The fact is that we are having a fair level of success in degrading the leadership of the Al- Qaeda movement. What is not been diminished is their ability to recruit volunteers prepared to carry a suicide bomb. Our press focuses on the odd such mad man aimed directly at US targets and misses the fact that they are almost daily occurrences in their own homelands were the heavy lifting is taking place.
Even then the level of activity is naturally self limiting and likely as bad as it is able to become.
The organization will continue to attempt penetration of our defenses because it is disruptive and the PR payback encourages yet more volunteers to come forward.
Thus our best strategy is to keep locating their leadership and eliminating them. And as their command and control also degrades, their ability to avoid detection also degrades. I suspect by now, that they are very vulnerable to basic intelligence gathering. As they weaken, they also are far more vulnerable to simple betrayal which is why kill numbers appear to rising.
Amazingly, while they have followed a strategy of waiting for the west to get weary and go home, it appears that those who passively supported them have also become weary and want put paid of them. I think that is why the Taliban has suddenly begun talking.
In the meantime, a new strategy is been deployed against them this coming week or so. It was first sprung by the Canadian forces in Kandahar
Yet the Taliban concentrated like flies to give battle. They appear to be doing it again in Helmand province at present. It is as if they can not stand the picture of a strategic defeat. If this succeeds, a few hundred Taliban will die and a handful will escape and the area will suddenly be cleared. Maybe they need to be visibly defeated in a great battle in order for the leadership to be able to negotiate a political settlement.
Anyway, it is curious. We may actually be seeing the end game after all these years. Keep up the pressure.
Al-Qaeda is a wounded but dangerous enemy
Monday, February 8, 2010
In the past six weeks, Americans have witnessed two jarringly different — but completely accurate — views of al-Qaeda’s terrorist network. One image was that of terrorist leaders being hunted down and killed by satellite-guided, pilotless aircraft. The other was of an agile foe slipping past U.S. defenses and increasingly intent on striking inside the United States
New assessments of al-Qaeda by the top U.S. U.S.
The deadly November shooting rampage at Fort Hood , Tex. , and the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner — both examples of the low-tech approach — have raised the fear level in Washington
“The noose is tightening, and al-Qaeda’s leadership is accelerating efforts that were probably in place anyway,” said Andy Johnson, former staff director of the Senate intelligence committee and now national security director for the Washington Third Way
In the past year, Johnson said, the “good guys have been scoring the points,” killing key al-Qaeda leaders and disrupting multiple plots. But pressure on al-Qaeda in Iraq and Pakistan has forced terrorist operatives to flee to new havens, such as Yemen
The U.S. Afghanistan
In testimony before two congressional panels last week, top U.S.
“Intelligence confirms that they are finding it difficult to be able to engage in the planning and the command-and-control operations to put together a large attack,” CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
But intelligence officials also warned lawmakers of worrisome new evidence of al-Qaeda’s ability to adapt. In an annual “threat assessment” to Congress, spy agencies described the emerging threat as more geographically dispersed and also low-tech, favoring lone operatives and conventional explosives.
‘Short-term plots’
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, who presented the assessment to House and Senate panels, said the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit is emblematic of an evolving threat that relies on “small numbers of terrorists, recently recruited and trained, and short-term plots.” The new tactics are less spectacular but also much harder to detect and disrupt, he said.
The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is a Western-educated young man who was apparently recruited because he had a U.S. Arabian Peninsula , and that he had a bomb made of a common military explosive sewn into his underwear, deliberately designed to thwart the kinds of safeguards put in place after 9/11.
The foiled plot came on the heels of the Fort Hood Western Europe . Blair acknowledged that intelligence agencies are newly concerned that Americans may be traveling overseas for training and returning to the United States
“A handful of individuals and small, discrete cells will seek to mount attacks each year, with only a small portion of that activity materializing into violence against the homeland,” he said.
Blair testified that he thought another attempted strike by terrorists was “certain” in the next six months. The assertion was a response to a question by the Senate intelligence panel’s chairman, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), about the likelihood that al-Qaeda would try to launch a major attack on Americans in the near future. But Blair also suggested that the rash of news about terrorist plots in recent weeks has created a false impression that the threat is new.
“We have been warning since September 11 that . . . al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists remain committed to striking the United States
Terrorism experts and administration officials have described the Dec. 25 bombing attempt as a wake-up call that helped expose gaps in security that are now being addressed. But some analysts say the dramatic successes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan may have led U.S. Georgetown University terrorism expert and senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center
“Until Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the prevailing assumption was that we could fight and win by drone attacks. But the threats are diverse and spreading,” Hoffman said. “Both administrations — Bush and Obama — had a tendency to focus on one threat, one enemy, emanating from one place. The use of predators in Afghanistan and Pakistan
BRITAIN faces the risk of renewed snow chaos after councils admitted yesterday that salt supplies are “stretched”.
