Our friend Bill Roggio with the Long War Journal has a fan­tas­tic piece of break­ing news and follow-​​up analy­sis on the regen­er­a­tion of al Qaeda’s shock-​​troop unit dubbed the “Shadow Army.“ 

We’re run­ning an excerpted ver­sion of the story on Military​.com this after­noon, but I am post­ing more value-​​added con­tent here. 

In addi­tion, as part of my new “multi-​​media” strat­egy, we’re going to inter­view Bill about the sit­u­a­tion in Pakistan, the com­mand of insur­gent groups by al Qaeda and the White House strat­egy to sta­bi­lize Afghanistan from within Pakistan today at 16:30 EST. 

We’ll allow lis­ten­ers to call in and hear the inter­view, but I’m not ready to allow folks to ask ques­tions yet (I might change my mind, though) because I’m still feel­ing my way through this. 

Check out Bill’s amaz­ing story below and be sure to tune in to the online radio inter­view this afternoon.

Al Qaeda has reor­ga­nized its noto­ri­ous para­mil­i­tary for­ma­tions that were dev­as­tated dur­ing the US inva­sion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. Al Qaeda has reestab­lished the pre­dom­i­nantly Arab and Asian para­mil­i­tary for­ma­tion that was for­merly known as Brigade 055 into a larger, more effec­tive fight­ing unit known as the Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army, a senior US intel­li­gence offi­cial told The Long War Journal. 

The Shadow Army is active pri­mar­ily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and in east­ern and south­ern Afghanistan, sev­eral US mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials told The Long War Journal on con­di­tion of anonymity due to the sen­si­tiv­ity of the subject. 

The para­mil­i­tary force is well trained and equipped, and has suc­cess­fully defeated the Pakistani Army in mul­ti­ple engage­ments. Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in suc­cess­ful Taliban cam­paigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat. 

In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army has con­ducted oper­a­tions against Coalition and Afghan forces in Kunar, Nuristan, Nangahar, Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar provinces. 

“The Shadow Army has been instru­men­tal in the Taliban’s con­sol­i­da­tion of power in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province,” a senior intel­li­gence offi­cial said. “They are also behind the Taliban’s suc­cesses in east­ern and south­ern Afghanistan. They are help­ing to pinch Kabul.“ 

Afghan and Pakistan-​​based Taliban forces have inte­grated ele­ments of their forces into the Shadow Army, “espe­cially the Tehrik-​​e-​​Taliban and Haqqani Network,” a senior US mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cial said. “It is con­sid­ered a sta­tus sym­bol” for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army. 

The Tehrik-​​e-​​Taliban is the Pakistani Taliban move­ment led by Baitullah Mehsud, the South Waziristan leader who has defeated Pakistani Army forces in con­ven­tional bat­tles. The Haqqani Network strad­dles the Afghan-​​Pakistani bor­der and has been behind some of the most high-​​profile attacks in Afghanistan. 

The Shadow Army’s effec­tive­ness has placed the group in the crosshairs of the covert US air cam­paign in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In October 2008, the US killed Khalid Habib al Shami, the leader of the Shadow Army, in a strike on a com­pound in North Waziristan. 

The pres­ence of the Shadow Army has been evi­dent for some time, as there have been numer­ous reports of joint oper­a­tions between the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, Hizb-​​i-​​Islami, Lashkar-​​e-​​Taiba, Harkat-​​ul-​​Jihad Islami, and other ter­ror groups. In January 2008, The Long War Journal noted that the var­i­ous ter­ror groups were cycling through the numer­ous camps in the tribal areas and have orga­nized under a mil­i­tary structure. 

While the Shadow Army has been active, there has been lit­tle visual evi­dence of its exis­tence until now. The Long War Journal has obtained a pho­to­graph of a unit from the Shadow Army oper­at­ing in Pakistan’s Taliban-​​controlled dis­trict of Swat. 

The pho­to­graph was taken some time in January of this year. It shows what appears to be either a rein­forced squad or two squads of foot sol­diers. Fourteen fight­ers are in view, and oth­ers appear to be in the far back­ground. All of the fight­ers are wear­ing masks, new clothes, sneak­ers, and web gear. One fight­ers is wear­ing a Camelbak. The weapons are uni­form; six AK-​​47s and one RPG are in view. 

A look at the cloth­ing of the fight­ers gives a good indi­ca­tion of the iden­tity of the fight­ers, an expert on al Qaeda told The Long War Journal. The length of the pants of pic­tured fight­ers is described as being at “al Qaeda height” — mean­ing only al Qaeda and allied “Wahhabi/​Salafi-​​jihadis” wear their pant legs this high. 

“The extrem­ists who fol­low al Qaeda’s reli­gious beliefs think that pants must be at least six inches above the ground because there’s a hadith [a say­ing of the Prophet Mohammed] that says clothes that touch the ground are a sign of pride and van­ity,” the expert said. “This, along with the new dye­ing of men’s beards red or yel­low is a sure sign of al Qaeda-​​ization.“

The type of masks worn and the ten­nis shoes are also strong indi­ca­tors that these fight­ers “are non-​​Afghan fight­ers,” an expert on the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan said. “Those types of masks I have seen, and they are always on the Pakistani side of the bor­der,” the expert said. “The ten­nis shoes and socks are a big indi­ca­tor that they are non-​​Afghan fight­ers, prob­a­bly Pakistanis or Arab/​Central Asian fighters.“ 

The Shadow Army is orga­nized under a mil­i­tary struc­ture, a US mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion in north­west­ern Pakistan informed The Long War Journal. There are units anal­o­gous to bat­tal­ion, brigade, and divi­sion for­ma­tions found in Western armies. 

The mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion has a clear-​​cut com­mand struc­ture with estab­lished ranks. A senior al Qaeda mil­i­tary leader is placed in com­mand of the Shadow Army, while expe­ri­enced offi­cers are put in com­mand of the brigades and sub­or­di­nate bat­tal­ions and companies.

The re-​​formed Brigade 055 is but one of an esti­mated three to four brigades in the Shadow Army. Several other Arab brigades have been formed, some con­sist­ing of for­mer mem­bers of Saddam Husseins Republican Guards as well as Iraqis, Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians, North Africans, and others. 

During the reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the US inva­sion in 2001, the 055 Brigade served as “the shock troops of the Taliban and func­tioned as an inte­gral part of the latter’s mil­i­tary appa­ra­tus,” al Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna wrote in Inside al Qaeda. At its peak in 2001, the 055 Brigade had an esti­mated 2,000 sol­diers and offi­cers in the ranks. The brigade was com­prised of Arabs, Central Asians, and South Asians, as well as Chechens, Bosnians, and Uighurs from Western China. 

The 055 Brigade has “com­pletely reformed and is sur­pass­ing pre-​​2001 stan­dards,” an offi­cial said. The other brigades are also con­sid­ered well trained. 

One offi­cial said the mix­ing of the var­i­ous Taliban and al Qaeda units has made dis­tinc­tions between the groups some­what meaningless. 

“The line between the Taliban and al Qaeda is increas­ingly blurred, espe­cially from a com­mand and con­trol per­spec­tive,” the offi­cial said. “Are Faqir Mohammed, Baitullah Mehsud, Hakeemullah Mehsud, Ilyas Kashmiri, Siraj Haqqani, and all the rest ‘al Qaeda’?” the offi­cial asked, list­ing senior Taliban com­man­ders in Pakistan that oper­ate closely with al Qaeda. “Probably not in the sense that they main­tain their own inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tions, but the alliance is essen­tially indis­tin­guish­able at this point except at a very abstract level.“ 

The Taliban have begun an ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­sion to Wahhabism, the rad­i­cal form of Sunni Islam prac­ticed by al Qaeda. “The rad­i­cal­iza­tion of the Taliban and their con­ver­sion away from Deobandism to Wahhabism under Sheikh Issa al Masri and other al Qaeda lead­ers is a clear sign of the al Qaeda’s pre­em­i­nence,” the offi­cial noted. Sheikh Issa is the spir­i­tual adviser for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al Zawahiri’s orga­ni­za­tion that merged into al Qaeda, and the leader of al Jihad fi Waziristan, an al Qaeda branch in North Waziristan. 

The estab­lish­ment of the joint Taliban and al Qaeda mil­i­tary for­ma­tions under the over­all com­mand of the Shadow Army has been facil­i­tated by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ter­ror train­ing camps in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province.

In the sum­mer of 2008, senior US intel­li­gence offi­cials told The Long War Journal that more than 150 camps and more than 400 sup­port loca­tions were in oper­a­tion in Northwestern Pakistan. Most of the camps are con­sid­ered “tran­sient” in nature, an offi­cial said. Trainers and recruits may gather in vil­lages and meet to con­duct train­ing in the vast moun­tains and val­leys in Pakistan’s north­west. As of last sum­mer, an esti­mated 25 to 40 of the camps were con­sid­ered permanent. 

These camps have var­i­ous func­tions, and not all of them are used to train the Shadow Army. Some of the camps are used to indoc­tri­nate and train sui­cide bombers for attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and the West. Some of the camps are devoted to train­ing the var­i­ous Kashmiri ter­ror groups who have flocked to the tribal areas and are also inte­grat­ing with the ter­ror alliance. One of these camps serves as a train­ing ground for the Black Guard, the elite body­guard for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other senior al Qaeda leaders. 

The Shadow Army has dis­tin­guished itself dur­ing mul­ti­ple bat­tles over the past sev­eral years, par­tic­u­larly in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province. Taliban forces under the com­mand of Baitullah Mehsud defeated the Pakistani Army in South Waziristan dur­ing fight­ing in 2005–2006, and again fended off the Pakistani Army in 2008 after fight­ing pitched bat­tles and over­run­ning a series of forts. 

In Swat, the Pakistani mil­i­tary was twice defeated by forces under the com­mand of Mullah Fazlullah dur­ing 2007 and 2008. Earlier this year, the mil­i­tary launched its third attempt to secure Swat, which has been solidly under the con­trol of the Taliban. The most recent oper­a­tion was ini­ti­ated after Fazlullah issued an amnesty to cer­tain gov­ern­ment offi­cials and called for oth­ers to be tried in a sharia court. The mil­i­tary regained con­trol of a small region last week, but fight­ing has been heavy. A few days ago, Taliban forces over­ran a police sta­tion and cap­tured 30 mem­bers of the police and para­mil­i­tary Frontier Corps. 

In Bajaur, the hid­den hand of the Shadow Army has been seen in mul­ti­ple reports from the region. Taliban forces dug a series of sophis­ti­cated trench and tun­nel net­works as well as bunkers and pill­boxes. The Pakistani mil­i­tary took more than a month to clear a six-​​mile stretch of road in the Loisam region. Pakistani mil­i­tary offi­cials also said the Taliban “have good weaponry and a bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem (than ours).“ 

(more…)

The head of coun­tert­er­ror­ism oper­a­tions for the U.S. Department of State said the al-​​Qaeda net­work is largely bro­ken and has lost the abil­ity to con­duct large-​​scale ter­ror­ist operations. 

While the U.S. has still been unable to kill or cap­ture the organization’s top lead­ers, they have nev­er­the­less been “beaten back into a hole” by relent­less pres­sure from spe­cial oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment and drone attacks. 

“They are scratch­ing their heads, real­iz­ing they took on a pretty savvy oppo­nent who went after them kinet­i­cally very fast, pulled out the rug from under­neath them, put them on the run, put them in a area where they didn’t have the assets they had before,” said for­mer Army spe­cial oper­a­tions com­man­der, Amb. Dell Dailey, who now heads the State Department’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism office. “Bin Laden can’t get an oper­a­tional effort off the ground with­out it being detected ahead of time and being thwarted.“ 

Dailey cited the foiled ter­ror plot to bring down as many as 10 U.S.-bound com­mer­cial jets in 2006 as an exam­ple of al-Qaeda’s dimin­ished capa­bil­ity to launch dra­matic attacks. 

“Their abil­ity to reach is non-​​existent,” Dailey told mil­i­tary reporters dur­ing a Jan. 6 break­fast meet­ing in Washington, D.C. 

But that doesn’t mean the U.S. can sit back and relax, he added. 

Though he’s a polit­i­cal appointee who may not keep his job in an Obama admin­is­tra­tion, Dailey had high praise for the incom­ing team’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism strat­egy and for the peo­ple who’ve been tabbed to wage it. 

Over the five meet­ings he’s had with Obama offi­cials since the elec­tion, Dailey sees a will­ing­ness to aban­don pres­i­den­tial cam­paign promises to uni­lat­er­ally move into Pakistan if there’s solid intel on bin Laden’s where­abouts and the local gov­ern­ment can­not or will not act. The incom­ing administration’s focus on strength­en­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism over uni­lat­er­al­ism seems to mesh with the State Department’s cur­rent counter-​​terror plan. 

“It’s not ‘go out and kill peo­ple right now’ to the detri­ment of our rela­tion­ships with sov­er­eign coun­tries,” Dailey said. “Their twist is going to be more aggres­sive engage­ment with our part­ner nations.”

(more…)

So, let me get this straight. Bush crit­ics have been whin­ing for years that the pres­i­dent wasn’t doing enough to kill bin Laden and his deputies — that he should essen­tially invade Pakistan, Syria and other places to kill him or Zawahiri if US offi­cials get the right intel.

And now the New York Times — after Obama wins largely on an anti-​​Bush ref­er­en­dum — decides to pub­lish a story that shows all the way back in 2004, the much-​​maligned Donald Rumsfeld secured an exec­u­tive order form the pres­i­dent to allow the same kind of com­mando raids admin­is­tra­tion crit­ics have been say­ing should have been pur­sued all along? And don’t tell me the NYT didn’t have a good por­tion of this story a month ago…this is an ever­green piece that didn’t have any news hook to it other than the recent Syria raid, which is prob­a­bly when Mazzetti and Schmitt fleshed out most of the sourcing.

Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries

WASHINGTON The United States mil­i­tary since 2004 has used broad, secret author­ity to carry out nearly a dozen pre­vi­ously undis­closed attacks against Al Qaeda and other mil­i­tants in Syria, Pakistan and else­where, accord­ing to senior American officials.

These mil­i­tary raids, typ­i­cally car­ried out by Special Operations forces, were autho­rized by a clas­si­fied order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the offi­cials said. The secret order gave the mil­i­tary new author­ity to attack the Qaeda ter­ror­ist net­work any­where in the world, and a more sweep­ing man­date to con­duct oper­a­tions in coun­tries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for exam­ple, a Navy Seal team raided a sus­pected mil­i­tants com­pound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, accord­ing to a for­mer top offi­cial of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mis­sion cap­tured by the video cam­era of a remotely piloted Predator air­craft in real time in the C.I.A.s Counterterrorist Center at the agen­cys head­quar­ters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.

Some of the mil­i­tary mis­sions have been con­ducted in close coor­di­na­tion with the C.I.A., accord­ing to senior American offi­cials, who said that in oth­ers, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the mil­i­tary com­man­dos acted in sup­port of C.I.A.-directed operations.

But as many as a dozen addi­tional oper­a­tions have been can­celed in the past four years, often to the dis­may of mil­i­tary com­man­ders, senior mil­i­tary offi­cials said. They said senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials had decided in these cases that the mis­sions were too risky, were too diplo­mat­i­cally explo­sive or relied on insuf­fi­cient evidence.

More than a half-​​dozen offi­cials, includ­ing cur­rent and for­mer mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials as well as senior Bush admin­is­tra­tion pol­icy mak­ers, described details of the 2004 mil­i­tary order on the con­di­tion of anonymity because of its polit­i­cally del­i­cate nature. Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the mil­i­tary declined to comment.

Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the American offi­cials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen pre­vi­ously undis­closed attacks, except to say they had been car­ried out in Syria, Pakistan and other coun­tries. They made clear that there had been no raids into Iran using that author­ity, but they sug­gested that American forces had car­ried out recon­nais­sance mis­sions in Iran using other clas­si­fied directives.

According to a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, the new author­ity was spelled out in a clas­si­fied doc­u­ment called Al Qaeda Network Exord, or exe­cute order, that stream­lined the approval process for the mil­i­tary to act out­side offi­cially declared war zones. Where in the past the Pentagon needed to get approval for mis­sions on a case-​​by-​​case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the new order spec­i­fied a way for Pentagon plan­ners to get the green light for a mis­sion far more quickly, the offi­cial said. 

Be sure to read the rest of the story HERE…

– Christian

From today’s Military​.com front page:

WASHINGTON — After secret inter­ro­ga­tions, the CIA trans­ferred to U.S. mil­i­tary cus­tody a high-​​level al-​​Qaida fig­ure who helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan in 2001, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Mohammad Rahim was cap­tured last sum­mer in Lahore, Pakistan, accord­ing to a diplo­matic offi­cial who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because intel­li­gence mat­ters are involved. Rahim was later handed over to the CIA, which after inter­ro­gat­ing him, turned him over to the U.S. mil­i­tary this week. In a mes­sage to agency employ­ees Friday, CIA Director Michael Hayden said it was the first such trans­fer from his agency’s inter­ro­ga­tion pro­gram since April 2007.

Rahim is now being held at the U.S. mil­i­tary prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Hayden said.

“Rahim’s deten­tion in the sum­mer of 2007 was a blow to more than one ter­ror­ist net­work,” Hayden told agency employ­ees in a memo obtained by The Associated Press. “He gave aid to al-​​Qaida, the Taliban and other anti-​​coalition militants…”

…Rahim is a close asso­ciate of bin Laden and has ties to al-​​Qaida orga­ni­za­tions through­out the Middle East, accord­ing to Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman. Officials said Rahim helped arrange the al-​​Qaida hide-​​out at Tora Bora — a moun­tain area full of war­rens used by bin Laden dur­ing the 2001 U.S. inva­sion of Afghanistan. 

The arti­cle focuses on the secret prison con­tro­versy, but unfor­tu­nately buries the lede by ignor­ing the key ques­tion raised by Rahim’s posi­tion in the al Qaeda orga­ni­za­tion. If he helped bin Laden escape Tora Bora and he is a “close asso­ciate” of the AQ leader, then why haven’t we cap­tured bin Laden? This guy surely knows where he is, or at least has a pretty good idea of where he was. So why don’t we have the big guy?

Seems to me if they released him from CIA cus­tody, they got what they needed out of him and he’s used up. So, a bin Laden cap­ture on the eve of the ’08 elec­tion? Conspiracy the­o­ries abound!

– Christian

Killing off your [erst­while] allies…? 

Our friend Aharon Etingoff sends me this from the JP:

‘Arabs helped Mossad kill Mughniyeh’

Syrian sources claim that sev­eral Arab nations con­spired with Mossad to assas­si­nate Hizbullah chief of oper­a­tions Imad Mughniyeh ear­lier this month, the London-​​based Al-​​Quds Al-​​Arabi daily stated on Wednesday. 

According to the report, which could not be con­firmed by any offi­cial source, Syria was mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress in the inves­ti­ga­tion of Mughniyeh’s death, and would pub­lish the results of its inquiry fol­low­ing the Arab league sum­mit in Damascus in March. 

(more…)

Here’s a story for­warded by Defense Tech con­trib­u­tor Aharon Etengoff, our mideast expert.

From the Sunday Times (of London)

NOTHING seemed very remark­able about the short, bearded man who min­gled with other guests on Tuesday evening at a recep­tion in Damascus, the Syrian cap­i­tal, to mark the 29th anniver­sary of Ayatollah Khomeinis Iranian revolution.

Yet before the night was over he was dead in the twisted wreck­age of his car and the inevitable assump­tion was that Mossad, the Israeli for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice, had killed him with an inge­niously planted bomb.

The news spread rapidly that the dead man was Imad Mughniyeh, an elu­sive fig­ure known as the Fox who had been one of the worlds most feared ter­ror­ist masterminds.

Robert Baer, a for­mer CIA agent who spent years on his trail, said Mughniyeh was prob­a­bly the most intel­li­gent, most capa­ble oper­a­tive weve ever run across.

As the Israelis rejoiced, Iran and Hezbollah, the mil­i­tant Shiite group, which together had har­nessed Mugniyehs exper­tise, mourned his death at a huge funeral in Beirut, where he estab­lished his ter­ror­ist network.

Mughniyehs mother, Um Imad, sat amid a sea of black chadors, a lonely, som­bre fig­ure as mourn­ers held their heros pic­ture aloft.

If only I had more boys to carry on in his foot­steps, she sighed, con­fess­ing that she did not have any pic­tures of him, even from his child­hood, as he had taken them away. He was the third of her sons to die in a car bombing.

With a price of $25m (12.7m) on his head, he was always vig­i­lant. Some say he had had plas­tic surgery to alter his face in an effort to elude the Americans and Israelis who blamed him for plane hijack­ings and other bloody attacks which killed hun­dreds of their cit­i­zens in the Middle East and as far away as South America.

He had grown accus­tomed to liv­ing dan­ger­ously and there was no rea­son he should have feared for his safety last Tuesday as he sipped fruit juice at the party at the Iranian cul­tural cen­tre. Mughniyeh was on fairly good terms with every­body present almost all the lead­ers of the Damascus-​​based mil­i­tant groups were represented.

At 10.35pm he decided to go home. Having exchanged cus­tom­ary kisses with his host, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi, the newly appointed Iranian ambas­sador, Mughniyeh stepped into the night.

Minutes later he was seated in his sil­ver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deaf­en­ing blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly.

According to Israeli intel­li­gence sources, some­one had replaced the head­rest of the dri­vers seat with another con­tain­ing a small high-​​explosive charge. Israel wel­comed his death but the prime min­is­ters office denied respon­si­bil­ity. Hezbollah accused the Zionist Israelis of killing its brother com­man­der but believed the explo­sive had been det­o­nated in another car by satellite. 

Read the rest of the Times story HERE…

– Christian