“Stealing Al-Qa’ida’s Playbook”

One of the things that’s made Osama & Co. so hard to beat is how decen­tral­ized they are; there’s no cen­tral head­quar­ters to flat­ten, and few big com­man­ders that can’t be quickly replaced.
But that doesn’t mean the jihadists don’t have weak­nesses — weak­nesses that the U.S. can exploit. No one knows that bet­ter than the insur­gents them­selves, notes a new West Point study, Stealing Al-Qa’ida’s Playbook. Thanks to William Lind for point­ing it out.

Jihadi lead­ers are sur­pris­ingly frank when dis­cussing the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of their move­ment and their strate­gies for top­pling local regimes and under­min­ing the United States… In a sense, mem­bers of the jihadi move­ment have put their teams
play­books online. By min­ing these texts for their tac­ti­cal and strate­gic insights, the United States will be able to craft effec­tive tac­tics, tech­niques, and pro­ce­dures to defeat fol­low­ers of the movement. 

The trick is to use the ter­ror­ists’ loose command-​​and-​​control struc­ture against them. Without rigid dis­ci­pline and intro­d­ic­tri­na­tion, extrem­ist groups have a nat­ural ten­dency to drift apart, to balka­nize on ideao­log­i­cal or tac­ti­cal grounds. Harmony and Disharmony, a com­pan­ion piece to Playbook, offers up some steps on how to turbo-​​charge that drift.
Some are obvi­ous, and are already being done — pres­sure Al Qaeda’s finances, make it as hard as pos­si­ble for the jihadists to oper­ate safely. Then there are rec­om­men­da­tions like these:

Al-​​Qaida mem­bers who appear less com­mit­ted should not nec­es­sar­ily be removed from the net­work if they can be reli­ably observed, even if they present easy tar­gets. By leav­ing them in place, the prob­a­bil­ity that the group will iden­tify agency prob­lems and hence adopt security-​​reducing mea­sures increases…
Make cred­i­ble pun­ish­ment of oper­a­tives harder for al-​​Qaida. This is most eas­ily done by pro­vid­ing an exit option for mem­bers other than indef­i­nite deten­tion or death. This approach can yield ben­e­fits in two ways. First, it will make it harder for groups to enforce discipline-​​hence con­trol– through the use of force against their own mem­bers. This will reduce the level of polit­i­cal impact groups can achieve. Second, offer­ing well-​​publicized amnesty or reduced pun­ish­ment for defec­tors will encour­age those dis­sat­is­fied with the orga­ni­za­tion to leave by reduc­ing the per­ceived costs of exit. In response, al-​​Qaida will have to become more care­ful about screen­ing appli­cants, which will in turn reduce the pool of poten­tial mem­bers, or increase the use of prob­lem­atic screen­ing mech­a­nisms…
Publicly empha­size the dif­fer­ences between al-​​Qaida lead­ers and affil­i­ate groups. Agency prob­lems can be enhanced within al-​​Qaida by reduc­ing incen­tives for al-​​Qaida sub­groups to remain closely linked to the cen­ter. Giving Osama bin Laden credit for Abu Musab al-​​Zarqawis ter­ror­ist attacks only legit­imizes and strength­ens their rela­tion­ship. Publicly rec­og­niz­ing the dif­fer­ences between periph­eral groups and the cen­ter, how­ever, may gen­er­ate com­pe­ti­tion for author­ity between them. Terrorist orga­ni­za­tions are inher­ently weak rel­a­tive to their oppo­nents and must over­come that weak­ness in order to rally sup­port­ers to their cause. Al-​​Qaidas cen­tral lead­er­ship main­tains nom­i­nal rela­tion­ships with periph­eral groups in part to gen­er­ate a per­cep­tion that it is a pow­er­ful group that can real­is­ti­cally chal­lenge its enemy. Effective poli­cies to degrade al-​​Qaidas capac­ity will avoid sup­port­ing this tac­tic and high­light dif­fer­ences in the move­ment instead…
Create uncer­tainty about oper­a­tionally rel­e­vant tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion. One key vul­ner­a­bil­ity of all ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions is com­mu­ni­ca­tions. A greater vol­ume of com­mu­ni­ca­tions between oper­a­tional cells and oth­ers presents a pro­por­tion­ally greater num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­pro­mise. If al-​​Qaidas oper­a­tors can read­ily find reli­able tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion on bomb-​​making and the like, they can oper­ate with a great deal of inde­pen­dence. However, if pub­lic tech­ni­cal data sources are rife with mis­in­for­ma­tion, then cells will need to com­mu­ni­cate more to make sure they are using appro­pri­ate materials/​techniques. These increased com­mu­ni­ca­tions reduce the max­i­mum fea­si­ble level of secu­rity.
Make screen­ing strate­gies appear risky. Al-​​Qaida can reduce pref­er­ence diver­gence, and hence increase their abil­ity to achieve polit­i­cal impact, by screen­ing their mem­ber­ship more closely. A com­mon strat­egy to do so is to recruit within famil­ial net­works. By openly mon­i­tor­ing the fam­ily rela­tions of known al-​​Qaida mem­bers, gov­ern­ments can cre­ate the per­cep­tion that using fam­ily ties to screen poten­tial mem­bers is a secu­rity risk. This takes away a use­ful screen­ing strat­egy, reduc­ing the max­i­mum fea­si­ble level of secu­rity.

But the most impor­tant advice Playbook gives is to turn the jihadists’ bar­barism against them. That’s done by exploit­ing what the authors call the “Shayma effect.”

One of his most painful lessons, [Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-​​] Zawahiri relates in his Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, was learned after an assas­si­na­tion attempt on Egyptian Prime Minister Atif Sidqi. Members of Islamic Jihad det­o­nated a car bomb in a failed attempt to kill the prime min­is­ter as his motor­cade passed by. Instead, the blast killed a 12 year-​​old girl named Shayma in a nearby ele­men­tary school. The gov­ern­ment launched a media cam­paign claim­ing that Islamic Jihad had delib­er­ately tar­geted Shayma and not the prime min­is­ter. Zawahiri explains that mem­bers of the group had sur­veyed the area and thought the school was unoc­cu­pied. Nevertheless, he admits that he was deeply pained by the death of the girl and acknowl­edges that the gov­ern­ments media cam­paign dras­ti­cally reduced pub­lic sup­port for the move­ment. It also stunned his senior lead­er­ship, caus­ing sev­eral of them to resign from the orga­ni­za­tion.
This back­ground explains Zawahiris words of cau­tion to Zarqawi in his recent let­ter, coun­sel­ing him against attacks that could inad­ver­tently kill Muslim civil­ians. This is not out of ide­o­log­i­cal or the­o­log­i­cal rea­sons, but from a purely prag­matic, strate­gic cal­cu­lus: The masses must view jihadis as lib­er­a­tors, not oppres­sors. They must be seen as fight­ing a just war and walk­ing the moral high ground. Killing Muslimseven when under­tak­ing legit­i­mate oper­a­tions against mem­bers of an unpop­u­lar local regime or sym­bols of Western occu­pa­tio­nis dam­ag­ing to the jihadi move­ment because it inevitably leads to a loss of sup­port among the Muslim masses.

UPDATE 03/​07/​06 7:22 AM: The Washington Post is report­ing that “tribal chiefs in Iraq’s west­ern Anbar province and in an area near the north­ern city of Kirkuk, two regions teem­ing with insur­gents, are vow­ing to strike back at al-​​Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni Arab-​​led group that is wag­ing war against Sunni tribal lead­ers who are coop­er­at­ing with the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and the U.S. mil­i­tary. Anbar tribes have formed a mili­tia that has killed 20 insur­gents from al-​​Qaeda in Iraq, lead­ers said.”

March 6th, 2006 | Strategery | 304518 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/03/06/stealing-al-qaidas-playbook/%22Stealing+Al-Qa%27ida%27s+Playbook%222006-03-06+12%3A53%3A50david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.