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
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
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
· A June 2009 attack against a
· A May 2009 plot to bomb Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base in
· The August 2007 arrests of two men found with an improvised explosive device in their car near
· A May 2007 plot to attack
· A June 2006 plot to attack targets in the
· A June 2006 plot to bomb the
· The July 2005 arrests in
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
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
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
This government scrutiny of Boyd may also explain the problems he and his co-conspirators experienced when they tried to travel to
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
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
One huge difference between the Boyd case and the 1993
Because of cases like the 1993
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
One other interesting parallel between the Boyd case and the 1993 cases is the ethnic mix of militants involved in the plot. In the
Ethnic mixing is not uncommon among Muslim communities in Western countries, just as Westerners tend to congregate in places like
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
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
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
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
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
In another case of tradecraft error, Ahmed Ressam — the would-be millennium bomber — fell victim to “burn syndrome” while attempting to enter the
“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
· Haroun Fazul, a key organizer of the 1998
· The jihadist cell that Abdel Basit linked up with in Brooklyn to conduct the 1993
· British authorities investigated Mohammed Siddique Khan, believed to be the ringleader of the July 7
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
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
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
Amid the chaos in combat zones like
The network that provides men and money to fight in places like
We believe that the disruption of this network has been a major factor in preventing al Qaeda from completing a follow-on strike on