Monthly Archives: November 2021

As information emerges about Islamic State of Khorasan, or ISIS-K – the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for last week’s suicide attack that killed 13 US service members and more than 160 Afghans – there is an increased effort to predict how Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, may emerge once again as a breeding ground for terrorist groups.

A United Nations report released in June estimates that thousands of fighters from the region had already poured into Afghanistan.  Many of them are believed to be affiliated with either the Taliban – still seen as a terrorist organization – or al Qaeda or ISIS-K.

The New York Times reports that ISIS-K was created six years ago by members of the Pakistani branch of the Taliban.  There is a range of thought among experts as to what their ability to successfully carry out a terrorist attack in a Taliban-ruled area means for the terrorist threat moving forward. 

The Cipher Brief spoke with respected terrorism experts Bruce Hoffman, Mitch Silber and Colin Clarke to get their thoughts on the current risk of terrorist attacks against Americans both home and abroad. 

The Cipher Brief: If the United Nations Report issued in June is accurate, and there are thousands of fighters from the region who have poured into Afghanistan – many associated with known terrorist groups – is there any way that the administration can say ‘mission accomplished’ in terms of degrading terrorism’s presence in Afghanistan? 

Hoffman: No. As those numbers from the report released by the United Nations Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team highlight, Afghanistan is again becoming a jihadi magnet and will likely continue to be so into the future. The suicide bomb attacks outside the gates of Kabul International Airport last Thursday underscore the multiplicity of terrorist groups already present in that country.

In addition to ISIS-K, there is the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda and, of course, the Taliban. Terrorism thrives in conditions of chaos and instability which the terrorists hope to spread to other countries and eventually across regions.

Much as Salafi-Jihadi terrorists migrated from existing battlefields in South Asia back to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus in the 1990s; spread to East and West Africa in the early 2000s; blossomed during the Arab Spring to wage civil wars in Syria, Libya, and the Sahel, in the early twenty-teens; the same phenomenon is unfolding in Afghanistan.

Silber:  Frankly, I don’t think any of the four administrations can make the claim that the policy goal of making Afghanistan inhospitable to serve as a safe haven for Al Qaeda or other similarly oriented jihadist groups has been accomplished.  Certainly, at a number of times during the last twenty years, the threat that jihadist groups, most importantly — Al Qaeda — has presented, in terms of their ability to project a threat to the United States has been diminished, the degradation of the threat was only temporary.

The Cipher Brief: How confident are you that Al Qaeda and ISIS are unable to plan and execute attacks against the U.S. domestically? 

Hoffman:  The credulous Doha negotiations with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan and subsequently to the Taliban’s blitzkrieg across Afghanistan and then to the shambolic evacuation of our diplomats and citizens, has painted a huge target on America’s back. Like sharks in the water, terrorists will smell blood. As my Council on Foreign Relations colleague, Jacob Ware, and I wrote in War on the Rocks, in May, every time terrorism has forced the U.S. to withdraw from a conflict zone where it had committed ground forces, whether in Lebanon in 1984; Somalia in 1993; and Iraq in 2011, it has led to more terrorism worldwide, not less, and thus made the U.S. less safe.

At a time when our country continues to grapple with the COVID pandemic; when climate change is pulverizing the Gulf States with Hurricane Ida and California with worsening wildfires; when the January 6^th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building continues to smolder with incidents such as the bomb threat that paralyzed the area near the Library of Congress and Cannon House Office Building earlier this month; coupled with ongoing cyberattacks and peer competition from China and Russia and concerns over Iran’s nuclear aspirations; our terrorist adversaries may well conclude that the U.S. is sufficiently preoccupied or distracted by any or all of the preceding and therefore conclude that the time to strike the homeland is opportune. It would very unlikely entail a repeat of the catastrophic September 11^th 2001 attacks. But a terrorist strike along the lines of the 2019 shootings at Naval Air Station Pensacola; the 2017 suicide bombing of a concert venue in Manchester, England; the coordinated suicide attacks on London transport in 2005; the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings; or any kind of significant lone wolf incident perpetrated in the name of some existing terrorist movement would likely re-create the widespread fear and anxiety that are terrorism’s stock-in-trade. Twice in the past three years, it should also be noted, members of al-Shabaab – perhaps al Qaeda’s least technologically proficient franchise – have been arrested both in the Philippines and in an undisclosed African country engaging in the same flight training that four of the 9/11 hijackers undertook before their fateful, history-changing coordinated attack.

Silber:  At this very moment, it is unlikely that Al Qaeda or ISIS-K have the infrastructure, resources, recruits and external planning ability to strike the United States based on statements by the IC and senior DoD officials to Congress.  However, without any, or only limited external pressure by the U.S. military as a result of the retreat from Afghanistan, these networks and capabilities can be reconstituted in the coming months and certainly groups like Al Qaeda have never given up their desire to strike the American homeland.

Clarke:  I think it is unlikely that AQ or ISIS will be able to attack the U.S. homeland.  We’ve spent the better part of the past two decades shoring up homeland defense. We’ve got CT tools now that we didn’t have twenty years ago. That said, the picture could look quite different 6, 12, 18 months from now. Both of those organizations are capable of regenerating an external operations planning capability. There is also the worry of inspired attacks.

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.

---

The Cipher Brief:  Some analysts have said that morale among terrorist or Islamic extremist groups is extremely high due to the circumstances surrounding the US pullout in Afghanistan, do you agree and if so what does that mean? 

Hoffman:  Yes. Of course. Both Sunni and Shi’a terrorist movements around the globe have applauded the Taliban’s re-conquest of Afghanistan and routing of the U.S. military. For Sunni Salafi-Jihadi terrorists, the events there this past month validate the strategy articulated by Usama bin Laden just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election, when he described the ease with which al-Qaeda had been able to “bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat” from Afghanistan in 1989, and predicted that the same fate would eventually befall the U.S. And, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, a Shi’a terrorist organization, for instance, last week delivered a sermon where he described America’s “historic and humiliating defeat in Afghanistan as representing, “the moral downfall of America.”

Silber:  Jihadi chat rooms and online extremist networks are feeling like they have the wind behind them.  It took twenty years, but before the 20th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11 an Islamic emirate has been re-established in Afghanistan.  Suddenly, what seemed impossible has become possible and Islamist insurgencies all throughout the Middle East and South Asia can take inspiration by the determination of the Taliban in their efforts to overthrow a secular democratic government and replace it with an Islamist one.

Clarke:  I do expect morale to be high among terrorist and especially Islamic extremists given the turn of events we’ve seen in Afghanistan. We’re a week and a half out from the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, and Al Qaeda leaders are returning to Afghanistan (this is being displayed in AQ propaganda). We’ve seen al-Qaeda affiliates all over the globe congratulating the Taliban for their victory. I don’t want to overstate the case here, but I do believe that what has occurred in Afghanistan will be a serious boost for the global jihadist movement right at the same time the U.S. and its allies are shifting from counterterrorism to great power competition. There will be fewer resources and energy to deal with terrorists, right at the time we have major threats metastasizing in Afghanistan, potentially with both a reinvigorated al-Qaeda and a stubbornly resilient ISKP.

Read also Mike Leiter’s Why We’re Much Safer from Terrorism Now, Than We Were After 9/11 in The Cipher Brief 

Read also Why We Need a New National Defense Strategy (for terrorism) exclusively in The Cipher Brief 

---

Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

---

 

The post The Risk of Terrorism at Home and Abroad appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Czechia will prohibit people who have not been vaccinated from entering public spaces such as restaurants and shops from Monday. Negative Covid-19 tests will no longer be allowed.

Speaking on Wednesday, outgoing Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the country would adopt the so-called Bavarian model from Monday next week, prohibiting those who have not received a Covid-19 vaccine from entering public places. Those who have recently recovered from the virus will be allowed entry. 

Read more

The country will enter a partial lockdown of the unvaccinated from Monday morning, assuming the restrictions are approved by the cabinet on Thursday.   

“We will introduce the Bavarian model from Sunday to Monday. This means that entry to restaurants, service establishments, or mass events will only be allowed for vaccinated or survivors. Those vaccinated with a single dose must have a PCR test,” Babis said on local TV.

The prime minister said that self-testing would be completely cancelled, as he lamented unvaccinated people for clogging up hospitals and preventing treatment reaching those with other illnesses.  

“The death toll is rising; the situation is serious. Vaccination is the only solution, there is no other,” he added. 

The country is seeing a spike in infections, with a record 22,479 new cases reported on Tuesday. 

The Bavarian model refers to strict anti-Covid measures introduced in the southern German state. Markus Soder, the state’s premier, claimed there was no choice but to implement “a kind of lockdown for the unvaccinated,” citing increasing pressure on hospitals and medical staff. 

Meanwhile, some two million people in Austria who are yet to receive their Covid shots have been subject to the world’s first lockdown for the unvaccinated, in an effort to bring case numbers down.  

While 68% of people are vaccinated in Germany, and 65% in Austria, just over 60% are vaccinated in the Czech Republic. 

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Winston Churchill’s 04 June 1940 speech in which he vowed that he and his countrymen would “fight on the beaches “and would “never surrender” in the face of a seemingly inevitable Nazi invasion is rightly renowned as perhaps history’s most famous address by a wartime leader.  Less well known, however, is the cautionary tone the new Prime Minister struck in that same appearance before the House of Commons, as he sought to temper the joy and relief engendered by the seemingly miraculous extraction of the British army from the beaches of Dunkirk.  “We must,” Churchill warned, “be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.”  “Wars” he admonished, “are not won by evacuations.”

Shortly before the 2011 Abbottabad operation that killed Osama bin Laden, I was asked by my HQ, my views on mounting an assault on the target we knew as Abbottabad Compound 1, (AC1) given that we were not sure it sheltered the terrorist leader.  After expressing my 95% confidence that the Al Qaeda (AQ) leader was in fact, there, I allegorically added that we must strike as ‘you cannot leave Hitler in his bunker and end the war’.  I was fortuitously, right in my assessment that the murderer of so many innocents was present within AC1.  Sadly, however, his death did not bring our war with radical Islamic terrorism to a conclusion.  As was the case after Dunkirk, our enemy was unwilling to quit the field or to limit his unbounded war aims.

Likewise, we should have no expectation that the withdrawal of our forces from the Afghan theater of combat signals an end to the conflict with terrorists who started that war by attacking us on September 11, 2001.  We cannot unilaterally declare an end to the War on Terror by leaving Afghanistan – however much we might wish to do so – for the very simple reason that our enemies do not share that desire.  As former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta put it, “I understand that we’re trying to get our troops out of there, but the bottom line is, we can leave a battlefield, but we can’t leave the war on terrorism, which still is a threat to our security.”

The Taliban parading of the American-made weapons and accoutrements of their defeated foes was, in a manner akin to that of ancient Rome, intended not only to celebrate victory.  It was also meant to humiliate the vanquished.   Such triumphal demonstrations – and what will be a galling celebration of the anniversary of 9/11 as their own holiday to follow – will evoke enthusiastic responses from Islamic extremists and will draw many new adherents to the cause that lies at the core of Taliban legitimacy and belief.

As was the case when we left Iraq and later had to go back into the region to crush the ISIS Caliphate that metastasized in the wake of our departure, there is every prospect that the Taliban’s success will breathe new life into Islamic extremist groups.  And there is no reason to believe that the “new” and now much more heavily armed Taliban – an organization that refused to break with AQ over the course of a brutal twenty-year battle, will be any less receptive to working with Islamic terror groups than were their pre-9/11 forebears.

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.

---

“We are going to have to maintain very, very intense  levels of indicators and warnings and observstion and ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance] over that entire region to monitor potential terrorist threats”, said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley in a recent interview, adding it will not be easy.

As CIA Director William Burns said during Senate testimony in April, “Our ability to keep (the) threat…in check in Afghanistan from either al Qaeda or ISIS…has benefited greatly from the presence of U.S. and coalition militaries on the ground and in the air fueled by intelligence provided by the CIA and our other intelligence partners.” With the withdrawal of the American military, Burns said, “the U.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish.”

Much discussed ‘over the horizon’ intelligence collection against Afghan terror targets will not fill the void left by the loss of our ability to monitor and attack terrorist targets from in-country bases.  With Afghanistan bordered by countries unlikely to be willing to host a significant US presence, intelligence collection missions will now have to be launched from bases well beyond the horizon with all that implies for the quantity, quality and timeliness of intelligence collected.  Such operations will also be commensurately more expensive and difficult to mount.  Moreover, the intimate knowledge of our adversaries that we have painstakingly built over the course of nearly 20 years on the ground, began aging the moment we departed Afghanistan.  Absent an intelligence presence on the ground, our ability to collect on terrorist groups operating in and from that country will only degrade further as time goes on.

After acknowledging that we “could see a resurgence of terrorism out of the region in the coming 12-36 months”, Milley went on that we will, “as opportunities present themselves… have to continue to conduct strike operations if there’s a threat to the United States.”  However, as our pre-9/11 experience showed, such remote strikes can delay our terrorist enemies’ plans, but will not deter them from their intent to strike the US homeland.

As such, Secretary Panetta is undoubtedly correct in his conclusion that US involvement in Afghanistan is not over.  “We’re going to have to go back in to get ISIS,” Panetta said.  “We’re probably going to have to go back in when al-Qaeda resurrects itself, as they will, with this Taliban.”  And, as was the case with our operations to destroy ISIS’s so-called Caliphate after we precipitously left Iraq, there can be no doubt that should we have to go back into Afghanistan, our task will be greatly complicated by the manner in which we left that country, abandoning our allies and bases there.

---

Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

---

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will have profound geo-strategic implications for America’s position in the region and in the world.  Our Chinese, Russian and Iranian adversaries will seize the opportunity to fill the void left in the wake of our departure.

The Taliban has already indicated it will engage with China, which covets Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.  Entry into a transactional relationship with the cash-strapped Taliban regime and granting access to Afghan mineral resources – and possibly use of Bagram Air Base – in exchange for financial aid and Chinese support for the Taliban in international organizations would suit Beijing, which would evince no concerns about human rights and the like.

For their part, Central Asian countries will look away from Washington and ever more towards their old masters in Moscow and a rising China to ensure their security and economic well-being.   Islamabad, while publicly celebrating the victory of their Taliban proxies and its role in guiding it, must at the same time worry that the extremism embodied by the victors will gain renewed traction beyond its frontier provinces with all that implies for the security of the Pakistani state.

Caught by surprise by Washington’s decision to leave and the conduct of the withdrawal, even our closest and oldest allies are questioning US resolve.  They will surely think twice before acceding to any future US request to join in joint operations.  Our decision to quit Afghanistan, and its messy execution, will also evoke questions about the validity of American assurances to other nations under threat from aggressors.  It will not have been lost on them that the withdrawal of American air, intelligence, planning expertise and logistical support ensured the collapse of an Afghan Army that was dependent on the US.

Our adversaries, too, will see the chaotic nature of our departure as well as the abandonment of Americans, allied citizens and Afghans to uncertain fates as signs of weakness and enfeeblement.   This possibility is particularly dangerous in that they could seize this moment of US distraction to engage in opportunistic adventurism that could include movement by China against Taiwan; a Russian attempt to resolve its impasse with Ukraine forcibly; stepped-up Iranian prosecution of its proxy war with Israel; or a further ramping up by North Korea of its nuclear program.  Any such eventuality would force the US to respond vigorously or risk further erosion of its international credibility.

Finally, the costs involved in remotely monitoring and trying to deter threats emanating from a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan mean that we will be unable to shift intelligence and military resources away from the War on Terror to confront the threat posed by peer competitors to the degree we had hoped.

Aristotle is said to have pronounced, “You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”  Likewise, the courage shown by so many – and the heroic conduct of US military and CIA personnel in particular – in seeking to extract American citizens from Afghanistan and to honor our obligations to Afghans who worked and fought alongside us for so long, cannot obviate the dishonor attendant to having left so many behind.  Bloody Taliban outrages and reprisals against the latter are a certainty.

It will not be long before Kabul’s new rulers recognize that the Americans now under their control, are potentially useful pawns in trying to extract diplomatic, financial and other concessions in exchange for their freedom.  The effectiveness of our efforts hereafter to extract our own people and our Afghan allies from the clutches of the Taliban and how we respond to any attempts to use them as leverage against us, will determine the depth of the stain on our national honor already attendant to the disastrous end of our Afghan campaign.

In that same famous speech, Churchill solemnly told his countrymen that: ‘The Battle of France is over: The Battle of Britain is about to begin.”  He went on that “we would be well advised to gird our loins for the continued warfare to come.”

As we approach the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, we should honor our sacred dead from that horrible day.  But we should likewise prepare ourselves for the battles with Al Qaeda and its murderous kindred of Cain that will surely come.

Recent polls would indicate that Americans support the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, if not the way in which it was conducted.  One wonders how those polled would have responded if the question had been ‘Do you support a withdrawal from Afghanistan even if it markedly increases the chance of terror attacks and atrocities directed at your fellow citizens at home and abroad?’  I fear we will find out soon enough.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

The post Wars are not Won by Evacuations appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Australia’s government could be forced to spend tens of millions in payouts after receiving more than 10,000 compensation claims from people who suffered side effects and loss of income due to Covid-19 vaccines.

Under its no-fault indemnity scheme, eligible claimants can apply for compensation amounts between AU$5,000 (US$3,646) to AU$20,000 (US$14,585) to cover medical costs and lost wages as a result of being hospitalized after getting the shot. The scheme’s online portal is scheduled to be launched next month.

Official figures suggest, however, that over 10,000 people have already indicated their intention to make a claim since registration opened on the health department’s website in September. If each claim was approved, the government could face a bill of at least AU$50 million (US$36.46 million).

There were around 78,880 adverse events to Covid-related vaccination in Australia as of November 7, according to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which regulates national health products. The majority of side effects were minor, including headaches, nausea, and arm soreness.

Read more

Only people who experienced a moderate to significant adverse reaction that resulted in a hospital stay of at least one night are eligible for coverage under the government’s scheme. Those seeking $20,000 or less have to provide proof their claims are vaccine-related – although there has been no information as yet on exactly what evidence would be acceptable.

“Adverse events, even though they happen to a tiny proportion of people, for the people it does impact it’s really quite devastating,” Clare Eves, the head of medical negligence at injury compensation firm Shine Lawyers, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Among the adverse reactions covered are the blood clotting disorder “thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)” linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine and the “myocarditis and pericarditis” heart conditions associated with the Pfizer vaccine. Other reportedly accepted side effects are Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition, and immune thrombocytopenia (excessive bleeding due to low platelet levels).

Claims for over $20,000, including those for vaccine-related deaths, will be assessed by an independent legal panel of legal experts and compensation paid on its recommendations. Nine people have reportedly died after an adverse reaction to one of the three vaccines in the country.

Eves told the Morning Herald that her firm was representing a number of litigants over the vaccine side effects, including several who are not eligible for the scheme.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

A stream literally flowing with booze emitting a strong beery odor has been discovered in one of the tropical islands of Hawaii. Its waters have been apparently contaminated with alcohol after a leak at a beverage warehouse.

A small river with a distinctive alcoholic smell was recently found on the island of Oahu, some 15 miles (24 kilometers) away from Honolulu, Hawaiian capital. Its waters have been flowing through the Waipio valley and even turned into a 100-foot (30 meters) waterfall on their way.  

Read more

The stream caught the attention of local environmental activists, who noticed the smell in the area.

“The other day we came here you would think it was a beer pub that hadn’t opened its doors for three or four days,” activist Carroll Cox told local Hawaii News Now. She also contacted the Department of Health about the issue.

Local media took samples from the unusual stream and had them checked at a private laboratory. It tested positive for alcohol, containing 1.2% percent of the substance in its waters – nearly a quarter the content in regular beer and strong enough to cause a buzz.

Local health authorities got involved, and an investigation into the source of contamination was launched. It was learned that the stream was coming from a drain pipe that was traced back to a warehouse of Hawaii’s largest liquor distributor, Paradise Beverages. Its representatives told local media they were working with officials to eliminate a possible spill, with the booze river apparently closing its free drinks service.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Covid-battered global supply chains are being threatened by organized criminals, including drug cartels and con artists posing as legit suppliers, a new study has found, warning that the situation is set to get worse.

The international supply chain woes amid the Covid-19 pandemic are highlighted in a new annual report, released this week by the British Standards Institution (BSI).

The document, titled the ‘Supply Chain Risk Insights Report’, highlights Covid’s impact on supply chains, with the experts also warning that organized crime has increasingly preyed on this crucial area during the pandemic. On multiple instances, criminals were posing as legitimate logistics providers, stealing goods during shipment.

“I’m seeing a significant number of false suppliers acting as genuine potential suppliers in supply chain logistics provision – warehousing distribution, distribution centres, transportation companies – and actually, they are criminal groups trying to infiltrate the logistics supply chain,” said David Fairnie, BSI’s principal consultant in supply chain security. He urged producers to “continuously monitor” the supply chain and to not immediately trust new logistics providers – especially those contacted only remotely.

So, arguably today more than ever, you do need to know your suppliers. So far in 2021, BSI has noted this issue of fake carriers in an increasing number of countries in both the Americas and Europe.

Criminals have apparently been trying to steal goods in various ways, with phony truck drivers loading up items and taking off with them, while conmen “posing as legitimate employees” have reportedly been observed lurking around delivery destinations to steal cargo.

Read more

At the same time, the report found that trade in illicit goods has also been on the rise lately, with the illegal drug industry in particular appearing to flourish. While the supply chain for drug cartels, which require large amounts of assorted chemicals to produce narcotics, was disrupted due to the pandemic lockdowns and border closures impacted trafficking routes, organized crime quickly overcame these problems, the BSI noted.

“Drug cartels around the world did not miss a beat,” Chris Tomas, BSI lead intelligence analyst, said.

While many cartels shifted their production towards synthetic drugs, namely amphetamine, amid the pandemic, the apparent “lack of eradication of coca crops in Latin American countries” also remains an issue, the BSI said. The flow of cocaine has grown over the past year and is expected to increase even further, the organization warned.

“The numbers and quantities of cocaine seizures in Europe increased steadily in 2020 and 2021 and are expected to continue to rise in 2022,” the report reads.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has acted to proscribe the Palestinian group Hamas “in its entirety,” stating that it has significant capacity to carry out terrorist acts and has facilities to train attackers.

In a tweet on Friday, Patel stated that she had banned the Palestinian group Hamas and designated it a terrorist organization, as she reiterated the British government’s commitment to “tackling extremism and terrorism wherever it occurs.”

Read more

“Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities,” she wrote.  

The home secretary’s tweet came during her visit to Washington and followed speculation on Friday morning that she was soon to outlaw the group.

Pre-empting Patel’s announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett welcomed Britain’s “intention” on Twitter.

“Hamas is a radical Islamic group that targets innocent Israelis & seeks Israel’s destruction. I welcome the UK’s intention to declare Hamas a terrorist organization in its entirety – because that’s exactly what it is,” Bennett wrote, thanking the leadership of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.  

Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, also hailed the expected move against Hamas, saying it was “part of strengthening ties with Britain.” 

Until now, only Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, had been outlawed by the British government. The EU and the US have already proscribed all of Hamas.

Hamas political official Sami Abu Zuhri rejected Britain’s move, claiming it showed “absolute bias toward the Israeli occupation and is a submission to Israeli blackmail and dictations.” 

In a separate statement, the group claimed it had a right to resist occupation by all available means, “including armed resistance.”

Hamas seized total control of Gaza in 2007, on the back of an election victory in 2006.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey is a Visiting Professor at King’s College, London and a former senior British diplomat. From 1996 to 1999 he was senior advisor to the British government on overseas counterterrorism.  This piece was first published by RUSI in London.  The views do not represent those of RUSI.

---

Analysis of openly available sources indicates that a British report shared with the US in December 1998 described an early stage of the 9/11 plot.

---

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Two extracts from Presidential Daily Briefs (PDB) are given some prominence in the 9/11 Commission report into the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. One is from a PDB delivered to President Bill Clinton on 4 December 1998, and the other is from a PDB given to President George W Bush on 6 August 2001. Both are presented inside a textbox and both contain intelligence ‘from a friendly government’ which provided the first and only significant suggestion that Al-Qa’ida (AQ) planned to hijack aircraft in the US.

Eight months after the attacks, under Congressional pressure, the Bush administration was obliged to reveal some details of the PDBs, and on 17 May 2002 the New York Times disclosed that ‘the report provided to the president on Aug. 6, which warned him that Mr. bin Laden’s followers might hijack airplanes, was based on 1998 intelligence data drawn from a single British source, government officials said today’. The British government was obliged to acknowledge that the intelligence came from British sources. The Guardian reported on 18 May that ‘The memo received by Bush on 6 August contained unconfirmed information passed on by British intelligence in 1998’. The Independent ran much the same story with additional detail.

Both PDBs quoted from one British report from December 1998. The key question is whether this report, with its significant deviations from what actually happened on the day, actually referred to the 9/11 operation. Subsequently published evidence points compellingly to this indeed being an early version of the 9/11 plan.

The heavily redacted British contribution was shown on pages 127 and 128 of the 9/11 Commission’s report. It reads:

‘On Friday December 4 1998 the CIA included an article in the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) describing intelligence received from a friendly government about a hijacking in the United States.

‘SUBJECT. Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft. Reporting [passage redacted] suggests bin Laden and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Sheikh Omar Abdal Rahman,  Ramzi Yousef and Muhammad Sadiq Awda. One source quoted a senior member of the Gamaat Al-Islamiya (GI) saying that “as of late October the GI had completed planning for an operation in the US on behalf of bin Laden but that the operation was on hold. A senior bin Laden operative from Saudi Arabia was to visit GI counterparts in the US soon thereafter to discuss options – perhaps including an aircraft hijacking. GI leader Islambouli in late September was planning to hijack a US airliner during “the next couple of weeks” to free Abdal Rahman and the other prisoners according to what may be another source. The same source late last month said that bin Laden might implement plans to hijack aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and that two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport.’

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.

---

In May 2002 the US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice issued a statement observing (correctly) that the report had mentioned ‘hijacking in the traditional sense’ with no indication that aircraft would be used as weapons of mass destruction. Her testimony to the 9/11 Commission made broadly the same point.

Indeed, even in late 1998, there was a profusion of threat reports of which the aviation strand was just one. The MI5 official history comments aptly that the Service was puzzled as to why there were so many more reports of threats than actual attacks: ‘Even the most reliably sourced intelligence received on this question usually consists of a snapshot of a proposed plan being discussed. Most of the reporting does not make clear how far advanced the plan is’ (Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 802–806). What MI5 did not realise at the time was that AQ operations could take up to three years from inception to execution.

Steve Coll writes that ‘Within the morass of intelligence lay ominous patterns. One was an interest by bin Laden’s operatives in the use of aircraft … yet at the counter terrorism security group meetings and at the CIA’s counter terrorist centre there was no special emphasis placed on bin Laden’s threat to civil aviation or on the several exposed plots where his followers had considered turning hijacked airplanes into cruise missiles’ (Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 419–420).

Although the December 1998 report appears fragmentary, there were a number of aspects of particular interest. The first was the name Ramzi Yousef. Yousef had studied electrical engineering at Swansea Institute from 1986 to 1990 before exploding a massive bomb under the World Trade Centre in February 1993 and then planning the Bojinka Plot against airliners in the Philippines in 1994. Yousef had been arrested in Islamabad in February 1995 and sent to the US, where he was tried and imprisoned for life. He was an energetic and imaginative terrorist, and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was also known to move in terrorist circles.

The aviation link must have struck a chord, too. The British were also interested in Hussain Kherchtou, who had been in Kenya at the time of the Embassy bombings and was himself a pilot. He later provided a debrief to the FBI. His story and his courtship by the British came into the public domain because of a subsequent US court case and a talkative FBI officer.

The Egyptian angle also would have provoked little surprise. On 19 November 1995 Egyptian terrorists had blown up the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, killing 13 – only yards from the British High Commission compound with its exposed staff housing and kindergarten. The British had a miraculous escape that day.

The concern for the release of Sheikh Abdal Rahman, ‘the Blind Sheikh’, was consistent with the widespread devotion which the preacher inspired among Islamist radicals and particularly Egyptians. His imprisonment in New York for his part in Yousef’s attack on the World Trade Centre had caused significant distress among his many adherents, who all wanted his release.

The idea that AQ would strike the US had first surfaced in 1997 and felt like the logical next step. Only a month beforehand (in November 1998), AQ had attacked two US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people including 12 US citizens. These operations had served as a wake-up call for those who thought the AQ threat was being exaggerated, and some who even conceived of Osama bin Laden himself as a benign figure who had somehow got out of his depth.

There were also some puzzling elements in the report. The first was the rather outdated idea of hijacking an aircraft to demand the release of the Blind Sheikh. It felt more in tune with Palestinian terrorist methods of the 1970s, and it was already known that Ramzi Yousef had developed the idea of exploding full airliners in flight.

The involvement of Gama’at Islamiya (GI) seemed odd. Bin Laden was known to be close to Ayman Al-Zawahiri of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), with whom GI were usually at daggers drawn. At the time GI were conceived of more as domestic Egyptian terrorists compared to the internationalist EIJ. Indeed, GI’s most recent operation had been the Luxor Massacre of November 1997, which killed 56 foreign tourists.

---

Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

---

The name Islambouli carried great resonance. This was Mohammed Shawqi Islambouli, who had tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995. His brother Khalid had been one of the assassins of President Anwar Sadat in October 1981 and had been tried and executed in Cairo. However, although Mohammed was thought to be in Afghanistan, he was not then known to be close to bin Laden, let alone Al-Zawahiri.

The dates made little sense. On the one hand an attack seemed imminent, but on the other hand it was ‘on hold’. But such is the nature of counterterrorist reporting: small fragments of a much bigger jigsaw.

Nonetheless, the report was taken very seriously on its receipt in the US. President Bill Clinton’s counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke summoned his Counterterrorism Security Group. ‘To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York City area airports.’

Of course, when 9/11 happened nearly three years later, there were two very significant differences. Although aircraft were indeed hijacked, they were used as missiles rather than as bargaining chips, and the terrorists were mainly Saudi and not Egyptian. So what happened between December 1998 and September 2001 which could explain these changes?

The 9/11 Commission report (drawing on material from the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) provides a fascinating section on AQ’s development of aviation methodology. Even before bin Laden had left Sudan in mid-1996, he had allegedly discussed the use of aircraft with Mohammed Atef: ‘(1) they rejected hijackings aimed at gaining the release of imprisoned comrades as too complex, because al Qaeda had no friendly countries in which to land a plane and then negotiate; (2) they considered the bombing of commercial flights in midair, as carried out against Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a promising means to inflict massive casualties; and (3) they did not yet consider using hijacked aircraft as weapons against other targets.’

So, why was the idea of a traditional hijacking still being discussed as late as December 1998? The answer must lie in the Egyptian jihadists’ determination to win the release of the Blind Sheikh. Mustafa Hamid, a journalist who was with bin Laden in Afghanistan, provides illuminating insight into the wrangling between EIJ and GI in Afghanistan. Hamid documents the tortuous process by which GI, with some reluctance, formed a union (‘The World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders’) with AQ, EIJ and others, but recounts how GI insisted on secrecy about their involvement. Hamid also describes GI’s determination to obtain the Blind Sheikh’s release and the involvement of one of their operatives in the African Embassy bombings (Mustafa Hamid and Leah Farrall, The Arabs at War in Afghanistan, p. 241 and pp. 263–266). So GI was indeed part of bin Laden’s group in Afghanistan and was involved in operations at the time of the December 1998 report.

However, bin Laden became increasingly irritated by the endless squabbling among the two Egyptian groups. Lawrence Wright, drawing upon a variety of sources, chronicles the disastrous attack on Luxor, which had the effect of alienating the Egyptian population from both groups. When on 23 February 1998 bin Laden’s second fatwa announcing the ‘World Islamic Front’ was published in an Arabic newspaper in London, GI were appalled, and some members tried to have Rahman pronounced emir instead of bin Laden. No wonder that Wright concludes that ‘bin Laden had had enough of the in-fighting between the Egyptian factions. He told both groups that their operations in Egypt were ineffectual and too expensive and that it was time for them to turn their guns on the United States and Israel’ (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, pp. 290–296). This may explain why the December 1998 report mentions the operation being ‘on hold’. Between December and the spring of 1999, the GI team and Islambouli must have been stood down.

According to the 9/11 Commission report, in March or April 1999, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) – who had hitherto allegedly been on the fringes of AQ – was summoned to Kandahar, where he discussed the aircraft plan with bin Laden and Mohammed Atef. Four operatives were chosen to begin work on the US project. However, ‘travel issues … played a part in al Qaeda’s operational planning from the very start. During the spring and summer of 1999, KSM realized that Khallad and Abu Bara, both of whom were Yemenis, would not be able to obtain US visas as easily as Saudi operatives like Mihdhar and Hazmi’. And so, the 9/11 plot developed with 15 of the 19 terrorists being Saudi nationals. Only Mohammed Atta was Egyptian.

KSM’s key involvement in the 9/11 plot makes it evident that there could not have been a second GI plot running in parallel, because KSM and Islambouli were close associates. Robert Baer and the 9/11 Commission report agree that KSM and Islambouli were working together in Qatar in the mid-1990s. For KSM it must have been difficult to abandon the rescue of his nephew, but he would have known that a traditional hostage release operation had none of the ambition or scale of bin Laden’s new thinking.

On 6 August 2001, only five weeks before the attacks, the December 1998 report featured once again in the PDB given to George W Bush at Crawford, Texas, entitled ‘Bin Laden determined to strike in US’. It began: ‘Clandestine foreign government and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US’, and concluded: ‘We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting such as that from a [redacted] Service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “blind Sheikh” Omar Abdal Rahman and other US-held extremists … Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.’

The PDB of 6 August caused some discomfort to the Bush administration and led to a National Security Archive page devoted to that one PDB (of which the December 1998 British report was just one constituent part).

The CIA Director George Tenet, who had been a tireless pursuer of the AQ threat before 9/11 and a regular correspondent with and visitor to London, regretted that more had not been done ‘to protect the United States against the threat. To cite two obvious and tragic failures, only after 9/11 were cockpit doors hardened and passengers forbidden from carrying box-cutters aboard US commercial airliners’ (George Tenet, At the Centre of the Storm, p. 205).

The British report of December 1998 was fragmentary, and while it was certainly ‘sensational’, it was not half as sensational as the actual events of that unforgettable and tragic day.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the authors, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

The post The British and 9/11 appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Germany has been plunged into a “nationwide state of emergency” because of its current high level of Covid infections, acting health minister Jens Spahn has said. He also refused to rule out further lockdowns.

Read more

“The situation is serious, the dynamic is unbroken,” Spahn told a press conference Friday.

“The incidence has increased fivefold in four weeks. We see sadly high values in the death rate. We are in a national emergency.”

Spahn refused to rule out the possibility of another lockdown, saying that, in such a drastic health situation, “we can’t rule anything out.”

The head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, added to the gloomy picture by saying that “all of Germany is one big outbreak,” with an estimated half a million active Covid cases in the country – and numbers rising. For the third day in a row, more than 50,000 cases have been registered in the country, while the death toll in Germany since the start of the pandemic is above 98,700, according to figures compiled by the RKI.

Wieler added that, with many hospitals already overwhelmed, more should be done to tackle the spread of the virus. Besides obvious measures such as vaccination and wearing masks, he also suggested closing poorly ventilated bars.

On Thursday, lawmakers in the Bundestag approved new measures in the fight against coronavirus, including requirements to prove vaccination status, a negative test, or proof of recovery from infection before employees can access communal workspaces or use public transport. The measures will have to be passed by the upper house before they can take effect.

Neighboring Austria announced on Friday that it would enter full lockdown as of Monday, November 22.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Those making and knowingly using fake vaccination certificates in Germany could soon face up to five years behind bars, as the country’s likely future coalition government is looking to tighten the screws.

Coming under the same category are also fake test results and Covid recovery certificates, with similar penalties for the counterfeiters and the holders. Everything envisaged in the new guidelines was drafted by the Social Democrats, along with the Free Democratic and Green Parties. The three are currently in coalition talks and expected to form a new government as early as next week.

The German Parliament will decide on the regulations this Thursday, though a draft has already been seen by the media outlet DPA.

According to German media, the manufacturing and sale of fake certificates has become a booming black-market industry in the country. In just one such case reported by Der Spiegel in late October, a counterfeiter working at a pharmacy in Munich and her accomplice had churned out more than 500 fake digital certificates in the span of one month, raking in €350 for each one sold.

Read more

Meanwhile, Berlin authorities are planning to further ramp up restrictions in the city, where, starting Monday, having either a vaccination or recovery certificate is a must to enter restaurants, cinemas, theaters, museums, galleries, swimming pools, gyms, as well as hairdressers and beauty salons. On Tuesday, Berlin Mayor Michael Müller confirmed that authorities want to “have an additional instrument” to contain the spread of the virus. However, he declined to elaborate on what the new measures will be. Local media speculate that starting next week, in addition to the requirement to have a vaccination or recovery certificate to enter public places, people inside the venues will also need to practice social distancing and wear a mask, or have a recent negative test result.

This comes after Covid-19 numbers in Berlin hit an all-time high last Thursday, with 2,874 new cases reported that day.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !