Login HereThe latest Terrorism Focus from Jamestown highlights a post by someone calling himself Burkan to an online forum apparently frequented by Iraqi jihadists. The guy is clearly crackers -- he thinks "believes the Islamic umma (community) must devise a new strategy for an apparently imminent World War III," according to J-town -- but in his recommendations for where the Iraqi jihad should go next, he starts applying the instructions of Abu Mu'sab al-Suri:
In another posting entitled “The Secret Camps for Preparing the Mujahideen,” al-Burkan talks about the advantages and requisites of secret training camps as follows:
• The camps do not have a designated location, therefore the maintenance and running costs are affordable by the participating jihadis without having to receive funds that would compromise the training cell.
• Such camps require only two to three training leaders experienced in weapons, communications, intelligence and human resource management.
• The trainees should be no more than five in number, hand-picked from the same age group. The trainees should be youths motivated by jihad and operating on a need-to-know basis.
Am I crazy, or is this a really good thing? Yes, a cell this tiny will be hard to infiltrate. But really, chances are that unless it's made up of five Chuck Norrises, it ain't gonna do something so successful. It's notable that the European operations of summer 2007 -- in London, Ft. Dix, Glasgow and Germany -- inspired by al-Suri were all easily foiled or self-fucked-up. al-Suri appears, so far (wood is being knocked right now), to have led the jihadist movement down a blind alley. You guys are fucked!
On the other hand, it's sort of hard to know how much to credit this guy Burkan with. He could just be the jihadi equivalent of an Internet gangster. I suppose such selection bias is an inevitable problem for counterterrorists who focus on the jihadosphere.
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In theory it’s a good thing from their POV. Problem is, in reality, they don’t have the kind of smarts to make it work. So it becomes a good thing from our* POV.
The flip side of your secret tiny little dynamic training bases is that they’re going to be harder for recruits to find. If you limit comms to keep them secret, then nobody who isn’t already in the loop finds out about them to start with.
Hence the only penetration that matters is still that of the comms/logistics chain. There’s not been a lot of actual human penetration of serious cells (as opposed to entrapment of non-serious ones) and I don’t think you should expect their ever will be.
Shit like this is doable, ask the Russians. But you only get the benefits of this type of tradecraft if you do it properly in the first place, which they can’t. If you do, you give up access and convenience for security - aka the golden rule of security. In this case this translates to less recruits. Well ok.
I’ve always been a big fan of encouraging young impressionable jihadis to travel to Afghanistan to attend training camps that may not actually exist. Get on google maps. Ain’t nothing surer to kill jihadi wannabes than that country and some bad directions.
*assumes you are with us, not with the terrorists. Decision pending.
Yes and no
Ask the Boers if this works. I believe it worked well. (Until the English invented the concentration camp). Thanks Patreaus Kitchener
It depends on who you ask. John Robb theorizes that to be effective a core membership of 5 individuals is needed in any network attempting to accomplish a goal. In theory what this Burkan fellow is proposing is enough to be effective at systems disruption while being loose and small enough to avoid detection before they perpetrate an operation.