The Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) has published a very timely unclassified report entitled Independent Assessment of U.S. Government Efforts against Al-Qaeda.
Some 380 pages long, this report is both incisive and critical in its analysis, concluding that while some progress has been made in the 16 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government has, on the whole, not managed to contain, much less destroy al Qaeda,
Here are the report’s central conclusions viz the US government and military’s operations against AQ:
Successes:
• The U.S. has made significant progress moving from a “stovepiped” approach to a comprehensive “whole-of government” approach to countering Al-Qaeda, and countering terrorism in general
• The U.S. has established key partnerships and worked cooperatively with countries around the world to counter AlQaeda
• The U.S. has developed a highly effective and efficient set of counterterrorism forces which operate through a combination of intelligence and special operations forces (SOF), coupled with continued innovation and improvement
* There has not been another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland anywhere near the scale of the attacks of 9/11
• In the early years of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. forces were effective at disrupting core AlQaeda, driving its leadership into hiding, and depriving the organization of what had been its main base of operations in Afghanistan
• In Iraq in the 2006-2008 timeframe, U.S. forces were able to almost completely dismantle AQI
• The Department of Defense (DOD) has had success building counterterrorism capacity in some partner nation security forces
Failures:
* The U.S. has failed to learn that regime change without effective stabilization operations creates enormous opportunities for Al-Qaeda in both the targeted country and neighboring ones
• The U.S. has failed to develop a proactive, consistent, and compelling narrative that can effectively compete with the narrative that Al Qaeda uses to advance its cause and to gain new recruits and followers
• The U.S. has failed to adequately and consistently align its approaches in ways that address the full spectrum of challenges that Al-Qaeda poses to the U.S. and the security vulnerabilities that Al-Qaeda exploits in countries where it currently operates or seeks to expand
• The U.S. has failed to fundamentally appreciate the resilience of Al-Qaeda as an organization, as a brand, and as a movement
* The U.S. has not effectively consolidated gains in the few instances where it has had success against Al-Qaeda in order to prevent the group from resurging
• The U.S. has failed to stop the spread of Al-Qaeda
• The U.S. has been unable to replicate the conditions that allowed it to almost completely dismantle AQI in its fight against any of the other Al Qaeda affiliates.
The full CNA report can be read in its entirety here:
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