Security Weekly: Grassroots Cells: Even More Dangerous Than Lone Wolves, August 20, 2015

By Scott Stewart

Al Qaeda and Islamic State leaders are calling for grassroots jihadists to conduct more strikes in the West, so we anticipate that additional attacks will be forthcoming. In fact, the past 11 months have been the most active in terms of grassroots jihadist activity since jihadist leaders first began to heavily promote the leaderless resistance operational model in 2009.

Many have referred to the perpetrators of these attacks as lone wolves, a term bandied about in the media. Indeed, I intentionally used the phrase in the above title to help attract attention to the topic in a way that is easily understood. But it is a critical mistake to assume that the leaderless resistance model is synonymous with lone wolf attacks. Certainly lone wolves are one component of leaderless resistance terrorist theory, but they are not the most dangerous aspect: The threat presented by grassroots cells far overshadows that posed by lone wolves.

Leaderless Resistance Theory

Right-wing groups in the United States began to seriously promote leaderless resistance in the late 1980s after the Ft. Smith Arkansas Sedition Trial revealed how far law enforcement had penetrated their ranks. The idea behind leaderless resistance — formally expressed by ideologues such as William Pierce, Richard Kelly Hoskins and Louis Beam — was to have a two-part structure that could help the groups combat and ultimately defeat government efforts.

One tier would be the public "organs of information," which would distribute information. Members of the organs of information were not to conduct any illegal activities so that the government could not justifiably arrest them. They would take advantage of free speech to outline strategy and to identify potential targets. The second tier would be composed of individual operators (lone wolves) and small phantom cells, which would conduct attacks based on the strategy and guidance published by the first tier. These people were to keep a low profile and remain anonymous, with no traceable connections to the above-ground activists. It was through an air gap, to steal a network security term, that they could insulate the two tiers from each other and make it far more difficult for law enforcement agencies to track operatives, map networks and thwart attacks.

Following the success of the 9/11 attacks, jihadists struggled to land their much anticipated and oft threatened follow-on attack. Because of this, jihadist theorists such as Abu Musab al-Suri began to promote the leaderless resistance model for jihadists in late 2004. In 2009, the call to leaderless resistance was adopted by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and in the wake of the Ft. Hood shooting, the al Qaeda core.

Though some jihadist ideologues such as Samir Khan and Anwar al-Awlaki began by carefully skirting the boundaries of the U.S. First Amendment, as had American white supremacists, it was not long before law enforcement pressure drove them overseas to places such as Yemen. The idea was still to provide a gap between ideologues like al-Awlaki and grassroots operatives to increase operational security, although the gap has not always been absolute. There have been cases where grassroots operatives have had contact with the high-profile jihadists who helped inspire and radicalize them: Such was the case with grassroots operative Nidal Malik Hasan who had direct contact with jihadist leader al-Awlaki. But in general, it is clear that jihadist groups, including the Islamic State, have widely embraced the leaderless resistance model. It is equally clear that grassroots operatives have become the most probable threat in the West. (Attacks by professional terrorist cadres are still the most severe threat to the West, even though such an attack is less likely to occur than grassroots attacks.)

There is danger, however, in the assumption that the leaderless resistance threat stemming from jihadist grassroots operatives is confined to just the lone wolf threat. Grassroots terror cells, which operate under the same logic but promote a slightly more collaborative approach, are a vital and dangerous part of the leaderless resistance model that must not be overlooked.

Beyond the Lone Wolf Threat

As I have noted in the past, it takes a very special person to be a successful lone wolf terrorist because the individual not only has to self-radicalize but also has to conduct every step of the terrorist planning process alone. This requires a lot of skill and discipline and explains why we see so few lone wolves. The limitations of individual jihadists also explain why so many individuals have reached out to government informants looking for help in acquiring weapons or explosives.

But by operating as a cell, a group of individuals can help overcome their individual limitations. They can motivate and encourage each other and use their individual strengths and abilities for the benefit of the whole. Moreover, they can operate as a fire team — or even multiple fire teams to attack multiple targets — even when conducting simple attacks using firearms.

We have seen such small jihadist cells operate in the past, as with the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, or the Kouachi brothers and their associate, Amedy Coulibaly, in Paris. In both cases, the employment of multiple actors and various crime scenes resulted in massive disruptions to the cities where they occurred, posing significant challenges to the police. These cases highlight the threat that grassroots cells pose. Law enforcement and security personnel need to prepare for complex scenarios, such as two or three simultaneous active shooter scenes at different soft targets in geographically distant sectors of the same jurisdiction, or multiple sequential attacks.

Unfortunately, law enforcement has a history of responding to emerging and changing threats only after a disastrous case, such as the 1986 Platt and Matix shooting in Miami, which resulted in the deaths of two FBI special agents and the wounding of four others, or the 1997 North Hollywood Shootout, in which two heavily armed — and armored — bank robbers wounded 11 police officers. But the threat of grassroots jihadist cells is not a secret, and there is no reason to wait for a watershed event to act preemptively. There are not only examples of cellular organizations out there, but jihadists who have noted the limits of lone wolf attacks, calling for grassroots jihadists to operate in cells or gangs.

In one e-book published earlier this year, titled, "Muslim Gangs: The future of Muslims in the West," the author wrote, "The aim of this book is to give Muslims a starting point on how to make their own gangs and grow them into a Jihadi movement which can recruit and become a force of strength in the West." Now, while much of the practical operational guidance provided in the book is amateurish, as it is in the author's other ebook, "How to Survive in the West," it is nonetheless significant that he has realized the strength that comes from working as an organized group. And he certainly is not alone. In January, authorities in Europe arrested a number of operatives they claim were planning to conduct multiple attacks against an array of soft targets.

The disruption and panic caused by the prolonged incidents in Boston and Paris, or even the single shooter in Ottawa, could be multiplied significantly if a city was to be hit by an assault with multiple gunmen working as a fire team or by multiple fire teams conducting simultaneous attacks, as seen in Mumbai. Sequenced attacks against different soft targets in one city or across the country could also have a tremendous psychological impact. However, such tactics are not new, or particularly remarkable outside of the West. Jihadists frequently conduct attacks involving multiple fire teams on the battlefield in places like Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, and fighters trained in these places are returning to the West.

Governments will continue to be able to thwart many of the attacks planned by grassroots lone operators and small cells before they can be launched, but inevitably some of these attacks will succeed. Police departments and security personnel need to be prepared to deal with them. Multiple shooters working as a fire team — and even situations involving multiple active shooters — can be countered or mitigated, but police agencies and security personnel in the West need to be prepared, as do their populations. Some large police departments such as those in New York and Los Angeles are perhaps better prepared to handle multiple or sequential active shooter attacks against soft targets in geographically diverse portions of their jurisdiction, but can the same be said about smaller cities such as Syracuse or Sacramento?

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Security Weekly: The Jihadist Blowback Against the Islamic State, July 9, 2015

By Scott Stewart

Last Ramadan saw the proclamation of the caliphate as a triumphant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared in Mosul's Great Mosque to declare himself the leader of all Muslims worldwide. This Ramadan, things have changed dramatically for the organization. Al-Baghdadi is keeping an extremely low profile because of the coalition bombing campaign over Iraq and Syria, while the Islamic State is on the strategic defensive, struggling financially and to hold the territories it conquered.

Although many often refer to the Islamic State as the wealthiest terrorist group ever, they fail to understand that the organization is really an insurgency rather than a terrorist group — and that fighting a war on several fronts and governing territory, especially large cities such as Mosul, Raqqa and Ramadi, requires an incredible amount of money, resources and manpower. The Islamic State's resource burn rate is magnitudes larger than that of a true terrorist group or even a small insurgency. Coalition airstrikes against oil collection points, oil tankers and mobile refineries have put a serious dent in the Islamic State's economy. Though the group does earn considerable revenue from taxation, extortion and smuggling, these revenue sources — which are obtained mostly from the people the group rules — are limited and will breed increased resentment against the group as they are ramped up.

This Ramadan also brought a new challenge to the Islamic State when the al Qaeda pole of the transnational jihadist movement launched a widespread ideological campaign to undercut the Islamic State's support base. These ideological efforts have been impressive, at least to this middle-aged American analyst. It remains to be seen, however, if they will have the desired impact on wealthy jihadist donors and young recruits.

Resurgence

The first ideological salvo fired this Ramadan was the second issue of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent's Resurgence Magazine. The 92-page publication was a "special issue" containing a lengthy interview that the publisher, Hassaan Yusuf, had conducted with Adam Gadahn, aka "Azzam the American," an English-language spokesman for the al Qaeda core group who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan in January.

While the interview was ostensibly a biography of Gadahn, Yusuf was able to cleverly shape it into a hit piece on the Islamic State. For example, Yusuf quoted Gadahn talking about al Qaeda's interactions with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. While Gadahn discussed al Qaeda's conflicts with al-Zarqawi, it emphasized that he was a strong proponent of jihadist unity and that he should not be held responsible for the "deviation" of those who claim to follow him today. The interview contained many scathing indictments of the Islamic State, such as:

Declaring Muslims to be outside the fold of Islam is not a trivial matter or something to be taken lightly.
Spilling the blood, taking the wealth and violating the rights of Muslims is not a trivial matter or something to be taken lightly.
When you declare yourselves to be "the" Islamic State, you are responsible if your actions and behavior distort the image of the Islamic system of government in the eyes of the Ummah and the world.
Ignorance of Sharia and misinterpretation of Islamic texts.
Interestingly, many of the arguments directed against the Islamic State used language that was not typical for Gadahn: specifically, terms that were beyond his educational level and normal lexicon. This likely indicates that these sections were later inserted by Yusuf, who is quite erudite, eloquent and apparently very well educated. Yusuf's writing uses advanced American idiomatic English, and it would be unsurprising to learn that he had earned an advanced degree from an American university, perhaps even an Ivy League school. Gadahn, by contrast, never attended university, and while he often sought to sound sophisticated in public statements, his efforts were transparent and his usage came across as unnatural.

Resurgence shows that in Yusuf, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent has an articulate propagandist who likely retains contacts in the United States. He is certainly a much deeper thinker than figures like Gadahn or Inspire magazine editor Samir Khan ever were. Yusuf accordingly will be an important figure to note and track.

Al Risalah Magazine

The second major ideological assault against the Islamic State was launched with the introduction of Al Risalah, a new English-language magazine by Jabhat al-Nusra. Risalah, which means "letter" in Arabic, has the stated purpose of dispelling "from the minds of
 the Muslims some of
 the mistaken notions
 and doubts promoted by the kuffar, hypocrites and deviant groups present amongst our midst, who aim to distort and destroy the clear and pure message of Islam and Jihad in the way of Allah."

The "hypocrites and deviants" the magazine focuses most intently upon hail from the Islamic State, which the magazine refers to as the Dawlat al-Baghdadi, or state of al-Baghdadi. The publication repeatedly criticizes the Islamic State for spreading dissension and attacking Jabhat al-Nusra/al Qaeda in Syria, when the latter are genuine jihadists. It also castigates the Islamic State for dividing and attacking fellow jihadists in Yemen, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Libya. "They have made their khilafa a sword, which splits the Ummah, and not a khilafa, which gathers the Ummah together."

Being produced by Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, Al Risalah naturally contains several articles authored by senior al-Nusra leaders, such as a eulogy for former al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wahayshi written by al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani. The magazine also features articles from a number of other interesting figures, including a female jihadist who immigrated to Syria from the United Kingdom and an American jihadist named Abu Hudaifa al-Amreeki. Another article was written by Qaari Ikram, a senior Taliban religious authority.

The magazine devotes a great deal of space to refuting the ideology and actions of the Islamic State and argues that the Islamic State cannot be the legitimate caliphate since al-Baghdadi did not consult with the leaders of the global jihadist movement before proclaiming himself caliph. An article entitled "Khilafa One Year On" specifically noted that the caliphate had not been restored and quoted a Hadith from Sahih Bukhari that says "if any person gives the pledge of allegiance to somebody (to become a caliph) without consulting the other Muslims, then the one he has selected should not be granted allegiance, lest both of them should be killed." The article also criticizes young Islamic State supporters for believing things posted on social media over the opinions of respected jihadist clerics, such as Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and even of treating such scholars with contempt and disrespect.

This theme of disrespecting elder jihadists and even cursing at them was made in other articles, including an interview with Chechen jihadist Muslim Shishani and an article by Qaari Ikram titled "This is al Qaeda or Have They Forgotten."

Ikram was particularly pointed in countering the argument repeatedly made by Islamic State figures that Ayman al-Zawahiri and the present al Qaeda leadership have strayed from the path charted by Osama bin Laden. Ikram notes that unlike the Islamic State leaders, he knew bin Laden — as well as other al Qaeda leaders — and observed his methods and beliefs in favorable conditions and under pressure. Based upon this firsthand knowledge, Ikram asserts that bin Laden and the other al Qaeda leaders would have condemned the Islamic State for attacking other jihadists, for the indiscriminate killing of non-Muslim women and children, and for the killing of Muslim women and children. He also berated them for being bloodthirsty, deceitful and divisive and for being excessive in declaring takfir (declaring a Muslim to be an unbeliever).

An article called "Halab Under Fire" by Abu Hudaifa al Amreeki specifically charged the Islamic State with helping the administration of Syrian President Bashar al Assad by attacking Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadist groups north of Aleppo (Halab is an ancient name for Aleppo). This forced other jihadists to divert forces away from their attack on loyalists in Aleppo to counter the Islamic State attack.

Turning the Tables on the Islamic State

Members and sympathizers of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have begun to use social media more aggressively. They launched a campaign on Twitter this week to criticize Abu Belal al-Harbi, the leader of the Islamic State in Yemen, accusing him of treason. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb also issued a statement this week criticizing the Islamic State's actions in Libya. Whether such efforts will make much headway against the Islamic State's powerful social media juggernaut, however, is not clear.

I found some compelling arguments against the Islamic State's ideology and practices while reading these materials. But whether potential jihadist recruits and wealthy jihadist donors will take the time to read them and be swayed — or whether they will continue to feed off the Islamic State's dramatic videos and short social media posts — remains to be seen.

Perhaps some of the more mature jihadists and foreign financiers will in fact take time to read these magazines and the reasoned arguments put forth in them. But for many of the younger recruits, the lure of bloody mayhem and Yazidi sex slaves may prove too strong for al Qaeda's arguments to overcome.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Security Weekly: Protective Intelligence Lessons From the Barakat Assassination, July 2, 2015

By Scott Stewart

A typical Monday morning rush hour in Cairo's Heliopolis district, with commuters from the wealthy area struggling through the heavy traffic to get to work, was suddenly fractured at 9:30 when a large car bomb detonated at the intersection of Suleiman al-Farsi and Mostafa Mokhtar streets. The explosion ripped through cars at the intersection, heavily damaging several of them and setting them on fire. The blast also broke windows, damaged building facades and blew leaves from the trees. First responders rushed to the scene to extinguish the leaping flames from the white-hot car fires, treat the wounded and transport them to the hospital.

As the smoke began to clear, it was learned that the bomb had detonated just as the motorcade of Egyptian Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat was making a right turn off Suleiman al-Farsi on to Mostafa Mokhtar. It appears the bomb was remotely detonated, not activated by a suicide operative sitting inside the vehicle. The prosecutor general and some of his bodyguards were among those transported to the hospital. Barakat would later be declared dead, apparently from internal injuries he suffered as the blast wave ripped through his armored vehicle. Because of the terrorist threat in Egypt, including the capital, Cairo, Barakat had been provided with a protective detail and an armored limousine. But those security measures did not protect him from the well-planned and well-executed attack that claimed his life.

The past week saw several terrorist attacks, including quite deadly incidents in Kuwait City and Tunisia. It is important to recognize, however, that from a tactical perspective, these other incidents were all simple attacks directed against vulnerable targets. They did not require much in the way of terrorist tradecraft to plan and execute. The Barakat assassination stands in stark contrast: It was a precisely targeted attack directed against a hard target. Because of this, the attack has far more significance for security practitioners and other potential targets.

Lesson One: Constraints of Place

Operating in a congested residential and commercial area like Heliopolis presents many challenges to a protective security detail. The streets are narrow and often clogged with traffic and parked cars. Street vendors, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians all pose potential threats to a motorcade stopped in gridlocked traffic. One-way streets also limit route selection, as in the case of intersections allowing only right or left turns instead of offering a choice of turns in either direction. All these factors can work together to create choke points, or areas that a person or motorcade must pass through to get from point A to point B.

Having limited route options that result in choke points is bad when a protective detail is making just a one-off or even an occasional stop, but it is downright dangerous when it is part of a daily routine involving a known location associated with the protectee, such as a residence or an office. Choke points that present conditions conducive for an attack, or potential attack sites, are especially dangerous.

The mantra of protective details is that you need to vary your routes and times. But quite honestly, depending on the location and traffic patterns, it can be impossible to vary some portions of a route. This is particularly true close to the residence if it is in a gated community, where there may be only one entrance and exit, or in an urban area where you can go only one direction after picking the protectee up at the curb. (It is impossible to turn large armored vehicles around on some narrow urban streets.)

It appears that the protective detail that picked Barakat up at his home encountered this situation. It attempted to exit the residential area using Mostafa Mokhtar to get to the larger Ammar Ibn Yasser Boulevard, which is two lanes each way. One can turn right only on Mostafa Mokhtar from Suleiman al-Farsi, meaning that the intersection where the attack occurred was a choke point. Media reports indicate that Barakat's motorcade passed through that intersection every morning.

A map of the area and a look at the neighborhood on Google Earth indicates that even if Barakat lived on Suleiman al-Farsi Street, there were still other routes out of the neighborhood. While there may have been road construction or other factors that forced it to use Suleiman al-Farsi to Mostafa Mokhtar every day, the protective detail might have settled into a predictable routine for the morning home-to-office trip rather than varying its times and routes.

If you cannot alter a route and must pass through one or more potential attack sites every day, varying the time becomes even more important. A protective detail, however, can be constrained from doing this by the protectee. Without the protectee's buy-in, it is hard to alter the motorcade's patterns. In many cases, the protectee will simply refuse to alter his schedule so that movement times can be varied or longer alternate routes taken. When the protectee steps out of his door late and needs to be at an important meeting in short time, the protective detail has little choice but to take the quickest route to the destination. Protection agents have little ability to force a powerful protectee like a government minister or corporate CEO to follow their security advice.

Lesson Two: Armored Vehicles Are Not Attack-Proof

There are many things that can lead a protective detail or a person afforded protection to become complacent, including denial ("It can't happen to me"), alert fatigue and years of operation with no incidents or attacks. Another thing that can lead to complacency is a sense of overconfidence in security measures. In recent months in Egypt, most terrorist attacks have involved either small-arms fire — like the June 3 drive-by shooting that killed two tourist police officers in Giza, just outside Cairo — or the small pipe bomb explosive devices frequently used in attacks by Ajnad Misr in the Cairo area. An armored vehicle can be quite effective in protecting against such attacks, a fact that Barakat's assassins took into consideration while planning their attack. Instead of deploying a gunman at the intersection or a pipe bomb, they chose a large vehicle bomb capable of defeating the vehicle's armor. As Stratfor has noted for many years, armored vehicles are not attack-proof, and in some cases they can even be detrimental to security by causing protective details and protectees to develop a false sense of security.

It is also important to remember that the Barakat attack is not unprecedented. There have been several well-executed attacks against high-profile targets in Cairo in the past two years. In January 2014, Gen. Mohammed Said, an aide to the Egyptian interior minister, was gunned down during his commute to work. Said's assassination came four days after a large vehicle bomb attack against the Cairo Security Directorate. In September 2014, Egyptian Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim was nearly assassinated in an operation that was eerily similar to the Barakat assassination: A vehicle bomb was deployed on a corner at a choke point in a residential area near the minister's residence. In the Ibrahim case, it appeared the attack failed because either the attackers did not use sufficient explosives in their device to defeat the vehicle's armor, or they were slightly off on their timing and the device was not detonated at the optimal time. Barakat's assassins did not make the same error; their bomb was large enough and was detonated precisely and with deadly effect.

Lesson Three: Surveillance Must Be Countered

The hard reality in executive protection is that if a proficient attacker is permitted to conduct pre-operational surveillance at will, he will be able to assess security measures, observe travel patterns, note choke points and potential attack sites, and identify ways to attack the target at vulnerable times, either because of gaps in security coverage or by launching an attack powerful enough to defeat the security measures in place. This is what happened in the Barakat assassination (and in the Said and Ibrahim cases, for that matter). The attackers were obviously able to plan and execute their attack without being detected or pressured. Clearly, surveillants must not be given free rein to observe security measures and plan attacks.

As noted above, place constrains security details, but it also constrains would-be attackers. They must go into certain identifiable locations to observe the activities of protective details as they attempt to assess security operations and patterns. As hostile surveillants enter these predictable locations to observe a known place such as a residence or office, or a choke point or potential attack site, they make themselves vulnerable to detection — if someone is looking for them.

In addition to the pre-operational surveillance required to plan an attack, the attack team in the Barakat assassination also needed to secure the specific parking space to place the bomb vehicle and then deploy the vehicle containing the bomb to the attack site. Some reports are suggesting that the vehicle bomb had been parked and was remotely activated. If this is correct, it means that there was probably someone watching the residence to notify the triggerman that the target had left the residence and was approaching the attack site. The triggerman also needed to have a clear view of the intersection to activate the bomb at the right moment. This is a lot of operational activity, and each of the actors deployed during the operation was vulnerable to detection before the attack.

The best way to detect surveillance directed against a protective detail is to deploy a dedicated countersurveillance team that can watch for watchers. They can also monitor for hostile surveillance outside known locations, publicized events, choke points and potential attack sites along routes that are frequently taken. But aside from professional countersurveillance teams, security forces can also make surveillants uncomfortable by "heating up" potential surveillance sites using police officers, security guards or obvious closed-circuit television camera coverage.

Lesson Four: Lingering Danger in Cairo

It is believed that members of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis were behind the assassination of Said and the failed attack on Ibrahim. As seen in those cases, these militants are capable and deadly. It was also believed that many of the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis cadre in Cairo had been killed or arrested, but those beliefs may have been mistaken and some of the planners behind the previous attacks could still be operating in Cairo. It is also possible that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis did not conduct the previous assassination operations, or that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis did the previous attacks and another group assassinated Barakat. The operational similarities between the failed Ibrahim attack and the Barakat assassination, however, are striking, as are the similarity in complexity and target set, suggesting a common author.

The terrorist tradecraft employed in the Barakat case also stands in contrast with the hybrid/guerrilla warfare tactics used by the Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula, such as the large-scale attacks in Sheikh Zuweid on July 1, and Ajnad Misr's tactics of using smaller bombs against police targets. Three Ajnad Misr militants were killed while transporting smaller bombs in a car in Cairo's October 6 City on July 1; it is believed they were en route to target a police station.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis elements in the Sinai Peninsula have broken from the al Qaeda orbit to declare fealty to the Islamic State, but it is not clear that the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis elements that claimed responsibility for the past attacks in Cairo followed suit. The Cairo-based Ansar Beit al-Maqdis elements are thought to have been closely aligned with the Mohammed Jamal Network, a group named after a former Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader arrested in 2012 who was close to current al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. It is also interesting to note that Wilayat Sinai quickly claimed responsibility for the Sheikh Zuwaid attack but has not yet claimed the Barakat assassination.

Whoever was responsible, the Barakat assassination proves that there is still a sophisticated terrorist actor in Cairo capable of planning and executing complex terrorist attacks against hard targets. Judging from the bomb deployed in this case, the group is not lacking for explosives (which is not surprising considering the amount of military-grade high-explosive material sitting around in anti-tank mines scattered all over the Sinai Peninsula, or available from al Qaeda and Islamic State militants in Libya). Such an actor is far more dangerous to potential high-profile targets in Cairo like government officials, diplomats and corporate executives than an actor conducting guerrilla warfare operations in the Sinai Peninsula or shooting random cops or tourists.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Security Weekly: The Jihadist Trap of Here and Now, June 25, 2015

By Scott Stewart

In recent weeks, I have found myself spending a lot of time thinking about the jihadist strategy of al Qaeda and how it compares to that of the Islamic State. Earlier this month, I wrote about the possibility that the al Qaeda brand of jihadism could outlast that of the Islamic State. Last week, I wrote about how ideologies are harder to kill than individuals, focusing on the effect that the death of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wahayshi will have on the group and the wider global jihadist movement.

But beyond the impact of leaders like al-Wahayshi, there are other facets of strategy that will influence the war for the soul of jihadism. Specifically, I am talking about time and place. Both al Qaeda and the Islamic State seek to establish a global caliphate, but both differ quite starkly in how to accomplish this task and how soon it can be achieved.

Al Qaeda argues that the caliphate can be established only after the United States and its European allies have been defeated, to the extent that they can no longer interfere in Muslim lands — either because of a lack of ability or a lack of desire. The organization pursues a long-war approach that emphasizes the need to attack the United States, "the far enemy," before focusing on overthrowing local governments. The Islamic State takes the opposite tack. It has adopted a more urgent "why wait?" approach and concentrates its efforts on immediately taking, holding and governing territory. This strategy banks on being able to use any conquered territory and resources for the purposes of continued expansion. The direct approach explains the Islamic State's decision to quickly proclaim a caliphate at the beginning of Ramadan last year, after it had captured a large portion of Iraq and Syria. The group's message to the Muslim world is that the caliphate is here and now, and there is nothing the world can do to stop its inexorable expansion.

Since the fall of the Taliban's emirate in Afghanistan, several jihadist organizations have attempted to create Islamist polities, with the current attempt by the Islamic State (the organization's second try) being the most recent. So far, each of these attempts has ended in a spectacular failure and in each case, including the Taliban's emirate, western military intervention has played a key role in the downfall of the jihadist polity — and it will do so again in the case of the Islamic State's so-called caliphate.

Recent Jihadist Polities

In 2006, an array of jihadist groups led by al Qaeda in Iraq announced that they were forming an Islamic state in Iraq. They even began to refer to themselves as the Islamic State in Iraq. While the group initially eclipsed the al Qaeda core in terms of attracting foreign fighters, outside funding and publicity, the U.S. surge in Iraq and the Anbar Awakening greatly weakened the group. By 2010, when a U.S. airstrike killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri — the group's top two leaders — the organization had become only a shadow of its former self. The 2011 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the sectarian policies of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government allowed the group to survive, and the civil war in Syria helped the organization recover its strength and grow into what it is today.

In 2011, as Yemen was struggling through a crisis that pitted elements of the military against each other, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seized the opportunity afforded by the chaos to grab large quantities of weapons, while also extending its influence over large areas of territory in Yemen's south. However, by mid-2012, Yemeni forces aided by U.S. intelligence and training (and some air support) were able to recapture most of the territory taken by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

A unique window into the thoughts of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula during this period was revealed with the discovery of letters sent by al-Wahayshi to Abu Musab Abdel al-Wadoud, the leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In the letters, which journalist Rukmini Callimachi discovered in the Malian city of Timbuktu, al-Wahayshi shared some of the lessons he learned — and mistakes his organization had made — so that al-Wadoud and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb would not repeat them.

According to one of al-Wahayshi's letters, his group suffered significant losses of men, materiel and money in 2012, far surpassing what they had gained in 2011. The group's higher profile and level of operational activity also resulted in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula losing a number of important members to U.S. airstrikes, including Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

In another of the letters, al-Wahayshi explained why his group purposefully did not proclaim an emirate in southern Yemen: "As soon as we took control of the areas, we were advised by the General Command here not to declare the establishment of an Islamic principality, or state, for a number of reasons: We wouldn't be able to treat people on the basis of a state since we would not be able to provide for all their needs, mainly because our state is vulnerable. Second: Fear of failure, in the event that the world conspires against us. If this were to happen, people may start to despair and believe that jihad is fruitless."

He encouraged al-Wadoud to also refrain from proclaiming an Islamic polity, but his advice went unheeded. Shortly after receiving the letter from al Wahayshi, jihadists aligned with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb declared an Islamic state called Azawad in northern Mali in April 2012. But the French intervention in Mali in January 2013 rapidly pushed the jihadists out of the territory they had conquered, ending the short-lived jihadist state of Azawad.

Past attempts to create an Islamic polity in Somalia were also thwarted by an international coalition. And in recent months Boko Haram, which now calls itself Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, lost most of the territory the group had previously seized in northern Nigeria.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula made another land grab in 2015 as the country fell into chaos. In April, the group took control of Mukalla, Yemen's fifth largest city and the capital of Hadramawt province. Meanwhile, jihadist groups in Libya, such as Ansar al-Sharia, the Mujahideen Shura Council and the Islamic State's three Libyan Wilayats (or provinces) are all fighting with secular, nationalist and tribal forces for control of the country.

And of course, the Islamic State took control of large portions of Iraq and Syria last year and declared the re-establishment of the caliphate there. The group's theatrical, genocidal violence resulted in the formation of the coalition that began an air campaign against it in September 2014. Since then, the group has lost much of its strategic momentum, as well as a great deal of its economic infrastructure and many weapons and personnel. The Islamic State also lost control of a good deal of territory in Iraq and Syria, including places such as Tikrit, Kobani and, most recently, Tal Abyad. Still, the Islamic State has taken control of the cities of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, though the group is under attack from the international air campaign, as well as local ground forces.

Bin Laden's Strategy

The United States and the West played a critical role in the downfall of recent jihadist polities in Iraq, Yemen, Mali and Somalia. This fact would certainly not surprise Osama bin Laden, who lived to witness such events. From the beginning of his public campaign to establish the caliphate, and in his 1996 "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," bin Laden warned that the United States had to be driven out of the region before progress could be made. Bin Laden noted the way that Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon had driven U.S. and French forces out of the Levant, which gave the group space to become a powerful player in the region. He sought to replicate that success elsewhere.

It was a strategic vision bin Laden held until his death. In a letter written to his assistant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman — likely around March or April 2011, based upon the events commented on — he asked al-Rahman to dispatch a letter to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb asking it to focus on attacking U.S. embassies and oil companies, rather than local security forces. Bin Laden also wanted to warn the franchise about the dangers of prematurely proclaiming a caliphate:

We should stress on the importance of timing in establishing the Islamic state. We should be aware that planning for the establishment of the state begins with exhausting the main influential power that enforced the siege on the Hamas government, and that overthrew the Islamic emirate in Afghanistan and Iraq despite the fact this power was depleted. We should keep in mind that this main power still has the capacity to lay siege on any Islamic state, and that such a siege might force the people to overthrow their duly elected governments.

We have to continue with exhausting and depleting them until they become so weak that they can't overthrow any state that we establish. That will be the time to commence with forming the Islamic state.

Bin Laden understood that while the United States struggles with ephemeral, ambiguous entities, it is very good at attacking a well-defined enemy that it can identify and locate. Declaring an Islamic polity and attempting to hold and govern territory automatically makes an organization a fixed target on which the United States and its allies can focus their formidable power.

Yet, even knowing this fact, al Qaeda has not been immune to the trap of place. The al Qaeda core has always needed a sanctuary to operate effectively, like Sudan or the Taliban's Afghanistan. Lacking a suitable sanctuary, the group's operations since the invasion of Afghanistan have been limited. There are reports that the al Qaeda core sent a group of operatives from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to Syria to attempt to establish a base there — the so-called Khorasan group. That group was struck by some of the first U.S. airstrikes in Syria in September 2014. Evidently, having an address has its downside.

It is also not entirely surprising that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has lost three senior leaders in Mukalla since the group conquered the city in April. After the loss of two of his lieutenants, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader al-Wahayshi still visited the city for some unknown reason — and it must have been an important reason to override security concerns. In the aforementioned letter to al-Rahman, bin Laden asked him to "send a letter to the brothers in Yemen to have them implement security measures, avoid moving about except for dire need."

Bin Laden knew that controlling territory is a dangerous trap, unless the United States and its allies are vanquished from a given region. But there are times when even groups affiliated with al Qaeda need to run the risk of exposing themselves in contested territory.

The Eventual Progression

When the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant broke from al Qaeda and declared a caliphate in a specific location, the organization once again made itself a fixed target. Its ideology and claims also serve to tie the group to a specific piece of terrain. It suffered major losses the last time it was so bold, surviving only by abandoning territory, reducing the group's overall profile and returning to a low-level insurgency and terrorism campaign. Of course, the group's survival was also greatly aided by Sunni sheikhs in Iraq who did not trust the government of former Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki government and thus sought to maintain some sort of jihadist presence as a tool to wield against Shiite sectarianism. Allowing the Islamic Sate to survive in Iraq is something those sheikhs surely regret now.

Despite the criticism that U.S. President Barack Obama has received over his administration's policy toward the Islamic State, the organization's expansion has been stopped and is beginning to be rolled back. There are some who would claim that the organization has not been contained, as demonstrated by the proliferation of existing jihadist groups and factions that have declared allegiance to the Islamic State. But make no mistake, these franchises clearly lack the resources and leadership of the Islamic State core, and they have not gained any capacity previously lacking. They are essentially the same groups with the same capabilities. Only their names have changed, as well as perhaps a little bit of their operational and media philosophies.

It may take some time, but eventually U.S. air power paired with local ground forces will drive the Islamic State from its perch in the same manner as the Taliban and the Islamic State in Iraq. It took seven years to cripple the group last time with U.S. forces on the ground. It will likely take years this time — especially without the presence of a reliable allied ground force in Syria. But there is little doubt that the group will slowly be strangled on the ground as it is repeatedly pummeled by precision airstrikes.

The Islamic State, consequently, will eventually follow the same strategy as the Taliban, al Shabaab, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The group will abandon its territorial gains to return to an amorphous, low-level insurgency and terrorism campaign. It is, of course, the same strategic shift the group made in 2010. If it had not done so, it would not be here today. If the Islamic State does not abandon its here and now attitude, deciding to stand its ground and defend its caliphate to the end, it will be destroyed.

The Jihadist Trap of Here and Now is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Security Weekly: Why Ideologies Outlive Ideologues, June 18, 2015

By Scott Stewart

"Killing ideologies is harder than killing people." Last week I made this statement when I was writing about how the al Qaeda form — or brand — of jihadism should not be written off as dead. It is quite possible that the al Qaeda brand of jihadism could even outlast that of its competitor for jihadist hearts and minds: the Islamic State.

The following points are among the several I made to support this argument: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been able to gain considerable strength in Yemen's current chaos, and high-profile Sahel-based jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar recently denied that he had sworn loyalty to the Islamic State.

However, these particular considerations seemed to dissolve this week when Libyan government officials announced that Belmokhtar had been killed by a U.S. airstrike June 14 and when Yemeni sources noted that the leader of AQAP, Nasir al-Wahayshi, had been killed by a U.S. airstrike June 9.

The death of Belmokhtar has not been confirmed. Jihadists associated with the Libyan militant group Ansar al-Sharia, which was reportedly involved in the attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi in 2012, provided a list of those killed in the airstrike in Libya that did not include Belmokhtar. It appears that Belmokhtar may once again have escaped an attack that was reported to have taken his life.

Conversely, AQAP's al-Malahim Media released a video June 16 announcing al-Wahayshi's death and his replacement, Qasim al-Raymi, one of the group's founding leaders and the chief of its military operations. The video featured Khalid Bartafi, a senior jihadist leader who was one of some 300 hundred jihadists rescued from prison when AQAP conquered the eastern Yemeni city of Mukalla on April 2.

As we have noted before, al-Wahayshi was an exceptional individual and an effective jihadist leader. However, the claims by some commentators that his death signifies the end of the global al Qaeda movement, or of AQAP, are vastly overstated. As demonstrated by the quick and orderly transfer of command, the organization that al-Wahayshi built is strong and has a deep roster of experienced jihadists.

The Death of a Prominent Jihadist Leader

Certainly, al-Wahayshi was an important jihadist figure. After his 2006 escape from prison, he was able to forge a united group out of the fractious jihadist landscape in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. His united group then grew and gained operational momentum until it assumed a leading position on both the physical jihadist battlefield and the ideological battlefield.

Following the Islamic State's defection from the al Qaeda orbit and the establishment of an alternative ideological pole in the jihadist universe, al-Wahayshi and his group became an important counterweight to help slow the exodus of jihadists leaving al Qaeda for the Islamic State. AQAP reaffirmed al Qaeda's philosophy of jihad and the importance on focusing jihadist efforts on the far enemy — the United States and its European allies.

Because of this, it will be hard to replace al-Wahayshi. At the same time, the jihadist movement has weathered the loss of a number of influential individuals, from the assassination of Abdullah Azzam to the arrests of the Blind Sheikh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the deaths of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and Osama bin Laden. Yet despite these losses, the ideology of jihadism has continued to flourish: New members have been recruited to the ideology and new leaders have stepped in to fill the voids left by their dead or imprisoned leaders. Jihadists today control far more territory than they did at the time of bin Laden's death in May 2011.

Creating a Robust Organization

As with the wider jihadist movement, AQAP has experienced a great deal of military and intelligence pressure — and loss — since its formation. Within the first month of its creation, one of the group's four founding leaders, Mohammed al-Awfi, surrendered to Saudi authorities. Of the group's four founding leaders, which included al Wahayshi, al-Raymi, and Said al-Shihri, al-Raymi is the only one still with the group. Al-Shihri was killed by an U.S. drone strike in July 2013.

But the strength and resilience of the organization is no accident. Both al-Wahayshi and al-Raymi witnessed how the al Qaeda organization in Yemen crumbled after an airstrike killed Abu Ali al-Harithi in November 2002 and al-Raymi and several other al Qaeda colleagues were arrested the same month. They knew they needed to build an organization that was able to withstand such losses, and, according to some sources, this was a subject they discussed at length while still in prison planning their future organization.

Other AQAP leaders who have been killed by U.S. airstrikes include:

Anwar al-Awlaki — English-speaking ideologue, recruiter; killed Sept. 30, 2011
Samir Khan — Creator of Inspire Magazine; killed Sept. 30, 2011
Adel bin Abdullah al-Abab — Chief of AQAP's Sharia Council; killed October 2012
Fahd al-Quso — Participated in USS Cole bombing; killed May 6, 2012
Harith bin Ghazi al-Nadhari — Member of the Sharia Council; killed Jan. 31, 2015
Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish — AQAP's Mufti, or religious official; killed April 12, 2015
Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi — AQAP spokesman; killed April 22, 2015
AQAP has been able to recover and continue to function after multiple losses of its leaders because it was designed to have a clear chain of command and succession. Sometimes these transitions have gone smoothly, as seen by the group's recent capitalization of the physical battlefield in eastern Yemen after civil war and Saudi airstrikes plunged the country into chaos. In other areas, the succession has not gone so smoothly: Inspire Magazine has never really recovered the vitality it had prior to Khan's death.

Nevertheless, unlike the leadership transition of the al Qaeda core from bin Laden to al-Zawahiri in 2011, which took several months, the transition to al-Raymi was efficient, and Khalid Bartafi, another senior member of the group, quickly announced the new leader. There was no sense of doubt or indecision. This assertiveness is important because the group is threatened by U.S. airstrikes and by the ideological threat posed by the disaffected al Qaeda members who have created a nascent Islamic State franchise in Yemen.

Loyal to the al Qaeda Core

The transition to al-Raymi's leadership means that AQAP will remain firmly in the al Qaeda orbit. According U.S. government records, al-Raymi spent time fighting with al Qaeda units supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and even worked as a trainer at al Qaeda's al-Farouq training camp, and another camp near Kabul called Training Center No. 9. He was also reportedly responsible for helping Yemeni jihadists return to Yemen from Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban government. Al-Raymi was reportedly arrested in November 2002 for participating in a plot to kill the U.S. ambassador in Yemen and remained in prison until his 2006 escape.

Al-Raymi had known al-Wahayshi from Afghanistan and was reunited with him in prison after Iran extradited al-Wahayshi to Yemen in 2003. Al-Raymi was allegedly a driving force in planning and executing the prison escape that sprung the pair from a Yemeni prison along with 21 other jihadists, though there are persistent rumors that the escape plot was aided by corrupt officials. As previously noted, al-Raymi worked hand-in-glove with al-Wahayshi to create AQAP. While al-Wahayshi was the organizer, al-Raymi has been the military brains of the group, both in terms of training and in planning and executing operations. While al-Wahayshi was the group's administrator, al-Raymi was the group's general. Given this background, there is nothing to suggest that al-Raymi will stray from the al Qaeda ideological line. Besides, with his younger brother Ali in captivity in Guantanamo Bay, al-Raymi has the motivation to focus on attacking the far enemy.

Al-Raymi's ideological adherence to the al Qaeda core's targeting guidance was perhaps most evident in the video he made apologizing to the victims of an attack against the Yemeni Ministry of Defense compound in Sanaa on Dec. 5, 2013. Al-Raymi said in the video that the team of attackers had been instructed to avoid the mosque and the hospital in their assault on the compound but that one of the attackers disobeyed those orders and attacked the hospital. Al-Raymi offered to pay restitution to the families of the victims for the mistake, a targeting philosophy clearly in keeping with Ayman al-Zawahiri's "General Guidelines for Jihad" that was published in August 2013. Bartafi and AQAP's high-profile bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri also appear to be firmly in the al Qaeda camp ideologically.

AQAP has also made several statements criticizing the Islamic State for its attacks that intentionally target Muslims and the places of worship of non-Muslims, things the al Qaeda targeting guidance forbids. While the authors of those statements, al-Ansi and al-Nadhari, are now dead, there is little doubt that the statements also reflect the opinions of other members of AQAP's Sharia and Shura councils.

Ideologies are far harder to kill than individuals. This fact is especially true for an ideology that teaches adherents that there is a war against Islam, that "true believers" will be persecuted for their beliefs, and that encourages followers to embrace and even celebrate martyrdom. Al-Wahayshi's death will not lead to the death of the global jihadist ideology — or of the militancy that emanates from that ideology — any more than the deaths of Azzam or bin Laden did.

A man is dead, but the ideology he promoted and the organization he founded clearly live on.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Security Weekly: Al Qaeda Is Down, but Not Out, June 11, 2015

By Scott Stewart

On Tuesday, George Friedman laid out his net assessment of the Middle East. In it, he laid out the tectonic geopolitical forces at work in the region, including the shift from secularism to Islamism, and how this shift led to the radical form of Islamism as represented by the jihadist movement.

At the strategic, level, George is right about that shift. However, at the tactical level, I disagree with George's conclusions that al Qaeda is a spent force, that the Islamic State's brand of jihadism is the logical successor to al Qaeda, and that the Islamic State is the only strain of jihadism that will survive.

Perhaps I am at least partially responsible for George's assessment that al Qaeda is a spent force. I have been writing for years about how the al Qaeda core has struggled to remain relevant; even in my January 2015 net assessment of the al Qaeda core, I wrote that it was weak and threatened by the Islamic State.

However, I also wrote in January that the al Qaeda core's weakness and irrelevance were not necessarily permanent. We have seen jihadist groups rebound after experiencing substantial losses on the battlefield; the Islamic State is a prime example of this resilience. Because of this ability to regenerate, I wrote that if the intense pressure on al Qaeda was reduced, and if it were able to find some space in which to operate, the group could regain strength. This is exactly what has happened. The past six months have been very good for al Qaeda, and the group is in fact recovering strength. In addition, the vigorous internal and external efforts to brand al Qaeda as the "more moderate brand of jihadism," and therefore more politically acceptable than the Islamic State, will also help ensure it can receive more foreign support. These factors may help ensure that al Qaeda's ideology will outlast the Islamic State's version of jihadism.

Focus on Ideology

Ideologies are harder to kill than individuals and organizations. As we've seen in the past with an array of other radical ideologies, including Marxism and white supremacy, leaders and groups come and go, but ideology can outlive individual leaders and groups. That said, individual leaders can leave their imprint on an ideology, shaping it in a manner that outlives them. Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky had very different ideas about Marxism and how to implement it, while the jihadism developed by the Islamic State and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi differs significantly from that of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. And as with the physical and ideological battles between Stalinists and Trotskyites, there are also battles between the Islamic State and al Qaeda jihadists.

Indeed, the Islamic State and al Qaeda are locked in active combat in places like Syria, Pakistan and increasingly, Libya. But beyond physical confrontations, the Islamic State has also attacked al Qaeda's ideology and operational philosophy. The Islamic State's more extreme form of jihadism poses a clear existential threat to al Qaeda's ability to retain its current adherents, recruit new members and solicit funds from wealthy donors. But this extremism is a double-edged sword in that it also serves to alienate many Muslims, and this alienation has constrained the Islamic State's ability to spread beyond its core areas.

Certainly, we have seen some militant groups pledge allegiance to the Islamic State and its self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but so far these groups have operated like al Qaeda franchises rather than true Islamic State provinces operating under a central authority. For example, Boko Haram has changed its name to Wilayat al Sudan al Gharbi to reflect that it is an African wilayat, or province, of the Islamic State. But Abubakar Shekau still leads Boko Haram, and we have seen no evidence suggesting the Islamic State has been funneling money, fighters or weapons to the group.

Indeed, the Islamic State has prioritized drawing recruits from these other places to fight in Iraq and Syria rather than pushing fighters out in the other direction. The organization's primary concern is clearly the fight in Syria and Iraq to retain and consolidate control over the core of its self-proclaimed caliphate, and the remote wilayats are really little more than propaganda efforts in support of this primary effort.

While the Islamic State core has traditionally been close to the Libya's Wilayat Barqa, outside of that group, we have not seen evidence suggesting that the core group has close contact with — much less the ability to exercise centralized command and control over — wilayats outside Iraq and Syria. While Islamic State propaganda seeks to portray its wilayats as being centrally controlled, these claims ring hollow. The group's only evident coordination with many franchises has been at the public relations level.

Furthermore, while the emergence of new Islamic State franchises has garnered much attention, it is important to recognize that these groups have all emerged from existing jihadist groups, and that many of them — such as the franchises in Yemen, Pakistan and Algeria — remain overshadowed by the far more powerful al Qaeda franchise groups from which they split.

Mainstreaming

The past six months have been good to al Qaeda franchises in Syria and Yemen. First, the Syrian franchise Jabhat al-Nusra has been successful in casting itself as a more moderate jihadist alternative to the Islamic State. After crushing the moderate Western-backed Syrian rebel group Harakat Hazm, Jabhat al-Nusra managed to forge a coalition of Islamist groups that conquered the Syrian city of Idlib. Yet despite its key role in the operation, Jabhat al-Nusra did not impose its brand of Sharia, but rather worked with allies to rule the city. The Jabhat al-Nusra led rebel coalition, Jaish al-Fatah, has continued to score victories against the regime. Despite an Islamic State offensive north of Aleppo (that the United States claims the Syrian government aided via airstrikes), the group has just succeeded in crushing a regime and pushing government forces out of nearly all of Idlib province. This victory solidifies its control over the province and gives Jabhat al-Nusra the latitude to continue its offensive in one (or more) of three directions: westward into Latakia, southward into Hama or eastward toward the ongoing battle of Aleppo.

Jabhat al-Nusra controls significant portions of Syria and the Syrian population, yet this control gets very little attention compared to that given to the Islamic State. For example, scant attention was paid to the conquest of Idlib, whereas the Islamic State's seizure of Palmyra garnered a great deal of media coverage.

As Jaish al-Fatah quietly continued to notch up battlefield successes, rumors began circulating that the leadership of Jabhat al-Nusra was considering breaking with al Qaeda to open up the way for more external support in its fight against the Syrian government. These rumors apparently started when contacts from Qatar began urging the group to "mainstream" so that Qatar could openly support it without violating international law. Despite these entreaties, Jabhat al-Nusra did not break with al Qaeda. Nevertheless, efforts to mainstream Jabhat al-Nusra continue, as do efforts to funnel support to the group via its partners.

Jabhat al-Nusra also scored a major media coup that has helped advance its mainstreaming when Al Jazeera aired a two-part special featuring a non-confrontational interview with Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani. (Al Jazeera is funded by Qatar's government, which is no coincidence given Qatari sympathies for the Syrian jihadist group.) Unlike Islamic State propaganda, which is self-produced and viewed mostly by Islamic State supporters, the Al Jazeera interviews of al-Golani had a similar format to television interviews of heads of state or important media celebrities, and they were broadcast globally. For the interview, al-Golani sat in a gilt chair in what appeared to be the governor's palace in Idlib city. This was a far cry from earlier media interviews of Osama bin Laden sitting in a cave or tent, and it gave al-Golani a tremendous air of respectability.

During the interview, Al-Golani made clear that he is still following orders from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Jabhat al-Nusra is still al Qaeda in Syria, and individuals and countries that support Jabhat al-Nusra or its Jaish al-Fatah allies are supporting al Qaeda. Even so, some parties clearly see empowering al Qaeda as a better alternative to allowing either the Islamic State or the Syrian government to win in Syria.

Breathing Room on the Arabian Peninsula

Syria is not the only place were al Qaeda is seen as the lesser evil. The Saudi-led air campaign against the Houthi rebels and military and security forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen have taken a great deal of pressure off of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi airstrikes have directly targeted what had been the two most effective anti-al Qaeda forces in Yemen: the Houthis and the U.S.-trained Special Security Forces.

In the midst of the chaos now wracking Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has taken over Hadramawt province. Its conquest has permitted it to seize large quantities of territory and cash, along with military equipment abandoned by government forces.

Like Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is ruling Hadramawt with a soft hand. It has established a subsidiary organization called the Sons of Hadramawt to rule the province, and it has not imposed the type of harsh Sharia that the Islamic State has imposed in areas it has conquered in Iraq and Syria. This is in keeping with the advice that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wahayshi gave to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to refrain from excessive fundamentalist and brutal behavior in northern Mali.

Al Qaeda has also gained additional favor with conservative Yemeni tribal leaders by sending fighters to assist them in their battles against the forces of the Houthis and Saleh loyalists. In some of these battles, Saudi aircraft have provided close-air support for tribal and al Qaeda fighters. Moreover, the Saudis have not conducted any airstrikes against al Qaeda troop concentrations or the weapons stockpiles and heavy weapons systems the group has captured. And while the United States has conducted a few airstrikes against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula using unmanned aerial vehicles in Mukalla, the capital of Hadramawt province, these strikes have had no impact al Qaeda's control of the area. Delegations from the Sons of the Hadramawt have traveled to Riyadh to confer with the Saudis. The Saudis accordingly seem to see al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as part of the mainstream anti-Houthi resistance.

Outside of Syria and Yemen, al Qaeda also received a boost in mid-May when high-profile Sahel-based jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar denied that his faction of al-Mourabitoun had joined the Islamic State. In late May, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan issued a 60-page statement rejecting the Islamic State's caliphate and listing errors in al-Baghdadi's claim to be caliph. The statement also reaffirmed the Pakistani Taliban's relationship with al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Afghan Taliban's Mullah Mohammad Omar. The move by the Pakistani Taliban is important, because it counters the pledge made by a small group of Pakistani Taliban leaders to al-Baghdadi in January and signals that the powerful Pakistani Taliban will not be defecting to the Islamic State en masse.

As George noted in his net assessment, the Islamic State is confined in a cauldron and is trapped between hostile forces. Despite its apocalyptic ideology, the leadership of the Islamic State core group is very worried about its survival, and it is pressing hard to publicize its gains while glossing over its losses. However, despite its propaganda hype, the group has suffered substantial losses of men, resources and territory over the past year. The fight to destroy them will take some time, but it will continue.

In the meantime, the al Qaeda leadership must be relieved that it is no longer the sole focus of the international anti-jihadist campaign. The support it will receive as part of the opposition in Syria and Yemen will help ensure that al Qaeda does not totally fade away. In fact, given these circumstances, it is entirely possible that al Qaeda could outlast the Islamic State and remain the dominant strain of global jihadism.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR

Geopolitical Weekly: A Net Assessment of the Middle East, June 9, 2015

By George Friedman

The term "Middle East" has become enormously elastic. The name originated with the British Foreign Office in the 19th century. The British divided the region into the Near East, the area closest to the United Kingdom and most of North Africa; the Far East, which was east of British India; and the Middle East, which was between British India and the Near East. It was a useful model for organizing the British Foreign Office and important for the region as well, since the British — and to a lesser extent the French — defined not only the names of the region but also the states that emerged in the Near and Far East.

Today, the term Middle East, to the extent that it means anything, refers to the Muslim-dominated countries west of Afghanistan and along the North African shore. With the exception of Turkey and Iran, the region is predominantly Arab and predominantly Muslim. Within this region, the British created political entities that were modeled on European nation-states. The British shaped the Arabian Peninsula, which had been inhabited by tribes forming complex coalitions, into Saudi Arabia, a state based on one of these tribes, the Sauds. The British also created Iraq and crafted Egypt into a united monarchy. Quite independent of the British, Turkey and Iran shaped themselves into secular nation-states.

This defined the two fault lines of the Middle East. The first was between European secularism and Islam. The Cold War, when the Soviets involved themselves deeply in the region, accelerated the formation of this fault line. One part of the region was secular, socialist and built around the military. Another part, particularly focused on the Arabian Peninsula, was Islamist, traditionalist and royalist. The latter was pro-Western in general, and the former — particularly the Arab parts — was pro-Soviet. It was more complex than this, of course, but this distinction gives us a reasonable framework.

The second fault line was between the states that had been created and the underlying reality of the region. The states in Europe generally conformed to the definition of nations in the 20th century. The states created by the Europeans in the Middle East did not. There was something at a lower level and at a higher level. At the lower level were the tribes, clans and ethnic groups that not only made up the invented states but also were divided by the borders. The higher level was broad religious loyalties to Islam and to the major movements of Islam, Shiism and Suniism that laid a transnational claim on loyalty. Add to this the pan-Arab movement initiated by former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who argued that the Arab states should be united into a single Arab nation.

Any understanding of the Middle East must therefore begin with the creation of a new political geography after World War I that was superimposed on very different social and political realities and was an attempt to limit the authority of broader regional and ethnic groups. The solution that many states followed was to embrace secularism or traditionalism and use them as tools to manage both the subnational groupings and the claims of the broader religiosity. One unifying point was Israel, which all opposed. But even here it was more illusion than reality. The secular socialist states, such as Egypt and Syria, actively opposed Israel. The traditional royalist states, which were threatened by the secular socialists, saw an ally in Israel.

Aftershocks From the Soviet Collapse

Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the resulting collapse of support for the secular socialist states, the power of the traditional royalties surged. This was not simply a question of money, although these states did have money. It was also a question of values. The socialist secularist movement lost its backing and its credibility. Movements such as Fatah, based on socialist secularism — and Soviet support — lost power relative to emerging groups that embraced the only ideology left: Islam. There were tremendous cross currents in this process, but one of the things to remember was that many of the socialist secular states that had begun with great promise continued to survive, albeit without the power of a promise of a new world. Rulers like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Syria's Bashar al Assad and Iraq's Saddam Hussein remained in place. Where the movement had once held promise even if its leaders were corrupt, after the Soviet Union fell, the movement was simply corrupt.

The collapse of the Soviet Union energized Islam, both because the mujahideen defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan and because the alternative to Islam was left in tatters. Moreover, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait took place in parallel with the last days of the Soviet Union. Both countries are remnants of British diplomacy. The United States, having inherited the British role in the region, intervened to protect another British invention — Saudi Arabia — and to liberate Kuwait from Iraq. From the Western standpoint, this was necessary to stabilize the region. If a regional hegemon emerged and went unchallenged, the consequences could pyramid. Desert Storm appeared to be a simple and logical operation combining the anti-Soviet coalition with Arab countries.

The experience of defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan and the secular regimes' loss of legitimacy opened the door to two processes. In one, the subnational groupings in the region came to see the existing regimes as powerful but illegitimate. In the other, the events in Afghanistan brought the idea of a pan-Islamic resurrection back to the fore. And in the Sunni world, which won the war in Afghanistan, the dynamism of Shiite Iran — which had usurped the position of politico-military spokesman for radical Islam — made the impetus for action clear.

There were three problems. First, the radicals needed to cast pan-Islamism in a historical context. The context was the transnational caliphate, a single political entity that would abolish existing states and align political reality with Islam. The radicals reached back to the Christian Crusades for historical context, and the United States — seen as the major Christian power after its crusade in Kuwait — became the target. Second, the pan-Islamists needed to demonstrate that the United States was both vulnerable and the enemy of Islam. Third, they had to use the subnational groups in various countries to build coalitions to overthrow what were seen as corrupt Muslim regimes, in both the secular and the traditionalist worlds.

The result was al Qaeda and its campaign to force the United States to launch a crusade in the Islamic world. Al Qaeda wanted to do this by carrying out actions that demonstrated American vulnerability and compelled U.S. action. If the United States did not act, it would enhance the image of American weakness; if it did act, it would demonstrate it was a crusader hostile to Islam. U.S. action would, in turn, spark uprisings against corrupt and hypocritical Muslim states, sweep aside European-imposed borders and set the stage for uprisings. The key was to demonstrate the weakness of the regimes and their complicity with the Americans.

This led to 9/11. In the short run, it appeared that the operation had failed. The United States reacted massively to the attacks, but no uprising occurred in the region, no regimes were toppled, and many Muslim regimes collaborated with the Americans. During this time, the Americans were able to wage an aggressive war against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. In this first phase, the United States succeeded. But in the second phase, the United States, in its desire to reshape Iraq and Afghanistan — and other countries — internally, became caught up in the subnational conflicts. The Americans got involved in creating tactical solutions rather than confronting the strategic problem, which was that waging the war was causing national institutions in the region to collapse.

In destroying al Qaeda, the Americans created a bigger problem in three parts: First, they unleashed the subnational groups. Second, where they fought they created a vacuum that they couldn't fill. Finally, in weakening the governments and empowering the subnational groups, they made a compelling argument for the caliphate as the only institution that could govern the Muslim world effectively and the only basis for resisting the United States and its allies. In other words, where al Qaeda failed to trigger a rising against corrupt governments, the United States managed to destroy or compromise a range of the same governments, opening the door to transnational Islam.

The Arab Spring was mistaken for a liberal democratic rising like 1989 in Eastern Europe. More than anything else, it was a rising by a pan-Islamic movement that largely failed to topple regimes and embroiled one, Syria, in a prolonged civil war. That conflict has a subnational component — various factions divided against each other that give the al Qaeda-derived Islamic State room to maneuver. It also provided a second impetus to the ideal of a caliphate. Not only were the pan-Islamists struggling against the American crusader, but they were fighting Shiite heretics — in service of the Sunni caliphate — as well. The Islamic State put into place the outcome that al Qaeda wanted in 2001, nearly 15 years later and, in addition to Syria and Iraq, with movements capable of sustained combat in other Islamic countries.

A New U.S. Strategy and Its Repercussions

Around this time, the United States was forced to change strategy. The Americans were capable of disrupting al Qaeda and destroying the Iraqi army. But the U.S. ability to occupy and pacify Iraq or Afghanistan was limited. The very factionalism that made it possible to achieve the first two goals made pacification impossible. Working with one group alienated another in an ongoing balancing act that left U.S. forces vulnerable to some faction motivated to wage war because of U.S. support for another. In Syria, where the secular government was confronting a range of secular and religious but not extremist forces, along with an emerging Islamic State, the Americans were unable to meld the factionalized non-Islamic State forces into a strategically effective force. Moreover, the United States could not make its peace with the al Assad government because of its repressive policies, and it was unable to confront the Islamic State with the forces available.

In a way, the center of the Middle East had been hollowed out and turned into a whirlpool of competing forces. Between the Lebanese and Iranian borders, the region had uncovered two things: First, it showed that the subnational forces were the actual reality of the region. Second, in obliterating the Syria-Iraq border, these forces and particularly the Islamic State had created a core element of the caliphate — a transnational power or, more precisely, one that transcended borders.

The American strategy became an infinitely more complex variation of President Ronald Reagan's policy in the 1980s: Allow the warring forces to war. The Islamic State turned the fight into a war on Shiite heresy and on established nation states. The region is surrounded by four major powers: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey. Each has approached the situation differently. Each of these nations has internal factions, but each state has been able to act in spite of that. Put differently, three of them are non-Arab powers, and the one Arab power, Saudi Arabia, is perhaps the most concerned about internal threats.

For Iran, the danger of the Islamic State is that it would recreate an effective government in Baghdad that could threaten Iran again. Thus, Tehran has maintained support for the Iraqi Shiites and for the al Assad government, while trying to limit al Assad's power.

For Saudi Arabia, which has aligned with Sunni radical forces in the past, the Islamic State represents an existential threat. Its call for a transnational Islamic movement has the potential to resonate with Saudis from the Wahhabi tradition. The Saudis, along with some other Gulf Cooperation Council members and Jordan, are afraid of Islamic State transnationalism but also of Shiite power in Iraq and Syria. Riyadh needs to contain the Islamic State without conceding the ground to the Shiites.

For the Israelis, the situation has been simultaneously outstanding and terrifying. It has been outstanding because it has pitted Israel's enemies against each other. Al Assad's government has in the past supported Hezbollah against Israel. The Islamic State represents a long-term threat to Israel. So long as they fought, Israel's security would be enhanced. The problem is that in the end someone will win in Syria, and that force might be more dangerous than anything before it, particularly if the Islamic State ideology spreads to Palestine. Ultimately, al Assad is less dangerous than the Islamic State, which shows how bad the Israeli choice is in the long run.

It is the Turks — or at least the Turkish government that suffered a setback in the recently concluded parliamentary elections — who are the most difficult to understand. They are hostile to the al Assad government — so much so that they see the Islamic State as less of a threat. There are two ways to explain their view: One is that they expect the Islamic State to be defeated by the United States in the end and that involvement in Syria would stress the Turkish political system. The other is that they might be less averse than others in the region to the Islamic State's winning. While the Turkish government has vigorously denied such charges, rumors of support to at least some factions of the Islamic State have persisted, suspicions in Western capitals linger, and alleged shipments of weaponry to unknown parties in Syria by the Turkish intelligence organization were a dominant theme in Turkey's elections. This is incomprehensible, unless the Turks see the Islamic State as a movement that they can control in the end and that is paving the way for Turkish power in the region — or unless the Turks believe that a direct confrontation would lead to a backlash from the Islamic State in Turkey itself.

The Islamic State's Role in the Region

The Islamic State represents a logical continuation of al Qaeda, which triggered both a sense of Islamic power and shaped the United States into a threat to Islam. The Islamic State created a military and political framework to exploit the situation al Qaeda created. Its military operations have been impressive, ranging from the seizure of Mosul to the taking of Ramadi and Palmyra. Islamic State fighters' flexibility on the battlefield and ability to supply large numbers of forces in combat raises the question of where they got the resources and the training.

However, the bulk of Islamic State fighters are still trapped within their cauldron, surrounded by three hostile powers and an enigma. The hostile powers collaborate, but they also compete. The Israelis and the Saudis are talking. This is not new, but for both sides there is an urgency that wasn't there in the past. The Iranian nuclear program is less important to the Americans than collaboration with Iran against the Islamic State. And the Saudis and other Gulf countries have forged an air capability used in Yemen that might be used elsewhere if needed.

It is likely that the cauldron will hold, so long as the Saudis are able to sustain their internal political stability. But the Islamic State has already spread beyond the cauldron — operating in Libya, for example. Many assume that these forces are Islamic State in name only — franchises, if you will. But the Islamic State does not behave like al Qaeda. It explicitly wants to create a caliphate, and that wish should not be dismissed. At the very least, it is operating with the kind of centralized command and control, on the strategic level, that makes it far more effective than other non-state forces we have seen.

Secularism in the Muslim world appears to be in terminal retreat. The two levels of struggle within that world are, at the top, Sunni versus Shiite, and at the base, complex and interacting factions. The Western world accepted domination of the region from the Ottomans and exercised it for almost a century. Now, the leading Western power lacks the force to pacify the Islamic world. Pacifying a billion people is beyond anyone's capability. The Islamic State has taken al Qaeda's ideology and is attempting to institutionalize it. The surrounding nations have limited options and a limited desire to collaborate. The global power lacks the resources to both defeat the Islamic State and control the insurgency that would follow. Other nations, such as Russia, are alarmed by the Islamic State's spread among their own Muslim populations.

It is interesting to note that the fall of the Soviet Union set in motion the events we are seeing here. It is also interesting to note that the apparent defeat of al Qaeda opened the door for its logical successor, the Islamic State. The question at hand, then, is whether the four regional powers can and want to control the Islamic State. And at the heart of that question is the mystery of what Turkey has in mind, particularly as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's power appears to be declining.

A Net Assessment of the Middle East is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Security Weekly: AQAP Gains as Yemen Implodes, April 9, 2015

By Scott Stewart

Early April 2, a convoy of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters descended on Mukalla, Yemen's fifth-largest city and the capital of Yemen's Hadramawt province. The gunmen stormed the central prison on the northern outskirts of the city and reportedly released some 300 inmates, many of who were AQAP members, including senior military commander Khalid Bartafi. AQAP fighters then moved into the city and seized control of the port, the central bank and several government buildings, including the presidential palace. Bartafi later posted photos of himself in the presidential palace to Twitter.

The next day, the militants turned their attention to nearby military facilities. The soldiers defending the headquarters of Yemen's second military zone and a Special Security Forces base fled after putting up minimal resistance, and AQAP fighters were able to loot weapons stores.

Such raids are not new to Mukalla: AQAP captured the second military zone's headquarters in September 2013. During the group's period of rapid expansion in 2011, it also attacked the central prison and released some 40 AQAP fighters. The jihadist group is continuing to capitalize on Yemen's power vacuum to expand its reach in the country.

A Much Needed Boost

The raid on Mukalla scored AQAP a terrorist trifecta — fighters, weapons and cash — that will greatly benefit its efforts to expand its power base in Yemen. On the manpower front, in addition to releasing foot soldiers, the group recovered Bartafi, a senior military commander who was instrumental in the group's 2011-2012 campaign that captured large chunks of the country. The group also seized large quantities of small arms, light weapons, ammunition and heavy weapons such as armored vehicles and artillery pieces. The New York Times cited a Yemeni official who said the amount of cash looted from the central bank was in the tens of millions of dollars. The windfall will go a long way in paying salaries, buying weapons and purchasing good will from some Yemeni tribes.

Some reports indicated that tribal leaders in Hadramawt were assembling a force to push AQAP out of Mukalla, but the group still controls much of the city. Also, despite the large concentration of AQAP fighters and vehicles in and around Mukalla, coalition aircraft have completely ignored AQAP targets. Instead, coalition aircraft continue to focus on hitting Yemeni military units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and al-Houthi militias, a decision that benefits AQAP because it weakens its two most dangerous enemies. In fact, several media outlets reported that AQAP militants stormed and captured a Yemeni border post near Zamakh wa Manwakh on April 6, indicating that the group may again be attempting to seize and control a large portion of Yemen as it did in 2011.

The bounty and publicity that came with the capture of Mukalla could not have come at a better time for AQAP. The group has suffered heavy losses on the battlefield and from airstrikes launched by U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles since January 2012. Also, the Islamic State had begun to supplant AQAP as the most sensational jihadist group in the country. A wave of Islamic State suicide bombings targeting three mosques frequented by al-Houthis in Sanaa and a government building in Saada killed at least 137 people and wounded hundreds more, garnering worldwide attention. More important, the attacks demonstrated that Islamic State members were willing to take deadly action against the al-Houthis, while AQAP fighters were mostly on the defensive. Many younger AQAP fighters were beginning to grumble about the group's lack of success compared to the Islamic State's gains in Iraq and Syria. Some of them even defected, pledging their allegiance to the Islamic State.

In this context, AQAP's capture of Mukalla and nearby military installations was a much needed boost for the group. Battlefield success combined with the release of jihadist prisoners and the infusion of cash and weapons should help AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi and his deputies stem dissent and defections of rank-and-file members.

The Saudi Calculus

Few have benefitted from the bloody and destructive war destroying most of the infrastructure of Yemen's western cities from Saada in the north to Aden in the south — except for AQAP. When Riyadh chose to attack AQAP's enemies on the ground in Yemen, they certainly knew the jihadist group would benefit. Indeed, while AQAP also opposes the various factions of the southern secessionist movement and the forces loyal to embattled President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi, none of these groups have been as effective in fighting AQAP as the al-Houthi militias and the Saleh-loyalist units, many of which were trained by the United States.

Why, then, did Saudi Arabia choose to intervene in Yemen's civil war? First of all, this is not the first time it has done so. Following the 1962 Nasserite coup that overthrew the Zaidi Mutawakkilite Kingdom, the Saudis feared they would be the next country the Nasserites targeted. So they intervened on the side of the monarchists, ensuring that the war would be long and bloody, but stay south of the border.

Also, besides military incursions, Riyadh has long meddled in the affairs of its impoverished neighbor by providing money and weapons to tribes and other political actors supportive of Saudi interests. Quite often, such payments went to or through Saleh, who ruled north Yemen from 1978 to 1990 and the united Yemen from 1990 until 2012. Saudi Arabia also intervened on Saleh's side in the 2009-2010 war against the al-Houthis (the sixth such flare-up since 2004).

However, the real driver of Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen is its need to strike back against Iran — or at least appear to strike back against Iran — after Tehran and Washington agreed on the framework of a nuclear deal, which is the first step in a broader rapprochement between the two countries. Saudi Arabia sees the improving relationship as a substantial threat to its geopolitical situation, which is based on the promise of U.S. protection. The United States is again pursuing a balance of power strategy in the region. With Iran involved militarily in Syria and Iraq, Saudi Arabia believes it needs to do something to flex its growing strength and showcase its military power.

The Saudi solution was to a select the weakest target: Yemen, which is far easier for Saudi Arabia to attack than Hezbollah, the Syrian government or Iran itself. Intervening in Yemen also provided an opportunity for Riyadh to display its ability to build a pro-Saudi regional coalition. However, Saleh and the al-Houthis proved resilient, standing up to two weeks of airstrikes and showing no sign of capitulating.

As we've previously noted, however, the Yemeni conflict is not sectarian in nature, nor is it a regional one. It is really more of an internal power struggle for control of the country. Nonetheless, forces have worked to make Yemen's struggle appear sectarian. Ironically, one of the first to cast the fight against the al-Houthis as a sectarian struggle was Saleh, who is now aligned with the al-Houthis.

Following his first conflict with the al-Houthis in 2004, Saleh repeatedly attempted to convince the U.S. and Saudi governments that Iran was backing the al-Houthis and that they should respond by supporting Yemen's efforts to destroy the rebels. Saleh even asked U.S. officials for intelligence he could use to kill al-Houthi leader Abdel Malik al-Houthi. However, as numerous State Department cables from 2004 to 2010 demonstrated, the United States was not convinced by the claims of Iranian support, and Saleh and his ministers were unable to show proof of Iranian or Hezbollah connections.

In addition to Saleh, Iran also attempted to portray the al-Houthi conflict as a sectarian struggle to increase the perception of their regional reach and clout in the hopes of intimidating rivals. In fact, Iranian sources in the region even provided Stratfor with false information inflating Tehran and Hezbollah's involvement with the al-Houthis.

It is impossible to be sure whether Saudi Arabia really believes Saleh and Iran's false claims, or if they are merely using them to justify flexing their muscles in Yemen. Either way, Saudi Arabia's destruction of weapons depots it gave to Yemen to help Saleh fight the al-Houthis is an ironic turn of events.

A Dangerous Snake

In the end, Saleh cannot win in Yemen. A man who was once known as being able to "dance on the heads of snakes" because of his prodigious and precarious efforts to balance all of Yemen's competing interests against one another is seeing everything come crashing down around him. Still, Saleh pursues only his own interests and will quickly turn on an ally if doing so benefits him. He has used the conservative tribes and the jihadists against his enemies in the south — for example, during the civil war in 1993-1994 — but also repeatedly against the al-Houthis during the six wars he fought against them. In addition to using the jihadists to attack his enemies, Saleh also used them as a boogeyman to secure funding, weapons and training from the United States.

Since being deposed in 2011, Saleh has been deeply bitter, using his old enemy, the al-Houthis, to lash out against the al-Ahmars, a powerful family that leads the Hashid tribal confederation that started the civil war that ultimately forced Saleh to step down. He has also sought revenge on those he believes are responsible for his misfortune, including Hadi and the interests of the foreign powers. Furthermore, like some sort of comic book villain, Saleh is also seeking vengeance over the June 2011 assassination attempt that nearly killed him and left him scarred.

Yemen continues to deal with a resurgent jihadist group, a vitriolic and manipulative former president, and a wide array of miscellaneous tribal leaders and warlords. Airstrikes and intense urban combat compound the situation. For the past several decades, Yemen has teetered on the precipice of disaster because of endless civil wars, tribal insurrections, jihadist movements, a failing economy, overpopulation, hunger and water shortages. Now the Saudi-led coalition appears to have finally pushed Yemen over the edge and into the void. Like Somalia, Iraq, Libya and Syria, putting Yemen back together again will be difficult and take time. In the instability, AQAP will thrive.

Russia Nervously Eyes the U.S.-Iran Deal is republished with permission of Stratfor."">AQAP Gains as Yemen Implodes is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Security Weekly: Jihadism in 2014: Taking Stock of the al Qaeda Core, January 1, 2015

By Scott Stewart

Editor's Note: The following is the second installment of a series examining how the global jihadist movement evolved in 2014.

Last week, we published the first part of a series detailing the current status of the jihadist movement. That section noted how the split between al Qaeda and the Islamic State had divided and weakened the jihadist movement. As if on cue, the Islamic Sate released the sixth edition of its Dabiq Magazine on Dec. 29 and laid out a vivid chronicle of that schism. The magazine included articles containing stinging condemnation of al Qaeda's core leaders, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Afghan Taliban. It also attempted to dissuade wealthy donors from providing support to al Qaeda.

For some time, rumors of efforts to reconcile the two sides have persisted. After the pointed, public and personal attacks in Dabiq, this seems increasingly unlikely. If anything, the attacks can be expected to provoke a heated response from those they targeted in the al Qaeda core and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has been relatively measured in its public criticism of the Islamic State so far.

Having discussed the new morphology of the jihadist movement last week, it is now time to turn our attention to the current state of the al Qaeda core.

A Very Weak Core

The al Qaeda core has been weakened to the point of military irrelevance, and its ideological clout has dwindled substantially. The fact that the Islamic State's leaders felt confident enough to defy the orders of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, publicly break away from the group and now mock him publicly is a clear reflection of the core's organizational irrelevance to the rest of the jihadist movement. If al-Zawahiri and the other core leaders were killed or arrested, the broader jihadist movement would hardly be affected.

The al Qaeda core's current irrelevance, however, is not necessarily permanent. In the past we have seen jihadist groups rebound and regain strength after experiencing substantial losses on the battlefield. The United States has employed the full force of its counterterrorism tools against the al Qaeda core for more than 13 years now, but if Washington were to reduce that pressure, and if the al Qaeda leadership were able to find some space in which to operate, it is possible that the group could begin to regain strength.

The al Qaeda core sent a group of representatives known as the Khorasan group to work with Jabhat al-Nusra around Aleppo in Syria; this could have been an effort to find such operational space. U.S. airstrikes, Syrian regime activity and attacks by the Islamic State and other Syrian rebel groups have severely constrained the Khorasan group's operational capabilities. Based on this outcome, it is unlikely that the remainder of the al Qaeda core leadership would depart from their sanctuaries along the Afghan-Pakistani border to relocate to such a precarious location.

The insular al-Zawahiri continues to constrain the core group's regeneration. He lacks the charisma and larger-than-life presence of Osama bin Laden — or even the Islamic State's Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even when leading his own group, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Zawahiri was an ineffective leader. The group languished, then split before al-Zawahiri and his loyalists were absorbed into al Qaeda. Given space and opportunity, it is possible that a more effective al Qaeda leader could emerge in place of al-Zawahiri. This has not happened yet, however, and with the increasing momentum of the Islamic State it appears that the al Qaeda core will continue to decline.

For many years now, al Qaeda has issued threats of impending attacks that it claims will surpass 9/11, but these have not materialized. Instead, the main threat from the jihadist movement has shifted from attacks originating from the al Qaeda core to ones coming primarily from franchise groups and grassroots militants. As early as January 2006, we assessed that the al Qaeda core had lost its ability to pose a strategic threat to the United States homeland.

Measuring Accomplishments

When we look at the al Qaeda core's accomplishments in relation to its goals of establishing emirates and eventually re-establishing the caliphate, the group has clearly failed. In fact, the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks caused the United States to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the one jihadist emirate that existed at that time. While the Islamic State has declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, that polity remains at war with al Qaeda's franchise in the region and at odds with al Qaeda ideologically. This means that following 25 years of armed struggle, the al Qaeda core is no closer to achieving its objectives than when it began.

In terms of insurgent theory, the al Qaeda core's leaders held a "focoist" view, meaning they believed they could act as a global vanguard and employ violence to establish the conditions necessary for a global uprising in the Muslim world. While some groups and individuals have heeded al Qaeda's call to battle, their actions have been far from a global uprising. Indeed, most of the groups we refer to as al Qaeda franchises were pre-existing Islamist or jihadist organizations that have simply assumed al Qaeda's name. As discussed last week, the Islamic State and several factions of other al Qaeda franchise groups have defected from al Qaeda's orbit, leaving the al Qaeda portion of the global jihadist movement considerably weaker than it was at this time last year.

On the terrorism front, we have seen al Qaeda's efforts devolve into early al Qaeda or even pre-al Qaeda operational models. The group has not been able to send highly trained facilitators to mobilize and equip local cells as we saw in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. Indeed, it has not even been able to deploy professional teams of skilled operators like it did for the 9/11 attacks. Instead, the al Qaeda core has been reduced to little more than a propaganda organization operating on the ideological level while franchise groups and grassroots jihadists have taken the lead in the physical struggle.

The al Qaeda regional franchise groups have been able to adopt hierarchical structures in their areas of operation but have been largely unable to develop the ability to project power far outside their core areas. Furthermore, many of the franchise groups have not sought to conduct transnational attacks due to lack of capability or a simple lack of interest. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb initially adopted a targeting philosophy similar to that of the al Qaeda core, but its large suicide bombings inside Algeria provoked a backlash from the more nationalist elements of the organization, and it soon reverted back to focusing on targets more like the ones the group had previously attacked when it was known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, for its part, has sought to conduct regional attacks like the assassination attempt against Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and transnational attacks such as the Christmas Day 2009 underwear bomb attack. The group, however, has been forced to conduct such attacks by dispatching bombers from its own base of operations in Yemen rather than by sending operatives to Saudi Arabia and the West to plan and execute attacks from within the targeted countries. Even then, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has not conducted a regional or transnational attack since the failed November 2010 cargo plane attempt. This long-term lack of success in attacking the West has resulted in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the al Qaeda core's calling for grassroots jihadists to adopt a leaderless resistance model.

Although badly damaged, al Qaeda has thus far managed to survive the focused and prolonged assault that was intended to destroy it. This is the primary goal of any organization pursuing a long war strategy, and, as previously mentioned, if pressure on the al Qaeda core were eased, it is possible the group could recover some of its pre-9/11 power. However, the group will have to deal with other challenges before it can resume its former position as the vanguard of the global jihadist movement.

Al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State have become more powerful and influential than al-Zawahiri and the al Qaeda leadership. The Islamic State's claim to leadership of the global jihadist movement is bolstered by its successes on the battlefield and the fact that it has established a large, physical Islamic polity in the heart of the Middle East.

When combined with its attacks on al Qaeda's ideology and operational philosophy, the Islamic State's more virulent and extreme form of jihadism also poses an existential threat to al Qaeda's ability to retain its current adherents, recruit new members and solicit funds from wealthy donors. These two factors, plus repeated attacks by Muslim religious leaders against the theology of jihadism, may ultimately prove more dangerous to the al Qaeda core than the U.S.-led campaign against the group.

Jihadism in 2014: Taking Stock of the al Qaeda Core is republished with permission of Stratfor.