In last week's Security Weekly, I discussed how the lack of terrorist tradecraft skills
has long plagued the jihadist movement. The al Qaeda core has had the
most success projecting terrorist power transnationally, but even its
operatives have often practiced sloppy terrorist tradecraft. Tradecraft
mistakes by al Qaeda operatives have led to plots being detected or
botched, including the millennium bomb plots and Operation Bojinka.
Sloppy tradecraft also jeopardized successful attacks such as the 1993
World Trade Center Bombing and the 9/11 attacks.
This
amateurish level of tradecraft was sufficient in an era such as the
early 1990s, when few people were aware of the threat posed by the
jihadist movement and few resources were dedicated to countering the
threat. However, in the wake of 9/11 the environment became far more
hostile to jihadist plotters, and as the focus of every intelligence and
law enforcement agency became firmly fixed on the jihadist threat,
terrorist operatives' ability to operate transnationally was severely
diminished. That is the reason the threat of a spectacular follow-up
attack to 9/11 never materialized.
Terrorist
threats must be assessed considering two elements: intent and
capability. Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups clearly have the intent
to attack the U.S. homeland, something that is evident in their rhetoric
and their repeated attempts to strike. But what these jihadist groups
lack is the capability to fulfill their intent. They do not possess the
terrorist tradecraft necessary to bypass the security measures
instituted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks or the subsequent
enhancements to those measures. Tradecraft is also not quickly or easily
learned, and acquiring it through practical experience is difficult for
a movement that often uses suicide operatives. These constraints have
resulted in terrorist operatives with limited tradecraft capabilities.
Response to Limited Capability
The
frustration that jihadists have experienced because of their inability
to attack the United States through traditional forms of terrorism --
most notably by sending terrorist operatives to the United States to
conduct attacks -- has prompted them to explore alternate approaches.
One such strategy has been to attack U.S. aircraft from overseas,
circumventing the need to operate inside the United States. This was
really a re-emergence of an old tactic, which had previously been
employed by Palestinian terrorist groups in various attacks including
Pan Am 830, by the Libyans in Pan Am 103 and al Qaeda in the aborted
Operation Bojinka (though these past plots did not involve the more
recent al Qaeda innovation of suicide operatives.) Since 9/11, we have
seen many other plots to attack U.S. aircraft with devices originating
from abroad such as the shoe bomb plot, the liquid bomb plot, two
underwear bomb plots and the printer bomb plot.
In
addition to attempting to directly conduct terrorist attacks
themselves, militant ideologues began using their influence to
radicalize grassroots jihadists already living in the United States and
the West, encouraging those radicalized individuals to conduct terrorist
attacks where they live. Initially, this tactic seemed to be
successful, producing the Little Rock and Ft. Hood shootings in the United States. Indeed, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula founded their English-language Inspire Magazine in
the wake of these two attacks to radicalize grassroots jihadists and to
instruct them how to conduct simple attacks. A year later, the al Qaeda
core group embraced this approach, releasing a video by Adam Gadahn that encouraged grassroots jihadists to conduct simple attacks where they live.
The Conundrum
Gadahn
and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki urged
grassroots jihadists to conduct "simple attacks" using knives, firearms
or simple explosive devices. "Build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom"
and use them against soft targets, they said. Simple attacks are within
the reach of untrained grassroots jihadists. They are also very well
suited to the skillsets of jihadists who have received basic military
training in places like Syria and Iraq. In other words, they are people
who know how to handle firearms and who understand the basics of
tactical shooting but lack training in sophisticated terrorist
tradecraft.
The
poor terrorist tradecraft most jihadists possess and the type of
training most receive in places such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen have meant
that when jihadists have attempted to plan and conduct spectacular
bombings, they have almost always been botched or uncovered by the
authorities. An example of a botched attack is the May 2010 Times Square attack,
in which Faisal Shahzad was able to obtain the materials required to
build a car bomb but was unable to properly assemble a functional
improvised explosive device. An example of a plot that was uncovered and
thwarted by the authorities is the September 2009 plot to bomb the New York subway system that involved Najibullah Zazi.
In
2010, considering the training and capability of most jihadist militant
actors and the new emphasis on simple attacks, I concluded we were
about to see a shift in jihadist terrorist tactics away from failed bombings and toward armed assaults.
However, the attempt by jihadist ideologues to change the mentality of
jihadist operatives has been largely unsuccessful, and it did not
produce the volume of expected attacks. We have seen a few simple
attacks conducted by such people, including shootings in Frankfurt, Germany, in March 2011; in Toulouse, France, in April 2012; and in Brussels, Belgium, in June 2014. The April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is a case of unsophisticated jihadists using the bomb-making instructions in Inspire Magazine to conduct a simple attack.
Despite the intensive media coverage and hysteria caused
by a simple attack like the Boston Marathon bombing, we have yet to see
a large percentage of the grassroots jihadist militant world adopt the
"simple attack" concept. For every successful simple attack we have
seen, there have been multiple would-be militants such as Terry Lowen, Adel Daoud and Quazi Nafis who have aspired to attacks beyond their capabilities and failed.
This
is partly because, apparently, most jihadists prefer to fight on the
battlefield against foes like the Syrian military rather than attack
civilian soft targets. But beyond the jihadist preference to travel to
fight rather than to conduct attacks at home, there is another conundrum
that puzzles me. Although most jihadists believe that it is permissible
to give one's life during an attack, they continue to aspire to
spectacular attacks that are beyond their capabilities and that have a
very high chance of failure rather than to simple attacks that are
certain to succeed. I am not a psychologist, but I speculate that
perhaps there is something in the psychological makeup of people drawn
to the ideology of jihadism that causes them to gravitate toward the
spectacular rather than the obtainable. Perhaps they also believe that
in order to justify their suicide, the attack must be spectacular.
I
am not the only one puzzled by this tendency. It also appears to
confound the al Qaeda ideologues who do not see the "harvest" of attacks
they anticipated. Such people are used to seeing their directives
carried out on the battlefield, and they surely must be perplexed that
grassroots jihadists continue to botch attacks or walk into sting
operations rather than conduct simple attacks within their capabilities.
But
it does appear that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is attempting to
adapt to the situation. In response to the ambition of grassroots
jihadists, the group has attempted to equip them to conduct the types of
spectacular attacks they aspire to. In the 12th edition of Inspire
Magazine, published in March 2014, the Open Source Jihad section was
titled "Car Bombs Inside America" and contained instructions for
building a vehicle bomb. The group republished the section Aug. 16 along
with some other previously published material (including the pressure
cooker bomb plans used in the Boston Marathon bombing) in a publication
entitled "Palestine Betrayal of the Guilty Conscience."
So
far, we have not seen any attacks, attempted attacks or thwarted plots
containing these vehicle bomb instructions. Still, the instructional
material is out there, and given the number of past plots in which
individuals attempted to follow the magazine's pipe bomb and pressure
cooker bomb instructions, it may only be a matter of time before we see
someone attempt to build and deploy a car bomb using these plans. In the
meantime, the directions contained in "Car Bombs Inside America" have
given intelligence and law enforcement officers new indicators of bomb making activity to look for.