Wednesday, 4 June 2014
At 4 AM this morning we watched a CNN early morning news program. They were on of a Taliban propaganda video of the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. There were shot of a gaunt Bergdahl and one of his Taliban captors exiting the pickup truck and the special ops team escorting him to a waiting Blackhawk helicopter. Panning the surrounding hills it appeared to be populated with Taliban fighters. There are also clips of the five Taliban detainees arriving in Doha, Qatar.
At 5 AM the daily copy Wall Street Journal (WSJ) arrived at our condominium door. I ploughed through the WSJ. It had two front page articles about the Bergdahl affair; one on the alleged secret videos that prompted Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper to provide a story of the prisoner exchange, “Secret Videos Prompted Exchange”. He stressed that Bergdahl’s condition had dramatically deteriorated. That article also reflected a rising chorus of objections from a number of Senators and Congressmen about the exchange. The latest criticism came from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who said that “she heard no evidence in a briefing on Tuesday that Bergdahl required medical treatment”. An unnamed senior White House official called her to “apologize” for the misunderstanding.
Yesterday we posted on whether Bergdahl might be subject to a possible charge of desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice given allegations from some of his former platoon members. Jake Tapper on CNN’s Lead program interviewed Bergdahl’s platoon team leader, Sgt. Evan Buetow. He told Tapper that he had overheard a radio intercept translated two days after Bergdahl walked away from his post, leaving behind his weapon and body armor. The Afghan translator allegedly told Entous that the chatter from a village located two miles away from the platoon’s forward operating base, indicated that an American was trying to contact the Taliban and wanted to find someone who could speak English.
Bergdahl remains in a military facility in Landsthul, Germany undergoing a debriefing and medical treatment. His parents after returning to their home in Hailey ,Idaho brushed aside questions about their son’s behavior in Afghanistan. The senior Bergdahl had tearfully told a news conference on June 1st in Hailey, Idaho that he was proud of what his son had done in support of the Afghan people.
Questions about the Bergdahl Taliban prisoner exchange dogged the President’s European visit during a press conference Tuesday with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. He replied, “Whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he's held in captivity. Period. Full stop."
At the June 21, 2013 White House press conference with former Spokesman Jay Carney during which a journalist raised about an offer from the Taliban to release Bergdahl in exchange for the five top Taliban Commanders. The most telling lines in Carney’s reply were, “As we have long said, however, we would not make any decisions about transfer of any detainees without consulting with Congress and without doing so in accordance with U.S. law.”
The WSJ had a front page article about the recidivism of returning Guantanamo detainees who returned to violence and died in the Syrian civil war, “Once Free, a Return to Violence”. The WSJ article on recidivism chronicled the jihadist careers of three Moroccan Jihadis; Ahmed Mizouz, Ibrahim bin Shakran and Mohammed Alami. They were trained in the same Afghan camp that also prepared the 9/11 perpetrators. The WSJ article pointed out that nearly one third, 29% of the 614 detainees released from Guantanamo have returned to violent Jihad. We noted the recidivism of Jihadi terrorists in our chronicle concerning the return and release of former al Qai’da child warrior Afghan Canadian Omar Khadr. He was convicted by a Military Tribunal at Guantanamo to 40 years for mortally wounding an American Special Forces medic at the battle of Khost in August 2002. Khadr’s conviction was commuted by the Obama Administration transferring him to a Federal Canadian prison with the potential for possible parole.
In the Moroccans’ case, they spent time in a prison extolling the virtues of the vision of the late Obama bin Laden and the glories of following the way of Allah, Jihad. Because they couldn’t find earthly pursuits in their native Morocco, they also were attracted to join with Al Qai’da cadres in Syria, only to get their wish, martyrdom as mujahideen. Doubtless those five Taliban commanders released in Qatar may foster jihad. Jihad like the genocidal slaughter of 6,000 Hazara Shia men, women and children in the western Afghan city of Mazar- i -Sharif in 1998. They may even have another possible release opportunity for more of their Mujahideen comrades in Guantanamo. There is a captive American /Canadian couple held by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2012 who pled plead in a video for their release.
Which brings me to the final WSJ articles triggered by the release today of a RAND Corporation study, authored by Seth Jones, associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center, A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qai’da and the Other Salafi-Jihadists . Jones’ op-ed, “The Accelerating Spread of Terrorism” and companion WSJ piece by Siobhan Gorman, “Jihadist Groups’ Threat to U.S. Grows, Report Says” overturn statements that “Bin Laden is dead and al Qai’da is on the run”.
Note these disturbing developments cited in the WSJ op-ed by Jones:
Since 2010, there has been a 58% increase in the number of jihadist groups world-wide, to 49 from 31; the number of jihadists fighters has doubled to a high estimate of 100,000; and the number of attacks by al Qaeda affiliates has increased to roughly 1,000 from 392. The most significant terrorism threat to the United States comes from groups operating in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.
The key findings in the RAND report are:
The number of Salafi-jihadist groups and fighters increased after 2010, as well as the number of attacks perpetrated by al Qa'ida and its affiliates.
Examples include groups operating in Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, Libya, Egypt (including the Sinai Peninsula), Lebanon, and Syria.
These trends suggest that the United States needs to remain focused on countering the proliferation of Salafi-jihadist groups, which have started to resurge in North Africa and the Middle East.
The broader Salafi-jihadist movement has become more decentralized.
Control is diffused among four tiers: (1) core al Qa'ida in Pakistan, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri; (2) formal affiliates that have sworn allegiance to core al Qa'ida, located in Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and North Africa; (3) a panoply of Salafi-jihadist groups that have not sworn allegiance to al Qa'ida but are committed to establishing an extremist Islamic emirate; and (4) inspired individuals and networks.
The threat posed by the diverse set of Salafi-jihadist groups varies widely.
Some are locally focused and have shown little interest in attacking Western targets. Others, like al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, present an immediate threat to the U.S. homeland, along with inspired individuals like the Tsarnaev brothers — the perpetrators of the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. In addition, several Salafi-jihadist groups pose a medium-level threat because of their desire and ability to target U.S. citizens and facilities overseas, including U.S. embassies.
The RAND Report Recommendations are:
The United States should establish a more adaptive counterterrorism strategy that involves a combination of engagement, forward partnering, and offshore balancing.
The United States should consider a more aggressive strategy to target Salafi-jihadist groups in Syria, which in 2013 had more than half of Salafi-jihadists worldwide, either clandestinely or with regional and local allies.
The Gorman WSJ article noted ,”That Egypt was the one key country that posted a decline since the government’s recent crackdown on terrorism”, and we might add The Muslim Brotherhood.
As if to deflect attention from the Bergdahl exchange, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced the resurrection of a long immured domestic counter terrorism task force founded in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh and others. The motivation had little to do with home grown jihadis. Rather it was attributable to the April 13, 2014 spree of killings by Frasier Glenn Miller a long term Neo-Nazi KKK wizard at a Kansas Jewish Assisted Living Center and the mass shooting at an Oak Creek, Wisconsin Sikh Temple on August 5, 2012 that took the lives of seven members. Those events were despicable acts of terrorism in their own right. However, the Department of Justice, FBI and Department of Homeland Security purposefully redacted training materials to evade the growing menace of home grown Jihadists cited in the RAND study.
Concerns have been raised about an American born jihadi, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, son of a Jordanian Muslim father and an American mother convert to Islam. He became a Salafist after indoctrination by an extremist Imam at an Orlando Mosque involved with allegedly sending jihadis to Mail and other West African hotspots. The young man left the US for Jordan and made his way to join the Al Nusrah front to become a suicide truck bomber in Idlib, Syria on March 29th. With his suicide bombing death in Syria, counterterrorism officials should be vitally concerned about American Jihadis being encouraged by extremist Mosque leaders to join al Shabaab in Somalia and Al Nusrah in Syria or perhaps to return here to wreak havoc.
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