Selected Wisdom

The announcement of the al Qaeda – al Shabaab official merger last week got me to finally go back and review the last question from the al Qaeda Strategy 2011-2012 poll conducted the week prior to Bin Laden’s death.  I wish I could honestly say I waited for the merger to show the results of this question.  But, the truth is that I was just being lazy.  However, this final poll result proves to be quite timely.

During the survey, I wondered under what conditions we might see not just the death of al Qaeda the organization but the death of al Qaeda the social movement.  My guess was that if new groups stopped calling themselves an al Qaeda affiliate and older groups quit re-branding as al Qaeda affiliates, then we might be witnessing the death of al Qaeda’s social movement.  (I now think my assumption for designing this question was flawed and will discuss below.)

In the last week of April 2011, 268 people answered the following question with regards to al Qaeda.

In two years, will regional insurgent groups and local, upstart terror groups continue to brand themselves as AQ affiliates?

(Example: GSPC changing its name to AQ in the Islamic Maghreb or al Shabaab calling itself AQ in the Horn of Africa.)

Here were the answer choices.

• No, AQ Senior Leadership will deny independent extremist groups branding as AQ affiliates because this weakens AQ’s operational control and undermines AQ’s global credibility.
• No, groups will not brand as an AQ affiliate as AQ’s image has tarnished due to inactivity and internal fracturing.
• Yes, groups will continue to brand as an AQ affiliate in order to receive ideological guidance, operational direction, and financial/technological resources.
• Yes, groups will still consider AQ a powerful symbol and will brand as AQ affiliates. However, new groups will not have direct ties to AQ’s senior leadership or resources.

I’ll first discuss the results from April 2011 and then compare it to what has happened over the past 10 months with regards to name changes.

Below are two charts.  The first shows the raw vote totals for the four answer choices by combining the votes of all five major professional categories. The second chart shows the percentage of people in each professional category choosing each of the four options.  Note, there were only 12 ‘Media’ voters in total so their voting in chart 2 appears more extreme than it actually is.  Here are the findings I found particularly interesting.

• Votes overwhelming selected “Yes, groups will re-brand but have no direct connection with AQ”.
• The notion that groups would re-brand to receive additional resources and guidance finished third out of four choices, but many analysts are currently citing this as the reason behind Shabaab’s recent merger. Only the smallest voting group, ‘Media’, selected this more than other groups.
• The lowest vote getter was “No, AQ will deny new groups from branding as AQ.”  ‘Academia’ selected it the most, but even then, only a little over 10% selected it.  I also find this surprising as it appears Bin Laden and Fazul both denied Shabaab the title of an AQ affiliate prior to their deaths.

The branding question arose several times this past year.  In Yemen, AQAP may have created a parallel organization called Ansar al Shariah.  Why do this?  To divest from a tainted AQ brand, maybe? Or is it an effort by AQAP to create a separate organization not under constraints of an al Qaeda allegiance.  By creating a separate group, AQAP leaders can do AQ’s bidding under one umbrella, and pursue their own objectives, outside of Zawahiri’s direction, via Ansar al Shariah.  I have no idea but Aaron Zelin did an excellent discussion on the AQAP-Ansar al Shariah branding some months back.

As for Shabaab, local politics have usually trumped AQ’s global agenda and may have prevented their renaming in the past.  Leah Farrel’s commentary from 2010 on an AQ-Shabaab merger describes all sorts of pros and cons for Shabaab when considering a merger and is also worth reading to understand the complexity of the AQ branding issue.

Overall, my logic for crafting the question in April last year was off.  I don’t think Shabaab taking on the AQ name makes either group stronger.  That being said, I do feel that if AQIM re-flags back to a name similar to GSPC/GIA or AQAP begins shifting its efforts, resources and media under the name Ansar al Shariah we could definitely be witnessing the slow decline of the al Qaeda brand.

I think in the future, we’ll still see jihadi extremist groups with former AQ members in their ranks.  These groups will operate similarly to AQ but may have minimal to no connections with AQ Central’s leadership.  However, these new extremist groups may be less inclined to brand as an AQ affiliate unless there are substantial resources coming from AQ Central to justify the Western CT attention that comes with the AQ name.  The implication: analysts should refrain from connecting every extremist outfit back to AQ and instead focus on the extremist group itself recognizing that each day that goes by without a substantial AQ attack likely represents the degrading of AQ’s brand name.  AQ’s not dead, in fact they have one excellent opportunity on the horizon (coming post), but we should avoid treating every extremist action as a function of a group whose last big attack on the West came almost seven years ago.

Here are the charts.

Here is the breakdown as percentage from each professional groups selected each response.

Al Qaeda graciously resolved an issue of long debate within the counterterrorism community  by finally announcing the merger of al Shabaab in their ranks.  Some have advocated that Shabaab has always been part of al Qaeda.  Many others have repeatedly claimed that Shabaab was being unfairly linked to al Qaeda.  Well, it is now settled – some twenty years after al Qaeda’s first forays into southern Somalia to work with “the Youth” (al Shabaab) – the two groups have formally merged under al Qaeda’s umbrella.

The bigger question is “why now?”.  Those persistently focused on al Qaeda will see this as a sign of the group’s resurgence.  Overall, I think the merger represents the confluence of several forces leading the groups to formalize their relationship.

Pros and Cons: Four ways to look at mergers

We must all hope that the al Qaeda- al Shabaab merger is as disastrous as the Time Warner-AOL merger in the business world.  The AQ-Shabaab merger might have happened at any number of points over the past 20 years but it did not occur. I believe this has to do with the relative position of each group and what they thought they would gain or lose from a merger.

In the chart on the left, I tried to lay out the situations for each group relative to a merger.  Each group is either in a position where they are relatively stronger or weaker in their current position as an extremist group.  Based on the relative status of each group, they can stand to gain or lose different things by merging.  In the top left quadrant, both groups, AQ and Shabaab, are relatively strong with respect to their history.  Smoothly merging might likely amplify their operations such that their combined output is greater than the sum of their parts.  More likely though, a Time Warner-AOL situation arises where increased bureaucracy and infighting hurts both groups.  In the upper right quadrant, we see where AQ is in a weaker relative position and subsumes a growing upstart affiliate into its ranks.  By doing this, AQ appears reinvigorated and the upstart gains prestige but could also lose local support.

In the lower left hand quadrant, we find the situation as presented to Bin Laden during most of his experience in Somalia.  A weaker Shabaab desires to join a stronger AQ to gain prestige and resources.  However, the benefit to AQ of added manpower is offset by the loss of incorporating an affiliate with limited competency that dilutes the brand.  (Example: Starbucks (Stronger) puts a shop inside another store like Target. Coffee operations run worse and dilutes the brand.)  I believe this is the common scenario before Bin Laden’s death and prevented the two groups from merging.  Finally, the lower right corner represents today.  Both groups are in relatively weaker positions to their historical highs and by combining they have little to lose.  Shabaab has already lost local popular support and AQ needs more troops and attention.  The lower left quadrant represents today’s situation and why a merger finally happened.

Why merge now? An al Qaeda perspective

• Media Exposure: AQ struggles to maintain the same level of media coverage it once enjoyed.  Bin Laden’s death, the Arab Spring, and a host of other problems have plagued AQ in recent months and this announcement gets them back into the media discussion – even though it really only formalizes associations known for decades.
• Increases Overall Membership: As noted by J.M. Berger, the alliance does bring more people formally into the AQ fold making the organization larger in size.  And if theories hold true, the increase in scale should increase the pace of AQ affiliated attacks (although not necessarily the severity – see the link).
• Access to Western Foreign Fighters: Shabaab in recent years, more than any other AQ affiliate, has generated foreign fighters from the West.  Shabaab’s foreign fighters include American, Canadian and European passport holders.  While Shabaab may not be that threatening to the West itself, it’s Western foreign fighters can cleanly gain access back into Western countries.  These recruits represent a valuable resource to AQ Central who can provide these recruits the training and resources to pull off a prized attack on the West in the West.
• Opportunity to reinforce the foreign occupier argument:  With the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq complete and the Afghanistan deployment drawing down, only a few conflicts provide Zawahiri an opportunity to sustain the foreign invader argument.  Somalia has Ethiopia, Kenya and the African Union intervening to fuel this AQ narrative.

Why merge now? An al Shabaab perspective

• Increased access to resources:  As has always been the case for extremist groups in southern Somalia, resources drive everything.  Shabaab struggles to maintain sufficient resources to counter the multitude of military forces working against them. Likewise, their local alliances always prove to be fickle and local defectors will continue to mount thus precipitating a need to look outside the country for help.
• Already losing local popular support: From the Shabaab perspective, clan motivations and alliances have always been about local politics first and global agendas second.  Smart local Somali clans have defected as Shabaab’s harsh tactics alienated the population.  Additionally, Shabaab brought the push of foreign military interventions to local communities.  With local popular support already lost, Shabaab has nothing to lose by joining AQ’s global agenda.

In addition to these reasons for and against, I do still have a few questions:

Why was Bin Laden such a “Bear” and  Zawahiri such a “Bull” on Shabaab and Somalia?

Bin Laden seemed reluctant to officially have Shabaab join AQ’s ranks.  I’m guessing this arises from AQ getting their butts kicked during the early 1990′s when they dispatched Special Forces style training teams to the tribes of southern Somalia.  Local Somali clans burned AQ by taking AQ resources while always focusing on local political squabbles over AQ’s Western objectives. Likewise, Bin Laden showed a strong preference for Arabs over Africans having paid them at different levels when AQ was based in Sudan and generally believing they were incompetent.

Zawahiri, on the other hand, has always been more supportive of Somalia causes having been the main vocal support for jihad in the country after the 2006 Ethiopian incursion.  Additionally, Bin Laden and AQ’s experience with Somalia occurred prior to Zawahiri joining the team so I imagine the pain of AQ’s early 90′s struggles affects Zawahiri far less than it did Bin Laden.

Is the alliance really between Shabaab and AQAP or Shabaab and AQ Central?

Sheikh Ali Mahamud Rage, Shabaab’s spokesman, stated in one report that Shabaab would be part of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) rather than AQ Central based in Pakistan.  Fascinating!  This could mean several things (or nothing):

1. Confirms associations/connections between the Shabaab and AQAP: I engaged in strong debates this past summer over this connection.  In addition to the Warsame detention, this statement by Rage might also suggest that AQAP is the key conduit between Shabaab and AQ.
2. Potential shift in AQ global leadership: AQAP could be taking on more roles of centralization for AQ globally – maybe becoming the new AQ Central.  I’m not convinced of this but connecting/aligning with AQAP might suggest a gradual shift in global leadership for Shabaab.
3. Differing AQ connections amongst Shabaab clan leaders: I doubt this one but I do wonder if there may be fracturing in Shabaab’s ranks and Rage’s statement may illustrate that different Shabaab leaders have different connections with AQ members.  Michelle Shepard mentioned these fractures last night in her article and I agree with her (have always agreed with this premise).  Holding consensus inside Shabaab, especially under military pressure, will be hard and Shepard suggest that Sheikh Hassan Aweys may not be keen on the alliance.  Aweys has always been the smoothest Somali operator since his days with AIAI, but I do find it remarkable that he might balk at an AQ alliance when he likely has the longest historical connections with AQ dating back to at least 1992.  Maybe only Aweys, Bin Laden’s ghost and Fazul’s ghost remember how AQ-Somali clan alliances can go wrong for both parties. See Harmony documents here for the proof.

This week the U.S. Justice Department, in advance of Umar Farouk Adulmuttalab’s sentencing for the Christmas Day 2009 Underwear bombing plot, issued a 37 page document describing the role of Anwar al-Awlaki in designing and implementing the failed terrorist attack on a flight over Detroit.  The memo clearly outlines Awlaki’s role from recruitment to execution.  More importantly, the memo confirms the operational structure of AQAP’s external operations branch properly diagrammed by Thomas Hegghammer in this November 2010 article.

Here’s Hegghammer’s description:

Awlaki is most likely part of a small AQAP cell — the Foreign Operations Unit –which specializes in international operations and keeps a certain distance to the rest of the organization. We are probably dealing with a classic case of functional separation of tasks: While most AQAP fighters are busy fighting Yemeni security forces and attacking Western targets in Yemen, the Foreign Operations Unit lies low and plans international operations slowly and carefully. The unit likely counts no more than 10 people and hides in a different physical location from that of the top AQAP leadership. This is why Awlaki appears only on the margins of the radar of those who follow the day-to-day operations of AQAP proper. This is probably also why the magazine Inspire differs somewhat in style and content from AQAP’s main magazine Sada al-Malahim.

Frank Cilluffo and I argued similarly in our article last June supporting the need for drone operations to pursue a known U.S. terrorist seeking to kill Americans.  Many countered that Awlaki was a mostly innocent preacher – peripheral to AQAP’s attacks.  However, Abdulmutallab’s confession clearly ends the debate on Awlaki’s role. While I agree with some of the arguments for increased transparency, improved planning and limited use of drone operations only in the presence of clear intelligence, I have no delusions that the U.S. can wait indefinitely to apprehend terrorists like Awlaki while they continue to plan repeated attacks to kill Americans.

Moving forward, I do hope the U.S. government can more clearly restructure the rules for going after terrorists such as Awlaki.  Omar Hammimi presents another case, similar to Awlaki, of an American citizen operating with an al Qaeda affiliate.  Likewise, it’s been more than two years since Abdulmuttalab’s detention on Christmas day 2009 and this memo, had it been released 18 months ago, might have quickly clarified the debate over pursuing Awlaki and mitigated the conspiracy surrounding America’s pursuit of a known terrorist.

The media got all hyped up about the Steve Jobs FBI file release this week.  In 1991, Jobs was being considered for an appointment to the President’s Export Council.  CNN couldn’t stop hyping it when I was passing through the airport. When I finally did hear the story, I found out that the Steve Jobs FBI file reads exactly like everyone’s FBI file would probably read.

What is revealed in these files? Very little!  If the files are worth anything, they only confirm what Steve Isaacson wrote in the Jobs biography (from what I gather) and I imagine Isaacson wishes the FBI had loaned him a copy a couple years back so he wouldn’t have to go interview all the same people and find the same results.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from The Smoking Gun article:

By comparison, the interview subject spoke of his own “high ethical standards,” while noting that Jobs “will twist the truth in order to achieve whatever goal he has set for himself.” The agent wrote that the man considered Jobs “to be a deceptive person.”

The man also told the FBI that he had heard reports from mutual friends–as well as Jobs himself–that he “freely used illicit drugs” like LSD and marijuana while in college. The source also provided the agent with details about how Jobs had fathered a daughter out of wedlock with his high school girlfriend, and how he had “mistreated” them by not providing support.

Amazing gossip – an FBI agent shows up to interview this person and the guy dislikes Jobs so much that he’s willing to repeat rumors he heard from “mutual friends” only to then speak of his own “high ethical standards.” What a joke!

In the end, Jobs profile sounds like that of a highly successful CEO.  In the course of business, things get competitive, some people will like the boss and some people (employees and competitors) will hate the boss.  Some people liked Jobs, some people didn’t like Jobs as he was highly driven, competitive and brilliant – exactly what a successful company needs.  The same thing can be said of most successful CEOs.  The Jobs FBI reports are right up there with the, “can you believe Lance Armstrong is so obsessive about cycling?” stories.

If Jobs could get American exports up, then who cares whether everyone likes him.  And if you wondered what an FBI background on you might look like if they interviewed all of your friends and contacts, just substitute your name for Jobs.

Last week, I discussed a past working paper on labor economics application as it relates to countering violent extremism of terror cell members and tried to relate it to the travels of Hanif – a fickled Pakstani fighter whose been a part-time fighter for al Qaeda and now the Haqqani Network.

This week, I’m throwing up my second labor economics graph related to countering violent extremism with respect to geographic and socio-economic positions.  (For a quick re-cap on my take as it relates to labor economics and terror recruits see this post.)  Here’s where I left off last week:

Knowing the combination of benefits bringing about terrorist recruitment is essential in crafting an effective program for countering violent extremism.  Much like real employment markets, the price of recruitment varies depending on the skills needed by the terror group (job opening) and the location of the terror group (geography).  A terror cell’s operational leader requires more incentives than a new wannabe.  A terror cell operating in Africa likely requires less resources for recruitment than a group in Europe.

Knowing the role of the recruit in the terror group is important for understanding how one might design a CVE strategy to disrupt the recruitment of specific individuals.  However, organizational role alone is not the only factor.  The local conditions from which a recruit arises also matters.  A terror recruit in Africa may be far more enticed by the tangible, pecuniary benefits offered by al Qaeda while a middle to upper class student recruit from Saudi Arabia might be more interested in the ideological, non-pecuniary benefits of group membership.

Following the same method as the price to recruit for terror group roles, I created a hypothetical distribution of recruitment prices based on locations in which al Qaeda operates.  The vertical (y) axis represents increasing pecuniary benefits and the horizontal (x) axis represents increasing non-pecuniary benefits.  Each dot represents the total combination of pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits an average recruit from that geographic location might require to be recruited to al Qaeda.  Note, this is a conceptual diagram and I don’t have actual data behind these dots.  It’s just an estimate for discussion. Another note, I’ve placed markers on here for countries and regions.  However, I think the price for recruitment should be done down to the local (neighborhood) level as the drivers for recruitment can be quite dynamic and highly dependent on local conditions.

So what, who cares?

Like understanding the price for recruitment by terror cell position, the local conditions bringing about recruitment can also help counterterrorism efforts shape appropriate CVE packages and chip away at group members.  One of the U.S. key witnesses during the U.S.A. vs Osama Bin Laden trial was a man named Jamal al-Fadl.  One of al-Fadl’s main reasons for defecting from al Qaeda and turning on Bin Laden – a pay discrepancy and the fact he was embezzling money from al Qaeda.  As seen in the Harmony documents and other reports, al Qaeda routinely paid African recruits to al Qaeda lower wages than Gulf recruits resulting in a friction between group members over pay.

Recognizing the differences in recruiting price geographically can help the U.S. select CVE programs with the greatest reach and impact.  In places like sub-Saharan Africa, where recruitment is largely about pecuniary benefits, programs focusing on alternative opportunities will likely have more of an impact.  In places like the Arabian Peninsula, where recruits join for ideology more than sustenance, programs in counter narratives or community engagement might be more effective.   Overall, the U.S. must know what type of recruits, by organizational function and geographic location, should be the focus of a CVE campaign and then build programs specifically to reduce the benefits (pecuniary and non-pecuniary) enticing that particular type of recruit.  If this step is not done first, then CVE will achieve little aside from making its advocates feel good for trying.

For those familiar with the al Qaeda Strategy 2011-2012 survey and Post-Bin Laden Poll, you may have also seen the “Future of Investing” challenge I ran a few months back.  The idea was to see if the same crowdsourcing approach, which proved helpful in gathering expert opinions for what the future of terrorism would look like, might also be able to collectively forecast the future of investing in a time of economic turmoil.

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced another decrease in unemployment suggesting there could be some renewed confidence coming into investment markets.  I saw this as another opportunity to re-post the Crowdsourcing the Future of Investing survey and see what people think about the economy compared to perceptions a few months back.

Thanks to all those that voted in the October round of the survey and for those just hearing about the survey, click the below link and answer the six questions (which take about 3 minutes).

Future of Investing Survey

Here’s a sample of the survey and its first question.

Today, I wanted to follow up with respect to my post a few days back on terrorist motivation and recruitment and relate it to my earlier discussion of Hanif, the AQ foreign fighter from Pakistan, who recently relayed news of al Qaeda’s struggles in Pakistan.  I closed the last post stating:

Before choosing a CVE approach, a community/government/nation must first determine which type of extremist they want to counter.  If this assessment isn’t done, one will find a CVE approach, for example, where a government seeks to counter the the extremist narrative in an attempt to deter young people from joining al Qaeda, only later to find out that recruits weren’t particularly knowledgeable of AQ’s ideology, joined for the adventure, and enjoy group membership more than radical sermons.

I’ve often heard that the U.S. should place top priority on countering AQ’s message in order to prevent young boys from being radicalized and recruited overseas.  While this may be important in certain cases, I’d like to return to the case of Hanif, the source for Newsweek’s article “Al Qaeda on the Ropes: One Fighter’s Inside Story”.  Hanif, lacking an al Qaeda cell to join, recently decided to join the Haqqani Network:

Hanif says he spent the next five months with the Haqqanis and took part in several cross-border raids into Afghanistan—“picnics,” his fellow fighters called them. “We’d cross the border on operations of one, two, or three days; make short, sharp attacks; and then return,” he says. “Crossing into Afghanistan is easier than ever. There’s no one to stop us.” When Haqqani fighters run into Pakistani troops, they just keep going, Hanif says; they’re never challenged. “I think there’s an understanding,” he says.

Hanif compares his time with AQ and the Haqqani Network where he says:

the network’s fighters are brave, but they’re not as disciplined and pious as al Qaeda fighters were. “Fifty percent of these young mujahedin are looking for something to do,” Hanif says. “They’re not really fighting for Islam.” Even so, he likes their fighting spirit. “They may be careless and not religiously motivated, but they are good jihadis.”

Hanif does note that his religious beliefs are important but not decisive in his terrorist participation.

He isn’t sure what he’ll do next. At present he’s taking time off from the war, staying with relatives in Afghanistan. He says he’s still determined to rid Afghanistan of Americans and foreign influence and to reestablish Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Islamic Emirate, although he’s disappointed that al Qaeda can no longer help him achieve those goals. He stays in touch with his parents by phone, and they keep urging him to return home to Karachi, get married, and perhaps go into business. Hanif hates the idea. To do so, he says, would be a betrayal of his political and religious beliefs. Still, he says, he’s thinking of going home—just for a little while.

So, how does the U.S. do CVE to disrupt the violence of Hanif and his comrades?  Counter al Qaeda’s narrative?

It seems like his ideological justifications for fighting in Afghanistan change frequently while his violence remains constant.

What about community engagement with elders and parents? 

His parents only appear to have a minor influence on his decision.

I don’t have an answer for what the right CVE package is for young Pakistani recruits but I do wonder what combination of CVE actions will be most fruitful for keeping young boys from seeking adventure in Pakistan’s frontier.

Back in 2005 and 2006, I spent a large chunk of time applying labor economics theory for modeling the recruitment of terror cell members into al Qaeda.  I piled the research into a working paper entitled, “Jihadist Seeking Challenging Martyrdom Opportunity; Will Travel.”  I circulated the working paper around at presentations. But, as anyone that has ever read a labor economics paper can tell you, the topic is dry reading.  The most useful parts of the paper were used by Jacob Shapiro and I when we wrote Chapter 2 of al Qaeda’s (Mis) Adventures in the Horn of Africa entitled “Theoretical Framework: The Challenges of Weak and Failed States”.

Recent pushes to Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) in the U.S. brought me to revisit this paper.  I focused on three general concepts to examine the terrorist labor market and will discuss one these in the following paragraph.  Rather than treating extremists as religious zealots motivated solely by ideology, I instead treated each terrorist as a rational actor (from their perspective) that chooses to work as a terrorist rather than seek other employment opportunities.  In this context, each recruit makes a decision to work based on a perceived wage generated from both pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits from employment as a terrorist.  Pecuniary benefits represent tangible items received in return for employment: pay, vacation, insurance, etc. – those things most commonly discussed in Western employment models.  For a good example of al Qaeda’s pecuniary benefits, see al Qaeda’s employment contract found in the report Harmony and Disharmony.  Non-pecuniary benefits represent intangible items received in return for employment: religious achievement, adventure seeking, group camaraderie, etc. The combination of these benefits presents the wage needed to recruit someone into a terror cell.  For those math nerds out there, I write as such:

Price of Recruitment = SUM(Pecuniary Benefits) + SUM(Non-Pecuniary Benefits)

Knowing the combination of benefits bringing about terrorist recruitment is essential in crafting an effective program for countering violent extremism.  Much like real employment markets, the price of recruitment varies depending on the skills needed by the terror group (job opening) and the location of the terror group (geography).  A terror cell’s operational leader requires more incentives than a new wannabe.  A terror cell operating in Africa likely requires less resources for recruitment than a group in Europe.

In this first post, I’ll focus on the price of recruitment for job openings in terror groups.  Terror cells usually consist of some combination of personnel including the following roles:

• Ideologue – Inspirational figure preaching extremist ideology
• Operations Leader – Skilled terrorist that can plan, execute and lead terrorist attacks
• Seekers – Young foot soldiers to the terror group
• Dr. Jekyl – A ‘Revert’ or new adherent to an extremist ideology that moves rapidly into a group in order to commit violence
• Elite Members – Usually financiers that may or may not be direct/apparent members of the terror group but provide some package of finance and guidance to the cell

The above provides only a brief outline of terror cell member typologies.  I delve further into them in the paper but recognize that FFI’s Petter Nesser does a much better job describing these constructs in his paper “Jihadist Cell Structures in UK and Europe“.  For each of these roles, I tried to plot a conceptual chart showing the total price to recruit for each job opening and the combination of benefits required to achieve this price.  Note, this is conceptual and only a guess on my part.  I don’t have actual data to go behind this chart.

In the graph, I tried to show that the cost to recruit young seekers is likely to be lower in total and more about tangible benefits.  Meanwhile, a highly ideological or more senior recruit is joining for different reasons related more to group membership and ideological fulfillment.  In all cases though, joining requires a combination of tangible and intangible benefits; not simply one or the other.

So why is this important?  Who cares?  Many CVE approaches seek silver bullet programs to defeat terror group recruitment.  Some focus narrowly on community engagement, others focus solely on jihadi Internet portals.  The bottom line is that it will take a combination of CVE options to dismantle terror cells because each extremist joins a group for a different combination of incentives.  Before choosing a CVE approach, a community/government/nation must first determine which type of extremist they want to counter.  If this assessment isn’t done, one will find a CVE approach, for example, where a government seeks to counter the the extremist narrative in an attempt to deter young people from joining al Qaeda, only later to find out that recruits weren’t particularly knowledgeable of AQ’s ideology, joined for the adventure, and enjoy group membership more than radical sermons.

More to follow on ‘Location’ in the next post.

Ryan Evans at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) extended the discussion on Wael Ghonim and the challenge of leadership amongst the Arab Spring’s Twitter Uprisings with a new post entitled “No Matter what he says, Wael Ghonim is a Leader.”  Last week, I remarked that the inability of Egypt’s Facebook/Twitter uprisings to move from the virtual to the physical world has led to those initiating the revolt seeking little fruit as those organized both virtually and physically (e.g. The Muslim Brotherhood) seized the opportunity to exploit the political vacuum after Mubarak’s fall.

Ryan takes the discussion one step further noting that Wael Ghonim is a social movement leader whether he likes it or not.  He says:

“Whether or not Ghonim wants to acknowledge it, he is a leader, although he was a more important one than he is now, having been overcome by the superior “organizational weapon” of the Muslim Brotherhood political machine and others who are not so shy about their status as leaders.

Things that social movement leaders do:

•    Inspire commitment
•    Mobilize resources
•    Create and recognize opportunities
•    Devise strategies
•    Frame demands
•    Influence outcomes

Although he seems happy to take a backseat now (like his former patron, Mohammad El Baradei), Ghonim did all of these things.”

Ryan’s points are right on target.  While I admire Ghonim’s courage and initiative, I hope he and his social network recognize the need for some form of leadership to advance their objectives.

For those interested in the quantitative study of terrorism, I recently stumbled onto the work of Aaron Clauset and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch entitled “The Developmental Dynamics of Terrorist Organizations.”  I guess the goal was to make sure very few people working in terrorism/counterterrorism studies read this article as it was published under “Physics and Society” at the Cornell University Library.  Both the first and second versions of this article are excellent.  I personally like the first version as it is shorter and written more as an executive summary making the conclusions easier to comprehend.  I’m sure academics like the latter version as it is long and exhausting which fits their style.

Here are the key points I noted and I encourage all those interested in terrorism and counterterrorism research to look at Clauset and Gleditsch’s research methodology and the construction of their data.  Their empirical efforts are excellent and terrorism research could stand to use more interdisciplinary approaches like this. Here’s a summary from page 1 of their 2009 version.

“Contrary to common assumptions, young and old groups are equally likely to produce extremely severe events.  Older groups, however, remain signifcantly more lethal overall because they attack much more frequently than small groups, not because their individual attacks are more deadly.”

This is an important point for those analyzing a declining al Qaeda.  If al Qaeda were to conduct a large attack on the West tomorrow, it would not necessarily mean that al Qaeda is stronger.  Instead, to assess the size, strength, support and following of al Qaeda, one should examine the pace of al Qaeda and its affiliates’ attacks, not the severity.  Here’s an additional research result:

“The strong dependence of attack frequency on experience suggests that the timing of events is governed by organizationally internal factors, like growth and learning, related to group development, e.g. recruitment, personnel, turnover and internal coordination….furthermore, we note that curtailing the frequency of a group’s attacks, perhaps by limiting growth, would reduce the cumulative risk of very severe attacks.”

and this quote is also important:

“Severity is inherently random, governed by contingent details associated with the particular attack, the particular group, etc.”

Overall, I think this research appears highly instructive to understanding the rise and decline of al Qaeda.  I recently noted al Qaeda’s “Put Up or Shut Up Problem.”  While they are just as likely today as much as in the past to execute a mass casualty attack, evidence suggests their pace of attack has slowed dramatically and thus their organization is likely shrinking in size exponentially with each delay in attacks.  For al Qaeda to inspire new recruits and rejuvenate their movement, they need to execute a successful attack.  Likewise, executing successful attacks requires persistent recruitment and talent development through training – two constrained inputs to al Qaeda’s operations in 2012.  Al Qaeda, not dead, but without a successful attack – dying.  So remain vigilant and don’t overestimate al Qaeda’s strength even if they do pull off a successful attack.