SOURCE: AP/Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt

A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper flies over southern Afghanistan during a combat mission.

Events over the past month in North Africa—the sudden French military intervention against advancing Islamist militants in Mali and the bloody end to the hostage crisis in Algeria—have illustrated two basic facts. First, despite the success the United States has achieved over the past four years in destroying the core Al Qaeda organization that attacked us on 9/11, violent Islamist extremist groups will remain a security threat in many regions of the world. Second, the tactic of terrorism will unfortunately remain a tool for violent extremists of varying and diverse ideological persuasions for the foreseeable future. Both these facts argue that the United States should formulate a broader-based and sustainable counterterrorism strategy that looks beyond the demise of Al Qaeda central and the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, in order to better use the full range of tools the United States possesses to combat an increasingly fragmented but dangerous menace.

The fact that violent Islamist extremism in various forms continues to exist despite recent successes against the core Al Qaeda organization currently hiding out in Pakistan does not argue for the continuation of an amorphous “war on terror” as conservative pundits seem to think. The Obama administration rightly shifted from the Bush administration’s ideological construct of a “war on terror” to a more narrow focus on groups that directly target the U.S. homeland—Al Qaeda central and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. While other violent Islamist extremists—such as those currently wreaking havoc in Mali and Algeria—share the same ideological motives and goals as Al Qaeda central, they have generally focused and cooperated—as in Mali—on local or regional concerns.

The fact that these violent Islamist extremist groups do not directly target the U.S. homeland—whatever their rhetorical aspirations—does not mean they are not worth the bother. In addition to grossly violating human rights, these groups often destabilize the regions in which they operate, as the fighting in Mali dramatically demonstrates, and can by extension threaten key U.S. interests. These groups can also target American diplomatic or military facilities abroad, such as the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens last September—an attack that Algerian officials claim involved Egyptian militants who also participated in the hostage crisis in Algeria, or target American civilians traveling abroad. What’s more, these extremists can target U.S. allies and partners just as militants in Mali have threatened to do in retaliation for France’s intervention there and as Algerian terrorists attempted during that country’s civil war in the 1990s.

While Al Qaeda central may be well along the road to its demise, the problem of violent Islamist extremism will continue to plague the world. It would be a mistake, however, to treat the various groups that espouse Al Qaeda-style ideology as interchangeable or one and the same. Each group represents a distinct challenge in whatever context it operates, which in turn will necessitate a distinct policy response from the United States and its allies and partners. Sending in U.S. forces or drones wherever violent Islamist extremists threaten regional stability or American interests may not be the wisest course of action in every situation, particularly if longstanding U.S. allies and local partners are able and willing to take responsibility. Mali is again instructive: The extremist groups operating there likely represent a greater threat to France and French interests than to the United States and its interests. Consequently, France has taken primary responsibility for beating these extremist groups back to allow U.S.-trained regional forces to take the lead.

Following the devastating blows it has inflicted on Al Qaeda’s core, the United States should commit to opposing violent Islamist extremism on a case-by-case basis. It should avoid subscribing to the unified field theory of violent Islamist extremism propounded by the Bush administration and many conservatives today who see each local eruption as a manifestation of a broader war between the United States and an abstract ideology. Rather, the United States should view specific groups espousing violent Islamist extremism as threats to its national interests, the security of its allies and partners, and human rights in the local and regional contexts in which they arise. Doing so will open up a greater range of options in collaboration with allies and partners than afforded under the old “war on terror” approach.

The multifaceted threat of violent Islamist extremism also shows that terrorism itself should properly be considered a tactic that should be guarded against, whatever its source. Historically, terrorism has been used by a plethora of groups with wildly divergent ideological goals—Russian anarchists, Northern Irish nationalists, German communists, American far-rightists, and violent Islamist extremists have all used terrorism as a tactic to further their political agendas. Even if all violent Islamist extremism were to magically cease, it’s likely that some other group driven by a different ideology would resort to terrorist tactics at some point in the future.

Terrorism will be with us in some form or another for the foreseeable future. And it’s just as likely that given changing dynamics and realities that the drone strikes that have apparently proven effective against Al Qaeda central will have limited utility going forward. The confluence of circumstances that allows drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan—groups that have directly targeted the United States from active conflict zones over which nominal governments have little authority and allow drone strikes—are unlikely to recur in the future. While the possibility that these circumstances may occur again cannot be definitively ruled out, they suggest it would be appropriate to adopt a high threshold when considering the use of drone strikes as a counterterrorism tool.

By contrast with Al Qaeda central and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the extremists threatening Mali have not directly targeted the United States, and longstanding U.S. ally France has taken responsibility in working with the Malian government to turn them back. What’s more, the United States is working to train the troops of various African nations to step into the situation as well. No matter how brutal they may otherwise be, not every terrorist group will directly target the U.S. homeland, and those that do may not have the opportunity to hide in legally distinct areas such as Pakistan’s tribal areas where foreign government security forces do not operate. Other governments may or may not prove as cooperative in allowing drone strikes as those of Pakistan and Yemen, preferring other approaches or types of U.S. assistance.

In other words, drones will probably outlive their usefulness as a counterterrorism tool when Al Qaeda central is judged to be on a permanent path to defeat. This is not to say that drones will not have utility in certain conflicts involving terrorist groups, but rather that the current framework for their use is based on the unique circumstances of the conflict between the United States and Al Qaeda. Other places drones have been used—Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, for example—fall more clearly under policy and legal frameworks of conventional war. Policymakers should not assume that this framework is easily transferable to the problems posed by other violent Islamist extremist groups and non-Islamist terrorist organizations in other parts of the world.

Looking forward, a broader-based and more sustainable counterterrorism policy that can both adapt to post-Al Qaeda terrorist threats—including other violent Islamist extremists—wherever they arise and is not based on the exigencies of the fight against Al Qaeda central will be needed. Interestingly, the Obama administration appears to have taken some steps forward on this front. The recent development of a counterterrorism “playbook” reportedly setting clear rules for lethal CIA strikes—exempting Pakistan for one to two years—shows how far the administration is going to rationalize its counterterrorism policies. And the work the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism has done to promote counterterrorism cooperation and capacity building across U.S. allies and partners—such as the launch of the Global Counterterrorism Forum in 2011, as well as various regional cooperation initiatives— provides a foundation for the future.

But as outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has acknowledged, drones are “not something we’re going to have to use forever.” While the development of the counterterrorism “playbook” is a step forward, it too will lose its utility once Al Qaeda, including those in the Arabian Peninsula, meet their eventual demise. The Obama administration should begin thinking about a post-Al Qaeda counterterrorism framework that presumes the expiration of the 2001 authorization for use of military force against Al Qaeda and its close allies. That is, a counterterrorism framework in which the logic of “armed conflict” no longer applies because Al Qaeda has been effectively defeated.

Developing this framework will not be easy. As noted, violent Islamist extremists subscribing to Al Qaeda-style ideologies remain destabilizing forces in many parts of the world. Terrorism as a tactic will remain available to any group that chooses to use it. The status of those held in Guantanamo Bay remains uncertain and politically intractable. Conservatives and others will try to cling to the “war on terror” framework laid out by the Bush administration. But successfully concluding the war against Al Qaeda and moving on to a more sustainable counterterrorism framework will allow the United States to finally and definitively move beyond the post-9/11 era in foreign policy.

Peter Juul is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Sony - Columbia Pictures

This film image released by Columbia Pictures shows a scene from "Zero Dark Thirty," directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

“Zero Dark Thirty,” the critically acclaimed new film by director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, depicts the “greatest manhunt in history”—a decade-long search for Osama bin Laden, from the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, to the SEAL Team Six raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011. As the film brutally depicts, the long, frustrating search for bin Laden included the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, physical violence, and psychological pressure in the early years of the Bush administration to extract information from detainees. But as “Zero Dark Thirty” rightly implies, the systematic use of enhanced interrogation techniques came at a steep moral cost while producing little to no valuable information in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

As the practice of enhanced interrogation techniques became publically known, Congress—led by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Carl Levin (D-MI)—took swift action against the program and passed the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Frequently referred to as “the McCain amendment,” the act prohibited the use of any treatment or technique not specifically authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation and marked the beginning of the end for the role of enhanced interrogation in Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, tactics.

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama repeatedly denounced the use of torture and pledged to end the practice if elected. On his second full day in office, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, which prohibited the use of enhanced interrogation techniques and mandated compliance with the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation for all detainees in U.S. custody. The McCain amendment and President Obama’s executive order reaffirmed America’s longstanding prohibition on torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment categorically and without exception, and effectively ended the CIA’s use of torture in the “War on Terror.”

An intensive three-year investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence produced a 6,000- page report this year that reportedly shows that enhanced interrogation techniques produced little to no valuable intelligence in the “War on Terror” and the hunt for bin Laden. Former CIA Director and head of CENTCOM Gen. David Petraeus said of torture, “Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary.” Glenn L. Carle, a CIA officer who witnessed enhanced interrogation techniques firsthand in 2002, added that coercive techniques “didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information.” It’s possible that the torture used on detainees in the attempt to find bin Laden may have produced some marginally useful information, but the high cost to America’s moral standing failed to produce any determinative information or actionable intelligence on the location of the Al Qaeda leader.

The long road that would eventually lead to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, would be built on years of painstaking intelligence and fact gathering by hundreds of intelligence professionals working for a decade. President Obama made the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden the top priority for the CIA at the onset of his presidency and instructed new CIA Director Leon Panetta to mobilize the resources necessary to find bin Laden, using all the tools of the American intelligence community.

The traditional, legal interrogation techniques detailed in the Army field manual and used in standard practice by the FBI—such as rapport building and detailed repetition—ultimately proved to be the most effective methods of obtaining useful, reliable intelligence from detainees. Note that in the film, Ammar, who was unsuccessfully tortured at the beginning of the movie, only reveals the nom de guerre of bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, once the CIA agents switch to more traditional methods of interrogation, offering him food and a cigarette to coax information from him.

Though unmentioned in the film, the most important step in the hunt for bin Laden may have been the end of the war in Iraq. The end of the war freed up critical human intelligence and technological resources that could be redeployed to Afghanistan and Pakistan to develop the actionable data and leads that were instrumental in directing American attention to the Abbottabad compound—critical resources that were diverted from their post-9/11 mission by the war in Iraq.

The removal of Osama bin Laden as a threat provides a measure of justice for the families of the victims of 9/11 and the countless other terror attacks he was behind. The CIA hunt for bin Laden profiled in “Zero Dark Thirty” and the SEAL Team Six mission at the Abbottabad compound not only removed the leader of Al Qaeda from the battlefield—it also produced a treasure trove of hard data on the terrorist group’s operations, inner thinking, and organizational structure.

The United States and the world are safer because our intelligence community and the military had the capable personnel, the resources, and the leadership from the top to succeed in their mission, not because of the immoral, illegal, and ineffective use of torture displayed at the beginning of the film.

Ken Sofer is a Research Assistant with the National Security and International Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/ Jeffrey Phelps

People walk around a flag pole memorial outside the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, the site of a hate-fueled, violent attack that left six members of the Sikh community dead.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing tomorrow  on hate crimes and domestic extremism. This hearing will hopefully provide not only a closer look at the growing number of hate crimes that occur in this country each year but also at the astounding expansion of hate groups that indicate a pattern of right-wing radicalization at the heart of such tragedies.

A diverse group of more than 150 organizations, led by the Sikh Coalition, requested this hearing in the aftermath of a violent attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in August. Media outlets covering the attack were quick to label the shooting as the actions of a “lone wolf.” Tragedies of this kind, however, are growing in number, rendering this loner analogy less and less accurate.

Tagging violent, right-wing extremists with this label, though, is anything but unusual. It happened when a Norwegian far-right extremist bombed federal buildings in Oslo and carried out a mass shooting at a youth political camp in 2011. It happened after an antiabortion extremist murdered Dr. George Tiller in 2009, and also when an antigovernment extremist bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The list goes on.

The Department of Homeland Security even released a report in 2009 warning that the threat posed by such “lone wolves” was more pronounced than in past years. But it’s more and more the case that these wolves run in packs.

We often use the lone wolf metaphor to make ourselves feel better about seemingly random acts of violence and hatred. Nature’s lone wolves separate from their pack, become aggressive defending themselves without the support of a pack, and often are unsuccessful in hunting prey alone. If the human perpetrators of violence are painted as socially isolated outcasts who have trouble relating to others, then their actions are interpreted as atypical and repeat occurrences are not to be feared.

To be clear, there certainly are incidents that seem to stand alone and that deserve the lone wolf marker, such as the recent shooting at the Family Research Council’s office in Washington, D.C. In this case the shooter disagreed with the organization’s political agenda and horrifically chose violence to express his disapproval. While the Family Research Council argues that the shooting was prompted by the Southern Poverty Law Center listing the council as a hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center responds that it has listed the council as a hate group since 2010 for spreading false and denigrating propaganda about gay and transgender people. The center did not encourage any acts of violence.

Thus, while this sort of violence cannot and should not be condoned, the shooter in the Family Research Council attack was clearly acting on his own and seems to have been incited to action by facts about the council’s hateful agenda. As misguided as the gunman’s actions were, this incident cannot be equated with the examples of far-right extremism mentioned above.

Indeed, the lone wolf portrayal of far-right extremism ignores the fact that these alleged loners on the right are actually embedded in networks that do preach violence. While there is no evidence to date of networks that would encourage the type of violence carried out at the Family Research Council this past month, far-right attackers are almost inevitably found to be linked to hate groups—groups which have been on the rise in recent years, partly because of our country’s changing racial and ethnic demographics. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a staggering 70 percent rise in such groups since 2000 alone.

Far too often these demographic changes trigger anxiety, a sense of dislocation, and anger, which in turn can lead to violence and hate crimes. Instead of recognizing this, though, the media often pretends that violent attackers act alone without any networks or support. As such, it ignores a deeper, more widespread problem that is growing throughout the nation.

These loners have friends

A closer, post-violence look into the behavior of these extremists nearly always reveals that they were anything but alone in their ideology. The Norwegian attacker was inspired by right-wing Islamophobic ideologues in the United States. The antiabortion extremist had several close, long-term relationships with other extremists advocating violent attacks on abortion providers. The antigovernment radical in Oklahoma had at least one co-conspirator in his attack, maybe more. What is interesting—and terrifying—is that regardless of the different agendas between xenophobia, abortion rights, and anarchy, all of these individuals had ties to white supremacists, who claim that diversity is a curse undermining the superiority of white people.

The Sikh temple shooter in Wisconsin followed in the same footsteps—he was a member of the underground, white-power music scene and affiliated with the white supremacist group Hammerskin Nation. Far from being a loner, he played in various white-power bands, whose lyrics promoted race wars and hatred, and may have even been involved in organizing a concert in Richmond, Virginia, this past spring that would have brought together many similar, white-power bands. In fact, according to Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research at the Anti-Defamation League—an organization fighting anti-Semitism, bigotry, and extremism—such hate music is intended to “create a group sense, praising or glorifying skinheads or white supremacists like themselves.”

Expressions of hate are not limited to public events or in-person interactions. The Internet allows the transmission of white-supremacist and other intolerant ideologies to millions across the globe, readily available to anyone at the click of a button. The ease of access to such vengeful ideologies—even though many of us chose to rise above this hatred—can spread these beliefs like wildfire, making them more common and, unfortunately, less shocking to some.

Mainstream hatred

The fact that groups promoting violence are on the rise should be alarming, given that our country is becoming more diverse as each year passes. But this increase should not surprise us: What all of these hate-inspired individuals share is an anxiety about a perceived threat. It could be a threat to their national identity, racial superiority, masculinity, or any number of other points of pride. We can’t be surprised that this anxiety is growing, given the societal megaphones that broadcast such ominous ideas and instill fear into the hearts of audiences nationwide.

Take Pat Buchanan, for example. This prominent conservative news commentator has written a book that claims diversity will be the death of America. Leaving aside his penchant for historical misinformation, his book rabble-rouses the worst elements in our society. In one chapter, he introduces statistics of demographic change with a tone of impending doom, saying that:

The white population will begin to shrink and, should present birth rates persist, slowly disappear. Hispanics already comprise 42 percent of New Mexico’s population, 37 percent of California’s, 38 percent of Texas’s, and over half the population of Arizona under the age of twenty … Mexico is moving north … Has our passivity in the face of this invasion imperiled our union?

Some politicians also incite such fears and encourage this kind of anxiety. Just this past week, Tea Party-backed Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) publicly commented that Muslims in this country posed a severe threat to the nation. The broader conservative political strategy of race baiting and fear mongering to distract the public from honest discussions about class inequality has even made its way into presidential and congressional elections. Individuals running for office are open about their hatred and incitement to violence: At a political fundraiser in August, Ohio Republican congressional candidate Samuel Wurzelbacher (more commonly known as “Joe the Plumber” in the 2008 presidential campaign) said that the government should “put a damn fence on the border going to Mexico and start shooting.”

The Oak Creek tragedy has now unveiled that on top of some media commentators and politicians, the dark underbelly of a certain music industry also promotes such hatred among its ranks and preys on the anxiety of its audiences. While the record label that distributed albums by the shooter has removed all of his products from their site and released a statement trying to distance itself from the attack on the Sikh temple, its actions since the shooting would be laughable if they weren’t so tragic. The label claims it has worked hard over the years to promote a positive path in peoples’ lives and denounces such violence. Yet when some of the only decipherable lyrics in the shooter’s music are “Sieg Heil”—a well-known Nazi salute—how can the label claim, in all seriousness, that it doesn’t promote racial and ethnic cleansing?

If social outcasts are now in the business of hearing their views in prominent media outlets, represented by national politicians, and promoted by profitable elements of the music industry, then those who still believe these individuals are loners must subscribe to a completely ungrounded sense of reality.

Growing anxiety is a serious problem

In light of the rise of such hateful groups; the easy networking enabled by the Internet; and the fear mongering of some conservative commentators, politicians, and musicians, the government must take this pattern of violence seriously. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Department of Homeland Security caved to conservative political pressures in 2009 and withdrew a report that exposed the surge in domestic right-wing radicalism. In the wake of the Oak Creek shooting, however, an important debate was resumed—namely, if we know that white-supremacist elements are serious threats, why are counterterrorism efforts almost exclusively devoted to threats that originate either abroad or within domestic, nonwhite populations? This conversation must be continued as these right-wing attackers continue to gain traction so we can work together to address the very real threat posed by domestic extremism.

As our country rapidly approaches the day when there will no longer be a clear racial or ethnic majority, we should be vigilant about growing anxieties among groups in our country, about those in the fear-mongering business, and about violent extremism. We must not wait for violence to erupt but must act early, doing our part to prevent anxiety and perceived threats from spreading. We must reinforce to these more-susceptible populations how diversity has always been this country’s greatest asset and will remain as such as we move forward together into our multicultural future.

Julie Ajinkya is a Policy Analyst for Progress 2050 at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/ Jacquelyn Martin

People look at a display of newspaper front pages at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on May 2, 2011, the day after Osama bin Laden was killed.

Osama bin Laden’s death a year ago marked a major achievement for the U.S. intelligence community and a critical blow to the Al Qaeda terrorist network. But the SEAL Team Six raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound on May 2, 2011 was only the largest in a long string of losses Al Qaeda has suffered over the past three years which have put the organization on a path to strategic defeat. The trove of data collected from the raid has quickened the pace of Al Qaeda’s collapse, helping U.S. counterterrorism officials better target senior Al Qaeda leadership and disrupt more terror plots.

The numbers show that while Al Qaeda remains a significant national security threat, its ability to successfully commit acts of terror has diminished since Osama bin Laden’s death last year. (All numbers from the National Counterterrorism Center’s Worldwide Incidents Tracking System.)

16 percent: The percentage drop in successful attacks by the Al Qaeda network in the year following bin Laden’s death compared to the year before.

65 percent: The percentage drop in successful attacks by the Al Qaeda network outside of Africa in the year following bin Laden’s death compared to the year before.

35 percent: The percentage drop in casualties caused by the Al Qaeda network in the year following bin Laden’s death compared to the year before.

81: The number of successful attacks by the Al Qaeda network in Pakistan since bin Laden’s death, down from 159 the year before.

22: The number of Al Qaeda network senior-level operatives and leaders captured or killed since May 2011.

0: The number of successful attacks by the Al Qaeda network in the United States since bin Laden’s death.

The map below shows the number and location of Al Qaeda attacks before and after bin Laden’s death as well as the Al Qaeda leaders killed or captured since May 2011.

For more on the evolution of the Al Qaeda network since Osama bin Laden’s death, please see:

• “Destroying Al Qaeda” by Brian Katulis and Peter Juul
• “The Evolution of Terrorism Since 9/11” by Ken Sofer

SOURCE: AP Photo/Hatem Moussa

Female Palestinian militants from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who claim they are willing to be suicide bombers, hold weapons during a news conference in Jebaliya, northern Gaza Strip, in May 2007.

In Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks at the launch of the Global Counterterrorism Forum in September 2011, she expressed the need to deepen our understanding of the process of radicalization and terrorist recruitment in order to undermine the appeal of extremism.

She’s absolutely right, but there’s still a gaping hole in the U.S. National Counterterrorism Strategy of 2011’s approach toward countering radicalization: the fact that terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban continue to exploit uniquely female motivations as a tool to recruit female suicide bombers to attack U.S. soldiers and international aid workers.

As the number of female suicide terrorists rises, it becomes increasingly important to acknowledge and address this threat to American lives and interests. Doing so would result in a more comprehensive counterterrorism strategy.

We outline the problem below as well as some of the factors that lead women to become terrorists.

Not a new threat

Female involvement in terrorist groups is not a new phenomenon. Secular groups began using female suicide terrorism nearly three decades ago.

Sana’a Youcef Mehaidli, a member of the secular Syrian Social Nationalist Party, conducted the first known female suicide attack in April 1985 when she drove a truck filled with explosives into an Israeli Defense Force convoy, killing two soldiers and injuring another two. In addition, 76 percent of attackers from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a separatist terrorist group in Turkey, have been women.

The successful integration of women as suicide terrorists in secular groups led terrorist groups based in religious ideology to begin including women in their operations as well. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have both formed female suicide cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to reports from 2010, culminating in the first female suicide bomber attack in Pakistan on Christmas Day of that year.

Factors that motivate women to become suicide bombers

Radicalization is largely a gender-neutral process and is usually in response to some combination of economic, political, and social factors, including economic conditions, lack of political rights, or military occupation. Added stressors and psychological factors can transform a radical into a terrorist and, in the most serious cases, into a suicide terrorist.

For women, the impetuses that drive the motivation to carry out a suicide attack are often unique to the experience of females in conflict scenarios. One unique impetus is the loss of feminine honor and the desire to redeem it.

Feminine honor

Both Dr. Anat Berko of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and Lindsey O’Rourke from the University of Chicago note that the idea of the female body as a symbol of honor is a longstanding notion in many communities, particularly as it relates to a woman’s perceived sexual purity. While this concept has lost salience in most areas of the world, there are some places—particularly in more conservative Middle Eastern and South Asian communities—that continue to take sexual purity very seriously.

If a woman’s honor is compromised through a violation of this purity, such as sex out of wedlock or being a rape victim, the shame is not only placed on her but also extended to her family. Suicide terrorism, frequently viewed by radicals as a form of martyrdom, is seen as a way to gain redemption and restore that honor.

The inability to fulfill predetermined social roles, such as bearing children, could also compromise a woman’s honor. In some communities, this loss of honor is grounds for divorce and could taint a woman as unmarriageable.

Wafa Idriss, who in 2002 became the first female suicide terrorist of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was divorced by her husband because of their failure to have children. Her life during the conflict as a volunteer medic is full of examples of what could radicalize a person, but there are certain details that make her motivations the result of a uniquely female experience—in particular her inability to have children.

Inequality

Besides perceptions of honor, social structures that promote female inequality and dependency provide more pressures that could attract a radicalized female to suicide terrorism. Giving your life to further the cause of radical groups alongside men can be perceived as a way for women to achieve equal social status, a measure that a man would not feel as pressured to take since he does not necessarily feel or experience social subordination the way a woman might.

Other women are forced to be economically and socially dependent on men and never learn the skills that would allow them to be independent, such as reading or writing. As men continue to die in conflict and women are left to carry on without them, they are inadequately equipped to assume full economic responsibility for their families, resulting in greater strains on them and their families. The increased economic and social pressures have the potential to push a woman over the edge. Sometimes terrorist groups will even make promises to provide for and take care of women’s families if they execute a suicide attack.

The best example of this violent reaction to the loss of a male figure is the Black Widows, an all-female Chechen suicide terrorist group associated with the terrorist group Riyad-us Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs. Their primary motivation is believed to be revenge for husbands, brothers, fathers, or relatives who were killed in the two-decade conflict between Russia and Chechnya after the latter declared independence.

Why women are such successful bombers

Women’s success in suicide attacks highlights just how little this national security threat is being addressed.

Mia Bloom from the International Center for the Study of Terrorism attributes their success to several factors, most notably the fact that women are still not expected to be involved in violence. The common social assumption that women are inherently weaker, gentler, and more peaceful than men discounts their ability to engage in such lethal activity. That assumption allows female suicide terrorists to be overlooked by counterterrorism efforts and escape thorough security inspections in many conflict zones, despite recent attempts to correct this security lapse.

Attacks by women tend to be more lethal as well. In general, a woman is able to more easily reach high-profile targets and carry out more assassinations due to the lack of security focused on thwarting female suicide attacks and a general unsuspecting attitude toward women.

Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s 1991 assassination by a Tamil Tiger female suicide bomber, who was close enough to touch his feet when the bomb went off, shows how much closer women can get to their targets in many scenarios.

These unique capabilities are probably why women are responsible for 65 percent of all assassinations among groups that use female suicide terrorists, even though they only make up 15 percent of total suicide bombers in these same groups, according to Lindsey O’Rourke.

In addition to inflicting death and injury on their victims, female suicide terrorists can inflict an additional psychological damage on survivors of the attack. A woman carrying out a suicide attack is considerably more effective in psychological warfare since it cuts against common societal views of women and builds suspicion toward a previously “harmless” segment of the population.

Further, the tendency for media outlets to focus on the gender angle is in larger part a reason why groups like using female suicide bombers—their actions have higher shock value and garner more media attention, and it sends the message of how serious these individuals and groups are about furthering their cause. As is common with these cases, the media led stories about an attack on the Moscow subway in 2010 with the fact that the attackers were women.

Finally, successful female suicide attacks are in part attributable to existing social, cultural, and religious restrictions on gender interactions resulting in weakened security measures toward women. For instance, men are not permitted to touch or pat down women in a way that would allow them to effectively search for explosives.

This problem is exacerbated by the use of both disguises and traditional female garb, such as the niqab, to hide weapons and explosives. Many women—and sometimes even men—disguise their bombs as faux pregnancies.

In 1996 a female suicide bomber from the PKK killed nine Turkish soldiers at a military parade when she detonated what turned out to be a bomb, not a baby. And in 2010 British intelligence discovered that women were being fitted with exploding breast implants, which are nearly impossible to detect at most security checkpoints.

A persistent problem that needs official recognition

With continuing problems of social equality and 86,000 war widows in Iraq, the impetuses for female suicide terrorism do not appear to be going away anytime soon.

In fact, Debra Zedalis, a terrorism expert from the U.S. Army War College, stated in 2004 that trends were pointing toward an increasing reliance on female suicide terrorists. In 2009 Umayma al-Zawahiri, wife of current Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued an open letter to her sisters in Islam stating that women could contribute to terrorist organizations as suicide bombers. Since that letter went public, a number of websites and publications have emerged encouraging women to take on a more active role in terrorist organizations.

We remain exposed to a growing female suicide terrorism threat without proper recalibrations to our current counterterrorism policy to address women’s motivations, tactics, and targets.

Efforts such as the 300-person Daughters of Iraq program, a U.S. military initiative that trains Iraqi women how to pat down and search suspected female suicide terrorists at check points, help mitigate some of the effects of this problem and should be promoted. But our counterterrorism strategy must also identify and address uniquely female motivations for suicide terrorism just as it identifies and addresses some of the gender-neutral motivations for suicide terrorism.

We should answer Secretary Clinton’s call to better understand the process of radicalization. But if we want to actually protect our country, we can’t simply forget about half of the world’s population. Including a female element to our counterterrorism policy also would be a welcome addition to Secretary Clinton’s larger push to make advancing women’s rights around the world a key piece of a progressive foreign policy. A counterterrorism strategy that works in coordination with a women’s rights strategy would be a progressive way to keep us all safer.

Ken Sofer is Special Assistant with the National Security team at American Progress. Jennifer Addison is an intern with American Progress.

CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb testifies before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management: Read this testimony (CAP Action)

Chairman Meehan, Ranking Member Speier, Chairman McCaul, Ranking Member Keating, and distinguished members of the subcommittees, thank you for inviting me to testify about the Iranian government’s alleged plans to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States on American soil. This event comes at a critical time in U.S.-Iranian relations, and it is imperative that the United States not overreact but respond rationally and effectively. In this testimony, I will discuss how the United States can best respond to Iran in order to protect and defend our national security and our interests in the Middle East and across the globe in this age of terrorism, tyrants, and weapons of mass destruction.

First, I would begin by congratulating our agents at the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. This case is a victory for law enforcement and a testament to the hard work done every day by the men and women at these two agencies to keep our country safe from terrorists with a global reach.

As you all know, in recent years, Iran has repeatedly worked against the interests of the United States and the international community. In addition to this most recent plot—Iran’s boldest but also most poorly executed effort to harm the United States and its allies—Iran is a known sponsor of terrorism and has pursued an illicit nuclear program in defiance of the international community. For example, just last spring, the Treasury Department announced it had uncovered evidence that Iran was funneling money and recruits to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Additionally, Iran’s decision to enrich uranium to 20 percent—far more than the 3.5 percent necessary to produce nuclear energy—as well as its decision to store this fuel in an underground bunker suggests that its nuclear program is not designed solely for peaceful purposes. In short, the planned assassination of the Saudi ambassador is merely the latest example of hostile behavior by Iran.

The question now facing the United States is how best to respond. Over the past two weeks, it has been gratifying to hear warnings from both sides of the aisle about the perils of reckless military action. Political leaders from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have urged restraint.

In the past, unthinking military action by the United States has strengthened Iran’s hand. Iran is perhaps the clearest winner from our mindless, needless, senseless invasion and occupation of Iraq. The war allowed Iran to capitalize on the overwhelming anti-American sentiment generated throughout the Arab and Muslim world by our invasion of Iraq under false pretenses.

CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb testifies before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management: Read this testimony (CAP Action)

Lawrence J. Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: Center for American Progress

Worshipers leave the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center after morning prayers in Falls Church, Virginia on September 30, 2011. U.S. airstrikes in Yemen on Friday killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American militant cleric at the mosque.

The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born terrorist working with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is a victory in the fight against international terrorist groups targeting the United States. Much remains unclear about how Awlaki was killed but it looks like a U.S. airstrike from a jet or drone aircraft. Based on Awlaki’s direct connection to terrorists that attacked the United States, he falls under the scope of the law Congress passed governing the military fight against international terrorism. That makes him a legitimate military target.

The significance of his death for AQAP or on Yemen-based terrorism, however, should not be overstated. It’s true that Awlaki was among the most influential international terrorists adept at spreading the movement using English. But he was not even the most powerful figure in his own terrorist group let alone a potential successor to the leadership role of Osama bin Laden. And his death will have virtually no impact on the AQAP’s strength in Yemen.

So while this is a clear win for the U.S.-led air campaign against AQAP, that’s the most Awlaki’s death can accomplish. And it is woefully inadequate to address the medium- and long-term challenges of AQAP in the region or the multiple ongoing crises facing the Yemeni people.

The story on Anwar al-Awlaki is as follows. He was born in New Mexico and was a U.S. citizen. But he spent much of his early life in Yemen. By 2000 Awlaki had returned to the United States and was an imam at a San Diego mosque visited by 9/11 hijackers Nawaf a Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar. When Hazmi moved across the country to Washington, D.C., in 2001 as the attacks approached, he and another 9/11 hijacker, Hani Hanjour, again connected with Awlaki—this time at a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia.

The 9/11 Commission Report documents the FBI’s suspicion that Awlaki was a facilitator for the hijackers: “[S]ome FBI investigators doubt [Eyad al] Rababah’s story. Some agents suspect that Aulaqi (Awlaki) may have tasked Rababah to help Hamzi and Hanjour. We share that suspicion, given the remarkable coincidence of Aulaqi’s prior relationship with Hazmi.”

Awlaki subsequently fled the United States and returned to Yemen, where he began inspiring would-be terrorists in the West to attack the United States or other Western targets. He was in email communication with Maj. Nadal Hassan, the perpetrator of the Ft. Hood shootings that killed 13 Americans. He is also directly connected to Omar Farouk Abdulmuttalab and the failed Christmas Day attempt to destroy a Detroit-bound airplane by AQAP. And he reportedly inspired Faisal al-Shahzad, the failed Times Square bomber. AQAP launched another failed attack using explosives hidden in toner cartridges bound for the U.S. aboard freight aircraft.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Congress enacted the Authorization to Use Military Force, which gave the president the power:

… to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

From what we now know about his subsequent actions, it strains credulity to believe that Awlaki’s connection to those three 9/11 hijackers while they were in the United States was merely coincidental. Awlaki has clearly been involved in attacks on the United States since 9/11 and continuously threatens to do so in the future.

The airstrike targeting Awlaki was not an extrajudicial execution for his role in the 9/11 attacks. It was an airstrike that resulted in the death of a legitimate military target based on the power Congress granted the president in the 2001 AUMF. There are reasonable questions raised about the interpretation of the 2001 AUMF when targeting or detaining suspected terrorists. But this instance does not happen to be one of them.

The killing of Awlaki, and the possibility that another American, Samir Khan, was also killed in the same strike, is a genuine victory. Khan is believed to be the creator of the online English-language magazine Inspire and was a key figure in the media and propaganda efforts of international terrorists. The loss of Awlaki and Khan together represents a major setback for international terrorism’s inspirational and propaganda activities using English in the West.

Still, we shouldn’t get as carried away as Rep. Peter King (R-NY) does when he claims that “[i]n many ways, Awlaki was, operationally, more important than Bin Laden. “

That’s ridiculous. Awlaki was able to reach an audience and inspire would-be terrorists in the West because he often delivered video sermons or writings in English. But he was no bin Laden. In fact, U.S. officials unintentionally served as Awlaki’s biggest propaganda office by constantly inflating his importance within AQAP and international terrorism.

Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen wrote today of Awlaki’s death that “Nasir al-Wihayshi, Said al-Shihri, Qasim al-Raymi and so on are much more important to the continued existence of AQAP than was Awlaki. I don’t think Awlaki’s death will in any way be debilitating for the organization.”

Further, the use of airstrikes against terrorists in Yemen and elsewhere are a useful counterterrorism tool but they are not sufficient to defeat terrorism on their own and fall far short of the necessary action in Yemen. The United States has reportedly increased its use of airstrikes against AQAP in Yemen since the political crisis gripping that fractured country has diverted the attention of Yemen’s security forces to regime survival. But at best this is a temporary solution. At worst it could exacerbate the problem of AQAP in Yemen if U.S. officials are further seduced by the transitory success of airstrikes.

What’s more, activities such as airstrikes in Yemen at the exclusion of virtually any other American footprint only further convince the Yemeni people that our only objective is to protect U.S. interests at the expense of issues that legitimately rank much higher on their priority list than targeting AQAP.

The death of Anwar al-Awlaki does remove a terrorist intent on directing attacks on the United States who could inspire a new audience in the West to take up his call because he could speak and write in English. But while he may be among the most identifiable international terrorists, he was not even the most powerful figure in his own terrorist group. Meanwhile, AQAP will certainly remain a major threat to Yemen, its neighbors in the region, and the United States. U.S. airstrikes in Yemen weaken AQAP, but only a broader approach to Yemen that addresses the problems that more directly affect the everyday lives of Yemenis will help that country achieve a more stable and sustainable future.

Ken Gude is the Managing Director of the National Security and International Policy Program at American Progress.

See also:

• Whack-a-Mole in Yemen by Ken Gude and Ken Sofer
• The Last Best Chance to Save Yemen by Ken Gude and Ken Sofer

SOURCE: AP/TV2 Norway

In this image taken from TV, smoke and flames billow from the shattered window of a building after an explosion in Oslo, Norway, on July 22, 2011. Isolated incidents such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, or the Oslo attacks earlier this year are likely to become the dominant strain of terrorism entering the next decade after 9/11.

When Osama bin Laden’s body was buried at sea, many observers believed an era in transnational terrorism was buried with him. In truth, the era of transnational terrorism reached its pinnacle in the atrocities of September 11 a full decade ago. Over the last 10 years, the structure of terrorist groups has evolved, in part because of American and allied policies, and in part because new technologies have opened up a new model of terrorism. Gone are the days of a centralized, hierarchical international terrorist movement with Al Qaeda clearly in the lead. That system has been replaced by a much more diffuse network of regional terrorist groups and individual actors connected to terrorist leaders only by the Internet.

The breakdown of the hierarchical system of terror

When bin Laden organized Al Qaeda in the late 1980s, he envisioned the group as an army of the faithful, which he could train and mobilize to fight kuffar, or nonbelievers, throughout Muslim lands. He financed training camps in tribal Pakistan, developed a system of recruitment for would-be suicide bombers, and planned complex operations, which required adherence to a strict chain of command. The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York represented the pinnacle of organized, hierarchical terrorism and would have been impossible to execute without Al Qaeda’s deep pockets and operational expertise.

Since that day the United States has eliminated Al Qaeda’s operational safe haven in Afghanistan and decimated its core leadership. A combination of raids, police stings, and the increased use of drone strikes under President Barack Obama have led to the capture or killing of many of Al Qaeda’s mid- to senior-level leaders, most notably bin Laden, and most recently Atuyah Abd al Rahman, a key figure in the organization’s operations.

The death of Al Qaeda’s core leadership and its loss of a safe haven in Afghanistan puts the organization close to strategic defeat, according to White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan. While Brennan’s comments on Al Qaeda’s imminent demise are likely overly optimistic, the organization is clearly weaker than it was a decade ago and has become increasingly reliant on a variety of ideologically sympathetic affiliates in Yemen, Algeria, and Iraq who have adopted the Al Qaeda name brand.

While these affiliates, most notably the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, maintain close ties to bin Laden’s Pakistan-based core and adhere to its central message, these organizations operate independently of Al Qaeda Central and do not generally coordinate with one another. Further, the new leadership of Ayman al Zawahiri, an extremely divisive figure in the jihadist community, likely means Al Qaeda Central will have a more difficult time controlling operatives and affiliates around the world. The increasingly confederate nature of Al Qaeda has broken down the hierarchical system bin Laden built in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Lower barriers of access to terrorism

Al Qaeda has adapted to the increasing difficulty of maintaining a physical organization in an identifiable safe haven such as Afghanistan by relying on the Internet and public media to spread its ideology and give individuals the tools to become terrorists. Just as Twitter and blogs made everyone a potential journalist, Al Qaeda and its affiliates launched a variety of media outlets and websites with the hope of making everyone a potential terrorist.

Publications such as AQAP’s English-language magazine Inspire feature interviews with prominent leaders and how-to articles such as “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.” Meanwhile, Al Qaeda’s media production house As Sahab produces “documentary-quality films, iPod files and cellphone video” for distribution across terrorist-sympathetic message boards and blogs.

The effect of this propaganda boom and the proliferation of easily attainable bomb-making instructions has been a further decentralization of international terrorism. While members of terrorist cells still actively recruit radicals to carry out attacks, such as the failed Times Square bomb plot last year, terrorism has become increasingly reliant on volunteers who are inspired by Al Qaeda’s ideology.

One example is Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people in 2009 and was inspired by AQAP’s Anwar al Awlaki. Hasan regularly emailed Awlaki for spiritual guidance and justification in the lead-up to the attack.

To an extent, the increasing decentralization of terrorism represents a loss in Al Qaeda’s operational capabilities. This means that they are less likely to pull off another expensive and complex attack like 9/11. But the decentralization of terrorism also poses a variety of new threats.

For one, it makes it significantly harder for the intelligence community to track would-be terrorists and thwart their efforts, which is why the only successful attacks in the United States since 9/11 have been gunmen acting alone inspired by the Al Qaeda ideology.

Al Qaeda’s ability to communicate and spread its ideology to a constituency of radicals is likely its most powerful remaining tool since 9/11, and now that a potential terrorist can Google an inspirational sermon and bomb-making instructions instead of needing to fly to a training camp in Kandahar, this tool has become even more potent.

The near enemy vs. the far enemy

One of the truly unique and dangerous elements of Al Qaeda’s brand of terrorism is its transnational nature. Bin Laden and many of his followers derided the governments of most Muslim-majority nations, in particular Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as apostates. Yet instead of targeting these governments, often referred to as the “near enemy,” Al Qaeda believed that destroying their U.S. and Western allies, the “far enemy,” would more effectively lead to the downfall of apostate Arab regimes. The group’s transnational aims and focus on the United States made it unique among terrorist organizations and brought jihadist terrorism to American soil.

Over the last decade, the United States has demonstrated the enormous costs associated with making it a target. When coupled with the death of bin Laden, the most effective advocate for this strategy, the near enemy/far enemy balance has shifted decidedly in favor of the near enemy. Al Qaeda affiliates, with the possible exception of AQAP, seem much more concerned about attacking domestic targets as opposed to spending their resources on a much more difficult attack on the other side of the planet.

Additionally, Al Qaeda’s membership now frequently loses recruits to organizations such as the Afghan Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, or Lashkar-e-Taiba who have purely national and not transnational aspirations. These organizations may be similar to Al Qaeda in that they use violence to kill civilians and seek to establish a conservative Islamist caliphate, but their goals only apply to the country they operate in.

Of the 48 groups designated by the Department of State as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Al Qaeda is the only group left with truly global operations and aspirations. The remaining groups, such as the Kurdish PKK, the Colombian FARC, the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, and the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo have a distinctly national or semiregional focus. Many of these groups frequently target American citizens, soldiers, and interests in their countries, but they either do not possess the capabilities or desire to launch an attack on U.S. or European soil.

What do these changes mean for terrorism in America today?

Since 9/11 we have braced for the possibility of another catastrophic attack on U.S. soil and pursued policies that have thankfully prevented such an attack from happening again. But largely because of our success in decapitating and dismantling terrorist networks and organizations, the landscape of terrorism looks very different than it did 10 years ago. Today we are less likely to face a large, complex attack from an enemy organization abroad such as Al Qaeda. But we remain vulnerable to a smaller, less traceable attack from an individual or small group of individuals here in the United States.

Incidents such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, or the Oslo attacks earlier this year are likely to become the dominant strain of terrorism entering the next decade after 9/11. While many would-be terrorists are inspired by the ideology of Al Qaeda and Anwar al Awlaki, as we have seen, lone-wolf terrorists can draw their inspiration from antigovernment or xenophobic ideologies as well.

Unfortunately, we have scaled back our efforts to combat the variety of small domestic threats we face. The face and nature of terrorism looks starkly different than it did on September 11, 2001, and our counterterrorism strategy will need to evolve along with the threat if we want to prevent death by a “thousand cuts.”

Ken Sofer is the Special Assistant for National Security at American Progress.

See also:

• Remembering 9/11 by Rudy deLeon
• 9/11′s Impact on Conservative Foreign Policy by Peter Juul
• Video: Growing Up in a Post-9/11 World
• The 9/11 Generation by Eleni Towns

SOURCE: AP/U.S. Marshal's Service

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed underwear bomber, who was prosecuted in criminal court, cooperated with authorities with intelligence gathering. Military detention has a spotty record at best with gaining intelligence.

Once again this morning The Washington Post lends its op-ed space to the neverending conservative campaign to weaken U.S. counterterrorism policy.

This time Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) complain that the Obama administration sent a suspected member of the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab to a New York federal court for trial instead of military detention in Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. criminal justice system boasts a long and successful record of prosecuting terrorism cases and obtaining valuable intelligence information. Guantanamo, however, remains a terrorist-recruiting bonanza. Sending an al-Shabaab member there is a terrible idea that would elevate the stature of the terrorist group and draw it more into direct conflict with the United States.

The circumstances of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame’s detention are certainly sensational. He was seized somewhere at sea between Somalia and Yemen and held aboard a U.S. Navy ship for at least two months while being interrogated by the High-Value Interrogation Group, or HIG, the team drawn from numerous frontline U.S. government agencies established by the Obama administration specifically to question suspected high-ranking terrorists. It was then determined after extensive discussions among top Obama administration national security officials to transfer Warsame to New York for trial on material support for terrorism and conspiracy charges.

This last move is what created the political opportunity for President Obama’s opponents to go on the attack despite the fact that this case is very similar to that of the 2008 arrest of Afiaa Siddique. Siddique was captured in Afghanistan and accused of the attempted murder of U.S. military personnel. The Bush administration quickly transferred her to the United States for trial in a federal court, where she was convicted and sentenced to 86 years in prison.

Conservatives didn’t say anything about Siddique’s transfer to the United States for trial, but 23 senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stoking unfounded fears that Warsame would be released in the United States. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took to the Senate floor to accuse President Obama of “deliberately importing a terrorist into the United States.” And today, Sens. Liberman and Ayotte claim “there is no good reason” not to use Guantanamo for the detention and prosecution of Warsame thus avoiding “the risks associated with a terrorism trial in a U.S. city.”

Well, senators, I have a few reasons. And they’re based on facts—not on attempts to scare the American people for political gain.

Criminal courts are much more experienced in prosecuting terrorists. Far from the supposed “advantages” Sens. Lieberman and Ayotte claim for military commissions, criminal courts are significantly better suited to prosecuting suspected terrorists on these charges than the Guantanamo military commissions. U.S. federal courts have extensive experience in handling cases involving charges of material support for terrorism and conspiracy, literally having prosecuted dozens if not hundreds of such cases whereas similar military commissions cases can be counted on one hand.

Criminal courts produce longer sentences. Looking at the results of these cases also demonstrates the criminal courts’ superiority as two of the three individuals convicted on material support charges in military commissions have already been set free while criminal courts dole out much longer sentences of at least 15 years. The prime example of this was the case of Salim Hamdan, who was acquitted by a military commission of conspiracy but convicted of material support for terrorism for serving as Osama bin Laden’s driver. His sentence was five months, and he was returned home to Yemen by the Bush administration.

Warsame’s conviction in a military commission could be overturned on appeal. Prosecuting Warsame for material support for terrorism and conspiracy charges in military commissions also runs the unnecessary risk that any conviction will be overturned on appeal for reasons unrelated to his alleged actions. Military commissions are established to prosecute war crimes, and neither material support nor conspiracy has ever been considered a war crime subject to prosecution in a military tribunal. That creates the very real prospect that any such conviction would be overturned on appeal. Why take that risk when a perfectly good and tested alternative exists?

Criminal courts yield reliable intelligence. Sens. Liberman and Ayotte next urge the detention of suspected terrorists like Warsame to be based on “intelligence gathering,” but completely ignore the evidence that the criminal justice system is an excellent source of reliable intelligence and military detention has a spotty record at best. Leaving aside that Warsame was interrogated for weeks by the HIG, he is reportedly still cooperating with federal authorities while his criminal case advances. Warsame is cooperating just like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed underwear bomber; Bryant Vinas, the American captured in Pakistan who has provided a “treasure trove” of information; and David Headley, who gave up information that rolled up terrorist cells and won convictions. The list goes on.

Intelligence collection from military detention is spotty. Sens. Lieberman and Ayotte claim that military detention is superior for intelligence collection because suspected terrorists “can be interrogated for as long as necessary in order to gain intelligence.” That would be great if the duration of interrogation was connected in any way to results. But unfortunately the evidence does not bear this out. The Bush administration detained Jose Padilla in military custody for more than five years, but he never provided any useful or reliable information to his interrogators. The same is true for Ali al-Mari, who was also held by the Bush administration for years in military custody and never cooperated.

Detaining Warsame at Guantanamo would help terrorists win more recruits. Conditions at Guantanamo have significantly improved since the darkest days of the Bush administration. But it is equally true that the detention center remains a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, and a potent propaganda and recruitment weapon for America’s terrorist enemies. Sending a member of al-Shabaab to Guantanamo—treating him as a warrior rather than a criminal—would hand the Somali-based terrorist group a major opening to elevate its standing among international terrorist groups vying for prominence in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death. It would also boost their recruiting, an effort which already occurs among Somali communities in the United States.

Sending Warsame to Guantanamo could draw al-Shabaab into targeting the United States. Al-Shabaab’s recruiting pitches and activities have largely focused on drawing young Somalis back to their homeland to fight for control of the country and not on conducting terrorist attacks on the United States or other targets. It does now appear, however, as if al-Shabaab is expanding its focus beyond Somalia’s borders. Sending a member of al-Shabaab to a place as loaded with symbolic power as Guantanamo could actually provide fresh impetus for them to direct more resources toward attacking U. S. targets with a pre-existing stable of Somali-American recruits.

Criminal courts have a long and successful record of handling terrorism cases like Warsame’s. They produce reliable intelligence information and deliver long jail sentences while military commissions are virtually untested, certainly unreliable, often allow for the quick release of those convicted, and have not demonstrated much in the way of producing intelligence.

Sens. Lieberman and Ayotte want the Obama administration to reject a criminal justice system that works in favor of a military detention system that would boost terrorist recruiting and might even draw al-Shabaab into expanding its operations to include U.S. targets. The Obama administration is right not to listen to them.

Ken Gude is Managing Director of the National Security and International Policy Program at American Progress.

See also:

• Conservatives Outraged over Prosecution of Terror Suspect by Ken Gude

SOURCE: AP/Carolyn Kaster

Chief Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan, above, announced a new strategy in the United States' efforts to fight terrorism this week.

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan announced a new effort on Wednesday to give the United States a surgeon’s precision in the fight against terrorism by focusing more directly on Al Qaeda. The new National Strategy for Counterterrorism, when coupled with President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan drawdown speech last week, represents the end of the era of resource-intensive counterinsurgency strategy as a means to fight terrorism. The new counterterrorism strategy aims to address the evolving threat of a decentralized Al Qaeda through smaller, discreet operations, and recognizes the need to provide nonmilitary assistance to civilians in the most vulnerable areas exploited by terrorists. We applaud this new approach as a step in the right direction but recognize it comes with new dangers.

Counterinsurgency has proven costly and ineffective in battling terrorists. A new study finds that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion at a time when Congress is looking to slash vital domestic programs. Worse, the human costs of the wars exceed 6,000 U.S. soldiers killed and 40,000 wounded both physically and mentally. The number of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the war is, by “very conservative estimates,” over 132,000.

These expensive endeavors actually played into Osama bin Laden’s strategy of “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” In contrast, the mission that killed bin Laden was undertaken by a mere two dozen soldiers at a tiny fraction of the price.

Al Qaeda and its allied terrorist groups have adapted their tactics since their ouster from Afghanistan. They are using a less centralized network of smaller regional affiliates to carry the terrorist cause across the globe. This international Al-Qaeda-inspired network has groups based in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Algeria with smaller cells across the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.

Resource-intensive counterinsurgency operations are a poor match for such a diffuse array of terrorist groups. Some possess the capability to attack the United States and others perhaps only the intent. The administration’s new counterterrorism strategy recognizes this new reality.

But just as massive ground invasions produced serious blowback, we cannot ignore the potential for similar reactions to elements of this new strategy. The greater reliance on more surgical strikes, for example, has become synonymous with unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. According to U.S. officials, the drone campaign in Pakistan has yielded significant tactical advantages in eliminating terrorist leaders and generally putting terrorist groups under great stress. What is equally true, however, is that the drones are extremely unpopular with local populations and can be a driver of recruitment into terrorist or extremist groups. In fact, Faisal Shazaad reportedly claimed he was motivated to try to detonate a bomb in Times Square last May because of the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan.

This is why reports that the United States is now increasing the use of drones in Yemen and Somalia give us pause. It’s not that drones are ineffective or shouldn’t be used, but merely that it would be a mistake to allow the only U.S. footprint in those areas to be drones. This essentially replaces ground invasion with death from above.

The rebalancing possible under a strategy that rejects counterinsurgency should free up some resources to invest in the progress of these at-risk countries. The United States can meaningfully improve security for people in Yemen with a few million dollars of investment and be much more effective than a trillion-dollar invasion and counterinsurgency operation in a country like Iraq.

The point is that there are military and nonmilitary means to combat terrorism that do not involve such a large presence of U.S. soldiers and are much more effective than massive ground invasions. By reducing our large military presence and replacing it with a more deliberate, targeted strategy, we can cut off the oxygen that fuels terrorist groups. In such a delicate time in the Middle East, we have the opportunity to alter our efforts in the most vulnerable areas of the world, turn the tide against anti-American sentiment, and redefine our role in the region. Further, our renewed and expanded nonmilitary efforts can help secure civilian populations and develop regional networks to combat terrorism wherever it appears.

We must be vigilant but pragmatic against the dynamic terrorist threat. The strategic shift away from massive military operations represents a good first step.

Ken Gude is the Managing Director for National Security, Ken Sofer is the Special Assistant, and Aaron Gurley is an intern at American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Al-Jazeera, file

Osama bin Laden’s appeal, though cynical, was rooted in real grievances against longstanding U.S. support for undemocratic regimes.

It goes without saying that the end of the terrorist mass murderer Osama bin Laden does not mean the end of the terrorist threat against the United States. Nor does it end the debate over the nature of that threat and the best methods of defeating it. But hopefully the death of America’s most notorious enemy—and an easing of the fears of millions that were bound up with him—will provide us an opportunity to think more rigorously about what it is he represented and what that means for the United States’ future relationships with the Arab publics to whom Osama bin Laden pitched his appeal.

The New York Times’s Anthony Shadid and David Kirkpatrick reported Tuesday that bin Laden’s legacy in the Arab world is not a simple one. The overwhelming majority in that region rejected his ultraconservative ideology as well as his reprehensible terrorist methods. But there was and still remains some measure of admiration for the man who defiantly declared war on the regimes that have oppressed Arabs for decades and on the Great Power patron who facilitated that oppression.

One of the great ironies of U.S. policy after the September 11 attacks was that President George W. Bush seemed to grasp that bin Laden’s appeal, though cynical, was rooted in real grievances against longstanding U.S. support for undemocratic regimes and that this regional status quo was unsustainable.

“Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe,” President Bush said in a 2003 speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.”

And yet having diagnosed the problem, his administration’s bizarre prescription—invading and occupying Iraq as a way to kick-start regional change—directly resulted in its having to abandon its democracy agenda and double down on support for those same dictators, pleading with them to help stem the extremist tide that the Iraq debacle unleashed.

In other words, President Bush voiced support for regional democrats and then withdrew it and scuttled back behind the usual Arab authoritarian enforcers. In so doing, he helped bring the United States’ reputation in the Middle East to a historic low point. America’s power and ability to shape events in the region was significantly diminished.

Fortunately, Al Qaeda’s own strategic stupidity prevented the organization from profiting too much from this. Its staggering brutality in Iraq and other countries such as Jordan—where a massive hotel bombing in 2005 resulted in anti-Al Qaeda demonstrations—managed to alienate rather than embolden and inspire new recruits (though of course many of those who did join up to fight in Iraq have returned to their respective countries to carry on the fight).

It would be a mistake to interpret Al Qaeda’s failure in this respect as a U.S. policy success. We’ve seen spectacularly over the past few months that the grievances to which bin Laden appealed are still present in the Middle East. The difference is that they’ve been expressed in a far more admirable and inspiring way, by those who’ve demonstrated in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and elsewhere.

But the truth is the U.S. foreign policy community hasn’t been able to squarely consider what made bin Laden’s propaganda resonate as much as it did and what a radical shift this might require for U.S. policy in the region. The Arab Spring of revolutions—or what I desperately hope will be an Arab Spring—makes it more imperative than ever that we do so.

What bin Laden got right is the strong perception among Muslims that the United States’ relationship with the Muslim Middle East has not been very good for most Muslims in the Middle East. To say that relationship has been built upon security imperatives is facile. All relationships between states are built upon security to a great extent.

More specifically, this relationship has been built on a shortsighted and long-outdated vision of security in which the primary point of American engagement was its military who buttressed authoritarian leaders who promised to keep their people quiet and the oil flowing. The people of the Middle East have now resoundingly rejected this deal. (And they have also, thankfully, stridently rejected bin Ladenism.) The United States must as well.

There’s now a dangerous idea in certain D.C. circles that if we help the people of the Middle East have true democracy, they’ll choose governments and policies the United States likes. This is simply not true. These governments will not act as America’s willing enforcers any more if and when they come to truly reflect popular will.

For instance, the current Egyptian government may not yet be fully democratic. But it’s clearly more democratic than the previous one in the sense that it is more responsive to popular will, which is strongly supportive of the Palestinians. This responsiveness is part of what led it to violate clearly marked U.S. red lines and broker a unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas. This is what the democratic future of the Middle East will look like.

The bottom line is this: While Americans may see our efforts in Muslim lands through the lens of freedom bringing, many if not most of the people there don’t see it that way. Recognizing that fact is essential because soon—hopefully—these people will be voting, probably for leaders and policies Americans won’t always be pleased with.

This doesn’t mean the United States should withdraw from engagement in these lands—quite the opposite. We need to broaden and deepen that engagement beyond the point of a gun to develop America’s relationship with the people of the Middle East and not just with its regimes.

Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst and Director of Middle East Progress at American Progress.

See also:

• Another Way to Fight Terrorism by Sarah Margon
• After bin Laden by Caroline Wadhams and Colin Cookman
• The bin Laden Aftermath by Brian Katulis
• A Chance for America and Pakistan to Enhance Coordination to Fight Common Threats by Peter Juul, Brian Katulis, and Caroline Wadhams
• Osama’s Death Unites Americans that Came of Age After 9/11 by Sam Fulwood III

SOURCE: AP/Charles Dharapak

President Barack Obama speaks about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. The Obama administration has an important opportunity to shift its counterterrorism policy toward a comprehensive approach that boldly recalibrates and adapts to a dramatically changed landscape.

Al Qaeda’s devastating 2001 attacks on the United States undoubtedly made Osama bin Laden the most wanted terrorist on the planet. His recent death—and the well-conceived plan that enabled it—is a tremendous victory for the Obama administration that should be heralded. But as spontaneous displays of elation erupt around the world, we must acknowledge that the terrorist threats to our national security do not die with bin Laden.

Since 9/11 we have seen some important successes in the fight against terrorism, including the disruption of terrorist financing networks, the interruption and prevention of attacks both at home and abroad, and a significantly narrower global operating space for terrorists. But the growth and strengthening of multiple local Al Qaeda franchises indicates the need to further shift our policy approach to ensure our long-term security.

The State Department’s 2009 “Country Reports on Terrorism” rightly notes that the Al Qaeda threat has become more dispersed and more geographically diversified in recent years. The Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, has undertaken multiple attacks against the United States and its allies since its founding in January 2009. Some of these attacks were more successful than others but there’s little doubt they will continue.

A lesser-known affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, which is based in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa’s Sahel region, has dramatically upped its kidnapping and killing of westerners in recent months. Many believe they were responsible for last week’s attack in Morocco.

Even the Somali-based al-Shabab, which maintains loose ties with Al Qaeda, recently undertook its first international operation in Uganda during the 2010 World Cup. Unfortunately, the attack succeeded and more than 70 people were killed, including Americans. Al-Shabab spokesmen have already communicated that they plan to take revenge for bin Laden’s death with "destructive explosions."

The 2009 “Country Reports” goes on to note that “[a]lthough the al Qaeda core in Pakistan remains the most significant threat to the United States, efforts to expand its operational capabilities by partnering with other terrorist groups remained a top priority for the organization.” Clearly Al Qaeda achieved this goal.

Bin Laden’s death may render Al Qaeda central’s fate uncertain for the time being. But we should be under no illusions that the global network of affiliates—no matter how loosely connected—is about to crumble.

Just last week, at a conference in Washington, D.C., Ambassador Dan Benjamin, the State Department’s coordinator for the Office of Global Terrorism, once again reminded us that “[w]hile the AQ core has weakened operationally, the affiliates have become stronger … [and that] this shift in activity towards the affiliates has been underway for some time.” The death of Osama bin Laden has great potential to reinforce that shift.

The Obama administration has an important opportunity to shift its counterterrorism policy toward a comprehensive approach that boldly recalibrates and adapts to a dramatically changed landscape. This opportunity is only reinforced by the uprisings across the Arab world, which are an unequivocal rejection of Al Qaeda’s fundamental principles.

The administration should consider these suggestions:

Lose the country-by-country approach

The Obama administration should craft a more comprehensive approach that focuses on the transnational, interconnected nature of global terrorism instead of focusing on a country-by-country approach to fight terrorism. The increasing ability for the local Al Qaeda affiliates to act quasi-independently while still maintaining critical links to Al Qaeda central means we need to be smart about engagement. Anticipating and preventing attacks requires a strategic focus that doesn’t get stuck in one part of the world indefinitely. Given the finite resources available, being smart means being strategic in our deployment of resources—both financial and materiel. Getting caught off guard or underestimating a potential safe haven because we’re too narrowly focused on one country or one region could result in an ad hoc response that jeopardizes our security instead of enhancing it.

Reflect on local conditions

We also need to consider the impact of local conditions on our ability to partner with local actors. A more global approach means factoring local elements into the overarching strategy in order to facilitate better decision making.

Consider these questions: How willing and able are local governments to work together to combat cross-border threats, such as in the case of Mali and Algeria? How do development concerns—such as water scarcity or rampant corruption in a pre-revolutionary Yemen—impact commitment to focus on the threats that are our top priorities? How can we help build a functional central government in Somalia in order to decrease opportunities for terrorists to operate there? How can our foreign assistance contribute to economic growth and support the many unemployed youth throughout North Africa and the Middle East, who might be otherwise open to recruitment by terrorist groups?

Crafting a meaningful, sustainable strategy to fight terrorism requires finding the right balance between understanding critical local conditions and being able to respond to legitimate threats from around the world.

Centralize human rights and governance

Al Qaeda affiliates—from Algeria to Yemen—thrive on political instability as well as by associating America with autocratic regimes such as those that have recently been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. The United States can no longer be seen as complicit in the denial of freedom and human dignity if it actively and openly supports human rights, accountability, and the rule of law.

Engaging beyond government officials—as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has increasingly sought to do—can help bolster genuine efforts at democratic reform. Employing a two-pronged approach that works closely with governments and civil society can help readjust our foreign policy goals to embrace these core values at the same time that it further undermines Al Qaeda’s objectives.

Get our diplomats out and about

Our diplomats work in tough environments but they still should be encouraged to get out of embassy compounds for regular meetings with representatives from the local community. These meetings help diplomats gain better access to open-source information and understand local dynamics, and they can also help reshape the face of America by encouraging the growth of individual relationships and networks.

The death of bin Laden and the uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa present an essential window for the Obama administration to shift toward a more globalized, wide-ranging counterterrorism policy. Some of the measures outlined above are already underway but a more pronounced effort is needed. We can better address our security concerns while helping to build legitimate democratic partners around the world by implementing a global approach that focuses on the decentralization of Al Qaeda, incorporates local dynamics, prioritizes human rights and the rule of law, and bolsters the work of our diplomats.

Sarah Margon is the Associate Director for the Sustainable Security program at American Progress.

See also:

• After bin Laden: Implications for U.S. Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Caroline Wadhams and Colin Cookman
• The bin Laden Aftermath by Brian Katulis
• Osama’s Death Unites Americans that Came of Age After 9/11 by Sam Fulwood III
• The Force of Special Forces by Lawrence Korb
• A Chance for America and Pakistan to Enhance Coordination to Fight Common Threats by Peter Juul, Brian Katulis, and Caroline Wadhams

SOURCE: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Crowds gather outside the White House in Washington early Monday, May 2, 2011, to celebrate after President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden.

Late on a clear, cool, spring Sunday night, a dozen or so young people rushed to the north side gate that separates the White House from a large public park in downtown Washington, D.C. They waved flags that fluttered shimmering stars on a blue background, rippled by red and white stripes. They chanted “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” over and over. A few broke into song, a full-throated, if off-key version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

On the other side of the iron gate, President Barack Obama prepared to tell the world that Navy SEALs had successfully followed his orders and killed Osama bin Laden. But the unofficial news had already seeped into the streets. Twitter and Facebook feeds circulated like rush-hour traffic, mixing fact and rumor with the frenzy of expectant optimism. Televised talking heads said it was so, reporting confirmation that the world’s top terrorist had been shot dead in a 40-minute firefight with U.S. servicemen.

As young people came, they were joined by others in a spontaneous outpouring of celebration. Business travelers put aside work or bedtime to walk from Washington’s luxury hotels to see it for themselves. Suburbanites rushed to the city center. One young man drove from Delaware to be at the center of the action after seeing it on CNN. It was reminiscent of the climatic scene in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” where wide-eyed people drew together, as if pulled by a human magnet. The need to be together was inexplicable, part curiosity and part emotional, a compelling desire to be in physical proximity with others who have shared the same feelings and experiences.

Osama bin Laden’s death is a punctuation mark for this generation. In earlier epochs, defining moments such as the Great Depression, World War II, the assassinations of President John Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the humiliating withdrawal from Saigon, and Watergate’s deceit defined the social and political contours of young lives in their respective generations.

For the folks who’ve come of age in the early 21st century, few will ever forget the celebration following bin Laden’s death. Whether in Washington’s Lafayette Park or at Ground Zero in New York City, the young people who raced to be among their peers shared the experience as a defining moment, a bookend to the loss of security that homeland terrorism cast upon the entirety of their lives.

Ann Garcia, 23, was in the ninth grade on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers fell. “All my life has been defined by what Osama bin Laden did,” she said. “I have mixed feelings about hearing that he has been killed. I’m relieved that he can’t harm anyone else, but I’ve been reading a lot of statements from people in my generation. We’re conflicted about celebrating someone’s death.”

Garcia pointed to her computer screen where feeds from her Facebook friends commented on the biggest news story of the day. She focused on the one that quoted Mark Twain: “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

“That’s how I feel,” she said softly.

Annabel Hogg, 23, was about to retire for the night when her BlackBerry beeped with an email alert from The New York Times. She dressed quickly, grabbed her digital camera, and sped several blocks downtown on her bike to Lafayette Park. She arrived shortly after midnight and lingered in the crowd for more than an hour.

“It was crazy,” she said. “People were still pouring in when I left.”

For the party-like atmosphere, Hogg was left a bit uncomfortable and shocked by her reactions. There was, she said, something churlish about cheering and celebrating the death of a human being, even Osama bin Laden’s, widely and uniformly viewed among her peers as evil incarnate.

“I don’t feel right about someone dying,” she told me a day later when we arrived at our offices. “But I understand the emotions and how they were released. I have and people of my generation have been profoundly affected by 9/11.”

Hogg compared the scene in Lafayette Park to being in the same spot on the night Barack Obama was elected president. She was a student at American University then and felt compelled to celebrate with other students. “My pictures look the same, people cheering with jubilation and excitement, but the feeling I get from them is very different. One set was about hope and pride; the other set about relief and confused excitement,” she said.

Still, she’s disquieted by the cheering and gloating over one man’s death because it represents such strong and mixed emotions. She’s not sure she wants to post the pictures she took on her Facebook page because she’s still hurt and confused by what the celebratory scene really means.

“Maybe I’m more angry because of what Osama represented,” she said. “He caused 9/11 and by doing so, he took away what the country had been before, one without terror alerts and men in caves who we are told want to kill us.”

So what now that Osama bin Laden is dead? The young people still fear terrorism. But could it really be that the worst of the terrorist nightmare, the scourge of a generation, has eased? If so, that helps explain the conflicted and complicated reactions of the young people who spilled into the streets. They were there to be among their peers, in the mix of relief and hope. To cheer, chant, and sing of an America they’ve never known and so desperately want to hold.

Sam Fulwood III is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

See also:

• After bin Laden: Implications for U.S. Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Caroline Wadhams and Colin Cookman
• Another Way to Fight Terrorism by Sarah Margon
• The bin Laden Aftermath by Brian Katulis
• The Force of Special Forces by Lawrence Korb
• A Chance for America and Pakistan to Enhance Coordination to Fight Common Threats by Peter Juul, Brian Katulis, and Caroline Wadhams

SOURCE: AP/Rahimullah Yousafzai

In this December 24, 1998, photo, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden speaks to a selected group of reporters in mountains of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

Léalo en español

Nearly 10 years after the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, justice is now served upon the criminal most responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans. Osama bin Laden is dead as a result of the tenacious pursuit by U.S. intelligence and two Navy SEAL units ordered into action by President Barack Obama yesterday.

The leader of Al Qaeda declared war on the United States but waged a merciless war on humanity, and now all of those around the world who want peace will rest easier knowing bin Laden is dead. It is the families and loved ones of his victims, people of every religion and from all corners of the globe, who will be grateful for this moment the most.

A courageous U.S. Navy SEAL team carried out this operation, yet we must also recognize the hundreds of thousands of Americans who answered the call of duty after 9/11 and fought on the frontlines of the war against bin Laden and Al Qaeda. It is to these brave men and women who sacrifice so much every day in the defense of our country that we owe an eternal debt of gratitude, especially to those who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect us all. Although nothing can make up for the loss of loved ones in battle, for the families of our fallen, this too is a day of remembrance and celebration.

Osama bin Laden’s death is a severe blow to Al Qaeda and an unprecedented victory in the fight against terrorism. Our fight with Al Qaeda is not over, and there may be more dark days ahead, but today, for the first time in a long time, the end is all that much closer.

Léalo en español

John D. Podesta is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

President Barack Obama hosts an iftar dinner, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast for Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan, in the State Dining Room at the White House on August 13, 2010. He emphasized the American tenet of religious freedom just as New York City is immersed in a deeply sensitive debate about whether a mosque should be built near the site of the World Trade Center that was destroyed during the September 11 terror attacks.

The United States is at its strongest when Americans have the courage to stand up for the values that make this country great. President Obama is upholding the best traditions of our Constitution by supporting Muslim Americans’ ability to build a mosque and community center on private property near Ground Zero.

September 11 left deep scars on Manhattan and the United States. The family and friends of the 3,000 who perished have suffered the most, yet all Americans share in the pain of that fateful day. Ground Zero is hallowed ground and will forever live in our hearts. But it is misguided to believe that we honor the victims by rejecting the values they cherished while succumbing to the very fear and hatred their murderers were trying to provoke.

Osama bin Laden wants Muslims to believe that America and the West are at war with Islam. That distorted view is the best and virtually only way he has to recruit young Muslims into his murderous cause. That cause targets America and our allies, but his primary mission is to destroy contemporary Islam, and the majority of his victims are Muslims.

The biggest threat to bin Laden is precisely the kind of Islam that is embodied in the Cordoba Initiative mosque and community center. Muslim Americans practicing their religion in freedom, rejecting the perversion of the faith that drives Al Qaeda, and preaching against radicalism and violence is exactly what bin Laden fears. Building this facility will help the United States and its allies prevail in this struggle against violent extremist groups like al Qaeda by undermining Osama bin Laden’s narrative that America is at war with the Muslim world.

We understand the raw emotions triggered by memories of September 11, but we are not at our strongest when we are fearful. The American experiment with freedom and religious liberty would not have been unique if it was easy and would not have survived without brave decisions to sustain it. We support building this mosque.

Ken Gude is Director of the International Justice and Security Program at the Center for American Progress.

For more information, see:

• The Distorted Lens of Islamophobia

Read more here.

SOURCE: AP/Craig Ruttle

Police officers stand watch in front of the United States Court House in New York on May 4, 2010. Times Square car bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport late Monday, is scheduled to appear in the court building sometime today.

The Obama administration’s integrated approach to meeting the threat posed by terror networks at home and abroad is paying dividends, but the country needs to remain vigilant in the wake of last weekend’s failed bomb attack in Times Square.

The seamless cooperation between local, state, and federal counterterrorism officials that led to an arrest just 53 hours after the failed Times Square attack is the result of a coordinated effort to deploy all available resources to protect the American people from further attacks. The investigation is still ongoing, but counterterrorism officials must use the most effective means of interrogation to obtain information from the suspect—lawful interrogation by counterterrorism professionals led by the FBI.

It did not take conservatives long to begin calling on the Obama administration to abandon these effective counterterrorism tools once the suspect was arrested and identified as a Muslim American. They urged military prosecution and a denial of Miranda rights for the accused. Their arguments fell apart almost as quickly as they were made. Faisal Shahzad, the suspect, is an American citizen and is not eligible for a military commission because the commissions only have jurisdiction over noncitizens. Attorney General Eric Holder also confirmed that Shahzad provided useful information both before and after he was read his Miranda rights.

Remember that the Bush administration’s failed experiment with military detention for suspects captured in the United States—the failure conservatives now want to repeat—ended without obtaining any useful intelligence information from either of the two suspects. That poor record stands in stark contrast with the extensive record of the criminal justice system to produce actionable and reliable intelligence.

Conservatives often deride using law enforcement and intelligence techniques against terrorists. But the swift capture and arrest of the Times Square bombing suspect shows that effective intelligence and law enforcement work—a component of successful counterterrorism operations for decades—is a crucial part of an integrated strategy to keep Americans safe.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s approach of combining quick steps to protect the homeland with aggressive action against terrorist networks in Pakistan and Afghanistan is producing results in those countries. In stark contrast to the previous administration—which under-resourced efforts in Afghanistan and ignored threats coming from Pakistan—the Obama administration has put militant groups in the crosshairs. It is working to complete the mission left unaccomplished in Afghanistan, and has taken out three times more suspected militants in Pakistan in its first 15 months in office compared to the Bush administration’s last five years. 

Gone are the days when President George W. Bush would claim that America was fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here, even while the Bush administration was turning a blind eye to the growing terrorist threat emanating out of Pakistan.

This latest bombing plot—just like a number of other attempts and foiled plots last year—demonstrates that America needs to act swiftly at home and abroad, and we need to use the full range of tools at our disposal to keep Americans safe. These include building strategic partnerships with key governments including Pakistan and India, advancing intelligence and law enforcement cooperation, and using targeted strikes against militant groups when all other reasonable means have been exhausted.  

It’s too soon to tell, but this attempted bombing in Times Square may be a desperate reaction to the increased pressure the United States is putting on militant groups in Pakistan. The investigation will determine whether this was a lone, “self-starter” militant or an individual connected to a broader network and plot. 

Nevertheless, the Times Square bombing attempt demonstrates that if we respond in the right way—acting without overreacting—our country can move forward effectively and keep Americans safe without compromising on the ideals and principles that make our country strong.

Ken Gude is the Director of the International Justice and Security Program and Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at American Progress

For more information, see:

• Progress in Pakistan by Brian Katulis and Caroline Wadhams
• Criminal Courts Are Tougher on Terrorists than Military Detention by Ken Gude
• Targeting Our 9/11 Enemies by Peter Juul and Brian Katulis

SOURCE: AP

A Yemeni anti-terrorism soldier performs a shooting exercise in the Sarif region, on the outskirts of the Yemeni Capital San'a.

America’s attention deficit disorder-afflicted media spent the last week rediscovering Yemen as a country of serious concern for global security. The renewed attention on Yemen, resulting from the failed Christmas Day airline bombing attempt in Detroit, reminds us that terror networks adapt and can quickly defy conventional military responses like troop surges in Afghanistan and Iraq by migrating around the world.

Top newspapers have sent correspondents into Yemen, and last night, ABC’s “World News Tonight” program led with a story quoting an expert saying that Yemen is a “near perfect haven” for terrorists. The fact that leading news organizations still perpetuate the “safe haven” myth, even as a number of terrorism experts and analysts have noted the flaws and fallacies of “safe haven” arguments, is astounding. The most important preparations for the 9/11 attacks took place in Germany and flight schools in the United States. Stateless terror networks can be just as lethal when they use our own territory or countries as a base—even with strong law enforcement and intelligence organizations operating in those areas. The sooner our country understands that, the quicker we’ll adapt our thinking to make our country safer.

It is nonetheless useful to be reminded that Afghanistan and Pakistan aren’t the only countries posing global security threats. Yemen is likely to remain in focus for at least the coming weeks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s announcing an international summit on January 28 in London to discuss the problems posed by Yemen.

Terrorism in Yemen has been a problem for decades—a quick look back at the State Department’s annual terrorism reports in 1992 and 1993 shows that groups have attacked American and other Western targets, including an attack that resulted in the first Bush administration’s decision to remove U.S. military personnel billeted in the southern city of Aden to support airlift operations for Operation Rescue in Somalia.

Then there’s the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden’s harbor, which killed 17 U.S sailors—and tragically Johaan Gookol, a sailor injured in the attack died over the past holiday season from injuries suffered in the attack. The United States killed a top Al Qaeda leader suspected of involvement in the USS Cole attack, Abu Ali al-Harithi, in a Predator drone strike in 2002 that also killed five others, including a U.S. citizen—long before unmanned aerial drone strikes were being used on an almost weekly basis as they are now in Pakistan.

From 2002 to 2009, the United States lost its focus and had its attention diverted to other issues—especially Iraq, which was an unnecessary diversion from finishing the mission in Afghanistan as well as dealing with problems such as Yemen. In 2003 and 2006, a couple of prominent escapes from Yemeni prisons by terror suspects—escapes I noted in this 2007 post—weren’t enough to put Yemen higher on the priority list. And the Bush administration’s mistakes in Iraq strengthened Al Qaeda affiliates who used Iraq as a training ground—as my colleague Matt Duss notes, these “other sons of Iraq,” the next generation of Al Qaeda terrorists—honed their skills and have now returned to places like Yemen.

Yemen garnered renewed attention at the end of last year, after signs that Nidal Hassan, the alleged murderer in the Fort Hood shootings, had contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Islamist cleric now based in Yemen. And Sudarsan Raghavan reports in this morning’s Washington Post that a number of other top Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden’s former spiritual advisor, have migrated to Yemen.

The day before the attempted airline bombing in Detroit, Yemeni forces, with support from the United States, attacked a meeting of senior Al Qaeda leaders. Kinetic operations like these are essential and will continue. But in order to advance stability in Yemen, it will be just as vital to put forward a comprehensive approach aimed at building Yemen’s law enforcement and judicial institutions, as well as advancing economic development.

I traveled to Yemen and interviewed dozens of government officials, academics, and analysts in 2003, and produced this report outlining the governance and rule of law challenges in Yemen. Rereading this report in my own rediscovery of Yemen last week, I was struck by how little the situation in Yemen had progressed. Smart analysts such as Andrew Exum and Richard Fontaine at the Center for a New American Security have recently highlighted Yemen’s long list of challenges, including economic development after the country runs out of oil, and they also rightly note U.S. policy alone cannot determine the outcomes.

The London conference at the end of this month serves as an opportunity to develop a comprehensive sustainable security strategy for Yemen—one that helps Yemen strengthen its institutions and advance the rule of law in order to deal with the threat posed by terrorists, as well as advance stability in the country by promoting economic development. The long list of challenges in Yemen means that there are no quick fix solutions, but America can’t afford to let Yemen fall from the agenda once again.

SOURCE: AP/Alex Brandon

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announces the administration's decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other 9/11 conspirators in a New York courtroom.

The decision today by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other 9/11 conspirators in a U.S. court is a victory for the rule of law and the American system of justice.

Choosing the most legitimate and fair forum available will return the focus onto Mohammed and his grievous crimes, and not on U.S. government misconduct. While the outcome can never be ordained in any legitimate judicial system, a successful conviction of Mohammed and his co-conspirators will finally bring justice to the families of the victims and a clear demonstration that America has overcome the deadly attacks of September 11.

Mohammed and his co-conspirators will be charged in a federal criminal court in the southern district of New York and held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. The Obama administration must wait at least 45 days to bring them into the United States, due to restrictions imposed by Congress on transferring Guantanamo detainees. Once that period is concluded, the trial process will begin but the pretrial phase is likely to last many months.

The most significant issue during this portion of the proceedings will be whether the defendants are allowed to represent themselves during the trial. They have so far refused to cooperate with their military defense lawyers at Guantanamo and it is likely that their objections to being represented by any attorney will continue. The final decision will reside with the judge in the case and will have significant bearing on how the trial moves forward because it is very clear that Mohammed and the others intend to plead guilty.

The 9/11 conspirators have taken every opportunity afforded them to loudly proclaim their responsibility for the attacks and that Al Qaeda planned and orchestrated the entire plot. It is almost inconceivable now that Mohammed would swear before the court and the world that he is not guilty—doing so would undermine Al Qaeda. The main issue will be whether the court accepts the guilty plea, and it may not.

Should it go to actual trial, enough evidence exists to obtain a conviction without using information tainted in any way by U.S. government misconduct. There are concerns that a trial would give Mohammed a platform to rail against the United States and rally his brothers in arms against America. But Mohammed would only expose himself as among the most notorious and unrepentant mass murderers the world has ever known—and that would unquestionably be a victory for the United States.

I worry, however, that the Obama administration may unintentionally hand Al Qaeda a propaganda tool should it—as Holder strongly suggested—seek the death penalty for these men. It is in the strategic interests of the United States to deny these most heinous Al Qaeda terrorists what they want most: martyrdom. Al Qaeda will exploit an execution by the U.S. government as a significant propaganda victory, no matter how fair and legitimate the trial. Life imprisonment, however, would cause Mohammed and his co-conspirators to be forgotten, like Ramzi Yousef and other terrorists currently wasting away in obscurity in U.S. jails, a far harsher punishment for these terrorists than execution.

Prosecuting Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a federal courtroom a mere stone’s throw from Ground Zero demonstrates a belief in the strength of the U.S. system of government. There would be no better evidence that although he was able to orchestrate an attack on the United States that claimed the lives of 3,000 people, he utterly failed to destroy America and all that it stands for.

See also: Interactive Map: Leaders of Pakistan’s Militant Groups

Militant commanders

Baitullah Mehsud
Maulvi Nazir
Hafiz Gul Bahadur
Hakimullah Mehsud
Faqir Mohammad
Omar Khalid
Maulana Fazlullah
Maulana Sufi Mohammad
Qari Zainuddin Mehsud
Haji Turkistan Bhittani
Mangal Bagh
Haji Namdar
Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Baitullah Mehsud

Affiliation: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Taliban Movement of Pakistan, TTP); Shura Ittehad-ul Mujahadeen (United Council of Mujahideen)

Forces: Estimates range from 12,000 to 20,000 fighters in South Waziristan, allegedly including foreign fighters from Uzbekistan and Chechnya. He also receives the loyalty of commanders in multiple Federally Administered Tribal Area agencies as chief of the umbrella TTP organization.

Location: South Waziristan Agency, FATA

Description: Baitullah Mehsud is head of the umbrella Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan organization. He has been linked by Pakistani and American intelligence officials to major high-profile attacks on the Pakistani government and security services, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dozens of suicide bombings.

Lacking formal religious or secular education, Mehsud reportedly left his madrassa schooling to fight in Afghanistan for the Taliban in the 1990s. He joined militant leader Nek Mohammad Wazir and fellow tribesman Abdullah Mehsud (no direct relation) in carrying out attacks against U.S. forces following the 2001 invasion of that country.

Pakistani officials signed a peace agreement with the Mehsuds in February 2005, which Baitullah used to consolidate control over South Waziristan. He was able to gain further strength after the deaths of Nek Mohammad in a June 2004 missile strike and Abdullah Mehsud in a July 2007 raid by Pakistani security services. His forces resumed regular attacks on Pakistani security services following the July 2007 siege of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. These actions led to clashes with neighboring commanders Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who formed the Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement) to counterbalance Mehsud’s growing influence.

Mehsud is credited with ordering the deaths of hundreds of tribal leaders and rival commanders, including Haji Namdar of Khyber Agency and Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, a cousin to Abdullah. He was able to successfully transcend tribal boundaries and secure the allegiance of several commanders across the Federally Administered Tribal Areas—alliances which were formalized in December 2007 when a shura council affirmed him as leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan umbrella organization.

Mehsud is widely reported to have strong links to Al Qaeda and other foreign militants, including Uzbek and Chechen fighters. He has publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban’s Mullah Omar, but the exact degree of coordination between them is unclear, and Omar has issued at least one statement disavowing links to Mehsud, citing his continued attacks on Pakistanis. Mehsud agreed to another ceasefire with the government in April 2008, but this too broke down. He was able to put aside differences with Nazir and Bahadur in February 2009 to form the Shura Ittehadu-ul Mujahadeen (United Council of Mujahadeen), which again pledged to refocus efforts on international forces in Afghanistan. Yet his continued clashes with security services and use of suicide bombing tactics led the Pakistani military to launch renewed military operations against Mehsud’s forces in late June 2009, whose outcome remains unclear.

Maulvi Nazir

Affiliation: Shura Ittehad-ul Mujahideen (United Council of Mujahideen); Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement, MTT)

Forces: Believed to command approximately 3,000 fighters.

Location: South Waziristan Agency, FATA

Description: Maulvi Nazir is a Pakistani Taliban commander with a base in the city of Wana, South Waziristan. He is a member of the Ahmedzai subtribe of the Wazir tribe. He may have received previous military training with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami and is believed to have hosted Al Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan following the fall of the Taliban regime. He retains ties to the Haqqani network.

Nazir signed a peace agreement with the Pakistani military in 2007. Since then, he has clashed with Uzbek and other Central Asian fighters, who he accused of assassinating tribal elders and robbing locals. Those foreigners are believed to have subsequently received shelter with Baitullah Mehsud, sparking a rivalry between the two commanders.

Nazir joined with fellow Wazir tribesman Hafiz Gul Bahadar in 2008 to create the Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement, MTT) as a distinct group from Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and was believed to have received covert Pakistani government support for keeping his attacks directed at American forces in Afghanistan rather than against the Pakistani state. Nazir was reportedly wounded in an American Predator drone strike in October 2008, and a spokesman threatened to carry out attacks against the Pakistani military and major cities if such attacks were not halted—threats Nazir’s followers reiterated in the spring of 2009.

Nazir formed the Shura Ittehad-ul Mujahideen (United Council of Mujahideen) with Gul Bahadar and Baitullah Mehsud in late February 2009 with the shared goal of fighting against the United States. Nazir emphasized at the time that all three groups retained their independent status and territory. Yet Nazir announced in late June that he was abandoning the peace deal negotiated with the Pakistani military in 2008 and would attack Pakistani forces due to continued U.S. drone strikes and the escalating Pakistani military offensive.

Hafiz Gul Bahadur

Affiliation: Shura Ittehad-ul Mujahideen (United Council of Mujahideen); Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement, MTT)

Forces: Estimates range from 8,000 to 10,000 fighters.

Location: North Waziristan

Description: Hafiz Gul Bahadur is a member of the Uthmanzai subtribe of the Wazir tribe and a prominent militant commander based in North Waziristan. He has established ties to the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network, as well as Al Qaeda.

Gul Bahadur fought off Pakistani military incursions into North Waziristan from 2003 to 2005, which culminated in a brokered peace accord, the 2006 North Waziristan Peace Agreement. Gul Bahadur and other local commanders agreed in the accord to expel foreign militants—particularly Uzbek fighters from Central Asia—and concentrate their attacks on American forces in Afghanistan, rather than the Pakistani military. Fighting broke out again between Gul Bahadur forces and the military in July 2007, but another ceasefire was negotiated later that fall.

Gul Bahadur took part in a militant council that established the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as an umbrella militant network, which named Baitullah Mehsud as overall commander. Yet Meshud’s subsequent attacks on Pakistani government security forces and the military response against him caused Gul Bahadur to distance himself from the TTP, reportedly resigning as deputy leader. Gul Bahadur joined with Maulvi Nazeer in June 2008 to form the Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement, MTT), which opposed attacks on Pakistan forces and the presence of foreign Uzbek fighters and allegedly received covert support from the security services. Bahadur, Nazeer, and Baitullah reconciled in February 2009, forming the Shura Ittehad-ul Mujahideen (United Council of Mujahideen), which pledged loyalty to Mullah Omar of the Afghan Taliban and again promised to focus attacks on American troops in Afghanistan rather than the Pakistani military.

Gul Bahadur announced in late June that he was abandoning the ceasefire negotiated in 2007 with the Pakistani military due to the continued use of U.S. drone strikes and the Pakistani military’s expanding operations in the north-west of the country. He decided to ally his group with Baitullah and claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in June 2009 on a Pakistani military convoy that killed 23 soldiers.

Hakimullah Mehsud

Affiliation: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan

Forces: Believed to command approximately 8,000 troops.

Location: Orakzai Agency, FATA

Description: Hakimullah Mehsud is a senior lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud and heads Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan operations in Orakzai Agency, the Khyber Agency, and the adjacent city of Peshawar. He has reportedly led operations targeting NATO supply lines, which have destroyed hundreds of vehicles and shipping containers in the past year and a half.

Hakimullah declared the imposition of sharia law in Orakzai in December 2008. He has been the target of at least one U.S. Predator drone strike, which he survived, and subsequently threatened to conduct ongoing suicide attacks in major Pakistani cities in retaliation for the strikes and for Pakistani military operations against Taliban fighters in the Swat district, Northwest Frontier Province. Hakimullah most recently claimed responsibility for coordinating the June 9, 2009 attack on the Peshawar Pearl Continental Hotel together with the terror group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which killed at least 17 and threatened to seriously disrupt international aid efforts for people displaced by the Swat conflict.

Faqir Mohammad

Affiliation: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan

Forces: Believed to command approximately 5,000 troops.

Location: Bajaur Agency, FATA

Description: Faqir Mohammad is a former disciple of Maulana Sufi Mohmmad’s Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), also known as the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law [see below], and was allegedly a member of Sufi Mohammad’s group of Pakistan fighters who joined to fight with the Afghan Taliban in 2001. He has continued to coordinate attacks into the adjacent Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan after his return to Bajaur. He is believed to have sheltered Arab fighters in Bajaur and acted as a facilitator for Al Qaeda in the border region. He reportedly coordinated a January 2006 meeting with top Al Qaeda ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri in Damadola, Bajaur, which was targeted by a missile strike.

Mohammad was appointed a deputy leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, led by Baitullah Mehsud, at its founding in December 2007. There have been multiple reports of Mohammad’s death, and military operations were launched against his forces in August 2008, displacing over 500,000 people and allegedly killing over 1,800 Taliban fighters. Operations slowed by November 2008, and in February 2009 Mohammad’s forces announced a unilateral ceasefire that was shortly reciprocated by the Pakistani military. The Taliban refused to turn over Mohammad as part of a March 2009 peace agreement, despite military claims of victory, and attacks in Bajaur on security forces resumed when the Pakistani military launched operations in the nearby Malakand Division in April 2009.

Omar Khalid

Affiliation: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan

Forces: Claimed to command approximately 3,000 fighters in a 2008 interview.

Location: Mohmand Agency, FATA

Description: Khalid, also known as Abdul Wali, emerged as a prominent militant commander following the July 2007 siege of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. Following the siege, fighters reportedly under Khalid’s command seized and renamed a local mosque Lal Masjid after the Islamabad establishment and vowed to continue the mission of Lal Masjid leader Ghazi Abdul Rashid, who was killed in the raids. Khalid reportedly received military training in the 1990s by the Pakistani military to conduct attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir and was connected to the banned terror organization Harakat-ul-Mujahadeen, before crossing into Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion in 2001.

Khalid has been the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan representative for the Mohmand agency since its inception in December 2007. In July 2008, Khalid reportedly captured and killed Shah Khalid, a rival militant commander who had opposed attacks on Pakistani security services. He was also linked to the abduction of Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, who was freed in September 2008. The military has conducted operations against his forces and those in neighboring Bajaur Agency, but he remains at large.

Maulana Fazlullah

Affiliation: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan; Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM)

Forces: Believed to have commanded approximately 5,000 fighters prior to the most recent military operations against them in Swat in April 2009.

Location: Swat district, Malakand Division, NWFP

Description: Maulana Fazlullah controls an armed faction of the Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, which has increasingly been identified as an affiliate of Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan since mid-2007. He is nicknamed “Mullah Radio” for his extensive use of pirated FM radio stations to disseminate his message throughout the Swat valley. His group opposed polio vaccine campaigns and girls’ education, and worked to establish a parallel government in parts of Swat.

Fazlullah’s fighters conducted attacks against the government and security services following the Pakistani military’s July 2007 raid on the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. A brief ceasefire agreement broke down in November 2007, and militant forces carried out regular bombings of schools, police and security service members, as well as government facilities within Swat throughout much of 2008. A ceasefire was renewed in late February 2009 after the army, under heavy strain, returned to its barracks and Fazlullah and other Tehrik-e-Taliban commanders in the FATA reciprocated. Fazlullah’s father-in-law, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, brokered a formal peace agreement between Fazlullah’s forces and the provincial government that was eventually signed into law by President Zardari in early April 2009. Yet tensions over the implementation combined with Fazlullah’s forces’ refusal to relinquish their weapons made it short-lived, as Taliban fighters entered the adjacent district of Buner and took police and paramilitary officers hostage. This prompted a heavy military response beginning in late April that is still ongoing. Fazlullah has gone underground since the operation began and is believed to be operating from a stronghold in the Peochar valley within Swat.

Maulana Sufi Mohammad

Affiliation: Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM)

Forces: Does not appear to command troops at this time.

Location: Swat district, Malakand Division, NWFP

Description: Mohammad is a former member of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Islamist party and the founder of Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), which he formed in 1992 and used to call for the imposition of sharia law.

Mohammad organized local recruits to defend the Taliban regime against the American-backed Northern Alliance in 2001. Most of the fighters were ultimately killed or arrested and a few, including Mohammad, returned to Pakistan and were arrested after the group was banned in 2002. Mohammad’s son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah took control of remnants of the TNSM during his imprisonment, during which time he began clashing with military forces and eventually linked himself to Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Mohammad was released from prison in 2008, renounced violence, and was used as an intermediary to broker a peace deal between the provincial government and the Taliban in Swat in February 2009 in return for the implementation of sharia law in the Malakand Division. This was later signed into law by President Zardari as the “Nizam-e-Adl Regulation.” Mohammad demanded personal authority to appoint the qazis (religious judges) for sharia courts as part of the deal, which he said would not be subject to appeal at the civil Peshawar High Court or Supreme Court of Pakistan. These comments, along with high-profile statements in which he declared democracy to be incompatible with Islam, weakened public support for the peace agreement in Pakistan.

Military operations began in the Malakand Division following the Taliban’s refusal to disarm. At least one of Sufi Mohammad’s sons was reported killed in the fighting, and two of his top aides were arrested and subsequently killed in an attack on a prison convoy. Mohammad disappeared from public view following the start of military operations, but reappeared in Peshawar in July amid rumors that he had been detained by Pakistani authorities.

Qari Zainuddin Mehsud

(deceased)

Affiliation: Abdullah Group; allegedly backed by the Pakistani government

Forces: Believed to command as many as 3,000 fighters at the time of his death

Location: South Waziristan and Dera Ismail Khan, NWFP

Description: Qari Zainuddin Mehsud was the self-appointed successor to former Taliban commander Abdullah Mehsud, and emerged in mid-2009 as a local rival to Baitullah Mehsud for control over militant forces in South Waziristan. Baitullah and Zainuddin are members of the same larger tribe, but they are from different sub-clans and are not direct relations.

Zainuddin was allied with Haji Turkistan Bhittani, another local rival of Baitullah’s, but his forces are believed to have been largely driven out of South Waziristan and into the adjacent NWFP district of Dera Ismail Khan, where some reports suggest he received covert government support. Zainuddin, in multiple interviews conducted in June 2009, accused Baitullah of violating the laws of Islam by carrying out suicide attacks and killing civilians. But Zainuddin expressed a commitment to continued jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and other areas where “infidels have come together against Islam.” The two forces clashed several times, and some reports indicate that each killed family members of the other leader. Zainuddin was assassinated at his offices on June 23, 2009, allegedly by a member of his security detail working for Baitullah Mehsud. In late July, Zainuddin’s surviving forces formally joined in alliance with those of Haji Turkistan Bhittani, with Iklhas Khan Mehsud as the new Abdullah Mehsud Group’s leader.

Haji Turkistan Bhittani

Affiliation: Abdullah Group; allegedly backed by the Pakistani government

Forces: Unknown, but has reportedly recently recruited additional followers with government backing for actions against Baitullah Mehsud.

Location: South Waziristan and Tank district, NWFP

Description: Haji Turkistan Bhittani is a leader of the small Bhittani tribe and a former associate of Baitullah Mehsud’s who broke with him over the use of suicide bombings and his attacks on Pakistani security forces. Bhittani reportedly fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and previously served in Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps.

Bhittani’s forces have clashed with Baitullah’s since at least mid-2008, and have been subject to retaliatory suicide bombings. To date, he has escaped unharmed. Bhittani described Baitullah Mehsud in recent press interviews as an agent of American, Indian, and Israeli interests, and accused him of misleading local youth into attacks on fellow Muslims and the Pakistani security forces. Bhittani pledged, following ally Qari Zainuddin Mehsud’s death, to eliminate Baitullah’s network in South Waziristan. His own forces are now concentrated in the adjacent district of Tank, where Pakistani press sources reports he is recruiting followers based out of government-owned buildings. In late July, Bhittani’s forces allied with the survivors of Qari Zainuddin Mehsud’s fighters to form a new Abdullah Mehsud Group opposed to Baitullah, which named Iklha Khan Mehsud as its leader.

Mangal Bagh

Affiliation: Lashkar-e-Islami (Army of Islam, LEI); Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement, MTT)

Forces: Unknown; claims to have approximately 10,000 fighters, but this number is likely exaggerated.

Location: Khyber Agency, FATA, and Peshawar, NWFP

Description: Mangal Bagh is a former bus driver who took over leadership of the group Lashkar-e-Islami in the Khyber Agency of the FATA shortly after its founding in 2005. LEI imposed a strict moral code through much of the area, operating pirate radio stations and conducting public executions in some reported cases. The group was officially banned in 2007, but continued to operate with what some locals interpreted to be support of the Pakistani military and intelligence services.

The group’s activities in and around Peshawar escalated in the summer of 2008, including the kidnapping of 16 Christians who were later released after intensive negotiations. The Pakistan Army began military operations against the group in June 2008, including shelling Bagh’s bases, but he instructed his forces not to resist the army, and most are reported to have fled prior to the operation. Bagh denied that his forces were challenging the authority of the state or conducting attacks on NATO supply convoys, and insisted he had no connection to Al Qaeda or Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan; there have been few reports of subsequent military action against him. Bagh formed the Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement) together with Haji Namdar and Hafiz Gul Bahadur to resist the TTP and local Baitullah lieutenant Hakimullah Mehsud, but there were few reports of direct clashes between the groups following Namdar’s death.

Haji Namdar

(deceased)

Affiliation: Tanzim Amr bil Maroof wa Nehi Anil Munkir (Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue); Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement, MTT)

Forces: Organizational strength unclear following his death.

Location: Khyber Agency, FATA and Peshawar, NWFP

Description: Haji Namdar established the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in 2003 following a 12-year pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. He modeled the system on Saudi Arabia’s own strict religious police and the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, banning music and television and threatening those who failed to grow beards or cover their heads.

Namdar’s forces, which allegedly include foreign Arab fighters, are believed to have carried out attacks on western forces in Afghanistan and to have established several private prisons in which they held those who violated Namdar’s orders. The group was officially banned by the Pakistani government, but continued operations in Khyber and around Peshawar. Namdar resisted joining Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan umbrella organization, however, and instead allied with Mangal Bagh’s Lashkar-e-Islam and Hafiz Gul Bahadur to form the Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement), which some sources suggest received government support. Namdar fought with the forces of Baitullah’s lieutentant Hakimullah Mehsud, and was assassinated in August 2008 at a mosque in Khyber agency.

Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani

Affiliation: Haqqani Network (HQN)

Forces: Unknown; some estimates suggest between 7,000-10,000 fighters in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Location: North Waziristan

Description: Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani founded the Haqqani network, which is a coalition of militants that train terrorists, provide logistics, and organize operations against U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. Jalaluddin was one of the largest recipients of U.S. and Pakistani aid and arms to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s. He was never formally a member of the Taliban, but he served as a minister in the Taliban government during the 1990s. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Haqqani fled to Pakistan, built a network of fighters, and turned his attention to expelling U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan.

Jalaluddin was appointed overall military commander for the Afghan Taliban in 2007, but his organization is generally viewed by American military analysts as distinct from the Quetta shura that leads the Afghan Taliban. There have been some reports of rivalry between Jalaluddin and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and the exact extent of their military coordination remains unclear, but the two organizations appear to complement each other’s operations. Sirajuddin Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son, has reportedly assumed greater leadership over the group’s operations in recent years. The network allegedly controls large areas of southeastern Afghanistan and has established parallel governments in many areas. They are also believed to collaborate with Al Qaeda and have numerous foreign fighters in their ranks. It is alleged that Pakistani intelligence services and military maintain linkages with the group, seeing them as a strategic asset, and the group is not known to have carried out attacks against Pakistani security services.

The network is also allegedly responsible for a number of the boldest and deadliest attacks in Afghanistan including the January 14, 2008 attack on Kabul’s Serena Hotel, which killed eight people; the failed assassination attempt on President Karzai in April 2008; the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008; and the raid of government buildings in Khost, Afghanistan. The United States has targeted the network through repeated drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but to no avail.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Affiliation: Hizb-e-Islami-Gulbuddin (Islamic Party-Gulbuddin, HIG)

Forces: Unknown, but some estimate several thousand.

Location: Bajaur Agency, FATA & Kunar, Afghanistan

Description: Hekmatyar is the head of the Hizb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, an Islamic extremist insurgent group intent on expelling foreign forces from Afghanistan. His group is based in FATA and operates in eastern Afghanistan, specifically Kunar, Nuristan, and Nangarhar provinces. He is also believed to control several Afghan refugee camps in northwest Pakistan.

Hekmatyar formed HIG in the 1970s to fight the Soviet-supported Afghan government and later the Soviet occupation. He was heavily supported by U.S., Pakistani, and Saudi intelligence services. Hekmaytar fought in the Afghan civil war following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, and served as the Prime Minister of Afghanistan for a short period of time. He is notorious for shelling Kabul between 1994 and 1996 to recapture it, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian deaths. He was defeated by the Taliban in 1996, and he fled to Iran, where he remained in exile until 2002.

HIG joined the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. government formally designated Hekmatyar as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in 2003. Hekmatyar has pledged loyalty to Mullah Omar and is believed to coordinate with both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but HIG operates independently. They have claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in Afghanistan, including shooting down a helicopter with foreign troops in the Laghman province, blowing up a Kabul police vehicle, and killing 10 French soldiers in 2008.

He is believed to have maintained linkages with the Pakistani intelligence services. The Afghan government is allegedly in serious negotiations with Hekmatyar to establish a ceasefire.