Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaeda-30- Bab-el-Mandab-3

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaeda-30- Bab-el-Mandab-3

The Straits of Malacca

The world is increasingly focused on the Indian Ocean region. This vast maritime area has become an undeniable pivot-point for the world economy and is poised to remain at the heart of global affairs for this century and beyond. The needs, desires, and development of the billions of people who call the Indian Ocean region home are central to the global economy and global stability. From the ramparts of the old Dutch fort in Galle, in Sri Lanka, one can see the immense quantity of shipping – tankers, bulk cargo freighters, and container ships – that sail along the vital energy and trade routes between the Straits of Malacca and Hormuz. The security and prosperity of the entire world is affected by what happens along these vital sea lines of communication. Atul Keshap, U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives Padang, Indonesia, October 23, 2015

Cees remember the al-Suri plan if the AQSL longer-term strategy: Strategic move in Phase VI; DAR AL HARB to start in 2016. As noted and mentioned in AQ master strategist Abu Mus'ab As-Suri his manifesto; The Call to Global Islamic Resistance, So, the most important enemy targets in detail: Third: The straits and the main sea passages: On the Earth there are five (5) important straits, four of them are in the countries of the Arabs and the Muslims. The fifth one is in America, and it is the Panama Canal. These straits are: 1. The Strait of Hormuz, the oil gate in the Arab-Persian Gulf. 2. The Suez Canal in Egypt. 3 . The Bab el Mandib between Yemen and the African continent. 4. The Gibraltar Strait in Morocco. -- Most of the Western world's economy, in terms of trade and oil, passes through these sea passages and 5 is the Panama canal. Cees we could and should add one to the list: The Strait of Malacca is also one of the most narrow chokepoints in the world. The narrowest point in the strait is only 1.7 miles wide, which creates a natural bottleneck for shipping. The strait has also become one of the newest piracy hotspots in the world.

Cees just a few weeks ago, Hamza Bin Laden describes the Crusader enemy as an evil bird. The head of the bird is America; the wings are Israel and NATO; and the body is the “apostate” leaders of the Muslim states who serve the Crusaders like the Saudis. Al Qaida's goal is to destroy the bird's head—America—which will kill the bird. Many would think of another 9/11, although we should not dismiss the intent to do so it is more likely that:”Al Qaeda plans to use the current “war of attrition” underway against the United States to force the collapse of the global economic system”. Or, as mentioned last year:”Al Qaeda is urging jihadists to conduct attacks on U.S. and foreign oil tankers and strategic sea-lanes in a new global campaign of economic warfare against the United States”, according to the terrorist group’s latest English-language magazine. Referring to my previous doc’s AQ and its affiliates are globally positioned to do so. Altogether, there are eight major oil chokepoints throughout the world, and a closure or disruption to any one of them could cause unpredictable price fluctuations.

October 28, 2014 Al Qaeda is urging jihadists to conduct attacks on U.S. and foreign oil tankers and strategic sea-lanes in a new global campaign of economic warfare against the

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.–Winston Churchill

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United States, according to the terrorist group’s latest English-language magazine. “Even if a single supertanker (or even an ordinary westbound cargo-vessel) were to be attacked in one of the chokepoints or hijacked and scuttled in one of these narrow sea lanes, the consequences would be phenomenal,” wrote al Qaeda member Hamza Khalid in the recently published, 117-page al Qaeda magazine “Resurgence.” The article on economic warfare includes maps showing strategic shipping lanes around the world and key oil chokepoints, like the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, where up to 35 percent of the world’s ship borne oil passes, and Southeast Asia’s Strait of Malacca, the strategic passage for oil from the Middle East to Asia.

“It represents the Achilles heel not just of the energy market, but also of western economies dependent on oil from the Muslim world,” Khalid stated.

“A sustained disruption in this supply system would not only increase insurance costs for international shipping, but also affect the price of oil globally.”

“Simultaneous attacks on western shipping or western oil tankers (a sea-based version of the cargo plane bomb plot) in more than one chokepoint would bring international shipping to a halt and create a crisis in the energy market.”

“A coordinated effort to disrupt enemy shipping in the future in all of these regions would not only hurt the enemy economically, but also stretch their resources further in this global war,” Khalid stated.American al Qaeda member Adam Gadahn stated in a second article headlined “besiege them” that “it is time for us to fight fire with fire, and impose our own blockade and embargo on the Jews and crusaders, by hitting them where it hurts and striking the heart and lifeblood of their economy, represented by international trade and finance.”Gadahn said the global economic system currently is “fragile and vulnerable” as the result of unrest in the Arab and Muslim world and debt and budget crises in Europe and the United States.

Al Qaeda plans to use the current “war of attrition” underway against the United States to force the collapse of the global economic system.Targets for the economic warfare campaign include cargo ships and merchant vessels in “Islamic waters,” actions aimed at closing off canals and straits, and disrupting shipping routes “wherever and however possible.”

“Any of their ships are legitimate targets, but exports are the key to any economy, including the economies of the West,” Gadahn wrote. “The mujahideen must seek to deprive the enemies of the precious oil and mineral resources they are stealing from us and using to fuel their war machine, by sabotaging crusader-run oil wells and mines in Islamic lands and destroying pipelines before the oil reaches the coast and falls into enemy hands, and by sinking their supertankers and sabotaging their oil rigs in enemy waters, and in the process, ruining their lucrative fishing industries.”“The path to victory over our enemies and the establishment of our caliphate isn’t confined to armed action alone, but includes all legitimate ways and means which support, strengthen, and advance the military effort and lead to our success in this battle for the future of the Muslim [world],” Gadahn said. “So don’t delay, and play your part in the jihad today, whether your part be military, financial, economic, educational, motivational, or otherwise.”

Kevin Freeman, an expert on economic warfare, said al Qaeda as early as 2005 outlined a timeline for its war against the West that included fomenting an Arab uprising and then launching an economic warfare campaign.“It has always been an economic war,” Freeman said. “From the first attacks on the World Trade Center until now, al Qaeda has used an economic warfare playbook





modeled on the Chinese doctrine of unrestricted warfare.” Freeman said the al Qaeda magazine articles bolster the findings of a report to the Pentagon in 2009 on economic warfare outlining terrorists’ use of the tactic of attacking oil targets. “Our enemies know that stopping the flow of oil, crashing our stock market, or collapsing the dollar are the paths to America’s destruction,” he said.

“The al Qaeda timeline has, since at least 2005, planned a new caliphate and Islamic State aimed against the West and Israel,” he added. “To accomplish this, they knew even back then, required an attack on Western economies.”

Matt Apuzzo of AP wrote: Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea in the summer of 2010, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said. The plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simple attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars. [Source: Matt Apuzzo, AP May 21 2011] U.S. officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in the compound where bin Laden was killed, was little more than an al-Qaida fantasy. But the FBI and the Homeland Security Department issued a confidential warning to police and the energy industry that al-Qaida had sought information on the size and construction of oil tankers and had decided that spring and summer provided the best weather to approach the ships. The group had determined that blowing them up would be easiest from the inside and believed an explosion would create an "extreme economic crisis."With about half the world's oil supply moving on the water, industry and security experts have warned for years that such an attack would be a jolt to global markets. That's particularly true if terrorists carried it out in one of the narrow waterways that serve as shipping chokepoints. "You start blowing up oil tankers at sea and you're going to start closing down shipping lanes," said Don Borelli, senior vice president of the Sufan Group security firm and a former FBI counterterrorism agent in New York. "It's going to cause this huge ripple through the economy."

Sep 2015, “The vastness (of the ocean) and the resultant challenges make it mandatory for each nation to work in close collaboration to ensure security in the maritime domain. Therefore, we need to work on broadly shared objectives.” So said Rear Admiral DMB Waththewa of the Sri Lankan Navy, speaking to representatives from 34 countries several weeks ago, at the fifth annual Defense Seminar hosted in Colombo. Throughout his presentation – in which he shared his thoughts on how traditional and emerging maritime threats ought to be confronted – Waththewa emphasized the need for naval cooperation between states in the region. Analysts would do well to keep his words in mind when they study the Asia-Pacific, which is overwhelmingly reliant on stable seas for its economic prosperity and security. Piracy was once dismissed in most circles as a relic of the past, a threat that was of no real concern in the modern age. This attitude has seen a dramatic reversal in recent years, largely as a result of the Somali piracy that wreaked havoc in the Gulf of Aden and disrupted vital trade routes, making the phenomenon an issue of public interest once again. It is estimated that dealing with piracy along the Somali coast in 2011 alone, cost nearly $7 billion. In the South China Sea, regional tensions between the Asian giant and emerging economies like Vietnam and Indonesia prevent a naval alliance of any sort. As a matter of fact, an equally important security concern for





Indonesia, Asia’s biggest victim of piracy, is securing the resource-rich Natuna islands from alleged Chinese naval ambitions, ruling out the possibility of an overarching military partnership. Southeast Asian states like Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore have acknowledged the need to fight piracy in the Malacca Strait together, but have been unable to stem the rising tide, mostly due to the lack of large-scale joint patrols in the ASEAN region. The South China Sea is filled with competing claims over territory by various nations, and commentators have pointed out that vital requirements like intelligence sharing may be perceived by some states as possibly working against their national interest. Pan-Asia Strategy?Why is a pan-Asian strategy necessary? States and analysts alike seem to be under the impression that securing their immediate maritime neighborhood will protect commercial interests. Thus, the perception appears to be that Southeast Asian and South Asian nations must focus on eliminating the threat in their vicinities, with no real need for a grand strategy. However, such an approach is unlikely to yield a long-term solution to the piracy problem and would be nothing more than a wasted opportunity. Our threat-assessment paradigms are often cluttered because of the discourse on terrorism, and it must not be forgotten that piracy is an entirely different species. For one, while terrorism has morphed into an asymmetric threat that has made conventional military capacity redundant in many areas, piracy can still be defeated with overwhelming firepower and numbers – a tactical advantage states must exploit to their benefit before it disappears and pirates begin to adapt, much like insurgents did. It is also a threat that could be used as a great point of origin for larger naval cooperation, since piracy is a multi-country problem by its very nature, and will inevitably require states to work in tandem with each other if they are to get rid of the scourge. A positive counter-piracy campaign could go a long way in establishing a sustained maritime security partnership between nations to help deal with other problems like poaching and trafficking, which is critical for Asia if it is to compete with rival continents in economic stability.Unlike terrorism, which is usually driven by ideology, the effect of piracy is largely economic in nature. Asia is already an inter-connected economy, with trade flourishing between different nations on an unprecedented scale. Its impact will thus have very far-reaching consequences. For example, while an insurgent movement in a South Asian country may not be of much concern to an East Asian one, rampant piracy in the South China Sea could lead to economic catastrophes even in countries that do not necessarily consider it to be in their vicinity, since trade interests could still be affected.Finally, piracy should be considered a very serious threat by all littoral states in Asia because it is slowly but steadily becoming more violent. Despite the large number of incidents of piracy and robbery at sea, one small compensation to date is that it has been significantly less brutal than that which the world has seen in the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden. That is slowly changing now, with three deaths reported last year at the hands of armed pirates. If this is an indication that piracy in Asia is slowly morphing into a more violent form that resembles its African counterpart, it bodes very ill for every nation involved.A continent-wide grand naval strategy is thus required if the region is to effectively tackle this alarming phenomenon. Hopes that such an initiative could actually take off the ground, however, still seem rooted more in fantasy than reality. A united effort might materialize when piracy does become a crippling force, but by then it might be too late for Asia to solve the problem unscathed.Source: The Diplomat





Aug 2015, Thousands from countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand the Philippines and Malaysia have joined ISIS on the battlefield in the Middle East. And the terror group has 'tens of thousands' of supporters and sympathisers in those countries. Counter-terrorism experts told MailOnline these ISIS-trained fighters could now return home to execute lone wolf attacks, recruit more extremists and extend Islamic State's caliphate even further around the world.

Altogether, there are eight major oil chokepoints throughout the world, and a closure or disruption to any one of them could cause unpredictable price fluctuations. Fortunately,

these locations are generally safe and are kept clear by the international community, whose economies and standards of living depend on these chokepoints remaining clear. Oil prices surged the last week of March after Saudi Arabia began its military operations against Yemen: 3.8 million barrels of oil a day pass through the Bab el-Mandab chokepoint on Yemen's southwestern coast. The Strait of Hormuz is able to accommodate the largest oil tankers in the world. But Iran has indicated that it could be willing to disrupt the strait. The Suez Canal passes through Egypt and connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. In 2013, a record 3.2 million barrels of oil a day passed through the canal, mostly to markets in Europe and North America. The Strait of Malacca is also one of the most narrow chokepoints in the world. The narrowest point in the strait is only 1.7 miles wide, which





creates a natural bottleneck for shipping. The strait has also become one of the newest piracy hotspots in the world. The Cape of Good Hope also functions as the secondary route for oil if the primary chokepoints of the Suez Canal or the Bab el-Mandab were closed. But rerouting oil around the cape would increase cost considerably as it would add an additional 2,700 miles of transit from Saudi Arabia to the US, according to the EIA. The Panama Canal connects the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean and ultimately to the Atlantic. According to the EIA, the Panama Canal transported 1.4% of all oil and petroleum products globally in 2013. This amounted to approximately 0.85 million barrels of oil a day in 2013.

The U.S. builds ships such as aircraft carriers and sails them into the South China Sea. And it should continue to do so. The U.S. Navy’s role in protecting the global commons has been a huge boon to world stability and prosperity—including China’s—for decades. The U.S. justifies its world-wide naval activities in support of freedom of

navigation based on the 1983 Law of the Sea Convention. Washington is deeply concerned and should continue pushing back against any Chinese enforcement of its “nine-dash line” claim to 85% of the region’s map. But the U.S. can’t stop China from building or modestly militarizing its new islands, nor should it try. What should the U.S. do about China’s increased assertiveness in the South China Sea? Beijing claims almost the whole sea—land formations, seabeds and open waters alike—and of late has been literally creating new facts on the ground, constructing 2,000 acres of artificial islands where only shoals or sand bars once existed. Beijing now says those efforts are nearly complete but acknowledges plans to place military assets on the islands, some of which may include

substantial airfields. While America builds carriers, China builds islands.

Some clues emerged in March when the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, China’s central planning body, published a clunky document,





“Visions and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-century Maritime Silk Road”. “The Silk Road has been part of Chinese history, dating back to the Han and Tang dynasties, two of the greatest Chinese empires,” says Friedrich Wu, a professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “The initiative is a timely reminder that China under the Communist party is building a new empire.”China will be faced with some grim alternatives — either turn tail and leave, or risk getting bogged down in security commitments and local politics. It has made clear that it does not want to replace the US in Afghanistan nor does it see itself as a regional policeman. “China will not fall into the same mistakes,” says Jia Jinjing, a specialist on south Asia at Beijing’s Renmin University. Economic development, strategists in Beijing

argue, will remove the appeal of radical Islam in China and Pakistan, Afghanistan and central Asia. But critics note that culturally insensitive policies, an enormous security presence and economic strategies that benefit Chinese communities at the expense of locals have so far only escalated tensions in Xinjiang, the desert region that has 22 per cent of China’s domestic oil reserves and 40 per cent of its coal deposits.Roads and pipelines across Pakistan and Myanmar will ultimately allow China to avoid another strategic vulnerability — the chokepoint of the Strait of Malacca, through which about 75 per cent of its oil imports pass. Already, half of China’s natural gas arrives overland from central Asia, thanks to an expensive strategy by Mr Xi’s predecessors to cut dependence on seaborne imports.




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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaeda-30- Bab-el-Mandab-3