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A Brief Note on the Spike in Intra-Sahelian Conflict in Light of al-Naba

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In last week’s al-Naba, a weekly newsletter the Islamic State issues every Thursday, two interesting articles focused on the newest local manifestation of intra-Jihadi conflict. The Sahel was long seen as “the exception”, but in the summer of 2019 tensions finally started to emerge between the local Islamic State affiliate known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), a subgroup of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM), the local al-Qaida franchise (and a sub-group of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb). During the fall of 2019 skirmishes were reported, but the conflict really got going in early 2020. For a great timeline see Nsaibia and Weiss’ piece in the CTC Sentinel from July. Here, the authors report that between July 2019 and July 2020 the two groups clashed 46 times.

The first article of interest in al-Naba issue 260 is an interview with ISGS amir Abu al-Walid al-Sahrawi. Caleb Weiss already dealt with the interview more broadly, but what is of interest here is al-Sahrawi’s comments on the conflict with JNIM. Al-Sahrawi mentions how the conflict initially erupted because JNIM fighters started to defect and pledge allegiance to ISGS. That much we already knew. He explains how JNIM reacted aggressively, arresting and killing several fighters leaving the group. One of them was al-Miqdad al-Ansari, a local leader of the contingent of JNIM fighters from Nampala that pledged allegiance to ISGS. Al-Sahrawi also aims his pen against Amadou Kouffa, the amir of the Macina Liberation Front, a constituent group of JNIM. Kouffa, he claims, ordered the defecting JNIM fighters to hand over all their weapons and leave Nampala within ten days or face persecution. It is interesting how a similar issue of weapons ownership also dominated the early tensions between Hay’at Tahriral-Sham and Hurras al-Deen in Syria. Finally, al-Sahrawi turns his attention to the issue of JNIM’s rapprochement with the Malian government. Their arrogance and delusion, he says, is “pushing them to follow a path similar to that of the apostate Taliban”.

The second—and arguably the more revealing—article is a military report covering the previous three months of skirmishes. According to the report, the two groups clashed 26 times during that period, leaving 76 al-Qaida fighters dead. Approximately 30 al-Qaida fighters were killed in just one attack in Mali’s N’Tillit area (see map above). The attack took place on October 21, when ISGS fighters allegedly ambushed a camp of about 600 JNIM fighters southeast of N’Tillit close to the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger. As is standard for the Islamic State’s military reports, while enemy casualties are described in detail, there is no mention of any killed ISGS fighters. Yet if these numbers are anywhere near the truth, they imply that clashes between the two groups have surged dramatically over the last three months.

Why Is ISIS So Bad?

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Why is ISIS bad? It’s a basic question that I encounter a lot, along with the related question, why is ISIS so evil?

Good and evil are value judgments, so everyone will have a different opinion about what deserves the labels. But we can at least say that ISIS (aka the Islamic State) is out of step with mainstream morality in most Muslim and non-Muslim countries.

Still, that begs the question: why is ISIS so bad relative to mainstream culture? The answer lies in ISIS’s needs and desires.

  • ISIS wants to revive parts of Islamic scripture written in the early Middle Ages. Perhaps those parts reflected mainstream morality then but they’re out of step with today’s mainstream.
  • ISIS wants to terrify the local population to subdue it. As you’ll see in my book, ISIS could govern and fight differently but it doesn’t think the alternatives are effective.
  • ISIS needs to raise money, which is hard to do legally when everyone wants to destroy you.
  • ISIS needs to excite young men to fight for its cause. Sex and violence is one way to do it.

Most of what ISIS does arises from one or more of those needs and desires. They combine to motivate some of ISIS’s worst atrocities, like slavery, destroying and looting antiquities, and beheadings.

ISIS atrocities 9-15-2015 (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more on what motivates ISIS, read The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.

New Issues Of Al-Qaeda In Yemen Journal

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Since July al-Qaeda in Yemen has not released its monthly journal, Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Glorious Battles).  This period of silence included the September attack on the U.S. embassy, which made it hard to confirm if al-Qaeda in Yemen had carried it out.

Now the group has published issues 5 and 6 of Sada al-Malahim with apologies for the delay “due to technical matters.”  Issue 5 includes the following titles:

  • “Exclusive Interview With Brother Ghrayb al-Taizi”
  • “Call To Assist Somalia”
  • “Lessons From The Tarim Operation”
Issue 6 includes:
  • “Lessons From The Embassy Operation”
  • “Status Of The Embassy Employees”
  • “Why The Embassy?”
  • “The Al-Furqan Raid,” an official statement from AQ in Yemen on the embassy bombing
  • “The Just Punishment,” an official AQY statement on the assasination of Muhammad b. Rabish

Document (Arabic): 11-9-08-faloja-issues-5-and-6-of-sada-al-malahim

The Strategic Effects of 9/11, Part 5: The Jihadi Domino Theory

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Continuing…

  • Why did al-Qaeda attack the U.S.?  Was it to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East?  Or was it to strike the far enemy for the sake of destroying the near enemy (i.e. regimes in the Arab and Islamic world)?
  • Regardless of the intent of al-Qaeda’s leaders, the sequence of events gives weight to the second possibility, which could also be termed the Domino Scenario.
  • According to a 2007 article by George Friedman, Bin Laden saw a rare opportunity after the fall of the USSR to begin re-establishing the worldwide caliphate.  But, says Friedman, armed groups can’t establish empires.  They can, however, seize a state and use it to begin to establish an empire.  UBL realized that Afghanistan wasn’t the ideal place for this because of its geographical position and its weakness.
  • Based on Zawahiri’s pre-9/11 writings, Friedman believes that UBL wanted to topple local regimes and replace them with Islamic ones.  He was looking to do this in Egypt because it leads the Islamic world.
  • Friedman says the two goals of the attacks were 1) to prove to Muslims that the US could be attacked and suffer great harm, and 2) to provoke a U.S. response.  Whatever the U.S. chose to do in response, Muslims would win.  If the U.S. failed to respond, it would look weak.  If it attacked, it would be engaged in a crusade.
  • The authors of a report from Decision Supports Systems, Inc. written two months after 9/11 understood al-Qaeda’s intent.  The study says that before 9/11, AQ attacked three targets without sufficiently provoking the US: civil, diplomatic, and military.
  • Based on al-Qaeda’s statements before 9/11, DSSI wrote that al-Qaeda was trying to provoke the U.S. into a conflict with it.  After the 9/11 strikes, the U.S. responded in the manner planned by al-Qaeda.
  • According to DSSI, AQ wanted to provoke the U.S. into a large military invasion of the Middle East so AQ could destroy its military and upset the geopolitical balance of power.
  • The DSSI report argues that the greatest indicator that this was AQ’s strategy is the fact that its operatives assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander of the Northern Alliance.  AQ knew that when the US retaliated for 9/11, it would work through tribal proxies because the U.S. does not like to get its hands dirty.  Thus, AQ had to kill the most effective leader of those trbies.
  • As the DSSI study concludes, as long as the U.S. continues to behave in predicable ways, al-Qaeda can anticipate its responses and plan accordingly.
  • According to the DSSI study, there are three possibilities after 9/11.  1) The U.S. intervention in the Middle East provokes uncontrolable violence in the Middle East which will make it ungovernable in the long term.  2) The U.S. sends more troops to stabalize the situation but its presence polarizes Muslims and puts strain on its allies in the region, particularly the Gulf states and Pakistan.  The government of Pakistan could become unstable and AQ or its allies could get control of its nukes by infiltrating the security apparatus or overthrowing the government.   The collapse of these states will create security vaccuums that AQ or its allies will fill, giving them control of oil and nukes.  3) AQ could choose to destroy oil production in the MIddle East, forcing the U.S. to look elsewhere to meet its energy needs.

[Update: All of DSSI’s publications can be found here.]

Attacks in Yemen: Claimant May Be Lying

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[Gregory D. Johnsen] Details are still coming in about this morning’s attack on the US Embassy in Yemen, and it will likely be a couple of days before a complete and accurate picture of the attack can be drawn. But in my conversations very early this morning what seems to be clear is that the attack involved at least two separate car bombs and came very close to succeeding on a much more spectacular level.

Even at this early stage it is important to note a couple of things. The attack, while shocking, was not necessarily unexpected. On August 19, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: The Soldiers’ Brigades of Yemen posted its 13th statement to al-Ikhlas. The statement threatened attacks in retaliation for the death of Hamza al-Q‘uyati, who was killed along with four of his comrades in a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in the eastern city of Tarim on August 11. The proof, the statement said in a common Islamist phrase, “will be in what you see and not what you hear.” The group has been silent since. However, on September 9, a teaser was posted to al-Ikhlas indicating that the fifth issue of Sada al-Malahim was due to be released in the coming days. Sada al-Malahim is the journal of al-Qaeda in the South of the Arabian Peninsula. The combination of these two indicators should have triggered warnings in Yemen, as over the past year al-Qaeda has developed a pattern of linking its attacks to its rhetoric. That is to say, an attack usually follows the release of a statement, journal or video.

Unfortunately, on a side note, the al-Ikhlas website was taken off-line, most likely by hackers, before the fifth issue of Sada al-Malahim could be posted in what I can only imagine was a counterproductive attempt to disrupt al-Qaeda’s statements. This means that analysts are now flying blind in the sense that they no longer know what al-Qaeda in Yemen is saying either in its journals or statements. This will make predicting and analyzing the group that much more difficult.

On the issue of responsibility I have seen reports both in English and in Arabic that a group calling itself the Islamic Jihad in Yemen has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement signed by someone calling himself Abu Ghayth al-Yamani. Personally, I have strong reservations about the veracity of this claim. This typically happens in Yemen following a suicide attack, but is rarely true. What usually happens is that some individual such as Abu Ghayth al-Yamani hears the news and dashes off a fax, and then a day or two later the group responsible posts an official statement claiming responsibility. Unfortunately, with al-Ikhlas being down getting access to this statement will be difficult (see above paragraph).

There are two other things to note from the August 11 raid – neither of which have been well reported – that killed al-Q‘uyati, who spent time in Afghanistan in the late 1990s before escaping from a Yemeni prison in February 2006. First, his cell was extremely localized. Of the seven individuals involved in the fighting – five of who were killed and two were captured – five of them were from al-Mukalla while the other two came from the neighboring towns of al-Qatn and Shabwa. This should have given a number of people pause; most of whom were proclaiming victory in the war against al-Qaeda in Yemen. The localized nature of the cell, I believe, indicates a diffusion of strength that should have worried Yemen as well as the US and the UK, which both relaxed their travel restrictions to Yemen following the death of al-Q‘uyati. I attempted to articulate this in a conference in DC at the end of August, but I don’t believe I was particularly successful.

The second important point to note from the August 11 raid is that it was precipitated by a local tip. One of the worrying trends in Yemen has been the lack of a strong public outcry against al-Qaeda attacks in the country, which have killed many more Yemenis than they have westerners. In order to truly defeat al-Qaeda in Yemen, something similar to what happened in Saudi Arabia in late 2003 and 2004 needs to take place. This has yet to happen, but there have been signs throughout the summer that the tide could be turning. One can only hope that this attack, coming as it did during Ramadan, and killing only Yemenis and other non-westerners will further enrage popular opinion within Yemen.

For those interested in reading more, see the article appended below.

Document: gregory-johnson-on-recent-aq-attacks-in-yemen

Cyber attack and Ineptitude Delay Release of al-Qaeda 9/11 Video

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Major Jihadi forums have been down for almost a week now, which ruined al-Qaeda’s release of its 9/11 anniversary video.  The video is now out, but those who prepared it for distribution included the wrong password and it probably won’t be until tomorrow that the problem is corrected.  Even when it finally sees the light of day, viewing it will be very anticlimactic.

My hat off to whomever succeeded in removing Ekhlaas, et al.   The usual suspects (the good Doctor and the Haganaut) have denied involvement and I believe them.  Still, whoever did it knew what they were doing, beyond technical proficiency–they targeted the right forums at the right time.  As a gauge of the attack’s effectiveness, look at how many days it’s taken to get the message out and how clumsily it’s been distributed.   If these attacks continue, al-Qaeda will have to find other means of distribution or stop telegraphing its intentions with banner ads.

The Strategic Effects of 9/11, Part 3: Striking the Enemy at the Center of Gravity

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Continuing…

  • It is no accident that the World Trade Center was the main object of the 9/11 attacks since it was the symbol of U.S. economic hegemony. Bear in mind that the attacks had been planned in the ’90s during the height of U.S. economic power.
  • The strikes were meant to polarize Muslims as well as the enemy’s population. They were also intended to push the U.S. into overreacting and committing errors.
  • Why didn’t all four strikes on 9/11 hit the Pentagon alone? Why did al-Qaeda attack civilians and the WTC? We need a new strategic framework to understand its reasoning. Three things needs to be considered.
  • First, when the U.S. attacks a country, it abides by the principle of the ends justify the means. This is one of the foundational principles of American pragmatism. Studies that came out after 9/11 really brought this mindset to the fore. But, according to a principle of international relations, it is the right of oppressed people to respond in kind. Al-Qaeda decided that there was no difference between civilian and soldier among the enemy, especially since is a democracy. Since U.S. citizens vote, they are responsible for U.S. policies and thus subject to terrorism. This was the first strategic breakthrough of AQ.
  • Second, although the U.S. is militarily superior to everyone else, it sometimes uses asymmetrical warfare against its enemies. In response, AQ decided to make use of it as well. Asymmetrical warfare is part of guerrilla warfare and AQ added terrorism to its asymmetrical toolkit.
  • Third, the U.S. began promoting fourth generation warfare in ’89 after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Fourth generation warfare means that there is no longer a battlefield; rather, the society of the enemy is the theater of conflict. 4GW puts emphasis on small, flexible forces. The goal is to destroy the enemy from within and the list of targets iss expanded to include the enemy’s culture and popular support for the war.
  • For fourth generation warfare to succeed, it is necessary to correctly identify the enemy’s strategic center of gravity. In this type of warfare, there is no delineation between war and peace and no clear battlefields. In these circumstances, differences between civilian and soldier are erased.
  • The idea of the center of gravity has changed the conceptual framework of warfare. In any war, you identify the enemy and identify the point on which you’ll concentrate all your effort to achieve victory with the least amount of effort and losses. This point is called the center of gravity.
  • In traditional warfare, the center of gravity was the opposing army. If a country lost its military strength, it was unable to continue fighting and consequently lost the war. But the development of weapons and the growing complexity of the means of control in modern societies means that the center of gravity is now more flexible and elusive. It’s not just material power. The U.S. won all its battles in Vietnam but lost the war because public opinion turned against the war. “In other words, America lost the political will to pay the costs of the war and did not consider the hypothetical return on investment commensurate with the expected loses.”
  • The center of gravity is certainly not the enemy’s point of weakness such that a strike at it will end everything. Clausewitz, who invented the term “center of gravity,” had difficulty defining it, as do contemporary American military theorists. The meaning slides between an enemy’s point of weakness or its point of strength. In Clausewitz’s work, it is evident that the concept is not confined to a place, a potentiality, or a fixed source of power. Rather, it is the point of equilibrium from which the enemy derives the potentialities of power and the will to fight.
  • Identifying the enemy’s correct center of gravity is half the battle according to the American colonel, Antulio Echevarria. He believes that the center of gravity in Clausewitz’s original text is judged according to its impact on the whole, not according to its potentialities and capabilities. In other words, it is the specific point that, if struck sufficiently, will have a decisive impact on the whole body. On this basis, Echevarria suggests redefining the term as focal points which inhere to the combatant’s complete structural order and which bring it strength from several sources and give it purpose and direction. [To quote directly from Echevarria: “A center of gravity is the one element within a combatant’s entire structure or system that has the necessary centripetal force to hold that structure together.”] He also believes that an enemy’s center of gravity should be continually reassessed due to its temporary and transitory nature.
  • In total wars, the strategic center of gravity is a combatant’s economic-industrial potential.  In limited wars, it is the military-security potential.  National leaders are not centers of gravity because they themselves do no have the potential to defeat the enemy.  They are only catalysts.
  • Now to return to the strikes on the U.S. center of gravity.  Firstly, the center of gravity for the U.S. during WWII was its industrial complex.
  • Secondly, In the past two decades, U.S. financial centers seemed to be its center of gravity.  They absorbed the liquidity of the world and its interest.
  • Thirdly, the U.S.’s primary means of attracting funds is its capacity to impose its will through force on other countries and its belief that it can’t be defeated because of its geographical and geopolitical protection (it’s surrounded by oceans) and its military dominance.
  • Fourthly, hitting the U.S. homeland, despite all the strengths we mentioned, demonstrated the country’s brittleness, which gave reassurance to the U.S.’s enemies, especially in the Islamic world.
  • Fifthly, the strike on the WTC was not enough to destroy the world’s confidence in the U.S., even though it shook one of the pillars of its control of the world.
  • Does all of this mean that AQ committed the mistake of Japan in WWII, creating its own Peal Harbor?  In other words, did it provoke the giant without finishing it off and now it must bear the consequences?
  • There is a difference in both cases.  Japan was a small, isolated, maritime nation that had no resources or raw materials.  Since Japan fought a traditional war, its defeat was certain given that it could not match or destroy the U.S.’s center of gravity [its industrial base].  AQ, on the other hand, stretches over continents and its resources are from the umma; these resources have been barely affected.  AQ’s mode of fighting is new and not one to which the U.S. is accustomed.

Map of Recent Strikes on al-Qaeda Leadership in Pakistan

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Reuters reports, on the authority of a Pakistani security official, that an “Abu Saeed al-Masri” was killed.  The official said Masri is “among the top leadership of al Qaeda.”  The identity of Masri is unknown, but the news media is claiming that it’s Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a close Egyptian friend of Zawahiri’s from the Sadat assassination days (Long War and CT Blog have good summaries of the news).

If true, it is horrible news for al-Qaeda.  Abu al-Yazid is the head of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and one of the few public faces of the organization (he sometimes gets the job of announcing the death of AQ operatives killed in Afghanistan).  Moreover, it comes after a string of successful strikes on high-profile al-Qaeda leaders this year: Abu Layth al-Libi, Abu Sulayman al-Jaza’iri, and Abu Khabab.  Of course, there are other capable leaders waiting in the wings, but don’t underestimate the damage these deaths cause.  It is sending AQ Central back to 2003.

To get a spatial and chronological sense of what is happening, I’ve put together a map of the 2008 killings based on Bill Roggio’s nice summary of the information.  The marks for al-Jaza’iri and Abu Khabab are accurate since we know where they died; for Libi and Abu al-Yazid (if dead), all we know is the province.

Two Major Steps Forward in Studying al-Qaeda

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First, Thomas Hegghammer has written a very valuable article on the rise and fall of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia (more properly, “al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula” or QAP).  Thomas’ study is valuable because he draws on a deep well of empirical research to challenge the three major explanatory models of Islamist militancy: ideological (as they believe, so shall they fight), structural (the system is pushing them to fight), or social movement (al-Qaeda is just the violent manifestation of a larger network of like-minded people).  Thomas argues instead that QAP’s material and human resources, organizational needs, and pan-Islamic orientation, coupled with the Saudi security environment in the early 2000s, were more determinative influences on the group’s behavior.  I’m interested to know what he makes of the latest round of militant activity and arrests in the kingdom.

Second, Steve Corman of the COMOPS Monitor has created a blog aggregation service for counterterrorism and public diplomacy.  It will be a one stop shop for CT reporting and analysis.  Membership is free and it has a voting feature (“flag it”), so the cream rises to the top.  This is going to save me a lot of mouse clicks.

Abu Khabab Killed in Missile Strike

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This morning Reuters reported that U.S. missiles had struck a madrasa in Wana, South Waziristan and killed six people. At that time, the reporters did not know who had been killed.

On the forums this afternoon, there were several rumors that Abu Khabab, a senior al-Qaeda bomb maker and chemical weapons expert, had died in the strike. Now Taliban officials have confirmed it.

Abu Khabab was supposedly killed in 2006, but he survived. If you’ve read Omar Nasiri’s Inside the Jihad, you’ll remember Abu Khabab’s ominous appearance at a training camp in Afghanistan (hat tip: AC).

The fact that the U.S. has killed so many high-profile al-Qaeda members recently suggests greater penetration of the militant network in Pakistan or greater cooperation of some tribes in the region.