Transcript
Page 1: Ppt 11 al qaeda responses and challenges

Responses and proposed solutions from key global actorsChallenges to effective solutions

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Some sceptics dismiss Al Qaeda as significantly weakened

Threat from Al Qaeda and its affiliates will likely depend on several factors –

Survival of a leadership structure Weak governments in North Africa and

the Middle East Support from local cells

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It appears that Al Qaeda will retain key leaders (although not necessarily based in Afghanistan or Pakistan)

That some government will continue to remain weak – such as Yemen

And that Al Qaeda will continue to enjoy local support ins some countries

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Its objectives will remain fairly consistent

– overthrowing multiple regimes to establish a pan-Islamic caliphate ( a caliphate is like an empire and the word ‘pan’ means something which is unified e.g. in the 1930s Germany and Austria spoke of pan-Germanism )

And fighting the United States and its allies who support them

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AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI (AL QAEADA CORE)

AQAP’s leadership is compartmentalized, and highly decentralized, allowing it to withstand attacks and arrests and still continue to operate.

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2004 – Attack on Khobar, Saudi Arabia – Khobar in the hub of the Saudi oil industry.

In the attack at the Khobar Petroleum Centre, four AQ militants forced their way in and shot 22 Westerners.

Osama bin Laden had vowed to destabilise the Saudi government, which the Saudi-born extremist viewed as insufficiently Islamic and which he derided for its close relationship with the United States.

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AQAP has committed several acts of terror in Saudi Arabia, with the militants focusing on the country's valuable and vulnerable oil infrastructure.

After the 2004 Khobar attack the price of oil reached $42 a barrel – an all time high at that point in history. In a statement an Al Qaeda chief noted that ,”This irks the malicious government that is committed to guaranteeing America's prosperity and the continuation of the oil flow.'

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2009 – The underwear bomber (or known as the Christmas Day bombing)

The near miss bombing of jetliner over Detroit - in which a would be bomber attempted mid flight to light an explosive hidden in his underwear. The jihadist, Umar Adbulmutallab was trained in Yemen.

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2012 - the CIA foiled an attempt by a Yemeni trained would be bomber who planned to use it on a US bound airliner on the anniversary of Bin Laden’s death.

This new bomb was also designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time al-Qaeda developed a more refined detonation system, US officials said.

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http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-07/al-qaeda-bomb-plot-foiled/54811054/1

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Attacks in 2012 on Yemen’s gas and oil pipelines.

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Posted April 2012 http://trackingenergyattacks.com/al-qaeda-claims-credit-for-2-gas-pipeline-att

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/tribesmen-bomb-yemen-main-oil-pipeline-201471273048484859.html

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Challenges to proposed reponses

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The USA’s TSA (Transport Security Administration) also introduced new security measures in American airports.

The TSA has implemented more thorough screening procedures for passengers and their baggage whereby passengers are asked to remove shoes and checked baggage passes through an explosive detection system.

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But the real change has been the institution of "many layers of security," including measures that go beyond passenger screening, such as heightened police presence outside of airports and increased cooperation between airlines and security officials

The TSA pre-screens passengers. Airlines are required to submit lists of passengers to the TSA, which then compares the names to a watch list.

No fly lists – individuals with known links to terrorist organisations names are placed on the TSA’s No Fly List

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The Friends of Yemen, set up in 2010, comprises 40 states and organisations which co-ordinate international support for the Arab world's poorest country. It suffers from the second highest malnutrition rates in the world, a lack of water and medicine, weak governance, corruption and grave security problems.

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The goal of aid and development assistance provided by The Friends of Yemen group is help the country combat a resurgent threat from al-Qaeda in the ancestral homeland of its slain leader, Osama bin Laden.

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The group continues to propose democratic reform in Yemen and attempts to coordinate increased development aid for Yemen, its primary concern is stability in the country and containment of AQAP.

In 2012 the Friends of Yemen pledged $4 billion in aid to Yemen – money that is crucial to Yemen which is facing a food crisis, with malnutrition rates doubling since 2009.

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34% of the population is unemployed.

45% live below the United Nations‘ poverty line

55% are illiterate

GDP per capita $2000

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The US has made hundreds of attacks on targets in Pakistan since 2004 using drones

These attacks are part of the United States' War on Terrorism campaign, seeking to defeat Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan.

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The US has also used drones in Yemen – the average rate being a drone strike a day in 2012

The use of drone strikes has escalated under the Obama administration, with Obama calling 2010 the ‘year of the drone’

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Top US officials consider drone strikes very successful and believe that the senior al-Qaeda leadership has been 'decimated' by these strikes

The US has stated that drone strikes are legal because of the right to self-defence. The US is involved in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their affiliates and therefore may use force consistent with self-defence under international law

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The U.S. has increased military aid to and cooperation with Yemen as part of the war on terror.

With several foiled bombing attempts – the two ‘underwear’ attempts in 2010 and 2012, AQ is still highly active in Yemen and poses a threat to US security.

The U.S. has more than doubled aid to Yemen this year, reaching an estimated $345 million.

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Increased scanning at airports for bombs –

The increased sophistication of the bomb which was to be used in 2012 shows that Al Qaeda’s bomb makers are adaptable and highly skilled.

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The FBI is examining the latest bomb (2012) to see whether it could have passed through airport security and brought down an airplane, officials said. They said the device did not contain metal, meaning it probably could have passed through an airport metal detector. But it was not clear whether new body scanners used in many airports would have detected it.

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Asymmetrical warfare is a violent struggle in which the two belligerents are mismatched in terms of their military capabilities.

"The smaller power applies its strengths against the weaknesses of the larger power,”

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Asymmetric warfare includes methods such as guerrilla warfare, terrorism, sabotage, subversion and criminal activities

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The success of Al Qaeda’s bomb makers in developing bombs which can circumvent the airport security designed to diminish their capabilities highlights one of the difficulties states face in fighting asymmetric warfare.

Actors who use asymmetric forms of warfare rely on unconventional methods such as terror attacks, which rely on the element of surprize and novelty for their effectiveness.

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Terrorism combines surprise and shock to amplify effect and demoralize the broader public. It is asymmetric only so far as it "attack[s] vulnerabilities not appreciated by the target.

The U.S. government remains ill-prepared to counter such surprise. Most U.S. strategic planning with regard to terrorism focuses on replication of past activities

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This means when Al Qaeda develops a new technique, target or weapon – as in the new bombs which can pass through air security detectors designed to pick up metal, Al Qaeda has a significant advantage.

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No Fly List – Despite the heightened focus on passenger screening,

it too remains a magnet for criticism. As for pre-screening passengers, Shanks says, "In principle it’s a good idea, but in practice it doesn’t always turn out that way." The watch lists compared with passenger manifests are just lists of names. Ordinary passengers with names similar to ones on the list have at times been stopped, and Shanks says there’s little to stop a terrorist from creating a false identity

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Pre-screening passengers lists works only in flights originating from the US.

Every recent attempted terrorist attack on US aviation has come from abroad – Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, boarded a flight in Paris, Umar Adbulmutallab , the underpants bomber, boarded a flight from Amsterdam.

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Although it has only been les than a year and half since the first meeting in London, many analysts believe the process within the group of Friends of Yemen has been doomed to fail from the start.

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• The main reason for such pessimistic views rises from conflicting interests among regional neighbors and Western governments.

• Until now, Western governments have focused on demanding democratic reform by Yemen in areas such as civilian command of armed forces, the judiciary and the electoral process.

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Some observers mentioned that work on such issues has been stalled by Arab partners who are not interested in such priorities since at the end it will affect their own societies who will demand such reform in the Gulf countries as a consequence of their participation in the group.

(States such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are not democracies by any means - power and wealth is held in the hands of a few royal families in each of these states – you could describe these states as autocracies – a terms meaning power is held in the hands of the one or the few)

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/obama-drone-program-anniversary_n_4654825.html

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As Al Gore said: “another axis of evil in the world:

poverty & ignorance; disease & environmental disorder; corruption & political oppression”

Military action to combat terrorism does nothing to address some of the root causes of poverty.

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Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has launched a war on terrorism, but it has neglected the deeper causes of global instability. The nearly $500 billion that the U.S. will spend this year on the military will never buy lasting peace if the U.S. continues to spend only one-thirtieth of that, around $16 billion, to address the plight of the poorest of the poor, whose societies are destabilized by extreme poverty

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The U.S. has promised repeatedly over the decades, as a signatory to global agreements like the MDGs, to give a much larger proportion of its annual output, specifically up to 0.7% of GDP, to official development assistance.

The U.S.'s failure to follow through has no political fallout domestically. Often because of its position as the world’s largest giver of FDA at $19 billion Americans are often unaware of how little the US gives on a per capitia basis – 0.25% of GDP.

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When politicians promise to cut foreign aid in the US, this is generally well received by the public (because of erroneous beliefs that the US gives too much).

Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 promised that a Republican administration would cut foreign aid by $5 billion

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Cuts in aid, or lack of aid make it harder for the international community to counter the growth of terrorism.

For example Yemen is one of the world’s most water stressed states – tipped to be the first in the world to run out.

Yemen needs ODA to help its government deal with some of the conditions (poverty, unemployment, a sense of hopelessness and grievance) which foster extremism and terrorism.

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Role of technology –

As his various speeches addressing Western nations and Muslims around the world indicate, Osama bin Laden recognized the important role the media plays in making terrorism’s tactics effective and impactful.

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The success of an act of terrorism is dependent not only on the physical attack itself, but also on the reactions of multiple audiences; as a result, terrorists “do not commit actions randomly or senselessly. Each wants maximum publicity to be generated by its actions and, moreover, aims at intimidation and subjection to attain its objectives…frighten and, by frightening, to dominate and control. They want to impress. They play to and for an audience”

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At the same time, terrorism plays upon fear, since “Terrorism is as much about the threat of violence as the act of violence itself” (Hoffman, 32). Terrorist activity strives to generate an atmosphere of fear, insecurity, and uncertainly about potential aggression. This instability can prompt people, and even governments, to think and react differently than they would have otherwise. This is exactly the factor that al Qaeda recognized and exploited in attacks of September 11.

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Al Qaeda has used technology to spread its ideology across the world in hopes of recruiting individuals to their cause.

By embracing the technology, bin Laden could become a symbolic leader rather than a commander in chief.

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His messages could continue to spread, and recruitment could take place without any physical communication, with tactics like “a two hour al Qaeda recruitment video that bin Laden had circulated throughout the Middle East during the summer of 2001…with its graphic footage of infidels attacking Muslims [and] children starving under the yoke of the UN economic sanctions in Iraq”

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Circulating recruitment videos through the Internet publicized negative incidents that could incite sympathy and feelings of being wronged in the viewer; for that reason, the appeal of al Qaeda increased, especially as bin Laden’s claims against the United States and the West were validated with horrific footage.

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