reflectivepundit

Al Qaeda and Like-Minded Terrorist Actors: Weakened but not Destroyed

By Brigitte L. Nacos

First, in May, Al Qaeda’s founder and boss Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals in his hide-out in Pakistan. Then, a U.S. drone strike ended the lives of one of the most notorious Al-Qaeda propagandist and recruiter, Anwar al-Awlaki and his side-kick Samir Khan, in Yemen. Finally, last week, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, mastermind of state terror and sponsor of non-state terrorism, was brutally killed by his own people who couldn’t have prevailed, however, without support from NATO, including an important role of the U.S. and its remotely controlled spy drones. Add to this the demise of many leading and rank-and-file members of Al Qaeda and allied organizations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Iraq.   

Do these unprecedented events signal a weakening or the beginning of the end of Al Qaeda Central and its real and virtual affiliates around the globe?

To discuss and try to answer this question, it is best to begin with bin Laden’s demise and its likely effects on Al Qaeda Central. The decapitation of a terrorist group by either the death or arrest of its leader(s) does not necessarily mean the organization’s end. The actions of the left-extremist Red Army Faction (RAF) became more numerous, more spectacular, and more lethal after the RAF founders Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader had been caught and imprisoned. In other cases, decapitation leads to temporary decline. This happened, after Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was captured by Turkish authorities and received the death penalty, which was later changed to life imprisonment. But eventually, the PKK resumed its violence in various parts of Turkey. The most recent attacks have come at a time, when the Turkish government is trying to find a political solution to the "Kurdish problem." Terrorism by the Basque separatist group ETA in Spain subsided after several of its leaders were caught thanks to cooperation between Spain and France. Yet, it is far from clear whether ETA’s recent promise to end terrorist actions will be kept beyond the usual period of reorganization.

To be sure, Al Qaeda is a unique organizational creature. There is no doubt that Al Qaeda Central’s leadership has been weakened and is limited in masterminding terrorist operations. . But, as Peter Neumann, Ryan Evans and Raffaello Pantucci write in the latest issue of the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Al Qaeda’s middle managers are alive and well as they retain a close relationship with Al Qaeda Central and with new recruits and established foot soldiers in various parts of the world.

What “Occupy Wall Street” Protesters Can Learn from Tea Partiers

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Just like Tea Partiers in the spring of 2009, when they staged their first anti taxation protests, Occupy Wall Street Protesters were initially interested in winning mass media attention. With that accomplished, Tea Partiers then and the Occupy Wall Street Activists now were able to enlisted support for their actions and causes. Occupy Wall Street has ignited protests against social injustice in other cities across the country—voices from the 99% versus the 1%. Some observers have already compared Occupy Wall Street with the beginning of a progressive Tea Party movement.

But whether die Occupy Wall Street Initiative grows into a movement at all or one that can rival the right-wing Tea Party in size, activism, and political effectiveness depends on several factors, most of all what kind of organizational structure emerges once the initial demonstration phase runs its course.

So far, the Occupy Wall Street initiative has achieved some fundamental requirements for a non-violent protest movement to emerge: (1) critical mass; the initially small protest in downtown New York City swelled to a large crowd here and led to similar actions in other cities, and (2) public attention via mass media organization and social networking.

Up to now, Occupy Wall Street activists have talked about a laundry list of grievances instead of agreeing on an easily understood common cause with an easy to understand slogan. Some young demonstrators have simply said, “We want social justice.” That is a cause with the potential to win more popular support than the Tea Party movement.

For that to happen, the Occupy Wall Street activists need to come up with something like the Tea Party’s organizational model that consists of networks with a multitude of local cells across the country. These cells are highly active, not only at the heights of political campaigns. Just like Tea Partiers are tireless in their efforts to defeat of elective officials that do not embrace their cause, a progressive protest movement needs to organize itself so that it can work relentlessly for the defeat of elective officials that are determined to dismantle effective government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, undermine the public school system, and make wealthy individuals and corporations richer.

Peaceful protests are part of the political fabric of democracies. But when the demonstrations stop, a movement’s energies are best channeled into political participation--in the case of Occupy Wall Street  into the 2012 election campaigns.

 

To Kill or Not to Kill Terrorists Regardless of Their Nationality

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After a team of U.S. Special Operation Forces killed Osama bin Laden at his hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, merely a few voices and organizations outside of Pakistan decried the mission as illegal and immoral. After all, the founder and principal leader of Al Qaeda was long the number one on the FBI’s and the intelligence community’s list of most wanted terrorists. And as for the charge that the killing was illegal, there was Congress’s post-9/11 “Authorization for the Use of Force against Terrorists” that authorizes the president to use appropriate force against nations, organizations, and persons involved in the 9/11 attacks. And as for international law, defenders of the killing cited Al Qaeda’s frequent threats of further attacks against Americans as justification for “neutralizing” bin Laden as an act of national self-defense.

In 1998, a U.S. Federal Grand Jury in New York issued an indictment against bin Laden alleging that he and others engaged in a long-term conspiracy to attack U.S. facilities overseas and to kill American citizens. But for more than a dozen years since then, there was simply no opportunity to try bin Laden in an American court. Instead, he and his group plotted, carried out, and inspired many lethal attacks around the world with Americans highest on their list of targets.

The Navy Seals that killed him could have tried to take him out of Pakistan alive and brought him to the United States. But this would have made their hasty get-away from bin Laden’s compound even more dangerous and indeed less likely. Based on Al Qaeda’s communications, the group and its leader continued to pose an imminent threat to the United States.

The question was and is whether this justifies targeted assassinations even as last resort.

In democracies, even those accused of the worst offenses have the right to be tried in courts. Capturing Osama bin Laden and seeing him tried in the International Criminal Court at the request of the UN Security Council would have been in line with democratic values.

But this would have meant to risk the lives of American soldiers for the lesser chance of achieving that outcome.   

Should the rules of the game be different, if the terrorist operative is an American citizen? It seems that certain civil libertarians believe so. The assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen of Yemeni descent and a leading figure in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has fueled a debate that dwells on the particular constitutional and legal protection of American citizen.

According to the New York Times,

“Jameel Jaffer, the A.C.L.U.’s deputy legal director, said that the drone strike, which killed Mr. Awlaki and another American, Samir Khan, violated United States and international law. ‘As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public, but from the courts,’ Mr. Jaffer said.”