Many thanks to Tony Kimery for this outstanding article on Anwar Al Awlaki, and for accurately capturing my thoughts and comments on the subject! It was a honor to contribute to his work. I visit the Homeland Security homepage everyday and encourage my readers to do the same. The articles are well researched and documented, and podcasts extremely informative. Bookmark this page and make it part of your daily reading. http://www.hstoday.us/home.html
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By: Anthony Kimery
After Awlaki
Having eliminated a key leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, counterterrorism authorities are seeking the organization’s remaining operatives—in the American homeland.
On Sept. 30, 2011, there came the announcement that many Americans—inside and outside the counterterror community—had been hoping to hear for a long time: Anwar Al Awlaki, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had been killed in a drone strike in Yemen.
Gone along with Awlaki was Samir Khan, editor of AQAP’s online magazine, Inspire, who was riding in the same car.
Despite this significant blow, experts say AQAP and its parent terror network aren’t going away anytime soon.
“Post-Awlaki, Al Qaeda’s top leadership, and especially AQAP, has been disrupted,” but “Al Qaeda has one of the broadest, deepest benches of any Islamic terror organization of the last century,” Clare Lopez, a veteran Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and an authority on Islamic terrorism, told Homeland Security Today in an interview.
“Al Qaeda will recover, although it will not easily replace Awlaki,” argued Lopez. Awlaki “provided an as-of-yet unique mix of capabilities for AQAP: American birth and intimate familiarity with our society—its psyche, its cultural touchstones, its vulnerabilities—all wrapped up with colloquial American English, the scholarship of a highly intelligent individual and a deep devotion to Islam. That is a very dangerous mix, and it is not at this moment readily apparent from where his replacement will come.”
Nevertheless, she warned, “that replacement or replacements will come, and increasingly Al Qaeda has at its disposal Americans willing to commit treason for love of Islam.”
An American presence
The concern now is that Awlaki and AQAP infiltrated individuals into the United States.
For four years beginning in 2000, the US Border Patrol apprehended more than five dozen Yemeni citizens trying to enter the United States illegally. In 2004 the number of Yemenis apprehended dropped significantly for six years. Then, in 2010, their numbers increased appreciably once again.
This sudden and suspicious boom in illegal Yemenis coincided with intelligence indicating that AQAP had established a variety of operations to get jihadists into the United States. It also coincided with AQAP’s involvement with several interlocked human smuggling ventures in Mexico that specialized in smuggling both Yemeni and Somali terrorists into America. Some were members of Al Shabaab, a brutal Somali jihadist group whose leaders personally pledged their allegiance to Osama Bin Laden. Al Shabaab, in turn, is intimately tied to AQAP and had an especially close relationship with Awlaki.
Awlaki was the spiritual advisor, chief recruiter, radicalizer and external operations chief for AQAP, which had been widely regarded as Al Qaeda Central’s (AQC) most active terrorism franchise. With Awlaki’s help, AQAP succeeded in pulling off AQC’s first attacks on US soil since Sept. 11, 2001. It also plotted other potentially devastating attacks, but they fortunately were thwarted or fizzled because of technical problems.
A counterterrorism official, speaking to Homeland Security Today on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said US counterterrorism experts do not believe the surge of Yemenis over the Southwest border and AQAP’s intention at the time to insert operatives in the US was a coincidence.
Beyond Yemeni jihadists infiltrating the United States, there also has been longstanding concern about Awlaki’s and AQAP’s ability to radicalize Americans.
Awlaki was believed to have successfully radicalized US Army Major Nidal Hasan, who went on a shooting spree in Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 9, 2009. The Christmas Day 2009 attempt to bomb an airliner over Detroit, Mich., by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab revealed the failure of the US intelligence community to appreciate the magnitude of the AQAP threat.
That threat remains. In addition to terrorists or potential terrorists who have been arrested or otherwise identified as suspected jihadists with ties to AQAP, Western counterterrorism authorities believe there may be at least another dozen jihadists tied to Awlaki who “have gone operational” and may be part of a new Al Qaeda cell in the United States.
An official familiar with the ongoing investigations of the terror group’s members who are believed to be at large in the United States stressed that some of them are hard-core terrorists who had direct ties to Awlaki and are now presumably taking their orders from another AQAP leader “or are part of plots Awlaki had earlier set in motion; it’s hard to know what they’re up to, but you can be pretty sure it’s not good whatever it is.”
The future of AQAP
Since Awlaki’s death, counterterrorism officials have been scrambling to get a bead on his replacement, any cells Awlaki personally was running and whether any AQAP-directed plots are in play.
“Unfortunately, growing instability in Yemen has led to a void in leadership and the rule of law, thus interfering with US intelligence efforts to monitor AQAP and gather information about any upcoming attacks,” retired Air Force Col. Jennifer Hesterman told Homeland Security Today in an interview. Hesterman, who has done extensive research on terrorism and organized crime, added that having Awlaki under surveillance “probably helped us gather valuable information regarding his contacts, AQAP communication efforts and so forth, but eliminating him was necessary,” even though it “probably did harm to our information gathering efforts.”
“We need to remember that Yemen is the ancestral home land of the Bin Laden family and has been associated with Al Qaeda since its official formation 23 years ago,” Hesterman pointed out.
While the recent strikes are very important tactical victories, they do not change the underlying dynamic, Charles Faddis. In an interview with Homeland Security Today, the former CIA head of counterterrorism and author of the book Willful Neglect noted. “We are a long way from done in Yemen because we are a long way from addressing the underlying factors, which have allowed Yemen to become a breeding ground for terrorism.”
To that end, Hesterman stated, “Awlaki was not the leader of AQAP ...The group is led by Said Ali Al Shihri and Ibrahim Suleiman Al Rubaysh, both former Guantanamo Bay detainees who the US released to the Saudi deradicalization program. Unfortunately, both these terrorists escaped this program, made their way to Yemen and joined two other escapees, Nasir Al Wuhayshi and Qassim Al Raimi, who fled from Yemen jails. Together, these four terrorists built AQAP into a formidable, transnational enterprise. Awlaki was certainly used as a recruiting tool, with his powerful sermons about jihad, but he was not a hands-on leader of AQAP. Therefore, his elimination from the group will not have a lasting effect on its scope or strength.”
Hesterman also emphasized that “I wouldn't underestimate Al Qaeda's ability to procure a new editor [for Inspire magazine] or their zeal for getting a new publication out soon as a sign of their strength and capability. Lacking Inspire, the group still leverages social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate and recruit for jihad.”
Former CIA officer and terrorism expert Lopez agreed. “It's likely Al Qaeda will make a serious effort to keep the magazine alive—Abu Musab Al Suri has been a key contributor, for instance, and probably is playing a central role in making sure the online magazine does not disappear.”
Lopez also noted that while Inspire has taken a hit, “Given the response to its July 2010 call for the Muslim Brotherhood to rise up versus local Arab rulers, it’s worth has already been proven many times over.”
Al Qaeda will definitely find a way for “Inspire magazine [to] remain strong in the very near future,” added Kerry Patton, an analyst who has done extensive work with numerous US government agencies and has extensively interviewed former terrorists.
Nor is Awlaki’s death expected to have much impact on Al Qaeda’s ideology. “Do we really understand what or who Al Qaeda is?” Patton asked during an interview with Homeland Security Today. He answered his own question: “I don’t believe we do.”
“There’s no doubt that AQAP is still a significant threat,” noted Rick Nelson, director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC in an interview with Homeland Security Today. “But it’s not at the same level it was. Awlaki was not so much useful to AQAP as he was in building a global following for Al Qaeda. His death will have an impact on the larger Al Qaeda.”
“Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri [AQAP’s chief bombmaker] and Nasir Al Wuhayshi [its formal leader] are still out there so it’s still a dangerous organization,” Nelson said. However, the death of Awlaki makes it clear that AQAP is under pressure from the United States and as long as its followers are responding to that pressure and working simply to stay alive, they’re less able to plot against the United States and its allies.
Nelson saw two dangers for the United States in the days ahead: “One, we could be the victims of our own success. The more success we have against AQAP, the more tempting it is to relax the pressure; it’s like not taking your full dose of antibiotics when you start to feel better.”
The other danger comes from the chaotic situation in Yemen itself. “You have a government in Sanaa that can barely manage Sanaa and [President Ali Abdullah] Saleh has been an inconsistent partner at best,” he said. In such circumstances, AQAP’s ability to create safe havens in Yemen may rise as the political and economic situation there destabilizes or declines.
The pressure has to be maintained against AQAP for the success against Awlaki to make a permanent difference. Nelson summarized it succinctly: “Any attempt to draw back or step back before this group and allow it to continue increases the threat against the United States.”
The Future of Al Qaeda
Just as there is speculation about the future of AQAP following the death of its spiritual leader, so US analysts are attempting to discern the future of Al Qaeda itself, given the death of its leader, Osama Bin Laden.
“Al Qaeda, while labeled a terrorist group or network, is more of an energy source for radical and non-radical Islamists,” theorized Kerry Patton, saying “some counterterrorism and intelligence specialists will claim that a hierarchy exists within the group. However, truth be told, that is a very Western mindset because our culture induces a false perception toward organizations all needing some type of hierarchical structure similar to a pyramid.
“Al Qaeda never was and never will be a pyramid, hierarchical, structured organization,” Patton said, explaining “it always was and always will be a network comprising of numerous global systems that may or may not be structured one way or another internally—system by system. But what is most unique about Al Qaeda is the fact that within the network, there is another system attached that has no organizational structure at all—the lone Islamist actors who have been socially conditioned to conduct terrorist attacks, either through imams, social media or Islamic literature. In many ways I believe our Western cognitive processing—again, culturally induced—actually turned Al Qaeda into a global terrorist organization, when in truth it is not a terrorist organization at all.”
Jennifer Hesterman tended to agree: “Al Qaeda is a leaderless organization. Although satisfying from the standpoint of tactical success, the military tactic of decimation, or killing the top 10 percent of the leadership,
will not bring about the demise of Al Qaeda.”
The reason? “The enemy isn't a person or a group—it is an ideology,” Hesterman said. “Al Qaeda is as much an ideology as it is a group and is not confined to nation-state borders. Al Qaeda can't be fought neatly on a battlefield. This war is truly in the hearts and minds of humans who hear and heed the powerful call of jihad. The killing of Awlaki may damage the effort but certainly did not weaken the resolve or power of Al Qaeda-affiliated groups such as AQAP.”
Clare Lopez said she agreed “100 percent. Al Qaeda is as much an idea, a movement, an ideological concept as it is an Islamic terrorist organization dedicated to kinetic attack versus the non-Muslim world.”
The deeply religious ideology of jihad will be kept alive and supported by the conditions that breed it for perhaps generations to come, as authority after authority cautioned over the years since the 9/11 attacks.
As Charles Faddis put it, “this conflict is going to be going on for a very long time on some level. Much of the world is plagued by runaway population growth, falling water tables, disease, weak governmental institutions and abject poverty. Those are conditions which are going to keep fueling fanaticism of all types for decades to come. We need to accept that and put together a mechanism for fighting these kinds of conflicts, which can be sustained indefinitely.”
Faddis warned that “any place on the globe with a significant Muslim population and a weak, ineffectual government is a potential breeding ground. Bangladesh, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, the new Libya all are potentially new fronts in this war.”
Lopez concurred, noting “Al Qaeda now has vibrant franchises operating in AQAP, East Africa (Al Shabaab in Somalia), West Africa (Boko Haram in Nigeria) and across North Africa (Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb).”
And, she stressed, “none of this existed 10 years ago.”
