Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 4-1-AQAP-30

C de Waart; CdW Intelligence to Rent [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 4-1-AQAP-30

They say those who forget history are doomed to repeat it again

A US government spokesperson has struggled to answer questions put to him on why the US condemns Russian bombing in Syria, and supports Saudi-led bombing in Yemen, both of which have killed thousands of civilians. Washington reserves the right to strike targets in Yemen whenever “necessary and appropriate,” President Obama told Congress after the US military carried out its first direct attack in the bloody conflict, using the pretext of self-defense.

Yemen war: 'My children are starving to death'. ‘We Sleep Afraid, We Wake Up Afraid’: A Child’s Life in Yemen

Escalation in the Red Sea: Yemen’s Civil War, Iran, and Saudi ArabiaBy Katherine Zimmerman, Emily Estelle October 14, 2016Ethan Beaudoin, Maher Farrukh, and Hamsa Fayed contributed significant research to this piece.

The United States military struck and destroyed three radar sites in Yemen after two missile attacks against U.S. navy ships in the Red Sea this week. U.S. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook characterized the U.S. response as “limited self-defense strikes” to protect American personnel, American ships, and freedom of navigation in the Bab al Mandab Strait. The U.S. Navy had just increased its presence in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden after al Houthi-Saleh forces claimed the October 1 destruction of an Emirati catamaran off Yemen’s coast.

1The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. –Winston ChurchillCees de Waart: CdW Intelligence to Rent of 8

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The deliberate targeting of U.S. Navy vessels from al Houthi-Saleh–controlled territory is a significant inflection in the Red Sea and a sign that Yemen’s civil war is becoming tangled in regional dynamics and conflicts. It does not make sense when seen in the context of only one of the conflicts—the Yemeni civil war, the Iranian-Saudi conflict, and Iran’s more aggressive posturing in the region. The reasons for these attacks emerge from the increasing interaction between those overlapping conflicts.

The al Houthi-Saleh faction, an alliance of sorts between an Iranian-backed Zaydi Shi’a armed movement and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, was almost certainly involved in the attack. Yet that faction does not benefit from further drawing the United States into the Yemeni civil war. Al Houthi-Saleh officials, in fact, have repeatedly denied that their forces conducted the October 9 and October 12 attacks against the USS Mason in the Red Sea. Senior U.S. administration officials asserted in an October 14 background briefing that they were confident the al Houthi forces were involved in the attacks, though they could not state with confidence who exactly fired the missile and whether Saleh’s forces, or Iranian forces, were involved. It hard to conceive of a situation in which actors—internal hardline factions or even Iranian or Lebanese Hezbollah operatives—were able to operate in Yemen without the al Houthi-Saleh faction’s knowledge and facilitation and that operatives were able to use the radar sites under al Houthi-Saleh control twice without the al Houthi-Saleh faction’s consent in some form.Targeting U.S. Navy vessels in the Red Sea would have strategic value for Iran as the Iranian regime pursues a hard line against Saudi and American influence in the region. Iranian-Saudi tensions are high, and Iranian regime officials continue to make barbed comments about the Saudi regime. A powerful Iranian brigadier general levied a thinly veiled attack against the Saudi defense minister on October 4 and called the Kingdom Iran’s “main threat,” for example.[1] The Iranian regime is also posturing against American intervention in the region, calling for the U.S. to leave the Middle East. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy Commander called for the U.S. to “end [its] presence in the Persian Gulf” in mid September. He denied that IRGC vessels had harassed U.S. Navy vessels operating in the area. American and Saudi interests align against Iranian interests in Syria, but also in Yemen. Iran sees American support for the Saudi-led coalition as another sign that the United States is acting as an adversary.The United States risks getting drawn unwittingly into the Yemeni civil war and further into regional conflicts even by taking limited, defensive action in the Red Sea. Regional and Yemeni actors perceive American actions through the lens of their conflicts. American missiles destroyed three radar sites in al Houthi-Saleh territory in Yemen, a perceived attack against the al Houthi-Saleh faction. It furthers the al Houthi-Saleh narrative that the U.S. is backing Saudi Arabia against it because of continued American intelligence and logistics support to the Saudi-led coalition. It also furthers the Iranian narrative that the U.S. is intervening in regional affairs. More dangerous, still, is the very real probability that the multiple conflicts spinning in the region will become so entangled that undoing the Gordian knot is near impossible.

The challenges facing the United States in the Red Sea and the region will continue to multiply rapidly. Iranians or their proxies are now challenging the U.S. Navy’s ability to operate freely in one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. American responses risk drawing the U.S. further into a complex regional and internal Yemeni war. The U.S. must stop compartmentalizing challenges and conflicts that are increasingly intersecting. A strategic and comprehensive view of these problems must replace the tactical and ad hoc approach that has characterized U.S. policy in the Middle East for so long.


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[1] The head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, IRGC Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, said Saudi Arabia was Iran’s “main threat” and said “inexperienced Saudi leaders,” probably referencing Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, have implemented “offensive strategies against Iran.” Bin Salman is widely assessed to have been the Saudi official who pushed for a military intervention in Yemen in early 2015.

Yemen Frontlines: October 2016By Katherine Zimmerman October 6, 2016

The frontlines of Yemen’s civil war have remained relatively fixed because neither side has the military strength to extend its influence significantly beyond the borders of its support base. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) adds complexity to the civil war. AQAP is fighting against the al Houthi-Saleh alliance and is attempting to prevent the internationally recognized government under Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi from consolidating control over southern Yemen.The al Houthi-Saleh alliance in northern Yemen continues to control historical strongholds for both the al Houthi movement and former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.The al Houthi movement includes prominent Zaydi-Shia families and tribes and an armed faction that

has been fighting the Yemeni government (previously Saleh’s government) since 2004. Al Houthi strongholds include Sa’ada governorate and parts of Hajjah and al Jawf governorates in northern Yemen.

Ali Abdullah Saleh has the loyalty of units that had been part of Yemen’s Republican Guard, an elite armed group that Saleh’s son commanded. He also has a vast patronage network through his


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political party, the General People’s Congress (GPC). GPC leaders have called up tribal militia forces to fight for Saleh. Saleh’s strongholds include Sana’a and many of the governorates in central Yemen.

Iran has provided limited support to the al Houthi-Saleh alliance.[1]Internationally recognized Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi does not have a strong constituency and instead depends on the support of other Yemeni factions and international actors.• President Hadi relies on Lieutenant General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar, his vice president, for support in

northern Yemen and for the Yemeni military forces Ali Mohsen brings to the table. Ali Mohsen had commanded Yemen’s strongest regular army unit, the First Armored Division, which Hadi disbanded during security sector reforms in 2012.[2]

• The Southern Movement, a southern umbrella group with secessionist leanings, supports Hadi over the al Houthi-Saleh alliance, which it sees as a northern occupier. Southern leaders seek to resolve the current conflict in a way that sets conditions for a more autonomous or possibly independent southern state.

• Tribes in southern Yemen have also allied with Hadi to oust al Houthi-Saleh forces and, in some cases, to remove local powerbrokers linked to Saleh. Tribal leaders who are members of the Islah party, an Islamist opposition party, have also fought behind Hadi because of targeted actions the al Houthis took over the past few years to degrade the party’s influence.

• Salafi militias mobilized against the al Houthi-Saleh alliance and are increasingly gaining power and influence in southern Yemen.

• The Saudi-led coalition, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, intervened military on Hadi’s behalf and has provided support to Ali Mohsen, southern militias, and Salafi militias.

This map of Yemen’s frontlines simplifies the area of operations of major factions in Yemen’s civil war. Media reporting tends to report all forces operating under the al Houthi-Saleh alliance as “al Houthi” forces, which makes it difficult to assess where al Houthi or Saleh forces are operating and whether they are under a single command structure. Locations that are heavily contested are marked, though there is active fighting along the frontline between the al Houthi-Saleh forces and the Hadi coalition. The majority of Yemen’s population is concentrated in the country’s northwest and western terrain; eastern Yemen is sparsely populated and primarily desert.

[1] Katherine Zimmerman, “Signaling Saudi Arabia: Iranian Support to Yemen’s al Houthis,” AEI’s Critical Threats Project, April 15, 2016, http://www.criticalthreats.org/yemen/zimmerman-signaling-saudi-arabia-iranian-support-to-yemen-al-houthis-april-15-2016.[2] Katherine Zimmerman and Sasha Gordon, “Yemen’s Military Restructuring: Removing Saleh’s Network,” AEI’s Critical Threats Project, December 20, 2012, http://www.criticalthreats.org/yemen/yemens-military-restructuring-removing-salehs-network-december-20-2012.

You'd be forgiven for thinking Al Qaeda disappeared with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, but it hasn't. Though Islamic State is capturing the world's attention and a lot of young recruits, the organisation now headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri remains adaptive and patient. In 2001, Al Qaeda was the name on everyone's lips. In 2016, we rarely hear about it and instead it's all about Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh. So, why did Al Qaeda seemingly fade away?Is it because its leader Osama bin Laden was tracked down and killed by US forces in 2011—or simply a new strategy?One of the world's leading terrorism experts, Bill Braniff, says Al Qaeda is still around—and is in fact noted for its longevity.'Al Qaeda's been around since 1988, in the waning days of the anti-Soviet jihad, when the Soviet


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Union had invaded Afghanistan and it's still around some 28 years later,' says Braniff, the director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism at the University of Maryland.'This is an organisation that is not going anywhere.'But Braniff admits that Al Qaeda's prominence and reputation took a hit when its leader, Osama bin Laden, was killed in 2011 and replaced by the much less charismatic, Ayman al-Zawahiri. 'This is certainly true and it's not the same organisation that it was in the 1980s and 1990s—or as recently as 2011 and the death of Osama bin Laden. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current emir of Al Qaeda, is largely believed to be a less effective, less charismatic individual,' he says.Who has more staying power?Braniff believes that Al Qaeda is an organisation that is adaptive and patient. He says this is a weakness when compared to the brashness of Islamic State, which has captured the attention of the world and a lot of young recruits. But, perhaps in the long run, an organisation like Al Qaeda, even if less inspiring, may have more staying power,' he says.So, has Al Qaeda been keeping tabs on IS, how it operates and what it's doing in order to modify its organisation and bring itself back to prominence?Braniff says terror organisations are highly networked and that both Al Qaeda and Islamic State have many allied groups. 'They actually inspire a lot of adherence and there's actually a fair amount of overlap between the individuals and the groups and their allegiances,' he says. 'So, the idea that they learn from one another is very well accepted, because the human capital changes from one group to the next group or they know each other in the real world—these are real social networks—where they can share information and best practices.'But many terrorism analysts say they believe Al Qaeda is now distancing itself from the tactics and some of the propaganda of IS. Braniff agrees.'Groups like Al Qaeda are saying that Islamic State is beyond the pale, they're killing Muslims in gross numbers, but we, Al Qaeda, have never lost our eyes on the real enemies of Islam and when IS burns itself out, we're still going to be here,' he says.Al Qaeda's new strategy—or is it?Al Qaeda is said to have taken on a new, long-term strategy. Instead of fighting now, and in particular waging war against fellow Muslims, the group has been securing supply lines in war-torn areas and socialising agents into villages and regional networks.Analysts say the idea behind the move is to shore up local support now, so that it can be called upon at a later time.Bill Braniff says in fact that this is a new twist on an old strategy. Al Qaeda has always sought to work by, with and through other militant organisations.But he says the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, has damaged the organisation's reputation by killing so many Muslims in Iraq, instead of directing violence in Iraq toward US and allied forces there.'This is the risk of running a decentralised, franchised model: you can get a Zarqawi who can take the franchise off in a direction that the organisation does not want,' Braniff says.'What they learned after that was that they could take a slightly softer approach, that they didn't have to be the people that were in charge of the violence, they could instead work on some other aspects—things like supply lines, funding, propaganda generation.'Recently, Braniff says, the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria requested to entirely drop its affiliation with the main branch of Al Qaeda, so it could be better integrated locally into the rebellion against the Assad regime.'The Al Qaeda leadership acquiesced and said: "Of course, if that's what you need to be successful on the ground against the Assad regime, by all means, you can drop the affiliation,"' he says.'That's an amazing degree of patience and decentralisation, bordering on irrelevance. Does Al Qaeda


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even matter in this instance? Is it a liability and not an asset? So, it's an interesting time right now to see which way the movement goes after this really drastic step in Syria.'Islamic State: 'Still catching up'So, how large is Al Qaeda's sphere of influence? Where is its power base, and is it spread as widely as Islamic State appears to be?Terror experts seem to largely agree that Al Qaeda has groups or associates in every region of the Muslim-majority world—and say IS is still catching up.Bill Braniff says he believes it's important to note that in the last four years, six or seven of the most lethal and active terrorism organisations in the world have either been associated with the Al Qaeda franchise or a combination of Al Qaeda and Islamic State.'Groups like Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are still highly violent, highly active groups that are part of the Al Qaeda franchise,' he says.'So, we shouldn't say that Al Qaeda as a movement has lost the wind in its sails. It's quite the opposite—it's just not individuals around Ayman al-Zawahiri who are pulling the triggers.'Social media the key to recruitmentExperts agree that Al Qaeda to some extent flies under the radar, with sub-groups operating under different names and perhaps not getting the sort of global attention garnered by IS, particularly through the western media.Is this why IS has been much more effective in recruiting young people to its cause, particularly through the use of social media? Bill Braniff says in particular Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Shabaab were very adept at using western-style propaganda on social media websites like Twitter to get their message out.But, he says in this regard they've really been superseded by IS on all forms of social media.'As an organisation, Islamic State has invested heavily in the human capital it takes to develop their own scripts,' he says.'IS develops its own platforms for communication, and dissemination of its information be developing a series of smartphone applications.'They've created these in-house, they're not off the shelf. So this is an organisation that's watched the success of the Al Qaeda franchise and doubled down on the digital communication as a tool.'Braniff says it doesn't stop at communication. He says IS is also using social media to mobilise people into the violence. He says those on social media are not just 'propagandists or cheerleaders'—they're actually helping people get from one destination to another across Iraq and Syria.Different strategies, same desired effectBraniff says while so called lone-wolf attacks seem random and irrational, organisations like Al Qaeda and IS have a strategy at play.'While we may fundamentally disagree with the starting assumptions that they have and we certainly don't think that they're moral in what they do, they are rational,' he says.He says Al Qaeda has a strategy of attrition, that they're trying to create enough violence against western targets in enough Muslim countries, that western governments choose on their own to sever ties with those countries. 'The logic here is that once you've attritted the will to remain engaged in the Muslim world from these outside supporting powers, then you can overthrow the local governments,' he says.Braniff says Islamic State is taking a different course. It is not waging a long term war of attrition, but instead a strategy of destabilisation. He says the IS goal is to destabilise Muslim regimes and then stage a takeover.'It's much, much more violent and more dangerous regionally as a strategy because it can topple regimes, it can bring a country into a state of civil war,' he says.


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Regards Cees***

Hiding US Role in Yemen Slaughter So Bombing Can Be Sold as ‘Self-Defense’By Adam Johnson To hear US corporate media tell it, the US was dragged into a brand new war on Wednesday.US destroyers in the Gulf of Aden launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels, a Shia insurgent group currently withstanding a massive bombing campaign from a Saudi-led coalition in a year-and-half conflict between largely Shia rebels and the Saudi-backed Sunni government in Yemen. The Pentagon insisted that cruise missiles had been fired onto the USS Mason on Sunday and Wednesday from Houthi-controlled territory, and called the airstrikes a “limited self-defense” response.Needless to say, US media followed the Pentagon’s lead. The fact that the United States has been literally fueling Saudi warplanes for 18 months while selling weapons and providing intelligence support to the Gulf monarchy—acts which even the US State Department believes could expose the US to war crimes prosecution—was either downplayed or ignored. Nor did media recall the US’s long history of drone warfare in Yemen, where the military and CIA have been carrying out long-range assassinations since 2002, killing more than 500 people, including at least 65 civilians.A video accompanying the New York Times story on the Yemen bombing (10/12/16) presents as fact the claim that Houthi rebels attacked a US ship—thought the rebels deny this, and even the Pentagon says it does not know for sure.So far, most print media reporting has at least bothered to briefly put the attack and counterattack in broader context, noting the US role in the brutal bombing campaign that has left over 4,000 dead, including over 140 bombed at a funeral in Sana’a last week—even as the stories’ framing downplayed the US’s history in the conflict. The New York Times (10/12/16), for example, said in the second paragraph of its report on the airstrikes (emphasis added):The strikes against the Houthi rebels marked the first time the United States has become involved militarily in the civil war between the Houthis, an indigenous Shiite group with loose connections to Iran, and the Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations.But the Times story went on to acknowledge, somewhat contradictorily, that the US had been “quietly providing military support to a Saudi Arabia-led bombing campaign against the rebels since last year.” The story noted that the US had beenproviding intelligence and Air Force tankers to refuel the coalition’s jets and bombers. The American military has refueled more than 5,700 aircraft involved in the bombing campaign…. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed since the bombing began, according to the United Nations’ top human rights official.TV news reports, on the other hand, kept the spin and left out the context. They mostly failed to mention that the US has been assisting the Saudi assault on the Houthi rebels for a year and a half, and framed the incident as a US warship being attacked while simply minding its own business in international waters.CBS’s David Martin, fresh off his 14-minute Pentagon commercial last month, didn’t mention the Saudi bombing campaign or explain the US’s role in the war for his segment for CBS This Morning (10/13/16). In fact, Martin never uttered the word “Saudi” or named any of the other countries involved in Yemen, only noting that the rebels are “trying to overthrow the government.” The average viewer would come away thinking the US Navy ship just happened to be in the neighborhood when it was randomly fired upon.

ABC‘s Martha Raddatz reports on US intervention in Yemen without using the words “Saudi” or “Arabia.”ABC’s Martha Raddatz (Good Morning America, 10/13/16) likewise didn’t inform the viewer that


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the US has been a party to the civil war for 18 months. She also never used the word “Saudi” or referred to the brutal bombing campaign; she barely even alluded to there being a conflict at all.CNN’s Barbara Starr (CNN, 10/13/16) joined the club, omitting the US and Saudi roles in the conflict entirely. She went one step further and repeatedly speculated about “direct” Iranian involvement in the Mason attack and what that would entail, despite there being zero evidence and no suggestion from the Pentagon of Iranian participation. Starr even conflated Al Qaeda and Iran, despite their being on opposite sides of the conflict: The Yemeni missiles were fairly old but had been outfitted with highly lethal warheads, the kind Al Qaeda and Iran know how to make. The implication was that Al Qaeda might have somehow provided Houthi rebels with missiles, but this, of course, is absurd: The Houthis and Al Qaeda are sectarian enemies and have been fighting each other throughout the civil war. Never mind; Starr needed to raise the stakes and throw out as many boogeymen as she could.MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (10/13/16) delivered the worst of the batch. Not only did she too omit the Saudi bombing campaign and the US’s role in it (again, leaving the viewer to believe the attack was a total non sequitur), she spun the issue in tedious partisan terms, recalling Trump’s statement he would attack Iranian warships that threatened the US:You might remember Republican candidate Donald Trump said in an off-handed remark during the campaign that if Iranian ships got too close to American ships and if Iranian sailors made rude gestures towards our American sailors under President Trump, we’d blow those Iranian ships out of the water. Well, Iranian ships and American ships are now in the same waters, off the coast of Yemen in the middle of war, with Tomahawk missiles and cruise missiles already flying. Steady on.Why are American ships in those waters? Why are Tomahawk missiles “flying”? The conflict is never explained; it’s only brought up so that Maddow can warn that the GOP nominee could make things worse. Of course, it isn’t Trump who backed the Saudis in an air campaign that’s left thousands dead, but Obama—and it’s Hillary Clinton who as secretary of State enthusiastically pushed to sell warplanes to Riyadh (The Intercept, 2/22/16). But such facts would messy up the election-season narrative.Maddow, like the other reports, used the loaded modifier “Iran-backed” to describe the Houthis (even though experts and Pentagon officials think Iran’s support is overblown). This is a stark asymmetry, considering that none of the reports referred to the Yemeni government as “US-backed” or “Saudi-backed.” She also said that the Navy blamed the attacks on the Houthis, when the Pentagon only claims the missiles came from rebel territory, and could very well be from other allied groups (New York Times, 10/13/16).Not only is the US’s backing of Saudi Arabia omitted from all these reports, the word “Saudi” isn’t uttered in any of them. The viewer is given the impression that the war, aside from Iranian meddling, is an entirely internal affair—when it actually involves over 15 different countries, mostly Sunni monarchies propping up the Yemeni government—and that the rebels just randomly decided to pick a fight with the largest military in the history of the world. The Houthis, for their part, vehemently deny having carried out the attack on the Mason, and there is no publicly available evidence it was them or allied forces. It should be noted, however, that Houthi forces took credit for sinking a United Arab Emirates supply ship two weeks earlier. As is often the case with war, the issue of “first blood”—or who started the fighting—gets muddied. Governments naturally want global audiences and their own citizens to view their actions as defensive—a necessary response to aggression, not aggression itself. US corporate media are aiding this official spin in their reporting on the US bombing of Yemen. Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org.


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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 4-1-AQAP-30

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