The Great Debate

Bringing a terror mastermind to justice

Josh Meyer

May 5, 2012 14:38 EDT

Four months after retaliation for the 9/11 attacks he masterminded brought devastation to al Qaeda’s haven in Afghanistan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was living openly in neighboring Karachi, Pakistan and taking leisurely walks with his new prize recruit – a young computer geek from Maryland who wanted to join the jihad.

They talked about how Majid Shoukat Khan might poison water wells in the United States and blow up his family’s gas station. Mohammed was especially enthusiastic about using his young associate to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, perhaps by sneaking a suicide bomber into Khan’s planned arranged wedding to the daughter of a prominent Pakistani general.

The marriage never happened, and another Musharraf assassination plot fizzled, but the two continued to meet and scheme for more than a year. Mohammed’s patient grooming of his young associate ultimately paid off: Khan delivered $50,000 to al Qaeda associates for deadly attacks in Indonesia. And during trips back to the United States, he helped other al Qaeda operatives that Mohammed had dispatched on secret missions.

Those plots were publicly disclosed by the U.S. government several months ago as part of its effort to bring charges against Mohammed and four other men for their alleged roles in the 9/11 attacks.

Mohammed, his nephew Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash appeared in court for arraignment on Saturday in the U.S.-run detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The charges could make them the first defendants to be executed by the U.S. military in more than 50 years.

Mohammed’s previously undisclosed relationship with Khan is just one of many facets of his life that are expected to come to light during the long-awaited military commission process. Many of them are sharply at odds with the public perception of Mohammed that has emerged in the nine years since the Pakistani militant was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

While Mohammed was locked away in secret CIA prisons and then in Guantanamo, it was Osama bin Laden’s name that became synonymous with the 9/11 attacks and with al Qaeda’s global terror campaign.

We need a new Pakistan-U.S. relationship

By Farhana Qazi The opinions expressed are her own.

For the United States, Bin Laden is history. He is an after-thought. And it is almost certain that the Central Intelligence Agency has moved onto its next target. But for Pakistan, the death of the terrorist kingpin is not over as U.S policy makers debate Islamabad’s role in the war on terrorism.

Since the news of Bin Laden’s death, Islamabad’s elites are being attacked and accused of harboring a famed terrorist leader. In his latest piece for The Daily Beast, Salman Rushdie boldly stated that Pakistan should be declared a terrorist state for playing a “deadly game” with America unless Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus, or the ISI, can offer “satisfactory answers.” Rushdie is right to demand an answer but wrong to insist that Pakistan be isolated for protecting proxies and pariahs.

Less than a week after Bin Laden’s death, there are important details that have emerged that need to be answered. When did Bin Laden arrive in Abbottabad? Why did the local owner of the compound rent the home to an individual in Waziristan? Why did a rival to the once-deadly-terrorist leader of the Pakistani Taliban Baitullah Masud live in the same compound? And why was there indication that the compound was being expanded? What we have are details of a deadly mystery. What we do not have is any indication that Pakistan’s senior leadership had knowledge that al Qaeda’s elite moved to and from Abbottabad.

Immediate answers to the “after-Bin-Laden” mystery case have yet to be provided. We have to accept that the details about the legendary terrorist leader that will likely unfold over the coming days may not satisfy the American or Pakistani public. Newspaper sensationalism over who-knew-and-why adds to the fury inside both countries and detracts from the more important facts.

We should focus on what we do know. Bin Laden, and hundreds of other senior and low-level al Qaeda members, have been apprehended inside Pakistan with joint cooperation among the CIA and ISI. The kill-and-capture of al Qaeda operatives is a win-win situation for both countries. Mission accomplished.

In truth, caution defines the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. All intelligence agencies protect sources and methods. The CIA and ISI both have their dark secrets. And there will always be distrust and distance between them. Counter-terrorism cooperation between the United States and Pakistan is imperfect and has its limits. Only when mutual interest is established can the two agencies agree to capture — or kill — top al Qaeda operators. In a world driven by spymasters, there are no good guys or bad boys. There is only strategic benefit.

We cannot stop at Osama bin Laden

Robert Morgenthau

May 4, 2011 11:18 EDT

By Robert M. Morgenthau The opinions expressed are his own.

Every American must applaud the demise of Osama bin Laden. But even as we celebrate the success of the mission, we cannot afford to gloat. As any veteran law enforcement official can attest, the end of so long a manhunt only marks a new beginning. Rather than rest triumphant, with momentum on our side, we must redouble our efforts.

As one who has supervised investigations that often lasted years and spanned continents, I know there is an unusual opportunity here to reduce the influence of fanatics and make the world a safer place for democracy.

Al Qaeda has been deprived of its leader, but the terrorist organization has not been eliminated. Consider the power structure. The organization has lost its charismatic commander, a despot who ruled as all criminal leaders do: by fear. But bin Laden’s death will not automatically spell the end of his terror network. When a criminal boss is taken out an internecine struggle often follows. We must exploit this sudden split in the ranks. Headless, al Qaeda is uncharted territory. The coming days will bear much new traffic, as the old lieutenants and adjutants jockey for new positions.

The raid on the bin Laden hideout has yielded a trove of new evidence in our case against al Qaeda. Government investigators will have to sift through years’ worth of papers. Further, if the published reports are accurate, the Navy Seals also captured a number of bin Laden’s housemates — witnesses who must be interrogated. We must interview them thoroughly to glean leads. Time is of the essence.

I am reminded of the last days of World War II. After Hitler was killed, we did not stop. Washington dispatched American agents [OSS and Counter-Intelligence teams] to go after his henchmen — the Nazi leaders who were apprehended and tried at Nuremberg. The operation in Abbottabad also reminded me of the Doolittle raid — when after Pearl Harbor Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to demonstrate that the United States still had teeth, that even as we faced enemies on two fronts, our military was not a paper tiger. The raid led by Lt. Col. “Jimmy” Doolittle on April 18,1942, was a wild experiment, when the U.S. Army flew sixteen B-25 bombers off an aircraft carrier for the first time to strike the Japanese homeland for the first time in the war.

Since 9/11, much has been said about the need for superior technology to win the war on terror. No doubt the Pentagon and Langley brought our technological advantage to bear in this mission. And yet President Obama chose not to rely on satellites and bombs. He went with boots on the ground. He trusted the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, and he demonstrated that America still has the skill and the will to accomplish its just goals — no matter how tall the odds.

from Bernd Debusmann:

Egypt, America and a blow to al Qaeda

Bernd Debusmann

Feb 14, 2011 09:38 EST

These must be difficult times for Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The uprising that swept away Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of huge demonstrations, none in the name of Islam, does not fit their ideology. In the war of ideas, al Qaeda suffered a major defeat.

Its leaders preach that the way to remove "apostate" rulers -- and Mubarak was high on the list -- is through violence. Al Qaeda's ideology does not embrace the kind of people power that brought down the Berlin wall, forced Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines into exile, and filled Cairo's Tahrir Square with tens of thousands of peaceful protesters day after day.

They waved the red-white-and-black flags of Egypt, not the green banners of Islam, in peaceful demonstrations that amounted to "a huge defeat in a country of central importance to its image," in the words of Noman Benotman, the former leader of a Libyan group often aligned with al Qaeda. "We are witnessing Osama bin Laden's nightmare," wrote Shibley Telhami, an Arab scholar at the University of Maryland.

Long before al Qaeda struck against what it calls "the far enemy" on Sept. 11, 2001, its leaders exhorted Arabs to take on the "near enemy" -- Arab regimes that failed to run their countries under sharia law -- with bloody attacks against its leaders and institutions. Violent jihad was the only way. First Tunisia, then Egypt, showed that the argument was flawed.

Which is probably the reason al Qaeda, an organization of considerable Internet savvy and communications skills, has been largely silent on the unrest that first flared in Tunisia, rolled over to Egypt and now keeps rulers awake at night from Algeria to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Bahrain.

According to SITE, a U.S.-based organization that monitors statements from al Qaeda, its offshoots and followers, the first reaction to the turmoil in Egypt came on Feb. 8, day 15 of the mass uprising, in an online forum. The "doors of martyrdom" had opened, the message said, and Egyptians must ignore secularism, democracy and nationalism.

With peaceful demonstrators jamming Tahrir Square, calls to martyrdom sounded as irrelevant and off-key as some of the statements from the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama which zigged, zagged and at least initially shone a spotlight on Washington's decades-old policy of backing dictators detested by the people they rule.

Torching U.S. power

The following is guest post by Andrew Hammond, a director at ReputationInc, an international strategic communications firm, was formerly a special adviser to the Home Secretary in the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair and a geopolitics consultant at Oxford Analytica. The opinions expressed are his own.

The ninth anniversary of September 11 is being overshadowed by the news of Pastor Terry Jones and his now-suspended plan to burn copies of the Koran at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. Even if the bonfire does not take place, the news of it is tragic for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, although President Barack Obama and other US officials have rightly condemned the pastor’s previously intended actions, the episode has exacerbated anti-American sentiment, especially in the Muslim world. This comes at a sensitive period at the end of Ramadan, when debate is also still raging about an Islamic group’s plan to build a community center, which includes a mosque, near Ground Zero in New York City.

It is this latter issue that has apparently enraged Pastor Jones whose backpedaling on the Koran burning only came after he announced an alleged agreement with the community project’s leaders whereby the building would be located further from the World Trade Center site. Although the pastor’s claims of a deal reportedly have been denied by some of those involved in the project the risk remains that he could resume prior plans to hold his “International Burn a Koran Day.”

The re-invigoration of anti-Americanism caused by this episode presents a major political headache for the Obama administration whose public diplomacy has — over the last two years — helped restore US standing across much of the world. But there is still much work that remains. The 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Survey released in June shows that in nine of 15 countries public favorability toward America lags behind that recorded at the end of the Clinton administration a decade ago.

The Pastor Jones episode is so serious because it further erodes America’s “soft power” — the ability to influence preferences of others derived from the attractiveness of a state’s values, ideals and government policies, especially foreign ones.

History underlines the key role soft power has played as a means of obtaining desirable outcomes. For example, Washington used soft power resources very skillfully after the Second World War to encourage other countries into a system of alliances and institutions, such as NATO, IMF, World Bank, and the United Nations.

9/11 and the nine year war

The following is a condensed version of George Friedman’s geopolitical column for STRATFOR, a global intelligence company where Friedman is chief executive officer.

It has now been nine years since al Qaeda attacked the United States. And it has been nine years of America primarily focusing on the Islamic world. Over this period of time, the United States has engaged in two multi-year, multi-divisional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, inserted forces in other countries in smaller operations and conducted a global covert campaign against al Qaeda and other radical jihadist groups.

In order to understand the last nine years, we must understand the first 24 hours of the war — and recall our own feelings in those 24 hours. First, the audacious nature of the attack was both shocking and frightening. Second, we did not know what was coming next.

At the root of our panic was a profound lack of understanding of al Qaeda, particularly its capabilities and intentions. Since we did not know what was possible, our only prudent course was to prepare for the worst. Nothing symbolized this more than the fear that al Qaeda had acquired nuclear weapons and that they would use them against the United States. The evidence was minimal, but the consequences would be overwhelming.

What happened was that an act of terrorism was allowed to redefine U.S. grand strategy. The United States operates with a grand strategy derived from the British — maintaining the balance of power. For the United Kingdom, maintaining that balance in Europe protects any one power from emerging that could unite the continent and build a fleet to invade Britain or block its access to the mainland.

The Americans elevated that grand strategy to a global level. Having blocked the Soviet Union from hegemony over Europe and Asia, the United States proceeded with a goal, like that of the United Kingdom, to nip potential regional hegemons in the bud.

American nightmare: Al Qaeda at home

Bernd Debusmann

Jan 21, 2010 11:16 EST

- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -

It has been a recurring nightmare of American counter-terrorist officials for years — growing numbers of home-grown al Qaeda recruits drawn from the Muslim-American community, plus blue-eyed, blond-haired would-be suicide bombers travelling on American passports.

That notion clashes with the widely-held belief that Muslims in the United States are not nearly as prone to being seduced by Al Qaeda propaganda as their co-religionists in Europe. But a series of recent terrorism cases involving American citizens have challenged old assumptions and thrown question marks over a host of surveys meant to show the American Muslim communities’ resistance to radicalization.

Incidents spiked in 2009 and included the arrest of five U.S. citizens in Pakistan, where they allegedly tried to link up with extremists, and the arrest of Daniel Boyd, a white convert to Islam who was accused of plotting to attack soldiers at the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. Early in the year, Bryant Vinas, a Hispanic American convert, pleaded guilty to having trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Now, the lure of al Qaeda’s murderous ideas is seen as a real threat. “The group seeks to recruit American citizens to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States,” according to John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “These Americans are not necessarily of Arab and South Asian descent,” he wrote in the preface of a Jan. 20 report from his committee on al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia. “They include individuals who converted to Islam in (an American) prison or elsewhere and were radicalized.”

“The prospect that U.S. citizens are being trained at al Qaeda camps in both countries deepens our concern…” not least, apparently, because an American official in Yemen told committee investigators that American converts living in Yemen included “blond-haired blue-eyed types.” That echoes then CIA chief Michael Hayden’s 2008 warning that al Qaeda was training “operatives that wouldn’t attract attention if they were going through the customs line at (Washington) Dulles airport.”

How many have done so is anyone’s guess. A January study by researchers from Duke University found that in the eight years following the September attacks, 139 Muslim-Americans had committed acts of terrorism-related violence or were prosecuted for terrorism-related offenses involving violence.

War and Peace, by Barack Obama

Bernd Debusmann

Dec 3, 2009 10:04 EST

– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –

It is a timeline rich in irony. On Dec. 10, Barack Obama will star at a glittering ceremony in Oslo to receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. That’s just nine days after he ordered 30,000 additional American troops into a war many of his fellow citizens think the U.S. can neither win nor afford.

Whether the sharp escalation of the war in Afghanistan he ordered on December 1 will achieve its stated aim – disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan – remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: more troops equals more fighting equals more deaths — of soldiers, insurgents and the hapless civilians caught in the middle. Not exactly a scenario of peace.

In Oslo, Obama will become the fourth American president (after Jimmy Carter, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt) to be handed the coveted peace medal and invited to give the traditional Nobel Lecture. It is meant to spell out the award winner’s vision of peace, a challenging task for a man who just picked a much bigger war from a range of options that included reducing the U.S. military presence.

Resolving the contradiction will require the mastery of words of Leo Tolstoy, author of the epic novel War and Peace about the run-up to the unsuccessful invasion of Russia by Napoleon.

The deployment Obama announced at the U.S. military academy at West Point will bring U.S. forces to around 100,000, more than three times as many as when the president took office in January. The combined strength of American troops and soldiers from 42 other nations will be 140,000 – the same level as the peak of Soviet forces during an eight-year war that ended in a humiliating defeat.

Obama and his war council are as confident that the U.S. will not share the same fate as they are determined to reject comparisons between the American involvement in Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam. “This argument depends upon a false reading of history,” Obama said in his West Point speech.

America’s perennial Vietnam syndrome

Bernd Debusmann

Nov 13, 2009 09:44 EST

–  Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –

Prophetic words they were not. “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all…The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula.”

Thus spoke a euphoric President George H.W.Bush early in March, 1991, shortly after the 100-hour ground war that chased Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, the oil-rich U.S. ally they had invaded and occupied in the summer of 1990.

The specter of Vietnam, far from being buried in the Arabian sands, has risen again as President Barack Obama and his advisers are considering the course of the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year, increasingly unpopular, and considered unwinnable even by America’s senior soldiers if it is fought alongside a corrupt government that lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the population.

That the Vietnam syndrome is alive and well is obvious by the proliferation of analyses and commentaries drawing parallels, or dismissing them as nonsense, since Obama declared Afghanistan a war of necessity. (Type “Is Afghanistan Obama’s Vietnam” into the Google search box and you get more than nine million references).

The cover of the latest edition of Newsweek magazine is taken up by an iconic photograph of the Vietnam war, people clambering up a ladder to a U.S. helicopter waiting to evacuate them off the roof of a Saigon building the day before the city fell to communist forces on April 30, 1975. The story inside: what to learn from the lessons of Vietnam.

The answers to that question differ widely and the Vietnam analogy has come up routinely whenever the United States resorted to military action in the past three decades, from Lebanon and Somalia to Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.  Obama himself has dismissed the parallel.

from Afghan Journal:

Growing beards to tame the Afghan insurgency

Sanjeev Miglani

Nov 8, 2009 02:44 EST

If you were on the U.S-led coalition base in Bagram in Afghanistan soon after the 2001 invasion, you couldn't help noticing soldiers with long, Taliban-style beards and dressed in light brown shalwar kamaeez down to the sandals.

They kept to themselves. They weren't the friendly sort and before long you figured out these were the Special Forces who had fought along side the Northern Alliance in small teams to overthrow the Taliban and were then hunting its remnants and members of al Qaeda. The men grew beards to blend in during difficult and isolated missions in the Afghan countryside.

Close up, on the base some people thought looked like a little bit of America with its mountains of food, gym, and the easy banter of men and women soldiers, the Western men with the flowing beards stood out.

Eight years on, the Special Forces ops are still trying to master the disguise. But the men are still no closer to ordinary Afghans. In fact, the locals have grown to be especially wary of the Special Forces as this article on the Foreign Policy website says. The beards apparently only serve to allow ordinary people to distinguish them from regular U.S. and allied military units.

In Kandahar province's Zhari district, elders refer to the "bearded Americans," who they say behave very badly, and the "shaven Americans," who aren't so bad, the article says. Likewise, in Uruzgan province, locals have complained about "bearded Americans" using foul language and manhandling respected community elders and government officials.

Of course not all the members of the Special Forces go around with beards and not all the regular troops are clean shaven.  And to paint them as Rambo-types would be equally inaccurate, most of them are probably unassuming men, chosen as much for their mental as their physical aptitude.