A counterterrorism strategy for the Obama administration

Gender and Education

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 359-377

  Hoffman, Bruce ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Afghanistan; Counterinsurgency; Counterterrorism; Global war on terrorism; Inter agency coordination; Obama presidential administration counterterrorism options; Pakistan; Strategy; Terrorism

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449369421     PISSN: 09540253     EISSN: 13600516     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550902950316     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. The establishment of al-Qaeda was first discussed by bin Laden with a colleague on August 11, 1988. A three-day meeting was held in his house a week later (on August 18, 1988) that resulted in the creation of an advisory council, a list of requirements, and the wording of an oath of allegiance for members of the new organization. See Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al-Qaeda's Leader (New York: Free Press, 2006),78-81.
2. David Rapoport, Terrorism, in Mary Hawkesworth and Maurice Kogan, eds., Routledge Encyclopedia of Government and Politics, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1992), 1067.
3. Audrey Kurth Cronin, Ending Terrorism: Lessons for Defeating al-Qaeda (London: IISS, Adelphi Paper 394, April 2008), 24.
4. What this development suggests is, first, that the vast majority of the terrorism universe needn't concern us. These are weak, inflexible organizations: bereft of an effective leadership, lacking imagination and vision-incapable of changing and thereby sustaining themselves. The most pressing policy research question so far as terrorism is concerned, accordingly, is not so much how terrorism ends (see Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Al-Qaida Ends, International Security 31, no. 1 (Summer 2006), 7-48), but rather acquiring a better understanding of how terrorism continues and how some terrorist groups are able to overcome or obviate even the most consequential governmental countermeasures directed against them. Indeed, it is precisely the elite group of survivors-terrorist groups that have overcome Herculean obstacles, that have surmounted daunting challenges, and that continue despite all odds to persevere (and that al-Qaeda has now joined)-who should concern us greatly. Such groups are capable of planning and executing operations, identifying and building a long-term strategy. They are equally adept at gathering intelligence and conducting surveillance without detection. They are implacable with a steely determination that is difficult to diminish, much less defeat. They have also historically been the most vexatious to the governments they threaten. They have not only shown themselves to be learning organizations, but have demonstrated an organizational persistence that has often proven enormously difficult to stifle. Second, without exception, the terrorist groups who arguably have been the most problematic for American foreign policy in recent years are all ones who have lasted two decades or more: the FARC in Colombia (founded in 1966); Hezbollah (founded in 1982); and, Hamas (founded in 1987). Thus, the terrorist groups that have lasted longest and consistently prove the most difficult to suppress are often the same groups that pose the greatest challenges for U.S. national security. This suggests that al-Qaeda will not quickly nor readily disappear, and because of this resiliency it will require a different strategy to counter it effectively than perhaps other, less entrenched terrorist groups would.
5. U.S. National Intelligence Council, Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate 'Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,' April 2006 accessed at http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf.
6. U.S. National Intelligence Council, The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland, July 2007, accessed at http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20070717_release.pdf
7. See Remarks by Mr. Ted Gistaro, National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, Assessing the Fight Against Al-Qa'ida, The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington, D.C., 12 August 2008, accessed at http://www.dni.gov/speeches/20080812_speech.pdf
8. Director's Remarks at the Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C., Remarks by Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden, Current State of al-Qaeda, 13 November 2008, accessed at http://www.acus.org/http%3A/%252Fwww.acus.org/event_blog/cia-director-event-transcript.
9. In addition to the disdain for rule of law that Guantanamo has come to symbolize, other war on terror initiatives that have traded short-term gain for genuine long-term progress include the neglect of Afghanistan and Pakistan because of the Bush Administration's preoccupation with Iraq. See David E. Sanger, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts And the Challenges To American Power (New York: Harmony Books, 2009), 115-124, 130, 132,133-139.
10. See also Helene Cooper, Obama's War: Fearing Another Quagmire, New York Times Week in Review, 25 January 2009.
11. See Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, Public Supports Closing Guantanamo, Washington Post, 22 January 2009;
12. Peter Finn, Plan to Eliminate Prison Faces Hurdles, Washington Post, 22 January 2009;
13. Karen J. Greenberg, When Gitmo Was (Relatively) Good, Washington Post, 25 January 2009;
14. Mark Mazetti and William Glaberson, Obama To Close Foreign Prisons and Guantanamo, New York Times, 22 January 2009.
15. Thirty-four percent of Americans, however, said that al-Qaeda had been weakened.
16. It should be noted that on average 61 percent of those in countries surveyed said that their feelings about al-Qaeda are negative, 8 percent were positive and 18 percent say they are mixed. World Public Opinion.Org, US 'War on Terror' Has Not Weakened al-Qaeda, Says Global Poll, (Washington, DC: World Public Opinion Global Public Opinion on International Affairs, 10 October 2008), accessed at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/547.php?nid=&id=&pnt=547&lb=
17. See the analyses in Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, The Unraveling: Al-Qaeda's revolt against bin Laden, The New Republic, 11 June 2008, 16-21;
18. Lawrence Wright, The Rebellion Within: An Al-Qaeda mastermind questions terrorism, The New Yorker, 2 June 2008, 37-53.
19. Bergen and Cruickshank, The Unraveling, 21.
20. The polling results, however, are more ambiguous than has often been argued. According to the Gallup Organization, in Pakistan there was a significant decrease from 18 percent to 7 percent, and in Kuwait from 36 percent to 20 percent among persons who thought the 9=11 attacks justifiable. In Morocco, however, there was a slight increase, from 8 percent to 10 percent, and a doubling in Indonesia, from 4 percent to 8 percent. In Lebanon the results remained constant at 20 percent. See Richard Burkholder, Support for Al-Qa'ida: Proxy Measures from Gallup Polling 2001-2008 Moral Admissibility of 9=11, and Other Attacks that Target Civilians, The Gallup Organization, 2008. Further, none of the key Islamic ideologues or theologians who have repudiated al-Qaeda ever actually belonged to the movement or were central to its ideology. Remarks by Dr. Thomas Heghammer, JFK School of Government, Harvard University at DoS-DoD Strategic Communications Conference, Department of State, 22 September 2008.
21. Joby Warwick, Jan. 1 Attack By CIA Killed Two Leaders Of Al-Qaeda, Washington Post, 9 January 2009.
22. This section incorporates some material that originally appeared in Bruce Hoffman and Seth G. Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, The National Interest, no. 96, July=August 2008, 42-51.
23. Those linked directly to al-Qaeda are what British authorities refer to as Operations Crevice (April 2004) and Rhyme (2004), the 7 July 2005 London suicide bombings, the 21 July 2005 London bombing attempts, and the 2006 London airlines plot. At least two more plots are linked directly to other jihadi groups in Pakistan: efforts by German jihadis to link up with Uzbek militants in September 2007 and intended attacks in Spain and other European countries that were disrupted in January 2008 by Spanish authorities in Barcelona.
24. In her landmark public address in November 2006, the then-Director General of the British Security Service (MI-5), Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller put the number in the UK alone as high as 30. We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy, she explained. What do I mean by numerous? Five? 10? No, nearer 30 that we currently know of. These plots often have linked back to al-Qaeda in Pakistan and through those links al-Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale. Quoted in BBC News, MI5 tracking'30 UK terror plots,' 10 November 2006, accessed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6134516.stm
25. They include the Afghan Taliban as well as the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda as well as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, other radical Afghan religious zealots such as the Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin (HiG) as well as their Pakistani jihadi counterparts in Lashkar-e-Toiba, among others.
26. See the respective assessments of General Dan K. McNeil, who stepped down as commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) quoted in Ann Scott Tyson, A Sober Assessment of Afghanistan, Washington Post, 15 June 2008
27. and of Major General Jeffrey Schloesser in Associated Press, Attacks Up, U.S. General Says, International Herald Tribune (Paris), 25 June 2008.
28. Interviews conducted by the author with U.S. military officers at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, March 2008.
29. Quoted in Eric Schmitt, Joint Chiefs Chairman is Gloomy on Afghanistan, New York Times, 10 October 2008.
30. See also, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, U.S. Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan, New York Times, 9 October 2008; and
31. Karen DeYoung,U.S. Urgently Reviews Policy on Afghanistan, Washington Post, 9 October 2008.
32. Interviews conducted by the author at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, March 2008.
33. Bruce Hoffman and Seth G. Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, The National Interest, no. 96, July=August 2008, 50.
34. General David H. Petraeus, Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance, Headquarters, Multi-National Force - Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq, 15 July 2008 iteration, p. 1.
35. Quoted in Hoffman and Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, 46.
36. Petraeus, Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance.
37. The World Vote: Barack Obama is almost universally favored over John McCain outside the United States. Should that matter to Americans?, Washington Post, 13 October 2008.
38. DeYoung, U.S. Urgently Reviews Policy on Afghanistan.
39. Quoted in Hoffman and Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, 45.
40. This discussion borrows extensively from the policy prescriptions in Hoffman and Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, 50-51.
41. Interviews conducted by the author in the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan in August 2008.
42. Interviews conducted by the author in Islamabad, Pakistan in August 2008.
43. See, for example, Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., How to Win in Iraq, Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (September-October, 2005) accessed at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84508/andrew-f-krepinevich-jr/how-to-win-in-iraq.html.
44. Interviews conducted in Washington, D.C. and Islamabad, Pakistan, August 2008.
45. Petraeus, Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance.
46. Corruption, record levels of opium cultivation, and poor governance are of course salient ancillary problems as well. However, improvements in those critical domains arguably cannot be achieved without a stabilization of the declining security situation in the country and the checking of Taliban expansion and control over both territory and populace.
47. See Government Accountability Office, Report to Congressional Requesters: Combating Terrorism-The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Washington, D.C., Government Accountability Office, April 2008, GAO-08-622), passim, accessed at: http://hcfa.house.gov/110/GAO041708.pdf;
48. and, Government Accountability, Report to Congressional Requesters: Increased Oversight and Accountability Needed over Pakistan Reimbursement Claims for Coalition Support Funds (Washington, D.C., Government Accountability Office, April 2008, GAO-08-806), passim, accessed at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08806.pdf
49. Arguably it is this isolation that breeds the Pakistan military's often paranoiac behavior vis-à-vis its clandestine support of jihadi organizations that potentially threaten Pakistan's stability and democratic institutions as much as they do India.
50. Interview conducted by the author in the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan in August 2008.
51. Petraeus, Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance.
52. Interview conducted by the author in Islamabad, Pakistan in August 2008.
53. Quoted in Hoffman and Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, 48.
54. Hoffman and Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, 48.
55. Interviews conducted by the author in Islamabad and Peshawar, Pakistan in August 2008.
56. Quoted in Hoffman and Jones, Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush, 44.
57. This section incorporates and builds upon some previous work done in collaboration between the author and Colonel Fred T. Krawchuk, U.S. Army, Special Forces.
58. Richard Holbrooke makes this point in his overview of international challenges facing the next president. The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless, he writes. But as the war enters its eighth year, Americans should be told the truth: it will last a long time-longer than the United States' longest war to date, the 14-year conflict (1961-75) in Vietnam. Richard Holbrooke, The Next President, Foreign Affairs 87, no. 5 (September=October 2008), 21.
59. What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, world-wide irregular campaign.... [T]he requirement for the U.S. military to maintain security, provide aid and comfort, begin reconstruction, and stand up local government and public services will not go away. U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Speech: National Defense University (Washington, D.C.), As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Washington, D.C., Monday, September 29, 2008 accessed at http://www.defenselink.mil/utility/printitem.aspx?print=http:==www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1279.
60. Secretary Gates made exactly this point as well in his September 2008 speech. In the long-term effort against terrorist networks and other extremists, we know that direct military force will continue to have a role. But we also understand that over the long term, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. Where possible, kinetic operations should be subordinate to measures to promote better governance, economic programs to spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented from which the terrorists recruit.
61. Quoted in John Cloake, Templer: Tiger of Malaya-The Life of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer (London: Harrap, 1985), 262.
62. Again, Secretary Gates argued in the above cited speech that, The kinds of capabilities needed to deal with these scenarios cannot be considered exotic distractions or temporary diversions. We do not have the luxury of opting out because they do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war.
63. Support for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in our budget, in our bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress, Secretary Gates stated during his National Defense University speech. My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support-including in the Pentagon-for the capabilities needed to win the wars we are in, and of the kinds of missions we are most likely to undertake in the future.
64. Battle against small, independent, and mobile formations change too rapidly to allow rigid, centralized command and control. The U.S. military will have to continue to adjust and fight accordingly. Fast and fluid bottom-up planning and execution, supported by top down guidance, resources, and support is an appropriate approach to counterinsurgency. Intelligence, logistics, and communications must integrate horizontally and vertically with operations to support this innovative approach to fighting insurgents.
65. Secretary Gates was explicit on this point as well. Retired Marine Colonel T. X. Hammes has noted that where past insurgencies consisted of military campaigns supported by information operations, they now often consist of strategic communications campaigns supported by military operations. In Iraq and Afghanistan, extremists have made deft use of the Internet and propaganda to misinform and intimidate local populations.
66. The RAND Corporation actively contributed to these analyses in a series of detailed reports, based on voluminous interviews of captured Vietcong. See, for example: Leon Gouré, Anthony Russo, and D. Scott, Some Findings of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study: June-December 1965 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, RM-4911-12-ISA=ARPA, February 1966);
67. Leon Gouré, J. M. Carrier, and D. Scott, Some Findings of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study: January-June 1966 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, RM-5137-ISA=ARPA, February 1966);
68. J. M. and Charles Thomson, Viet Cong Motivation and Morale: The Special Case of Chieu Hoi (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, RM-4830-2-ISA=ARPA, May 1966);
69. J. C. Connell, Viet Cong Motivation and Morale: A Preliminary Report (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, RM-4507=2-ISA, July 1968).