We are pleased to welcome back “Erica Chenoweth.”:http://echenoweth.faculty.wesleyan.edu/ Erica is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, where she directs the Program on Terrorism and Insurgency Research. She is currently finishing a book about terrorism in democracies. Erica’s post is below.
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Americans should be encouraged by Thursday’s “revelation that Osama bin Laden was personally linked to multiple recent terrorist plots”:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/asia/06intel.html?ref=global-home. Although it seems strange to be “encouraged” by such a thing, the documents recovered from bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan show that his death may significantly reduce Al Qaeda’s capability to continue launching attacks against the United States, such as an alleged plot to strike the United States on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11.
Besides the fact that one of the key strategic leaders of the network is now dead, the documents reveal that Al Qaeda remains predictable in several ways. Most importantly, the fact that bin Laden wanted to attack America on a particularly meaningful day—such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or on the State of the Union Address—shows that Al Qaeda core’s strategic planning is driven by a highly symbolic logic meant to maximize the psychological effects of their attacks. But this makes these attacks more predictable. Knowing that “important dates” matter the most also helps intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to step it up during these times, rather than assuming that Al Qaeda places an equal value on attacking during any of the 365 days in a year.
Moreover, the documents show that bin Laden’s Al Qaeda remains faithful to one of its trademarks—which is to strike mass transit during the morning hours. The focus on mass transit, such as planes, railroads, and buses, is likely related to the high casualty potential and economic impacts of such targets. And, although this is only a hunch of mine (one that I plan to test empirically), attacking during the morning is meant to maximize the psychological impact and disruptiveness of the attack. Other Al Qaeda franchises—such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—have continued this practice, as evidenced by the failed Christmas Day bombing of 2009 (Northwest Flight 253 was scheduled to land in Detroit at 11:40am) and the failed package plots of October 2010 (the two cargo bombs would have “detonated in the early morning hours as they approached Chicago”:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/world/europe/11parcel.html on November 1, 2010). In short, although the intentions are alarming, we should feel encouraged that Al Qaeda’s strategic imagination has plateaued.
Next, the documents may provide useful insight into the divisions within Al Qaeda. In a report released by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point in 2010, a number of scholars analyzed documents recovered from Afghanistan and elsewhere to demonstrate that there were “considerable internal rivalries and debates within Al Qaeda”:http://www.teachingterror.net/SIW-AQ-2010.pdf. According to scholars like Martha Crenshaw and Audrey Kurth Cronin, one of the most common ways that “terrorist groups decline”:www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.31.1.7 is by failing to transfer knowledge and know-how to the “next generation,” often because of leadership succession crises or because internal rivalries cause the group to fracture before such knowledge transfer can occur. The new documents U.S. intelligence officials have recovered may give us the updated view of the group’s most vulnerable fault lines, which U.S. intelligence officials can exploit to hasten the movement’s demise. Fortunately for scholars, there are also numerous possibilities for content analysis of these (and similar) documents—a wide-open field for people interested in understanding “how speech and text relate to terrorist behavior”:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a794424887~frm=abslink.
Al Qaeda’s response to bin Laden’s death has also been predictable. According to “Al Jazeera”:http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/201156125729467729.html, Al Qaeda spokesmen have confirmed bin Laden’s death and called for Pakistanis to “rise up and revolt to cleanse this shame that has been attached to them… and to clean their country from the filth of the Americans who spread corruption in it.” Although the group also vows to continue to attack Americans abroad and in the United States, it is not at all clear that they will be able to do so. Instead, most Al Qaeda franchises have primarily parochial goals, and even what’s left of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda probably sees attacks within Pakistan as a more productive and efficient way to continue the struggle. Although Americans in Pakistan should feel uneasy about this, Americans in the United States should feel fairly safe.
The future of Al Qaeda is uncertain, but these documents show that bin Laden remained a crucial figure to the operations of the organization. Earlier this week, “Max Abrahms”:http://www.maxabrahms.com/ and I were discussing how this seems to vindicate Bruce Hoffman, who has “long argued”:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63408/bruce-hoffman/the-myth-of-grass-roots-terrorism that bin Laden’s operational and organizational salience remained. But now that bin Laden is gone, one wonders whether Al Qaeda will resemble Sageman’s “grassroots model of self-initiating, Al Qaeda aspirants”:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64460/marc-sageman-and-bruce-hoffman/does-osama-still-call-the-shots? If so, this is not necessarily the worst outcome for the United States. To continue the fight, Al Qaeda will have to rely increasingly on amateurs, who are easier to thwart. Indeed, as Byman and Fair have argued, they “routinely blow themselves up before hurting anyone else”:http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-case-for-calling-them-nitwits/8130/.
All in all, although “Al Qaeda is still with us”:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/opinion/03clarke.html, Americans should see bin Laden’s death—and the intelligence obtained during the operation—as developments that will indeed make us safer.