FEBRUARY 2008 . VOL 1 . ISSUE 3 COMBATING TERRORISM CENTER AT WEST POINT CTC Sentinel OBJECTIVE . RELEVANT . RIGOROUS Contents Counter-Terrorism Issues for FEATURE ARTICLE the Next President 1 Counter-Terrorism Issues for the Next By Richard Clarke and Rob Knake President By Richard Clarke and Rob Knake REPORTS 4 U.S. Security Assistance to Philippines: A Success Story Against Terrorism By Peter Chalk 8 Takeovers of Moderate Muslim Institutions: Radical Islamist Tactics at the Local Level By Madeleine Gruen 10 Radical Madrasas in Southeast Asia By Scott Atran, Justin Magouirk & Jeremy Ginges 14 The Salafi-Jihad as a Religious Ideology By Assaf Moghadam 17 Somalia’s al-Shabab Reconstitutes Fighting Force By Anonymous 20 Deconstructing the Myth about al-Qa`ida and Khobar By Thomas Hegghammer 22 Return of the Arabs: Al-Qa`ida’s Military Role in the Afghan Insurgency he next president will inherit and political capital spent on other, less By Brian Williams from the current administration a important matters. In an effort to prevent 25 After Action Report: dysfunctional counter-terrorism this from occurring, the authors propose 1 An Army Lieutenant’s View of AQI’s T apparatus. The U.S. military a three-part framework for combating Operations in al-Khidr and Hanaswa has been stretched thin by the wars in terrorism that involves drying up support By First Lieutenant Jon Patrick Cheatwood Iraq and Afghanistan, the intelligence for terrorism, improving our intelligence community has been discredited by the capabilities and rethinking our approach 27 Recent Highlights in Terrorist Activity lack of weapons of mass destruction to homeland security. 32 CTC Sentinel Staff & Contacts in Iraq and the ongoing failed hunt for Usama bin Ladin, and the Department of Ending the GWOT and Reducing Support for About the CTC Sentinel Homeland Security has so many missions Terrorism The Combating Terrorism Center is an and so many disparate agencies that it The United States is not fighting a “Global independent educational and research is ineffective. An even more challenging War on Terrorism” any more than it fought institution based in the Department of Social task will be to restore to the United States a “War on Drugs” in the 1990s. During Sciences at the United States Military Academy, credibility in the world and to reduce the that time, General Barry McCaffrey, who West Point. The CTC Sentinel harnesses number of people who bear us ill will. served as “Drug Czar,” was adamant that the Center’s global network of scholars and “war” was a poor metaphor for what practitioners in order to understand and Every new president has about a year when needed to be accomplished. “We’re not confront contemporary threats posed by they can better achieve goals and changes going to run a year- or two-year-long terrorism and other forms of political violence. because of their fresh mandate from the campaign and achieve total victory,” people. Without a clear agenda, however, he said. This sentiment can be applied the first year can be easily squandered equally to the current situation where The views expressed in this report are those of the war metaphor has been counter- the authors and not of the U.S. Military Academy, 1 This essay is expanded in the forthcoming book, productive. Since this problem has been the Department of the Army, or any other agency framed as the GWOT, the Pentagon of the U.S. Government. Richard Clarke, Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters (Spring 2008). has been the driving force behind U.S. 1 FEBRUARY 2008 . VOL 1 . ISSUE 3 counter-terrorism policy. Yet, the military have not been capable of offering adequate to operating in cyberspace. Increasingly, is a sometimes ineffective tool. As General alternatives. The program needed to the information spy agencies want David Petraeus has noted, sometimes the address our current intelligence needs to collect is in cyberspace, as are the best weapons don’t shoot. is very different from the program we controls for vital systems. The highly needed to fight and win the Cold War. That skilled personnel and sophisticated To defeat the al-Qa`ida movement, it system relied heavily on our technological systems we need to operate in cyberspace must be recognized as a cancer infecting prowess. Defeating al-Qa`ida, however, are in such short supply that we cannot only a small percentage of the greater will be largely about human intelligence. spread them out over dozens of military, body of peace-loving Muslims worldwide. Breaking the cycle of intelligence failures defense and intelligence agencies. While eliminating the cancer is our end will take a strong Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with experience in - A relatively small, elite, highly trained the intelligence community to shift the and experienced professional intelligence “A relatively small, emphasis from the fiefdoms of expensive analysis organization should serve the elite, highly trained and intelligence collection technologies to DNI and the president. This Intelligence an integrated, analyst-driven structure. Assessment Staff must be institutionally experienced professional The new DNI must energetically pursue insulated from political pressures and intelligence analysis a series of new initiatives aimed at this it must be able to control intelligence purpose: collection to support its analysis efforts organization should serve from being stolen. the DNI and the president.” - For the new DNI to be responsible and accountable for U.S. intelligence, he - For intelligence agencies to be trusted or she needs to control all of the U.S. by the citizenry, there must be a real intelligence agencies and their budgets. program in which someone is actively objective, our more immediate goal is to Today, most of their money is buried in monitoring those agencies to ensure that keep it from spreading. Yet many of our the Pentagon’s budget, and the roles of there is no abuse of laws or policies. Thus, actions aimed at capturing and killing the secretary of defense and the DNI are the national security adviser and the DNI terrorists have alienated wide swathes of overlapping. There should be a single, should create an active Executive Branch the Muslim world. In short, what we have independent, integrated intelligence oversight program for all Intelligence done to eliminate the cancer has served to budget and most of the intelligence Community efforts, especially the spread it. The most important counter- agencies now in the Department of restricted covert action programs. The terrorism tools are law enforcement, Defense need to be shifted to the DNI, existing National Security Council staff intelligence and ideology. When military specifically the National Security mechanism for that oversight are weak action is called for, we must act swiftly and Agency, the National Reconnaissance and under-resourced. decisively, but in the context of defeating Office (NRO) and the National Geo- al-Qa`ida, smart bombs, cruise missiles Spatial Intelligence Agency. Homeland Security and SEAL teams must be applied like a The creation and subsequent dysfunction surgeon’s scalpel to prevent a counter- - Within that integrated budget, we need of the Department of Homeland Security productive reaction among people affected to further shift resources from traditional, reveals many of the reasons why the U.S. by the collateral damage. costly satellite collection systems run government fails so often at national by the NRO to fund other programs in security. For several years, during two It is the authors’ judgment that removing cyberspace and in the field of human U.S. troops from Iraq is the single biggest intelligence. step we can take to reduce support “The DNI must rationalize for al-Qa`ida and eliminate anti-U.S. - The National Clandestine Service (NCS), the roles, missions and sentiments across the globe. By ending the our human spy agency, should continue war in Iraq, we will remove a justifiable its slow efforts to expand the use of Not capabilities of the various grievance that is the rallying cry for the Official Cover (NOC)2 programs, but it U.S. intelligence agencies al-Qa`ida movement. Other steps must should also recast our spying effort to include sincere efforts to bring peace to reflect the reality that most information when it comes to operating Israel and Palestine and to help our allies will continue to come from open in cyberspace.” in the Muslim world move away from sources, walk-ins and liaison services. oppressive tactics of government. We Americans are not likely to become good should not, however, force democracy at spying anytime soon and, therefore, onto nations and cultures that are not the Clandestine Service should focus its administrations of different political prepared. Most importantly, we need to efforts at enhancing what we can do well. parties, people engaged in federal work with our Islamic friends to promote management and in national security tried ideological counter-weights to al-Qa`ida. - The DNI must rationalize the roles, to resist a politically motivated drive to missions and capabilities of the various be seen to “do something” about security Intelligence U.S. intelligence agencies when it comes through bureaucratic reorganization. Our reliance on military solutions to the When, after the September 11 attacks, threat posed by al-Qa`ida stems in part 2 NOC refers to spies based outside of U.S. government that drive became irresistible, the chief from the fact that our intelligence agencies facilities. criteria in designing and managing the 2 FEBRUARY 2008 . VOL 1 . ISSUE 3 major new government enterprise was homeland security equation, and securing In order to meet this demanding agenda, appearance and politics, not problem the country’s borders. the next president will need to inspire, solving.