A new video from al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab, became available on the Internet on June 2. The video was 100 minutes long, distributed in two parts and titled “Responsible Only for Yourself.” As the name suggests, this video was the al Qaeda core’s latest attempt to encourage grassroots jihadists to undertake lone-wolf operations in the West, a recurrent theme in jihadist messages since late 2009.
The video, which was well-produced and contained a number of graphics and
special effects, features historical footage of a number of militant Islamist
personalities, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdullah Azzam and Abu Yahya al-Libi.
In addition to al-Libi, who is considered a prominent al Qaeda ideological
authority, the video also features an extensive discourse from another Libyan
theologian, Sheikh Jamal Ibrahim Shtaiwi al-Misrati. Al-Misrati (who is from
Misurata, as one can surmise from his name) was also featured in a March 25
As-Sahab message encouraging jihadists in Libya to assume control of the country
and place it under Shariah once the Gadhafi regime is overthrown. The still
photo used over the March message featuring al-Misrati was taken from the video
used in the June 2 message, indicating that the recently released video of
al-Misrati was shot prior to March 25. The video also contains a short excerpt
of a previously released Arabic language Al-Malahim media video by Anwar
al-Awlaki and an English-language statement by Adam Gadahn that is broken up into small segments
and appears periodically throughout the video.
Despite the fact that many of the video segments used to produce this product
are quite dated, there is a reference to bin Laden as a shaheed, or martyr, so
this video was obviously produced after his death.
Unlike the As-Sahab message on the same topic featuring Adam
Gadahn released in March 2010 and the English-language efforts of al Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula’s “Inspire” magazine, this video is primarily in
Arabic, indicating that it is intended to influence an Arabic-speaking audience.
To date, much of the media coverage pertaining to the release of this video
has focused on one short English-language segment in which Adam Gadahn
encourages Muslims in the United States to go to gun shows and obtain automatic
weapons to use in shooting attacks. This focus is understandable given the
contentiousness of the gun-control issue in the United States, but a careful
examination of the video reveals far more than just fodder for the U.S.
gun-control debate.
Contents of the Video
The first 36 minutes of the video essentially comprise a history lesson of
militants who heard the call to jihad and then acted on it. Among the examples
are individuals such as ElSayyid Nosair, the assassin of Jewish Defense
League founder Meir Kahane; Abdel Basit (also known as Ramzi Yousef), the
operational planner of the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the thwarted
Bojinka plot; Mohammed Bouyeri, the assassin of Dutch filmmaker
Theo Van Gogh; and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. Others include the leader of the team of assassins who killed Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat and the militants behind the Mumbai attacks.
Then, after listing those examples, the video emphasizes the point that if
one is to live in the “real Islamic way,” one must also follow the examples of
the men profiled. Furthermore, since the “enemies of Islam” have expanded their
“attacks against Islam” in many different places, the video asserts that it is
not only in the land of the Muslims that the enemies of Islam must be attacked,
but also in their homelands (i.e., the West). In fact, the video asserts that it
is easy to strike the enemies of Islam in their home countries and doing so
creates the biggest impact. And this is the context in which Gadahn made his
widely publicized comment about Muslims buying guns and conducting armed
assaults.
Now, it is important to briefly address this comment by Gadahn: While it is
indeed quite easy for U.S. citizens to legally purchase a wide variety of
firearms, it is illegal for them to purchase fully automatic weapons without
first obtaining the proper firearms license. This fixation with obtaining fully automatic rifles
instead of purchasing readily available and legal semi-automatic weapons has led
to the downfall of a number of jihadist plots inside the United States,
including one just last month in New York. Therefore,
aspiring jihadists who would seek to follow Gadahn’s recommendations to the
letter would almost certainly find themselves quickly brought to the attention
of the authorities.
When we look at the rest of Gadahn’s comments in this video, it is clear the
group is trying to convey a number of other interesting points. First, Gadahn
notes that jihadists wanting to undertake lone-wolf activities must take all
possible measures to keep their plotting secret, and the first thing they should
do is avail themselves of all the electronic manuals available on the Internet
pertaining to security.
A few minutes later in the video, Gadahn remarks on a point made in a segment
from a U.S. news program that the Hollywood perception of the capabilities of
the National Security Agency (NSA) is nowhere near what those capabilities are
in real life and that, while the NSA and other Western intelligence agencies
collect massive amounts of data, it is hard for them to link the pieces together
to gain intelligence on a pending attack plan. This is true, and the difficulty
of putting together disparate intelligence to complete the big picture is something STRATFOR has long discussed. Gadahn notes
that the downfall of most grassroots operations is loose lips and not the
excellence of Western intelligence and urges aspiring grassroots jihadists to
trust no one and to reveal their plans to no one, not even friends and family
members. This claim is also true. Most thwarted grassroots plots have been
uncovered due to poor operational security and sloppy tradecraft.
The video also contains lengthy theological discussions justifying the
jihadist position that jihad is a compulsory, individual obligation for every
able-bodied Muslim. As the video turns to the necessity of attacking the enemies
of Islam in their homelands, Gadahn notes that Americans are people who crave
comfort and security and that terrorist attacks scare them and take away their
will to fight Muslims. According to Gadahn, terrorist attacks also cause the
people to object to leaders who want to attack Islam, and the people will not
vote for those leaders.
Throughout the video, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is
depicted several times, and it is asserted that the United States and the West
are controlled by Jewish interests. Gadahn says that influential figures in the
Zionist-controlled Western governments, industries and media should be attacked,
and that such attacks will weaken the will of the masses to fight against Islam.
He also says that attacks against such targets are not hard and that, from
recent examples of people who have assaulted the pope and Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, it is evident that if jihadists trust their efforts to Allah
and choose the right place, time and method, they can succeed in their
attacks.
But armed assaults are not the only type of attacks being advocated in the
video. The message also contains several minutes of material dedicated to
encouraging cyber-jihadists to conduct electronic attacks against the United
States. This concept was supported by several excerpts from a segment of the
U.S. television program 60 Minutes pertaining to the cyber threat and featuring
U.S. experts discussing their fears that terrorists would attack such targets as
the electrical grid. Again, this is an old threat, and acquiring the skills to
become a world-class hacker takes time, talent and practice. This means that, in
practical terms, the threat posed by such attacks is no greater than it was
prior to the release of this video.
Tactical Implications
First, it needs to be recognized that this video does not present any sort of
new threat. As far as Gadahn’s pleas for American Muslims to buy firearms and
conduct armed assaults, we wrote an analysis in May 2010 discussing many failed jihadist bomb plots and forecasting that the
jihadists would shift to armed assaults instead. Furthermore, jihadist websites
have long been urging their followers to become cyber-jihadists
and to create viruses that would cripple the economies of the United States and
the West, which are so dependent on computerized systems.
Even the calls to target industrial and media leaders are not new. Jihadist
publications such as the now-defunct online magazine of al Qaeda in Saudi
Arabia, Maaskar al-Battaar, encouraged attacks against such
targets as far back as 2004.
This means that this latest As-Sahab message merely echoes threats that have
already existed for some time now, such as threats emanating from grassroots jihadists. The
grassroots threat is real and must be guarded against, but it is not nearly as
acute as the threat posed by other, more skillful terrorist actors. Grassroots
operatives do not often possess good terrorist tradecraft, and their attacks
tend to be poorly planned and executed and susceptible to discovery and
disruption.
However, killing people is not difficult, and even amateurs can be deadly. As
we examine these repeated pleas by al Qaeda for grassroots jihadists to conduct
attacks in the West, and then consider the ease with which such attacks can be
conducted — evidenced by Hasan’s actions at Fort Hood — it raises an interesting
question: Why haven’t we seen more of these attacks?
Certainly we’ve seen some thwarted attempts like the previously mentioned
plot in New York in May 2011 and a successful attack in March on U.S. Air Force personnel in Frankfurt,
Germany, but overall, the jihadist message urging Muslims to take up arms
and conduct attacks simply does not appear to be gaining much traction among
Muslims in the West — and the United States in particular. We have simply not
seen the groundswell of grassroots attacks that was initially anticipated. The
pleas of Gadahn and his companions appear to be falling upon deaf ears and do
not seem to resonate with Muslims in the West in the same way that the cries of
the pro-democracy movements in the Middle East have in recent months.
In theory, these grassroots efforts are supposed to supplement the efforts of
al Qaeda to attack the West. But in practice, al Qaeda and its franchise groups
have been rendered transnationally impotent in large part by the
counterterrorism efforts of the United States and its allies since 9/11.
Jihadist groups been able to conduct attacks in the regions where they are
based, but grassroots operatives have been forced to shoulder the bulk of the
effort to attack the West. In fact, the only successful attacks conducted inside
the United States since 9/11 have been conducted by grassroots operatives, and
in any case, grassroots plots and attacks have been quite infrequent. Despite
the ease of conducting such attacks, they have been nowhere near as common as
jihadist leaders hoped — and American security officials feared.
One reason for this paucity of attacks may be the jihadist message being
sent. In earlier days, the message of Islamist militants like Abdullah Azzam was
“Come, join the caravan.” This message suggested that militants who answered the
call would be trained, equipped and put into the field of battle under competent
commanders. It was a message of strength and confidence — and a message that
stands in stark contrast to As-Sahab’s current message of “Don’t come and join
us, it is too dangerous — conduct attacks on your own instead.” The very call to
leaderless resistance is an admission of defeat and an indication that the
jihadists might not be receiving the divine blessing they claim.
Al Qaeda's New Video: A Message of Defeat is
republished with permission of STRATFOR
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Qaeda's New Video: A Message of Defeat | STRATFOR