Paying attention to the grassroots

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Seven men accused by U.S. authorities of belonging to a militant cell appeared in U.S. District Court in Raleigh, N.C., for a detention hearing Aug. 4.

 The hearing turned out to be very lengthy and had to be continued Aug. 5, when the judge ordered the men to remain in government custody until their trial. The seven men, along with an eighth who is not currently in U.S. custody, have been charged with, among other things, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons in a foreign country.

According to the grand jury indictment filed in the case, one defendant, Daniel Boyd (also known as “Saifullah,” Arabic for “the sword of Allah”), is a Muslim convert who was in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 1989 to 1991 attending militant training camps. The indictment also states that Boyd fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, though we must note that, because the Soviets completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, it is more likely that any combat Boyd saw in Afghanistan was probably against Soviet-backed Afghan forces during the civil war waged by Islamist militants against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (a socialist state and Soviet ally) was overthrown by Islamist forces in 1992.

Islamist veterans of that war in Afghanistan are held in reverence by some in the Muslim community, tend to be afforded a romanticized mystique, and are considered to be victorious mujahideen, or “holy warriors,” who defeated the Soviets and their communist (and atheistic) Afghan allies. The grand jury indictment implies that Boyd used the prestige of his history in Pakistan and Afghanistan to influence and recruit others to participate in militant struggles abroad. It also charges that he helped train men inside the United States to fight in battles abroad and that he helped them attempt to travel to conflict zones for the purpose of engaging in militant activities such as guerrilla warfare and terrorist operations.

An examination of the indictment in the Boyd case reveals that the facts outlined by the government allow for a large number of parallels to be drawn between this case and other grassroots plots and attacks. The indictment also highlights a number of other trends that have been evident for some time now. We anticipate that future court proceedings in the Boyd case will produce even more interesting information, so STRATFOR will be following the case closely.

Homegrown Jihadists

As STRATFOR has noted for several years now, the threat from al Qaeda and its jihadist militant spawn has been changing, and in fact has devolved to pre-9/11 operational models. With al Qaeda`s structure under continual attack and no regional al Qaeda franchise groups in the Western Hemisphere, perhaps the most pressing jihadist threat to the U.S. homeland at present stems from grassroots jihadists. This trend has been borne out by the large number of plots and arrests over the past several years, including:

·                         A June 2009 attack against a U.S. military recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark.

·                         A May 2009 plot to bomb Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

·                         The August 2007 arrests of two men found with an improvised explosive device in their car near Goose Creek, S.C.

·                         A May 2007 plot to attack U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J.

·                         A June 2006 plot to attack targets in the United States and Canada involving two men from Georgia.

·                         A June 2006 plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago involving seven men from Miami.

·                         The July 2005 arrests in Torrance, Calif., of a group of men planning to attack a list of targets that included the El Al airline ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, synagogues, California National Guard armories, and U.S. Army recruiting stations.

And now the organization led by Daniel Boyd.

We are listing the Boyd group as a grassroots cell because it appears to have only dated or tangential connections to the larger jihadist movement, though members of the group appear to have attempted to initiate stronger contact with other jihadist players. According to the indictment in the Boyd case, Daniel Boyd, his two sons and two other associates were largely unsuccessful in their attempts to link up with militant groups in Gaza to fight against the Israelis. One of Boyd`s associates, Hysen Sherifi, appears to have had a little more success establishing contact with militant groups in Kosovo, and another associate, Jude Kenan Mohammad, attempted to travel to camps on the Pakistani-Afghan border. (Some reports indicate that Mohammad may have been arrested in Pakistan shortly after his arrival there in October 2008, although his current whereabouts are unknown.)

A Known Quantity

Information released during the Aug. 4 detention hearing indicated that Boyd also attended training camps in Connecticut in the 1980s — an indication, perhaps, that he was then connected to the al Qaeda-linked “Brooklyn Jihad Office” (formally known as the al-Kifah Refugee Center), which trained aspiring jihadists at shooting ranges in New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut before sending them on to fight in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

According to some reports, Boyd and his brother Charles (also a Muslim convert) were arrested in Pakistan in 1991 and charged with bank robbery. The Boyd brothers were initially sentenced by a Pakistani court to have a hand and a foot amputated as punishment, but they were pardoned by a Pakistani court in October 1991 and deported. It is not clear whether the Boyds were guilty of the bank robbery, but interestingly, in a recording introduced during the detention hearing, Boyd could be heard saying that militant operations could be financed by robbing banks and armored cars, lending credence to the charge.

Due to Boyd`s activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan he was likely known to U.S. counterterrorism officials — there were many Americans who fought as jihadists in Afghanistan but very few were blond-haired, as Boyd is, and he would have garnered additional attention. The chance of his being on the U.S. government`s radar dramatically increased due to his alleged involvement in jihadist training inside the United States and his arrest in Pakistan. It is therefore not surprising to see that Boyd had been under heavy scrutiny, and evidence produced so far appears to indicate that not only was he under electronic surveillance but the FBI had also placed at least one confidential informant within his circle of confidants, or somehow recruited one of his associates to serve as an informant.

This government scrutiny of Boyd may also explain the problems he and his co-conspirators experienced when they tried to travel to Gaza to link up with militants there. The Americans likely tipped off the Israelis. This would also explain why Boyd was questioned by American authorities twice upon his return to the United States from Israel. Boyd has been charged in the indictment with two counts of making false statements to government agents during these interviews.

Parallels

In many ways, the activities of Boyd`s group closely mirror those of the group of jihadists in New York that would go on to assassinate Rabbi Meir Kahane in Manhattan in 1990, help bomb the World Trade Center in February 1993 and attempt to attack other New York landmarks in July 1993. The members of that New York organization were very involved with firearms training inside the United States and many of them traveled overseas to fight.

It was this overseas travel (and their association with Sheikh Omar Ali Ahmed Abdul-Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh”) that allowed them to link up with the nascent al Qaeda network in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and company would later assign a pair of trained operational commanders and bombmakers from Afghanistan, Abdel Basit and Ahmed Ajaj, to travel to the United States to help the New York group conduct the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

One huge difference between the Boyd case and the 1993 New York cases is the legal environment. Prior to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, there were no “terrorism” statutes concerning the use of weapons of mass destruction or acts of terrorism transcending national borders. Instead, prosecutors in terrorism cases struggled to apply existing laws. The defendants in the 1993 New York landmarks bomb-plot case were not charged with conspiring to build bombs or commit acts of international terrorism. Rather, they were convicted on the charge of seditious conspiracy — a very old statute without a lot of case law and precedent — along with a hodgepodge of other charges. This made the case extremely challenging to prosecute.

Because of cases like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the trial of the Blind Sheikh and his co-conspirators, that legal environment has changed dramatically. As highlighted in the Boyd case, today there are not only laws pertaining to terrorist attacks that have been completed, but prosecutors now can charge defendants with providing material support to terrorists (18 USC section 2339 A), or with conspiring to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons outside the United States (18 USC section 956 [a]).

Following 9/11, the PATRIOT Act amended many statutes in order to ease the prosecution of terrorist crimes and stop them before people were harmed. For example, the definition of “material support” in the statute (18 USC section 2339 A) was changed to include providing “expert advice or assistance” and “monetary instruments.” Such charges are far easier to prove in court than seditious conspiracy.

Before these legal changes, agents and police officers assigned to the joint terrorism task forces investigating the cases and the assistant U.S. attorneys they coordinated with needed to have all the goods on a suspect before proceeding to act on a terrorism case. (It was, quite frankly, easier to prosecute a terrorist case after the attack had been conducted, and the authorities didn`t want to risk losing the case in court. This often meant letting the conspiracy fully develop and get very close to action before authorities stepped in and interdicted the attack — a risky endeavor.) The newer terrorism laws mean that prosecutors can be far more proactive than they could be in the early 1990s, and this has allowed them to focus on prevention rather than prosecution after the fact.

One other interesting parallel between the Boyd case and the 1993 cases is the ethnic mix of militants involved in the plot. In the World Trade Center bombing, Egyptian and Palestinian jihadists worked with Pakistanis. In the follow-on July 1993 landmarks plot, there were Egyptians, Sudanese, an African-American and a Puerto Rican militant involved. In the Boyd case, we have Boyd and his sons, all Caucasian Americans, along with men from Kosovo, and Jude Kenan Mohammad, who appears to have a Pakistani father and American mother. Ethnic mixing also seems to be in play in the recent plot disrupted in Australia, where Somali militants were reputed to be working with Lebanese militants.

Ethnic mixing is not uncommon among Muslim communities in Western countries, just as Westerners tend to congregate in places like China or Saudi Arabia. Such mixing in a militant cell, then, reflects the composition of the radical Muslim community, which is a small component drawn from the overall Muslim population.

What Ifs

Because investigators and prosecutors in the Boyd case had the luxury of pursuing the prevention strategy, Boyd`s cell did not have the opportunity to develop its conspiracy to a more mature form. This has caused some commentators to downplay the potential danger posed by the cell, pointing to its inability to link up with militant groups in Gaza and Pakistan.

However, it is important to remember that, although Boyd`s cell was seemingly unable to make contact with major jihadist groups, it seems to have tried. Had it succeeded in making contact with a major jihadist group — such as al Qaeda or one of its regional franchises — Boyd`s group, like the 1993 New York cell, could have played an important part in launching an attack on U.S. soil, something the jihadists have been unable to do since 9/11. Hopefully the lessons learned from the 1993 plotters (who were also under heavy scrutiny prior to the first World Trade Center bombing) would have helped prevent the group from conducting such an attack even with outside help.

Frustration over not being able to conduct militant operations abroad appears to be another parallel with the plot recently thwarted in Australia. The Somalis and Lebanese arrested there reportedly were originally plotting to commit violence abroad. After being repeatedly thwarted, they decided instead to conduct attacks inside Australia. In some of the evidence released in the Boyd case detention hearing, Boyd could be heard saying that he would consider attacks inside the United States if he could not conduct militant operations abroad.

It is important to remember that even without assistance from a professional militant organization, Boyd and his followers were more than capable of conducting small-scale attacks that could have killed many people. In addition to the training conducted with Boyd, other members of the cell had reportedly attended a private academy in Nevada where they allegedly received training in survival, assassination, and escape and evasion.

At the time of his arrest, Daniel Boyd was carrying an FN Five-Seven pistol and his son Dylan Boyd was armed with a 9 mm pistol. According to the indictment, Boyd had purchased a rather extensive arsenal of weapons — certainly enough for the group to have conducted an armed assault-style attack. An FBI agent testified during the detention hearing that agents seized more than 27,000 rounds of ammunition (some armor-piercing) from the Boyd residence while executing a search warrant.

As STRATFOR has noted repeatedly, even seemingly unsophisticated “Kramer jihadists” can occasionally get lucky. Aggressive counterterrorism efforts since 9/11 have helped reduce the odds of such a lucky strike, but as we move further from 9/11, complacency, budget constraints and other factors have begun to erode counterterrorism programs.

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Beware of ‘Kramer’: Tradecraft and the New Jihadists

January 19, 2006

By Fred Burton

In a recent article, we discussed the ongoing devolution of al Qaeda from what could be termed “al Qaeda the group” — a distinct group of individuals with a clear political aim — to “al Qaeda the movement,” a wider network of groups and individuals who have thrown in with al Qaeda’s “Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders.” The shift, we noted, lends greater geographic and operational reach to the entity or brand name of al Qaeda, but — as a movement — also renders it shallower in a sense: The new al Qaeda will lack the operational depth and expertise exhibited by the core group and its well-trained leadership.

In practical terms, this shift has many implications — one of which will become more evident in an area intelligence professionals refer to as “tradecraft.” That’s the set of skills needed to conduct clandestine activities in a hostile environment without discovery. Through the years, the jihadists on the whole have exhibited sloppy tradecraft, and we expect that trend will intensify with al Qaeda’s further devolution. This should not be taken, in any way, to imply that the ability of the jihadists to cause death and destruction will dwindle or that they can be dismissed as harmless goofs by those with an appreciation of “the craft” — quite the opposite. It does, however, represent a potential advantage for intelligence and security forces seeking to pre-empt attacks by an amorphous and shadowy enemy.

Intrinsic to this discussion is the shift in the way al Qaeda is making propaganda and tactical guidance available to sympathizers around the world. For decades, militant groups and lone wolves have relied on army field manuals and other printed resources, like the well-known “Anarchist’s Cookbook,” as sources of technical data. Al Qaeda printed what is known as its “encyclopedia of jihad” — titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants” — in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and of course provided other forms of practical training in physical camps in Afghanistan and Sudan.

Obviously, the Internet has dramatically increased the amount of technical data available to aspiring practitioners of terrorism. There are now thousands of Web sites that contain how-to information on topics that range from preparing improvised explosive mixtures and timing devices to formulating biological toxins such as ricin. As a side note, we must issue this caution to any aspiring terrorists among our readership: While some of the information on these sites is quite accurate, some of it is very wrong — and when it comes to mixing volatile substances like TATP, directions that are even “a little wrong” can kill you. Having said that, we return to our regular programming.

The Internet has proven a valuable tool to al Qaeda as well. Though in many ways jihadists spurn the corruption and sinfulness they perceive in the modern world, they have been quick to adopt new technologies and adapt them to their cause. This is not as surprising as it might seem when you consider that, by and large, the professional cadre of al Qaeda and its sister organizations, such as Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah, are educated men — many of them with backgrounds in engineering, medicine and other scientific fields that are friendly to innovation and technology. As a result of this serendipity, Web sites such as Azzam.com sprang up to spread the jihadists’ ideology and to recruit fighters and raise funds.

Through such means, al Qaeda has lost its distinctiveness as an identifiable group and is now taking on the characteristics of a decentralized, global “movement” instead.

Technical Education vs. Tradecraft

There is a downside for al Qaeda in this.

While some basic skills and concepts — we will call this “technical information” — can be learned in a classroom or over the Internet, taking that information and applying it to a real-world situation, particularly in a hostile environment, can be exceedingly difficult. The application often requires subtle and complex skills that are difficult to master simply by reading about them: The behaviors of polished tradecraft are not intuitive, and in fact frequently run counter to human nature. That is why intelligence and security professionals require in-depth training and many hours of practical experience in the field.

Let’s put this another way: Would you prefer to put your life in the hands of a brain surgeon who learned everything he knows about his craft from visiting Web sites, or one who graduated from a prestigious medical school, served internships under the guidance of established surgeons and had successfully completed similar operations before he took his scalpel to your head? Certainly, not all terrorist operations are as intricate and complex as brain surgery. But they are complicated, and in either case, one minor slip can lead to catastrophic failure.

The technical skills of terrorism (bomb-making, targeting, deployment) are important, but tradecraft — those subtle skills needed to maintain secrecy and operations in a hostile environment — are crucial to both the individual jihadist and his network. The craft is equally crucial to intelligence officers, who must be able to operate in similarly hostile environments without detection and to spy on others, while appearing to outside observers to be doing nothing out of the ordinary. For instance, the skills required to run a surveillance detection route without tipping off anyone following that you are trying to flush them out do not come easily. Intelligence agencies spend hundreds of hours on the streets, teaching their officers these skills and critiquing them heavily in real-world practicums.

Poor tradecraft, as history shows, has long been the Achilles’ heel of the jihadists and frequently has helped to pre-empt plots. In fact, it could be argued that poor tradecraft has caused the jihadists as much, if not more, grief than have penetrations by the intelligence services that hunt them. This is a weakness that is difficult to overcome with technology: Online training manuals and other instructional materials discuss the importance of surveillance work and even go so far as to tell jihadists what kinds of information to gather, but the texts do not teach how to gather the information without being detected. It is this omission — this dearth of street skills or tradecraft — that has produced vulnerabilities in the jihadists’ attack cycle.

From ‘Dumb and Dumber’ to ‘Kramer’ and ‘Ronald McDonald’

The history of the past decade is replete with examples of busted jihadist operations that were triggered by failures in tradecraft.

In September 1992, for example, Ahmed Ajaj attempted to enter the United States on a poorly altered Swedish passport and carrying a suitcase full of bomb-making instructions and other training manuals and videos. Both errors are mistakes that could be expected from a novice. Ajaj, as it happens, was en route from Osama bin Laden’s Khaldan training camp alongside Abdel Basit (otherwise known as Ramzi Yousef). Basit also was stopped by an immigration inspector, but requested political asylum and — as he was not carrying a suitcase full of bomb-making manuals — he was later released pending a hearing on his asylum claim. (Had he remained in custody, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing would not have been carried out.)

In another case of tradecraft error, Ahmed Ressam — the would-be millennium bomber — fell victim to “burn syndrome” while attempting to enter the United States from Canada in December 1999. Ressam completely lost his composure when he was approached by a U.S. Customs inspector, who was running a routine check of the ferry in which he was traveling. The Customs inspector had no idea that Ressam was an Islamist militant or that he was in operational mode — in fact, when he panicked, she assumed he was smuggling drugs rather than explosives.

“Burn syndrome” is a powerful psychological phenomenon that affects everyone conducting a covert activity: It is the irrational fear that a person observing you knows exactly what you are up to. This fear often causes people to make unnatural, frequently unconscious, movements — making them appear more rather than less suspicious. Thus, learning to fight “burn syndrome” is one of the key elements of tradecraft, and it is impossible to master simply by reading about it.

It is interesting to note that, despite the many tradecraft errors made in the past, the jihadists do not seem to have learned from their mistakes. It seems reasonable to assume that they have studied the report from the 9/11 commission, detailing the errors committed by the hand-picked crème de la crème of al Qaeda prior to hijacking the four aircraft. Those errors — ranging from Mohammed Atta’s citation for driving without a valid license and subsequent failure to appear at a court hearing, to the fact that two operatives (Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Midhar) who were known to the CIA as al Qaeda associates actually traveled to the United States under their own names — were all significant, and any one of them could have been enough to bring down the grand operation. Al-Hazmi and al-Midhar, in fact, were publicly characterized as “Dumb and Dumber” by a flight instructor who said they were “clueless” would-be pilots.

The commission’s report on the failure of U.S. intelligence to seize upon and interpret such clues, and others, certainly paints as vivid a picture of the problems plaguing the United States as it does those plaguing al Qaeda. Of the two, al Qaeda’s problems conceivably might be easier to address.

Nevertheless, it appears that the jihadists have not done so. It is not clear whether they lack the expertise to make corrections, or the loss of physical training facilities has hurt them considerably. Either way, they continue to make mistakes in tradecraft that have led to the unraveling of numerous jihadist plots since Sept. 11.

It can be easy, on this basis alone, for intelligence agents and security forces to dismiss the threat posed by aspiring jihadists — and, in fact, many have. Due to the errors in tradecraft (or, occasionally, personal quirks), jihadists frequently are characterized as bumbling fools of some sort or another:

·                         Richard Reid, most widely recognized as the “shoe bomber,” has been dubbed the “Kramer of al Qaeda” by some in the U.S. government — a reference to the quirky and clumsy character of “Seinfeld” fame.

·                         Haroun Fazul, a key organizer of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, reportedly was referred to as “the black Ronald McDonald” by the wife of Osama bin Laden’s personal assistant, Wadih el-Hage. April el-Hage said she had always viewed Fazul as “kind of goofy” and found it difficult to believe, as a result, that he could be a terrorist.

·                         The jihadist cell that Abdel Basit linked up with in Brooklyn to conduct the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had been previously investigated by the FBI. The investigation was closed down after the FBI decided the operatives were a bunch of hot-headed “wannabes” who posed no real threat. It was only when operative Mohammed Salameh stumbled into the Ryder rental office looking for the refund of the deposit on the truck used in the bombing that a light went off. Once Salameh was identified, the FBI knew his circle of associates from the earlier investigation and was able to quickly round up the rest of the cell.

·                         British authorities investigated Mohammed Siddique Khan, believed to be the ringleader of the July 7 London bombing cell, in 2004 in connection with foiled terrorist plots in the U.K. The MI5 investigation, however, reportedly was terminated after authorities decided he did not pose a direct threat to national security. Thus, the July 7 cell was able to pull off a successful strike, despite notably sloppy security practices surrounding the operation.

However “goofy,” “harmless” or technically inept the operatives might have been, the fact that authorities or associates dismissed the potential threat on that basis had deadly or near-deadly consequences in every case. “Kramer,” for example, was able to smuggle a powerful explosive device onto an aircraft after the post-Sept. 11 increase in airline security. Every “black Ronald McDonald” is a cautionary tale to intelligence agencies, for whom it is tempting to narrowly focus on the most commonly held concept of what a terrorist operative should look like. Authorities who are looking for the wrong threat — the fictional “super terrorist” or mythical “masterminds” — run the chance of missing the real and immediate dangers.

Intensifying Need for Craft

The failures, then — whether of craft or analysis — apply to both sides in the jihadist war. Poor craft has compromised more terrorist operations than have been successfully executed by al Qaeda, while technical mistakes have caused others to fail. But authorities in the West have made their own share of deadly mistakes, such as releasing Abdel Basit from custody or underestimating the threat posed by people like Mohamed Salameh and Mohamed Siddique Khan. The old saying that “it is better to be lucky than it is to be good” certainly holds true for the jihadists — who, after all, only have to be lucky once to achieve significant results.

The decentralization of al Qaeda, and its lack of concrete training camps like those it previously used in Afghanistan, will lead to further declines in tradecraft abilities. We believe this to be the case despite the practical combat training available to jihadists in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya, for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, combat experience does not necessarily translate into good tradecraft and street skills. Many of the busted operatives discussed above had combat experience in Afghanistan or Bosnia — and most of them received “advanced” training at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan — but they still made significant tradecraft errors.

Second, the skills that can be learned in insurgency situations have limited value when transferred to other settings. Just as fighting an insurgency is different from fighting a pitched battle or conventional war, it also different from conducting clandestine operations in a hostile environment, far from your base of support. The technical skills required to operate a rocket-propelled grenade or mortar system in hit-and-run attacks in Afghanistan or to function as a sniper in Ar Ramadi are very different from the skills needed to plan and execute a terrorist attack in New York or London.

Amid the chaos in combat zones like Afghanistan and Iraq, there are networks of local contacts that help to funnel militant jihadists and resources into the battle. The network provides arms, targeting guidance, intelligence and security functions for the militants. Thus, the individual militants do not need to learn or develop the skills to operate like a traditional “sleeper agent.”

The network that provides men and money to fight in places like Iraq and Afghanistan traditionally has extended into the United States, Europe, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Obviously, since Sept. 11, tremendous efforts have been made to disrupt that network in the West — with nearly daily reports emanating from Spain, Italy, France and other countries, pointing to arrests of people suspected of coordinating the flow of jihadists to Iraq.

We believe that the disruption of this network has been a major factor in preventing al Qaeda from completing a follow-on strike on U.S. soil, and that ongoing counterterrorism operations will make it difficult for militants to operate in the West. But any existing “sleeper agents” already present in the United States or other Western countries would find it necessary to act more on their own — without the level of command, control and support that was available to the Sept. 11 operatives. As a result of network disruptions, jihadists planning strikes in Western countries will stand in even greater need of tradecraft skills — or suffer as a result of their deficiencies in this area.