Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of...

CdW Intelligence to Rent -2016- In Confidence [email protected]

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaida-45-Our Performance-12

The best way to understand the Islamic State (ISIS) is to see it as the next phase of al-Qaeda. All Sunni Islamic jihadi groups—Boko Haram, ISIS, Taliban, al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, even Hamas—share the same motivations based on a literal and orthodox reading of Islamic history and doctrine: resurrecting a caliphate (which existed in various forms from 632 to 1924) that implements and spreads the totality of sharia, or Islamic law.

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan 20 Feb- Afghan forces have pulled out of bases in Musa Qala, a strategic district of the southern province of Helmand, after months of heavy fighting with Taliban insurgents, officials said on Saturday. Helmand, a traditional heartland of the Taliban and one of the world's biggest centers of opium production, has been threatened for months and the United States recently sent hundreds of soldiers to the province to bolster its defense. The commander of the Afghan army's 215th corps, Mohammad Moeen Faqir, said troops had been ordered to pull back from Roshan Tower, their main base in Musa Qala, as well as other checkpoints to reinforce Gereshk, straddling the main Highway One which links Kabul with the south and west. "Their presence in the area did not mean anything," he said. "We will use them in battle with enemies in other parts of Helmand province."

Feb 19, Twelve jihadists who are purportedly senior figures in Jund al Aqsa, an al Qaeda-“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of WarCdW Intelligence to Rent of 14 01/05/2023

mailto:[email protected]


linked group, have joined Al Nusrah Front. The dozen jihadists explained their decision to join al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria in a statement that

was released on social media earlier today. Their declaration has been translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.“Our leave from the Jund Al Aqsa group and joining [Al Nusrah] is a response to the Command of Allah the Almighty to be firm and unite the ranks, and in obedience to the scholars of the Ummah and the scholars of jihad, and to strengthen the ranks of the mujahideen,” the signatories explained.Like many other jihadist organizations, Jund al Aqsa offers little transparency with respect to its leadership hierarchy. Judging by the reaction from jihadists on social media, it appears that the twelve men are senior figures in the group. But it is noteworthy that none of them are described as being Jund al Aqsa’s overall emir, or leader. The short descriptions contained after the signatories’ names indicate that they are a mix of sharia (or religious) and military officials.The authors urge “the mujahideen of all factions and names to seek” unity because their real enemies are the Shiites and the “atheists.”As The Long War Journal first reported, Jund al Aqsa has been a front for al Qaeda, as senior operatives loyal to Ayman al Zawahiri have served in its ranks. Jund al Aqsa’s statement announcing its withdrawal from Jaysh al Fateh was also translated by the SITE Intelligence Group. In it, Ayman al Zawahiri was described as “the sheikh of the mujahideen of today” and “his eminence.” Jund al Aqsa prayed for Allah to “preserve and protect [Zawahiri], and let him hold firm to the truth until the day of meeting Him [Allah].” By praising Zawahiri in this manner, Jund al Aqsa clearly signaled its continuing loyalty to al Qaeda.

ISW: Iraq Situation Report: February 12 - 17, 2016The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute conducted an intensive multi-week planning exercise to frame, design, and evaluate potential courses of action that the United States could pursue to destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) and al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. ISW and CTP are publishing the findings of this exercise in multiple reports in a series titled U.S Grand Strategy: Destroying ISIS and al Qaeda. The first report – Al Qaeda and ISIS: Existential Threats to the U.S. and Europe -- described America’s global grand strategic objectives as they relate to the threat from ISIS and al Qaeda. The second – Competing Visions for Syria and Iraq: The Myth of an Anti-ISIS Grand Coalition -- defined American strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria, identified the minimum necessary conditions for ending the conflicts there, and compared U.S. objectives with those of Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia in order to understand actual convergences and divergences. This third report assesses the strengths and vulnerabilities of ISIS and al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra to serve as the basis for developing a robust and comprehensive strategy to destroy them. Subsequent reports will provide a detailed assessment of the situation on the ground in Syria and present the planning group’s evaluation of several courses of action.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey Are Walking into a Trapby Burak BekdilThe Gatestone InstituteFebruary 16, 2016

Originally published under the title "Russia's Trap: Luring Sunnis into War."

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

CdW Intelligence to Rent of 14 01/05/2023



After Russia's increasingly bold military engagement in war-torn Syria in favor of President Bashar al-Assad and the Shiite bloc, the regional Sunni powers – Turkey and its ally, Saudi Arabia – have felt nervous and incapable of influencing the civil war in favor of the many Islamist groups fighting Assad's forces.Most recently, the Turks and Saudis, after weeks of negotiations, decided to flex their muscles and join forces to engage a higher-intensity war in the Syrian theater. This is dangerous for the West. It risks provoking further Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria, and sparking a NATO-Russia confrontation.After Turkey, citing violation of its airspace, shot down a Russian Su-24 military jet on Nov. 24, Russia has used the incident as a pretext to reinforce its military deployments in Syria and bomb the "moderate Islamists." Those are the Islamists who fight Assad's forces and are supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Russian move included installing the advanced S-400 long-range air and anti-missile defense systems.Turkey and Saudi Arabia say they are ready to directly challenge Russian-backed pro-regime forces in Syria.Fearing that the new player in the game could vitally damage their plans to install a Sunni regime in Damascus, Turkey and Saudi Arabia now say they are ready to challenge the bloc consisting of Assad's forces, Russia, and Shiite militants from Iran and Lebanon.

As always, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke in a way that forcefully reminded Turkey-watchers of the well-known phrase: Turkey's bark is worse than its bite. "No one," he said on Feb. 9, "should forget how the Soviet forces, which were a mighty, super force during the Cold War and entered Afghanistan, then left Afghanistan in a servile situation. Those who entered Syria today will also leave Syria in a servile way." In other

words, Davutoglu was telling the Russians: Get out of Syria; we are coming in. The Russians did not even reply. They just kept on bombing.Turkey keeps threatening to increase its military role in Syria. Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan pledged that Turkey will no longer be in a "defensive position" over maintaining its national security interests amid developments in Syria. "Can any team," he said, "play defensively at all times but still win a match? ... You can win nothing by playing defensively and you can lose whatever you have. There is a very dynamic situation in the region and one has to read this situation properly. One should end up withdrawn because of concerns and fears."Is NATO member Turkey going to war in order to fulfill its Sunni sectarian objectives? And are its Saudi allies joining in? If the Sunni allies are not bluffing, they are already giving signals of what may eventually turn into a new bloody chapter in the sectarian proxy war in Syria.First, Saudi Arabia announced that it was sending fighter jets to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, where U.S. and other allied aircraft have been hitting Islamic State strongholds inside Syria. Saudi military officials said that their warplanes would intensify aerial operations in Syria.





caption begin"[A] ground operation is necessary ... But to expect this only from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar is neither right nor realistic," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on February 16.caption end

Second, and more worryingly, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey and Saudi Arabia could engage in ground operations inside Syria. He also said that the two countries had long been weighing a cross-border operation into Syria – with the pretext of fighting Islamic State, but in fact hoping to bolster the Sunni groups fighting against the Shiite bloc – but they have not yet made a decision.In contrast, Saudi officials look more certain about a military intervention. A Saudi brigadier-general said that a joint Turkish-Saudi ground operation in Syria was being planned. He even said that Turkish and Saudi military experts would meet in the coming days to finalize "the details, the task force and the role to be played by each country."In Damascus, the Syrian regime said that any ground operation inside Syria's sovereign borders would "amount to aggression that must be resisted."It should be alarming for the West if Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two important U.S. allies, have decided to fight a strange cocktail of enemies on Syrian territory, including Syrian forces, radical jihadists, various Shiite forces and, most critically, Russia – all in order to support "moderate" Islamists. That may be the opening of a worse disaster in Syria, possibly spanning over the next 10 to 15 years.Allowing Sunni supremacists into a sectarian war is not a rational way to block Russian expansion.The new Sunni adventurism will likely force Iran to augment its military engagement in Syria. It will create new tensions between Turkey-Saudi Arabia and Iraq's Shiite-dominated government. It may also spread and destabilize other Middle Eastern theaters, where the Sunni bloc, consisting of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, may have to engage in new proxy wars with the Shiite bloc plus Russia.Washington should think more than twice about allowing its Sunni allies militarily to





engage their Shiite enemies. This may be a war with no winners but plenty of casualties and collateral damage. Allowing Sunni supremacists into a deeper

sectarian war is not a rational way to block Russian expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. And it certainly will not serve America's interests.Turkey and Saudi Arabia are too weak militarily to damage Russia's interests. It is a Russian trap – and precisely what the Russians are hoping their enemies will fall into.Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

ISIS: The Latest Phase of the Jihadby Raymond IbrahimFebruary 17, 2016http://www.meforum.org/5837/isis-latest-phase-of-jihad

ISIS propaganda trumpets Muslim strength, not grievances.The best way to understand the Islamic State (ISIS) is to see it as the next phase of al-Qaeda. All Sunni Islamic jihadi groups—Boko Haram, ISIS, Taliban, al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, even Hamas—share the same motivations based on a literal and orthodox reading of Islamic history and doctrine: resurrecting a caliphate (which existed in various forms from 632 to 1924) that implements and spreads the totality of sharia, or Islamic law.Accordingly, ISIS's notorious atrocities—beheading, crucifixion, sexual enslavement, and destruction of non-Sunni places of worship—are being committed by other jihadi groups (e.g., Boko Haram and al-Shabaab, both of which pledged allegiance to ISIS) and even by some Muslim governments (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and individual Muslims around the world.Conversely, although al-Qaeda (AQ) adheres to the same sharia that ISIS implements, it has long waged a propaganda war against the West. AQ portrays all terrorist attacks on the West, including 9/11, as mere payback for the West's unjust polices against Muslims, including support for Israel and Arab dictators.[1]ISIS' strategy inspires Muslims, while losing Western public opinion.To maintain this "grievance" narrative, AQ knows that the innately supremacist and violent aspects of sharia—for example ISIS' destruction of churches and subjugation of "infidel" Christian minorities—need to be curtailed or hidden from the Western world. Otherwise AQ's efforts of portraying jihadis as "freedom fighters" resisting an oppressive West risk being undermined.[2]Regardless, AQ's strategy of turning Western opinion appears to have borne fruit in one pivotal area: canceling longtime Western support for secular Arab dictators. In the context of the "Arab Spring," the Obama administration turned its back on America's Egyptian ally of 30 years, Hosni Mubarak; helped ISIS-affiliated jihadis overthrow Libya's Gaddafi (even though he was complying with Washington); and continues supporting ISIS-affiliated "moderates"[3] to overthrow Syria's Assad. Idealists in both government and media forgot a primary reason the U.S. had formerly supported secular Arab dictators: they single-mindedly opposed the jihadis.The result has been a new and emboldened phase of the jihad, a.k.a., ISIS. Born and entrenched in precisely those nations that U.S. leadership brought "freedom and democracy" to—Iraq, Syria, and Libya—ISIS (or al-Qaeda 2.0) is now indifferent to Western opinion. By widely broadcasting its savage triumphalism in the name of Islam,





ISIS forfeits the "grievance card" but plays the "strength" card, thus inspiring millions of Muslims. According to the Pew Research Center, in 11 countries

alone, at least 63 million and as many as 287 million Muslims support ISIS.[4]Yet even ISIS works in stages. When criticized by Muslims for killing fellow Muslims and not attacking Israel—the supreme enemy—ISIS responded by saying it was following the pattern of the historic caliphate founded in 632.[5] Then, Caliph Abu Bakr beheaded and crucified tens of thousands of Muslims for apostatizing. Only after the rebel tribes were brought back into the fold of Islam were they set loose to conquer European/Christian territories during history's early Muslim conquests (634–750). Indeed, it is believed that ISIS' caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took this name to signify his focus, that is, terrorizing all "hypocrites" and "apostates" until they unify under the caliphate's banner.It still remains to be seen whether ISIS' strategy—inspiring Muslims but losing Western opinion—will succeed. According to polls, "Islamophobia" is on the rise in the West, especially after the rise of ISIS, prompting several politicians to speak more candidly about the catalysts for terrorist violence.The Obama administration's weak responses feed into AQ's narrative that Islamic terrorism at least in part reflects Islamic grievance; and it refuses to connect the actions of any jihadi organization—whether ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, et al—to Islamic teaching.Time will tell whether the next administration will remain willfully ignorant of the nature of its jihadi enemy—which is fatal in war according to Sun Tzu's ancient dictum, "know your enemy"—or whether reality will trump political correctness.

By: Hassan Hassan02-17-2016 Five years after the rebellion against the rule of Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya has become the center of a rivalry between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda over the leadership of global jihad, a struggle that should be the focus of intelligence and policy practitioners in this region and beyond. Seen purely in military terms, the strength of Libyan franchises of Islamic State is commonly exaggerated. The group is still a minor player among the constellations of armed groups in this strategic north African country, and can be defeated if the few factions committed to fighting it are supplied with the necessary aid. But as a potential threat for Libya and the wider neighborhood, Islamic State could not have chosen a more central terrain for its strategy of claiming leadership. Inheriting al-Qaeda On February 3, 2015, Wilayat Tripoli released a video entitled “A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross.” In the video, the militants beheaded 21 people, 20 of whom were Coptic Christians from Egypt on a beach believed to be in Sirte, the group’s main stronghold in Libya since May 2015. Mimicking the beheading videos produced by Islamic State’s provinces in Iraq and Syria, a masked man, suspected to be an Iraqi named Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi, or Abu Nabil al-Anbari, addressed the camera, threatening that IS would continue to expand. Two weeks earlier, the same group attacked an oilfield south of Sirte operated by a French company and killed nine guards. And a





week prior to the oilfield attack, it killed 10 people, including five foreigners after storming the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli. Islamic State affiliates carried

out a series of similar attacks in subsequent weeks, including against the Moroccan and South Korean embassies. In April 2015, they rounded up 30 Orthodox Christians from Ethiopia, separated into two groups in different places, and murdered them, in a new message addressed to “The Nation of the Cross.”In jihadi literature, these attacks are part of a strategy of “exhaustion” and “depletion” aimed at confusing, weakening, and deterring enemies. The attacks are also designed to send carefully tailored messages to potential followers, namely al-Qaeda and its sympathizers. In the video showing the beheading of the Egyptian Copts, for instance, Islamic State depicted the act as revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden. “The sea in which you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden’s body, we swear to God we will mix it with your blood,” the speaker said. The title of the message also echoes a name associated to an al-Qaeda-linked faction, “Those Who Sign with Blood”, which operated in West Africa.The aforementioned attack on the oilfield was carried out by a group previously affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known as the Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade, said to have retreated to Libya and aligned with Ansar al-Sharia—a Salafist group formed in the wake of the Libyan rebellion in 2011—after the dispersing of militant groups due to the French bombing campaign in Mali. Many other Islamic State members in Libya also have roots in al-Qaeda. Libyan jihadists who had operated within al-Qaeda since the 1990s facilitated the transfer of one of the earliest waves of foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq in 2004. Their links to al-Qaeda—and more importantly to its franchise in Iraq— helped establish their loyalty to the Islamic State today and their ability to appeal to al-Qaeda sympathizers. Such connections also informed the Islamic State’s effort to appeal to the al-Qaeda base through longstanding jihadi figures such as al-Anbari and Bahraini ideologue Turki Binali. Binali was reportedly dispatched to the Libyan city of Sirte in March 2013 and in 2014 to proselytize for the Islamic State and address the issue from the Rabat mosque. He also authored a key booklet about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his claim to the caliphate, Extend the Hands to Pledge Allegiance to al-Baghdadi.There are two main reasons for the Islamic State’s attempts to appeal to this base. It aims to re-assemble the scattered networks of al-Qaeda in Africa, after being dispersed through years of U.S.-led campaign to choke off its finances and logistics. Libya has emerged as a meeting place for many of those jihadists, including a prominent former commander al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who had later formed his own factions, al-Morabitoon and Signed with Blood. Islamic State’s acceptance of the allegiance of Boko Haram in Nigeria and attempts to attract Taureg in northern Mali and across the Sahel as well as Somalia’s al-Shabab are also part of this wider effort.Depending on how the Islamic State fares in Libya and internationally in the coming months and years, it could prove to be the group that will reorganize the disseminated jihadi cadres in western and northern Africa and the horn of Africa, a possibility that would eclipse the threat of al-Qaeda. It is worth remembering that al-Qaeda’s links or authority over such groups was relatively frail, while Islamic State’s model involves closer leadership and coordination even if local franchises have extensive leeway to run their day-to-day operations.Another reason for its focus on al-Qaeda members and supporters is to attract battle-hardened fighters or ideologues who have the contacts and resilience necessary for the Islamic State to establish its fledgling international terror network. While the Islamic State aims to appeal to as wide a base as possible, it knows that experienced and committed





jihadists are key to its project. Along with child soldiers, those demographics are its center of attention everywhere.

Jihadists from Africa fighting in Syria and Iraq might also have a future role in this project of expansion. The footprint of Libyan fighters in the battlefield in Iraq and Syria is well felt. Some of the group’s key battles there, such as the suppression of a tribal rebellion in eastern Syria or the seizure of new territory after the fall of Mosul in 2014, were spearheaded by a Libyan faction, al-Battar Brigade, formed in 2012 in Syria mostly by jihadists from Derna, who previously operated within a group with the same name during the Libyan fight against Gaddafi. Some of those fighters later returned from Syria to reinforce the group’s fronts in Libya, operating again under the same banner. Similarly, Tunisian jihadists in Syria and Iraq are some of the most ruthless and committed to Islamic State. Those Tunisians, many of whom trained in and passed through Libya, are a hitherto latent threat to North Africa but one that will undoubtedly be an important chapter in the future battle against jihadists in this region.The Islamic State brand is currently impeded by established allegiance to al-Qaeda. Many of those loyal to al-Qaeda, or to local networks connected to al-Qaeda, are reluctant to recant their allegiance, especially as the Islamic State is still in its early stages. But that may change with time if the Islamic State continues to control territory and prove resilient as a regional force. And Libya is a test to the Islamic State’s nascent project of preeminence, probably more than anywhere else, as it is a test to the world’s effort against it, where lawlessness makes the country a meeting place for long-standing jihadists and for recruitment. The intensity of debates among jihadists and Islamists and the existence of long-standing extremists are turning the country’s battlefields into an academy producing a new generation of jihadists from across the continent.All of this shows that the Islamic State seeks to be the heir of Osama bin Laden in Africa. It is not true that the organization hopes to use Africa as a fallback base in case it loses in Iraq and Syria, for the simple reason that it is far more resilient and sustainable in Iraq than anywhere else. While Libya might be a haven for jihadists retreating from the rest of Africa, or indeed a stopover for those unable or unwilling to make it to Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State intends to use it as a foothold to expand its reach across the continent while simultaneously expanding from Iraq and Syria.A Libyan-Led FightAs such, the stakes are high in Libya. World powers that helped liberate Libyans from the reign of terror during Qaddafi understandably find themselves obligated to return to deal with this growing threat. However, the Islamic State presence in Libya must be viewed as a symptom of broader issues that need to be addressed carefully. Viewing the threat solely through a counterterrorism lens will worsen the situation. Even those who fight Islamic State in Libya admit that the group is more organized and has a better strategic foresight than they do, and premature intervention might be exploited by IS to increase division and recruit more people.Political stability remains the main intractable issue in Libya. Disparate factions that toppled the former dictator have so far failed to agree on a unity government and, in the process, division has widened even within those political and religious alliances, despite occasional appearance of progress. After one year of U.N.-sponsored negotiations and under international pressure, representatives of the two governments—a self-declared one in Tripoli, formed after dismantling the parliament, and an internationally-recognized one in Tobruk formed by the General National Conference—agreed in December to set up a nine-member presidential council to oversee the formation of a unity government to supersede the two. A proposal for a cabinet consisting of 32 members was struck down by





the Tobruk government, which asked for the number of ministers to be reduced to 17. It also rejected the suggested removal of Khalifa Hiftar, a

former general who commands the anti-Islamist Operation Dignity that began in May 2014, under the umbrella of the Libyan National Army. On Sunday, an amended 17-member cabinet was proposed, pending approval or rejection by the involved parties.Hiftar’s role is widely regarded as a cause of rift not only between the two political orbits but within the factions in Tobruk and the military officers supposedly under his command. Professionals and volunteers working within his fold proved committed to the fight against the Islamic State despite poor supplies, but his opponents blame him for the growing strength of the terrorists in Benghazi and Sirte in late 2014. Meanwhile, Islamic State is slowly gaining new territory and its opponents are fracturing or losing morale. Even if the proposed government is approved, the prospect of ending factionalism in the foreseeable future is low.Amid these intractable feuds, Western officials have recently floated the idea of a new foreign intervention to deal with the growing presence of IS, even though its growth is a symptom of the political stagnation perpetuated by regional powers and international dereliction. International fixation with the Islamic State is reflected in the fact that much of the news about Libya in recent months centered around it, and also in the wide suspicion among Libyans that the rush to form a government is designed to ask for an official approval to start a new air campaign, which reportedly included threats of sanctions against political spoilers. The fight against IS must be led by Libyans, and the formation of a national unity government is an opportunity to help them do so. Such support should come in two stages. Even if a full-fledged campaign against the Islamic State is delayed, a new government should be given time to operate and endure before full force is diverted to combating the group. At this stage, support for nationalist forces currently combating the Islamic State should begin immediately as fighters are losing morale amid political bickering. There is, admittedly, a real risk is that arbitrary support will strengthen militias, undermine any formed government, and deepen the crisis. A balance should be struck between empowering militias or individuals and waiting until a sufficient measure of national unity is achieved. There are enough forces willing to fight the Islamic State as part of a national army; the key issue has been politicking among the military leadership and interference from abroad. To that end, support for anti-IS forces should increase as those groups meet political milestones.Reliance on local forces to confront the Islamic State on the ground with the calculated support of outside powers has proven effective in Iraq and Syria. Channeling support through state institutions should be the long-term focus, and should begin to take place when a new government is formed, but it is unrealistic and counterproductive under the current circumstances. Similarly, an international rush to strike against the Islamic State without a strategy to enable Libyans to fight the group only repeats failed patterns over the past decade in Iraq and half a decade in Syria.One of the existing problems is that military support is often closely tied to loyalty to individuals, primarily Hiftar, which has led to defection and rupture within the forces fighting the Islamic State and its affiliates. This can be resolved systematically with the formation of a new government. This way, combating Islamic State becomes a tool and a unifying objective to put Libya back together, rather than using the formation of government as a tool to fight the Islamic State. The latter is a disastrous strategy that will fail and ensure that Libya remains a festering wound at the crossroads between Europe and Africa.





AQAP Expanding behind Yemen's FrontlinesBy Katherine ZimmermanFebruary 17, 2016

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has rapidly expanded its footprint in Yemen since February 1, behind the frontlines of Yemen’s civil war. Produced by James Towey.Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is well on its way to reconstituting the emirate it held in 2011 and 2012 almost unnoticed by the outside world. It has expanded across southern Yemen rapidly while the civil war’s frontlines remain effectively stalemated. It seized control of five cities in the past two weeks and gained control of two additional provincial capitals in the past two months. U.S. airstrikes have had no effect at all on this

expansion and have not significantly degraded the group’s ability to target the United States. AQAP is becoming an ever-more serious threat to American national security, and no one is doing much about it.None of the forces fighting on the ground are contesting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s expansion.[1] Airstrikes continue to target AQAP’s leadership, but the group draws on a depth of experience among veteran al Qaeda operatives and has proven to be resilient.The group may well be reconstructing the quasi-state it ruled at the height of its power in 2011 and 2012—the Emirate of Waqar. That emirate stretched across two Yemeni governorates, Abyan and Shabwah, which AQAP attempted to govern.[2] Its capital cities of “Wilayat Abyan” and “Wilayat Shaqra” were Ja’ar, about 12 kilometers north of Zinjibar, and Azzan, respectively. It has regained control of both cities. The cities under AQAP’s control today, in fact, extend across four Yemeni provinces, and include the




http://www.criticalthreats.org/sites/default/files/2016-02_Yemen_AQAP_Gains_1200.gif


capital of Lahij, al Hawta, to the west and the capital of Hadramawt, al Mukalla, to the east. AQAP has controlled al Mukalla since April 2, 2015,

and seized control of al Hawta on January 25, 2016.AQAP’s February gains secure its access to the key route linking its al Mukalla stronghold to Ja’ar. Its rapid expansion may mark the start of an effort to consolidate control over a contiguous area in south Yemen that it could really govern. [See Table I.] AQAP will most likely continue this effort by aiming to recapture Lawder and Mudia, which control a juncture in Abyan that provides access to al Bayda. Anti-al Houthi forces aligned with the Saudi-led coalition currently control the towns, but there are reports that AQAP is operating in the area.[3]Local resistance to AQAP is minimal at best. Local tribes and militias have little incentive to fight AQAP as it advances, especially given the ongoing violence in the rest of the country. AQAP has been actively targeting the leadership of the popular resistance committees that coordinated with the Yemeni military against the group in 2012 and that denied it much of the territory it has now regained.[4] Ansar al Sharia, AQAP’s insurgent force, placed a bounty on the head of Sheikh Abdul Latif al Sayyed and militants raided his home in Zinjibar in early December 2015, for example.[5] He had been one of the key powerbrokers in 2012 that led the fight against AQAP. Al Sayyed fled to Aden in early January.[6]The Saudi-led coalition’s primary efforts have aimed at combatting the al Houthi-Saleh forces and re-establishing Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government in Aden. The coalition spokesman announced a long-term objective of combatting AQAP on February 8, but underscored that the coalition was focused on restoring stability and governance to Yemen and that the counter-AQAP fight was a Yemeni one.[7] Coalition actions bear out this prioritization: its recent operations have focused on Yemen’s northern Red Sea coast in order to isolate the al Houthi-Saleh coalition inland—an effort that does nothing to help the fight against AQAP. The coalition is unlikely to open a new front against AQAP without significant support and leadership from the United States.American actions to counter AQAP will not halt AQAP’s advance, let alone roll back its gains. U.S. officials have indicated that American actions will remain limited to targeted airstrikes until there is a legitimate, sovereign government with which to partner against the group. U.S. airstrikes have killed a handful of senior AQAP leaders since the collapse of Yemen’s central government in January 2015.[8] Most recently, an airstrike killed a top military commander, Jalal Bal’idi al Marqishi on February 4, 2016.[9] Marqishi, also known as Abu Hamza al Zinjibari, was the Ansar al Sharia leader who seized Zinjibar in 2011.[10] Yet AQAP’s ground advance has continued unabated. The group has even revealed the presence of additional al Qaeda veterans within its leadership, including naming a founder of the group, Ibrahim Abu Salih, and a former Guantanamo detainee, Ibrahim al Qosi.[11]AQAP leadership has most likely decided not to operationalize attacks against the U.S. at this time so that American policymakers’ attention remains fixated on the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS). Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri instructed his affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al Nusra, to pursue this approach.[12] The myopic American focus on defeating ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and now Libya, has created space for AQAP and other al Qaeda affiliates such as Jabhat al Nusra to expand and consolidate their positions on the ground. The absence of an AQAP attack does not mean that the group cannot conduct attacks, nor that it has abandoned the idea of attacking the U.S. It means only that al Qaeda’s leaders are smart enough to take advantage of American distraction to prepare themselves for future struggles.





Destroying AQAP’s threat node—its attack cell and the direct organizational infrastructure supporting that cell—will not be sufficient to secure American

national security interests, even if the extremely limited American direct-action campaign in Yemen could hope to do so. Attempting to separate the threat node from the base and only targeting those components that are oriented on external attacks ensures that the group will continue to be able to generate future threats, the argument for which is made at length in Al Qaeda and ISIS: Existential Threats to the U.S. and Europe.[13] AQAP has and will continue to be able to generate threat nodes as long as its organizational base is intact and it has sanctuary in Yemen.American policy-makers’ single-minded focus on the threat node ignores the step-change in capabilities that AQAP made this year. AQAP is thriving on governance gaps created by the civil war, and also by the neglect of local administrations by both the al Houthi-Saleh and Hadi governments.[14] It has governed al Mukalla, Yemen’s third-largest port city, by proxy since April 2015.[15] It will probably replicate this system of governance, which establishes a level of deniability over the linkages to the group, in order to consolidate control over newly seized cities. AQAP has also worked along pragmatic lines, providing weapons, supplies, and training to Sunni tribal militia forces in the fight against the al Houthi-Saleh coalition, to strengthen relations with local populations, which is a source of the groups’ strength.[16] It is replicating to some extent the approach Jabhat al Nusra has taken in Syria, which has been enormously successful.[17] AQAP’s growing presence across southern Yemen will become more difficult to reverse the longer the group controls populated centers.Separating AQAP and its proxies from local governance to eliminate AQAP’s support base grows more challenging over time, increasing the requirements to secure U.S. national security interests. The Saudi-led coalition does not include combatting AQAP as one of its immediate objectives, and the American strategy still rests on—and waits for—a partnered Yemeni government to lead the ground fight. The end to Yemen’s civil war—a war fought along multiple fault lines in the country—is nowhere in sight. AQAP, meanwhile, will strengthen as it establishes itself in an expansive and contiguous block of territory, the building block for a future emirate.AQAP, like all al Qaeda groups, is prosecuting a long-term strategy to destroy the West. We must not be lulled into complacency as AQAP focuses on its local presence. Instead, AQAP’s expansion over the past two weeks should be seen as a call-to-action for the U.S. to drive efforts to fill the governance and security gaps in Yemen that AQAP has exploited and to facilitate meaningful political dialogue on multiple levels—especially at the regional and local level—to de-escalate the war. AQAP’s future threat to the U.S. is growing. We must recognize this now.

Regards Cees: How the Islamic State went from unruly subordinate to dominant rival.Ten years ago al-Qaida was the bogeymen of the West, a terrifying secret network that had brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11, and inspired bombs in Madrid and London. Fast forward a decade and that same spot in many people’s minds is filled by the Islamic State (ISIS), the media savvy ultra-violent organization that has carved out a small empire for itself in the Middle East.But al-Qaida has not disappeared. Although its leader Osama Bin Laden was killed by United States Special Forces in 2011 the network still operates, nominally under the command of Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri. ISIS once swore allegiance to al-Qaida, but now brands itself as the dominant Sunni-Salafist Jihadi-





group, outdoing its former master at its own game.So how has the world’s former premier terrorist organization been eclipsed by an upstart and what

differentiates these allies-turned-rivals?The Islamic State was born out of the violence that gripped Iraq following the US-led invasion in 2003. Responsible for some of the worst acts of violence witnessed in the country, the group was eventually defeated and almost driven out of existence by pressure from the US military coupled with rejection by local Sunnis. The collapse of Syria into civil war served as a lifeline to ISIS, one which it exploited to the maximum to revitalize and bolster itself.During its early years ISIS did not go by the grandiose title, Islamic State. Instead, it was known in Iraq as al-Qaida, which suggests that both groups espoused similar ideologies and objectives. Their strategies were, however, and continue to be, quite different. From the outset al-Qaida in Iraq was noted for its brutality, a trait that ISIS continues and which marks it out from the mainstream al-Qaida branches. Although the older organization can hardly be thought of as moderate or non-violent, it consistently chastised its Iraqi affiliate for its attacks on Shi'ites and its use of gory videos showing hostage-executions during the conflict in Iraq. These were seen as “contrary and damaging to Al-Qa’ida’s broader struggle,” Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the Middle East Institute wrote in his paper entitled Jihadi Rivalry: The Islamic State Challenges al-Qaida. But despite this, ISIS “repeatedly ignored orders to cease public displays of gruesome violence and mass casualty attacks,” Lister said.Al-Qa’ida believed that it was necessary to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis and that acts of extreme violence would backfire. This belief appeared to be correct in view of ISIS’s initial defeat in Iraq. But the same strategy gave the organization much of its clout following its rebirth in the wake of the Syria conflict and its subsequent seizure of territory in Iraq.Differences in their attitude to and use of violence was one way in which the two rivals diverged. The second relates to their view of the caliphate. “Islamic State’s strategy is that first of all you declare the caliphate and then you try to hold and expand it,” Prof. Assaf Moghadam, director of academic affairs at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, told The Media Line. For al-Qaida, on the other hand, the caliphate was more of a “distant Utopian dream” that required preparation before it could be achieved. These preparations – the removal of Western influence from the Middle East and the spread of Salafi ideology among Muslims – amounted to the majority of al-Qaida’s efforts. ISIS skipped the preparation and got straight into the business of creating its caliphate when it declared itself a state in the summer of 2014 following its land grab into Iraq. One of the most significant factors surrounding the establishment of the caliphate is the prestige and credibility it gave ISIS. In many ways the announcement of the ‘State’ can be seen as the moment of ISIS's victory over al-Qaida, the point at which the organization achieved something the previous generation of Jihadists never could.Not only did it give the organization prestige that attracted large numbers of foreign fighters, but it allowed them to recruit directly from populations living in the territory ISIS now occupied, Moghadam said. “These are people who have the misfortune to be (living) in territories that ISIS seized… the male population, children, who are joining ISIS for reasons to do with intimidation.” al-Qaida on the other hand never controlled a territorial body or a population from which to recruit, the counter-terrorism expert suggested.The two rivals also differ in how they seek to spread their influence through the region. ISIS frequently makes use of fear and intimidation – the same methodology it uses to control its territory – to coerce other groups throughout the Middle East into joining its brand. Al-Qaida by contrast creates its connections through, “tight close-knit alliances based on joint fighting, common training and friends on the ground,” a model which, in the long run, is likely to be more successful, Moghadam said.This leaves Western planners with a complex





calculation: How to react to the Sunni Jihadist split.“On the one hand the Islamic State is clearly more violent and more aggressively hard line. But

until last year it was not really committed to acts of terrorism against Western countries,” Gilbert Ramsay, a lecturer in international relations at St. Andrews University, told The Media Line. On the other hand, “al-Qaida, even though it was more moderate, was primarily committed to acts of terrorism in Western countries,” he said. It might be tempting for policy-makers to sit back and watch the two factions devour each other, as they fight it out for position of top dog. But the alternative scenario could be more dangerous, Ramsay suggested.“The reason we ought to be more concerned about the al-Qaida/ISIS rivalry is that it places more pressure on both organizations to compete for attention,” the academic noted. Unfortunately for the West, Ramsay said, “The way to outbid the other is to conduct larger and more spectacular attacks.”




Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of...

Documents

Transcript of Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of...