From the Horse's Mouth: Unraveling Al-Qa`ida's Target Selection

[Thor]

From the Horse's Mouth: Unraveling Al-Qa`ida's Target Selection
http://www.cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/070417.htm

[Jimbo]

Good article. Thanks for the link.

[Doc P]

Very interesting, nice link.

I found this quote from the RDD paper particularly interesting, "Suggested cities: Las Vegas (the city of fornication and gambling that does not sleep". - Funny how the 9/11 hijackers had some fun in Vegas prior to their "holy mission". Apparently hypocrisy during Jihad is no biggie.

[grog18b]

Good link. Right after 9/11 I had some friends ask what targets I thought would be next. Seems I was pretty close to the mark. It's not difficult when you know why they hate us. Basically, money and power. I also pointed out that they would not attack us again for quite some time after 9/11. The friends asked why I thought so. It's easy. They will now sit back and watch as we spend billions to try to plug up billions of holes in our National defense, and in our lack of security. One attack, we spend billions of dollars. When we stop spending money on trying to fix all the problems in our security, another attack. Billions more spent. Death by a million paper cuts. Each attack in an of itself means very little. They could have cared less if anyone was killed, or the amount of property damage caused. They planned out what would come next. The US pouring billions into more security. Our borders are so large, and our Nation so open, I don't see a cure. We end up going bankrupt.

[Massgrunt]

It's interesting how their stated strategy matches up to Maoist strategy (as per Thomas Hammes):

# Awakening the Masses: In this phase the network aims to increase the consciousness of the global Muslim community by "exposing" the alleged inherent American and western hostility to Islamic peoples. The network argues this will lead to increased hatred of western influences in Muslim lands and swell the ranks of al-Qa`ida and its affiliates with new volunteers and sympathizers. As important, in this phase "apostate" governments will reveal their alleged "collaborative" nature when they are forced to side publicly with their western "masters" in the aftermath of al-Qa`ida attacks. Furthermore, in this phase other political trends in the Middle East (nationalists, leftists, liberals...etc) will be shown as weak and indecisive, thereby enhancing the image of the Salafis as the only entity in the Arab and Muslim world that is willing and capable to fight on behalf of the Muslim masses and take the fight to the west and to the corrupt "apostate" regimes.

Phase 1: The insurgents concentrate mainly on building political strength. Military action is limited to selected, politically motivated assasinations. Any other military action must have a propaganda purpose to support the population's support of the insurgents.



# "Harb Istinzaf -- A long term war of attrition": In this phase the network aims to "bleed the enemy" until it crumbles. In short, their goal is to make the United States "bleed" economically, militarily, and politically until it loses the desire and the means to fight and withdraws militarily, politically and economically from the Middle East and other Muslim lands.

# Severing Western/Muslim alliances: In this phase, an American withdrawal from the Middle East will lead to the severing of American alliances with secular and moderates regimes (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc). This will entail the end of American military and economic support to Arab and Muslim regimes. Absent American military and economic aid, these regimes will be greatly weakened and will eventually lose their grip on their populations and will lack the ability to resist the global Jihadi movement.

Phase 2: The insurgents gain strength and consolidate control of base areas. They begin to actively administer some portions of the contested area. *** Like some of Anbar, pre-invasion Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan*** And because Mao had no outside sponsor providing weapons, they conducted military operations both to capture arms and wear down government forces.

# "Tasfiyat Hisabat -- Settling Scores": Once Arab and Muslim regimes are weakened, al-Qa`ida and its affiliates aim to overthrow them, and "settle scores" by eliminating the leaders and their security forces.

Phase 3: The insurgents commit regular forces (which have been carefully husbanded up to this point) in a final offensive against the government. This phase can succeed only if the "correlation of forces" has been shifted to the insurgents during the early phases.



Obviously it's not exactly the same, but the basic plan is. They're following a strategy that has worked before in a bunch of other places. I'm reading "The Sling and the Stone" right now so it kind of jumps out at me. And it meshes perfectly with Hammes' "Fourth Generation Warfare".