamless system will be critical.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the hope for an effective intelligence coalition is chimerical. To the extent that there will be one, the coalition will limit the ability of the United States to operate. Partners will skew data and will naturally limit operations on their soil. On the other hand, simply going it alone is impossible. The United States cannot go to war on the soil of allies -- at least not a wholesale war.
A two-tiered strategy is required. On one level, the coalition will have its uses and will provide cover. However, responsibility for the intelligence war ultimately cannot be shared. It is an American mission and an American duty. It also places operational imperatives on the United States that make it essential to have efficiencies that coalition warfare does not permit.
The United States must unravel al-Qa'ida's network without having the main effort sapped by attacks on peripheral relationships. There will be time enough for that later. Rather, the task of U.S. intelligence is to look for bin Laden's necessary vulnerabilities -- people, money, buildings. When those are found to be of sufficient importance, they must be destroyed using secret U.S. forces deployed around the world, frequently without the knowledge or permission of the host country. And if these forces are captured, Washington, like Israel does, will deny everything. If they are killed, they will be forgotten, except for a star on a wall in Langley, Va.
It goes without saying that the U.S. intelligence community needs reform. Some will say that can't be done in wartime. In fact, most military and intelligence reforms take place exactly at that time because that is when business as usual is most dangerous.
Turning the intelligence community from a collector of the arcane into a war-fighting instrument is the key. That, along with cunning and ruthlessness, may defeat al-Qa'ida. It will be long and unpleasant, and there will be counterattacks. There are follow-on theaters of operations to be addressed.
You folks were speculating about the organization of the terrorist organization yesterday. Interesting ideas here.
C-SPAN's Booknotes program had on the authors of two books on intelligence a week or two ago. Bamford, the author of the book on the NSA, agreed with this piece that there is far too little money spent on analysis in the U.S. intelligence community. He said that that community -- and the NSA in particular -- needs far more analysts and linguists.
As it specifically relates to taking out the WTC organization I think it means that there may well be several US cells that are totally independant of the cell network that did the Sept. 11, 2001 actions. I hope I am wrong but IMHO we do need to keep vigilant. It further provides a clear logical basis for Al Qua'ida to delay further stikes from these operational and uncompromised cells for a time. The hiatus allows propagation of more cells world wide.
lest anyone think I am being being defeatist, I am not. I am merely advising that we prepare for a worst case situation and take appropriate measures.
Stay well - stay safe - stay armed - Victory
Stay well - Stay safe - stay armed - Yorktown
War Plan: Part 2: The Afghan Theater Of Operations
Source: Stratfor.com; Published: September 25, 2001
War Plan: Part 3 - North American Theater Of Operations
Source: Stratfor.com; Published: September 26, 2001
War Plan: Part 4: The Intercontinental Theater Of Operations
Source: Stratfor.com; Published: September 27, 2001
Stay well - Stay safe - stay armed - Yorktown
The only way to battle terrorism effectively is through an OPERATION GLOBAL PHOENIX.
Of course, we must expect the chorus of howls when this or that "respected cleric or businessman or community leader" is found with a couple of .22LR slugs in his head. Our "allied" police may even arrest some of our operatives from time to time.
The same left wing American talking heads and politicos who have made it their live's work to cripple the CIA, and who then accused the CIA of "dropping the ball" before 9-11, will scream that the CIA is running "death squads".
And so we shall. And so we shall.
There is no other way to grapple with this beast.
On this front totally agreed.
Like you said it is what we have been saying since the event. Interesting also is the analysis of the cell structure and what that bodes for the future.
Stay well - stay safe -Stay armed - Yorktown
Re: Travis' idea of "Operation Phoenix", this will be assisted greatly by new resources soon to be deployed. Do a google search on 'Warfighter I'...
TM's past remarks of "the concept of 'a band of brothers' hiding out in the woods someplace is now a ticket to a quick trip to Valhalla" are quite accurate.
harpseal, I can't see how you could be wrong in yours, they have to have some folks well placed in some governments. All things considered, it wouldn't be very difficult for them to do anyway.
patent
I don't think you need to declare "a state of emergency" to know that acts which kill thousands of civilians, cause billions of dollars of damage, wreak havoc and instability on the economic markets, should initiate some kind of "suspension" of the "criminal code". By this I take it is mean't certain civil liberties. I do believe, that acts such as 9/11 which cause this amount of chaos and destruction ought to be answered by a clear targeting process: the Islamic and Arab Islamic communities.
There is no other way to grapple with this beast.Nope.
Stay well - Stay safe - stay armed - Yorktown
Can you imagine as each "sleeper" terrorist is identified that his/her picture goes up on the wall of every post office in the land? Talk about a hunting season!
LOL!
Obviously they have and no one seems to be posting about some of the hazards of some of the ships that come from the Middle East and North Africa to major seaports on our East Coast. The West coast has its hazards also. All I will say is that on many days there is a danger of 100,000 tons of incediary material coming into many ports. Some of the vessels carrying that cargo have crews entirely made up of nationals from nations with very active anti-American terrorist groups like for example Algeria.
The Coast Guard is our first line of defense in this situation and they need to be augmented.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
Stay well - stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
Stay well - stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
Stay Safe !
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