JOHN FENZEL

Peggy Noonan :: Declarations: The View From Gate 14

This OpEd from Peggy Noonan, entitled "Declarations," really does say it all....

April 25, 2008. America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.

And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government's way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.

All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.

America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport, going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home after a long day of meetings, of moving product.

No one in crowded gate 14 looks up to see what happened in Pennsylvania. No one. Wolf talks to the air. Gate 14 is small-town America, a mix, a group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in close proximity until the plane is called, and America knows what Samuel Johnson knew. "How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

Gate 14 doesn't think any one of the candidates is going to make their lives better. Gate 14 will vote anyway, because they know they are the grownups of America and must play the role and do the job.

The Defensive Components to Public Warning Strategy

The explosions are deafening. They occur in quick succession two minutes after midnight, awaking the citizens of Indianapolis and Raleigh-Durham in the vicinity of both factories. When first responders arrive at both locations, they find the team of security guards dead, shot execution-style outside the entrances to each factory.

It is not a conflagration. It is later learned that the ammonium nitrate bombs were delivered aboard five U-Haul trucks at each location and driven into the corners and center of the factories, and detonated simultaneously. The effect of the combined placement and composition of the devices is devastating—both factories implode, causing the roof of each building to collapse onto the specialized machinery and sensitive equipment used to manufacture insulin: nozzle and plate separators, fill and finish lines, fermentation vessels, bulk media vessels, storage tanks, refolding suites and downstream processing facilities, filtration suites machinery, clean-in-place facilities, cooling/refrigeration plants, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) columns, high capacity water purification plants, ozone generators for sterilization, laboratories and insulin stockpiles. All are destroyed—damaged beyond repair. It takes some time for the extent and scope of the destruction, and too, the long-term implications to be fully realized. There are only two insulin production factories in the United States. Both of them are now destroyed.

It takes two weeks for the supply of insulin already at hospitals, local pharmacies and in the national pharmaceutical stockpile to be depleted. Because insulin is required to be refrigerated, maintaining large stockpiles of insulin in a centralized location is nearly impossible. By the next day, it becomes clear in hospitals around the country that widespread "just-in-time" business practices (reducing inventory stockpiles and delivering products as they’re needed) has further limited the availability of insulin for diabetics.
The National Coordinator for Counterterrorism recalls that indicators emerged at least a year ago of a plan to attack the insulin production plants: an inordinately high volume of internet searches relating to U.S.-based insulin production factories on Google and Yahoo were detected from a known IP located at a madrassa in Peshawar, Pakistan. An Al Qaida notebook discovered in a terrorist training camp had also been found, listing both U.S. and European insulin production plans:

Penza, in the Volga region of Russia.
Tianjin, China.
Aventis Recombinant Insulin Plant, Frankfurt, Germany.
Novo Nordisk factory in Clayton, North Carolina
Novo Nordisk Insulin Bulk Plant, Kalundborg, Sweden

NSA signals intelligence intercepts of encoded digital cell phone conversations in Islamabad six months prior to the attacks pointed to two separate groups of men and women seeking student visas for attendance at the University of Indiana and University of North Carolina. UNC reported to the NC Bureau of Investigation two months prior to the attacks that a group of international students from Pakistan had enrolled, but never attended classes. In Valparaiso, Indiana, a local police investigation was initiated after a farm CoOp reported a warehouse break-in and the theft of an estimated five hundred 50lb sacks of fertilizer. A large automobile dealership along Route 1 in Raleigh, NC reported the theft of nine 50 gallon barrels of waste oil from their premises. In Indianapolis, a U-Haul center reported that five U-Haul trucks had been rented by a group of students of "Middle Eastern origin." Two days prior, one of the Pakistani "students" was issued a ticket for illegal parking on a main thoroughfare in Triangle Research Park, directly across from the insulin production plant. After the attacks, tour logs from both facilities indicated that tours were attended by five to eight Pakistani nationals on student visas.

In some cases, positive actions were taken to investigate and warn the public of a possible terror threat. In a daily secure video teleconference a week prior to the attacks, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and DHS incident management officials requested that the FBI investigate the "lost" Pakistani students. A retired former high-level FBI official made a personal call to the Director of the FBI to express his concern after hearing about the Pakistani students from a former colleague, and reading about the mass thefts of oil and fertilizer in Indiana and North Carolina two days apart in USA Today. When he felt the call was politely listened to, but largely ignored, he appeared on a local Delaware news station summarizing his concern and outrage at the FBI's unwillingness to take the emerging and imminent (yet unspecified) threat seriously. Given his widely-known reputation and media contacts, national media quickly arranged for him to participate in broadcast and print interviews following the attacks.

In response, DHS denied that it ignored the threat and responded by raising the threat level to red or "severe" at all stand-alone government buildings and major financial institutions across the nation. Notices are immediately sent out to other insulin production plants abroad advising them of the threat.
In a press conference a day and a half after the attacks, the Attorney General releases the names and photographs of the Pakistani "students," identifying them as terrorist suspects.

The President declares the situation an “Incident of National Significance.” In the wake of the attacks, hospitals quickly become overwhelmed with patients of all ages with Type 1 and 2 Diabetes, all suffering the emerging onset of insulin shock, many from extreme anxiety. The official national commission appointed to investigate the terror attacks on the U.S. insulin production plants ultimately concludes that the insulin plants are not included in national vulnerability analyses and that a host of intelligence and public warning failures have contributed to the inability of the federal and state authorities to preempt the attacks and mitigate their devastating effects to an entire disabled population.

Fortunately, this is a fictional scenario. And fortunately, scenario-based interagency drills that assume national strategic vulnerabilities, and that work “in reverse” to identify problems and apply broad interagency and intergovernmental strategies to address them are standard procedure with each of the States. Nonetheless, the strategic vulnerability described above does exist, and the gaps in public warning that could prevent such an attack persist. Scenarios such as the insulin production plant attack serve an important primary purpose: linking vulnerabilities—known and unknown—to strategic solutions. Once a threat to our national infrastructure is even remotely detected, a strategy to meet that threat is required. Templated or passive strategies are insufficient when we face terrorist threats because the adversary is capable of deliberate, strategic thought.

To be effective, warnings should be oriented toward the people and sectors of society that are actually at risk, and must include the first responders and officials charged with preventing, responding to and mitigating damage and loss of life. To this end, the Lexington Warning was focused first on the revolutionary movement’s “center of gravity,” the political leadership of Sam Adams and John Hancock. The secondary focus was the militia and their ability to defend the revolution by force, if necessary.

Kennedy's Warning...

Required Reading from Judith Miller: the NYPD's report on "Radicalization"

Here is a superb article from Judy Miller in the City Journal that discusses the NYPD's recent report on the homegrown terrorist threat. As Judy mentioned in a recent email, "the report has some important implications for intelligence surveillance and counter-terrorism...."

The Ill Turn of the Native
How homegrown terrorists are born
Judith Miller
21 August 2007

Who becomes an Islamic terrorist and why? How does the transformation occur? Is the terrorist threat to Americans diminishing or growing? And how can law enforcement prevent terrorist strikes within the United States?

To these critical questions, the New York Police Department has proposed some controversial answers whose profound implications for police surveillance in New York have angered some Muslim activists and civil libertarians. A 90-page assessment, released last Wednesday, argues that the primary terrorist threat to New Yorkers—indeed, to all Americans—comes not from al-Qaida in Iraq or from the mountainous tribal region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as the intelligence community in Washington asserted last month in its latest national intelligence estimate. Rather, the NYPD concludes, the main terrorist threat is increasingly homegrown.

While al-Qaida remains a vital source of “inspiration and an ideological reference point,” the study says, the more insidious terrorist threat comes primarily from younger Muslim men between the ages of 15 and 35 who have no direct al-Qaida connection, but who become radicalized by exposure to an “extreme and minority interpretation” of Islam. These ossified “Salafi” interpretations of the Koran and other sacred texts promote violence and intolerance, and they’re spread by local “Muslim student associations,” “extremist literature from Saudi Arabia”—a reference bound to annoy Riyadh—and militant websites, the report states.

The threat emanates largely from “unremarkable” men, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly observes in the report’s preface—those who prior to becoming holy warriors held “ ‘unremarkable’ jobs, lived ‘unremarkable’ lives, and had little, if any criminal history.” What worries the NYPD is that since 9/11, the “radicalization” of Muslim minorities in the United States and other democracies has been “accelerating,” the study warns, “and the individuals swept up in it are continuing to get younger.”

Further, while Muslims in America have seemed “more resistant” than those in Europe to the radical messages on the Internet—a key “incubator” and “echo chamber” for radical interpretation, training, inspiration, and support—they are “not immune” to the militant ideology spreading in the West at “an exponential rate.” In fact, many members of New York’s diverse Muslim population of between 600,000 and 750,000 people—about 40 percent of them foreign-born—may be vulnerable to radicalization, the study asserts. “Unfortunately,” it concludes, “the City’s Muslim communities have been permeated by extremists who have and continue to sow the seeds of radicalization.”

The study identifies patterns of radicalization in ten successful or thwarted plots at home and abroad since 9/11, as well as in the 9/11 plot itself, which seen in retrospect involved a threat that was “homegrown”—in Hamburg, Germany—rather than fostered in Muslim countries. It finds four “distinct phases of radicalization” common to participants in these plots. The first, “pre-radicalization,” is the “point of origin” prior to a person’s militant awakening. The second, “self-identification,” occurs when a person, sometimes prompted by a personal or family crisis, begins exploring radical ideas and associating with “like-minded” people. Following this phase is “indoctrination,” when a person’s commitment to violence and a radical outlook intensifies, often with reinforcement from a “spiritual sanctioner.” Finally, “jihadization” occurs when members of a cell or “cluster” agree to participate in jihad and prepare to act.

In most of the plots, the people “self-identifying” with radicalism gave up cigarettes, drinking, or gambling and began wearing traditional Islamic clothing and growing beards—easy enough for police to spot. But in the subsequent “indoctrination” stage, plotters withdrew from the mosques to discuss their increasingly radical agendas in more secure settings: private apartments, the back rooms of bookstores, and isolated corners of prayer rooms. As radicalization increased, “Outward-Bound-like” jihadi-reinforcing activities—camping, white-water rafting, paintball games, target shooting, and outdoor simulations of military-like maneuvers—reinforced the bonds of loyalty and trust. Often one or more members of a militant cluster traveled abroad, usually to a militant training camp in a country or region seen as a “field of jihad”—Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Somalia, and now Iraq.

By the time radicalization has progressed to this stage, strangers are no longer welcome, and the police’s ability to infiltrate the group has all but evaporated. And while most stages of radicalization occur gradually, over two to three years, “jihadization,” the phase that defines the actual attack, “can occur quickly, and with very little warning—in some cases, in as little as a couple of weeks.”

While Commissioner Kelly said that the report was a “template meant to help law enforcement in its investigations,” he declined to say how the NYPD would alter its surveillance activities in response to the report’s findings. The views of the report’s authors, NYPD senior intelligence analysts Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, are clear, however: to prevent the formation of radical clusters and the “planning of future plots,” the police need to identify suspects who are being radicalized “at the earliest possible stage.” This implies that police surveillance should include not just radical mosques that incite violence and intolerance, but also sometimes the more informal hangouts—cafés, flophouses, hookah bars, butcher shops, bookstores, and Muslim student associations—that the report identifies as the “nodes” of the radical new subculture where mainstream Muslim immigrants, along with second- and third-generation college-age Americans of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent, are getting radicalized.

This has infuriated many Muslim-Americans, or groups that claim to speak for them. The report’s “sweeping generalizations and mixing of unrelated elements may serve to cast a pall of suspicion over the entire American Muslim community,” warned a statement issued by Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case against a Texas-based charity accused of providing millions of charitable dollars to the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

More cautious concern came from Shamsi Ali, deputy imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, who is quoted in the report. Ali said last Thursday that while the report had created “a sense of uneasiness within our community, we know that there are cases, that the report contains facts.” Concern about radicalization, he said, had prompted his center to “reach out to Muslim youth” through summer camps, seminars, and other activities to warn against extremist interpretations of the faith. Mainstream Muslims were now in the ascendancy, he asserted. If he had a critique of the report, it was that it was “outdated.” The radicals, he said, “are becoming more marginalized.”

The report has troubled civil libertarians too. Christopher Dunn, of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that by painting all Muslims as “potential terrorists,” it risked not only discouraging law-abiding Muslims from cooperating with the police, but also eroding the line that separates the police from lawful religious activity.

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corporation whose comments introduce the report, concedes that while “intelligence operations”—such as the use of covert surveillance, confidential informants, and undercover agents—are often the best way to disrupt militant clusters, such early intervention is bound to be legally and politically problematic, since it risks violating the First and Fourth Amendments, which guarantee freedom of expression and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. He hopes that the designation of specific stages of radicalization will help prosecutors and courts decide “when the boundary between a bunch of guys sharing violent fantasies and a terrorist cell determined to go operational has been crossed.”

But the often contentious relations between civil libertarians and the NYPD mean that a tussle over the location of that boundary is likely to begin long before actual cases emerge. Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne insisted last Wednesday that the NYPD surveillance has been “legal and constitutional” and would continue to be so. He denied that the report meant that all Muslims would be monitored. “If a lead in a terrorist case takes us to a bookstore, as it did in the Herald Square bomb plot, we investigate the suspect in the bookstore—not all bookstores, Islamic or not, in Brooklyn,” he said. While the study provided “insight” into the radicalization process, “it is not a blueprint for deployment.”

Nevertheless, civil libertarian groups will surely protest any expansion of the department’s surveillance program to monitor what Lawrence Sanchez, the NYPD’s assistant commissioner of intelligence and the study’s director, called “seemingly unremarkable people engaged in innocuous behavior” who may be quietly undergoing radicalization.

Yet this is precisely what the NYPD is already doing, and must continue to do, to disrupt terrorist plots. The militant plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station, after all, was foiled by an NYPD confidential informant and an undercover officer. So, too, were some of the other plots that the study reviews. More aggressive surveillance may well be necessary if the trends identified in the new report accelerate. But public acceptance of such tactics will depend on the existence of tough-minded, independent oversight. The NYPD will need to assure concerned New Yorkers that their civil liberties are protected while the city is kept safe.

PAKISTAN: "THE TALIBAN'S GODFATHER"?

Documents Detail Years of Pakistani Support for Taliban, Extremists

Covert Policy Linked Taliban, Kashmiri Militants, Pakistan's Pashtun Troops

Aid Encouraged Pro-Taliban Sympathies in Troubled Border Region

For More Information Contact: Barbara Elias: 202/994-7000 - belias@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington DC, August 14, 2007 - A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the documents reflect U.S. apprehension about Islamabad's longstanding provision of direct aid and military support to the Taliban, including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan. The records released today represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan's aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad's firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.

These new documents also support and inform the findings of a recently-released CIA intelligence estimate characterizing Pakistan's tribal areas as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, and provide new details about the close relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban in the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Declassified State Department cables and U.S. intelligence reports describe the use of Taliban terrorist training areas in Afghanistan by Pakistani-supported militants in Kashmir, as well as Pakistan's covert effort to supply Pashtun troops from its tribal regions to the Taliban cause in Afghanistan--effectively forging and reinforcing Pashtun bonds across the border and consolidating the Taliban's severe form of Islam throughout Pakistan's frontier region.

Also published today are documents linking Harakat ul-Ansar, a militant Kashmiri group funded directly by the government of Pakistan, to terrorist training camps shared by Osama bin Laden in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Islamabad denies that it ever provided military support to the Taliban, but the newly-released documents report that in the weeks following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996, Pakistan's intelligence agency was "supplying the Taliban forces with munitions, fuel, and food." Pakistan's Interservice Intelligence Directorate was "using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces." Other documents also conclude that there has been an extensive and consistent history of "both military and financial assistance to the Taliban."

Highlights include:

* August 1996: Pakistan Intelligence (ISID) "provides at least $30,000 - and possibly as much as $60,000 - per month" to the militant Kashmiri group Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA). Despite this aid, the group is reaching out to sponsors of international terrorism including Osama bin Laden for additional support, and may in the near future become a threat to Islamabad itself as well as U.S. interests. HUA contacts have hinted they "might undertake terrorist actions against civilian airliners." [Doc 10]

* October 1996: A National Security Agency document classified Top Secret SI, Umbra comments on recent Taliban military successes noting that even Pakistan "must harbour some concern" regarding the Taliban's impressive capture of Kabul, as such victory may diminish Pakistan's influence over the movement and produce a Taliban regime in Kabul with strong links to Pakistan's own Pashtuns. [Doc 14]

* October 1996: Although food supplies from Pakistan to the Taliban are conducted openly through Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISID, "the munitions convoys depart Pakistan late in the evening hours and are concealed to reveal their true contents." [Doc 15]

* November 1996: Pakistan's Pashtun-based "Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary - combat" alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. [Doc 17]

* March 1998: Al-Qaeda and Pakistan government-funded Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA) have been sharing terrorist training camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for years [Link Doc 16], and HUA has increasingly been moving ideologically closer to al-Qaeda. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is growing increasingly concerned as Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a leader in Pakistan's Harakat ul-Ansar has signed Osama bin Laden's most recent fatwa promoting terrorist activities against U.S. interests. [Doc 26]

* September 1998 [Doc 31] and March 1999 [Doc 33]: The U.S. Department of State voices concern that Pakistan is not doing all it can to pressure the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden. "Pakistan has not been responsive to our requests that it use its full influence on the Taliban surrender of Bin Ladin." [Doc 33]

* September 2000: A cable cited in The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Pakistan's aid to the Taliban has reached "unprecedented" levels, including recent reports that Islamabad has possibly allowed the Taliban to use territory in Pakistan for military operations. Furthermore the U.S. has "seen reports that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance and military advisors." [Doc 34]

National Intelligence Estimate: The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland

Here's an overview of the National Intelligence Estimate assessments....

· We judge the US Homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.

· We assess that greatly increased worldwide counterterrorism efforts over the past five years have constrained the ability of al-Qa’ida to attack the US Homeland again, however, that this level of international cooperation may wane as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory.

· (W)e judge that al-Qa’ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here…as a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment.

· We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups. Of note being, al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI).

· We assess that al-Qa’ida’s Homeland plotting is likely to continue to focus on prominent political, economic, and infrastructure targets…al-Qa’ida will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and would not hesitate to use them.

· We assess Lebanese Hizballah, which has conducted anti-US attacks outside the United States in the past, may be more likely to consider attacking the Homeland over the next three years.

· We assess that the spread of (the) West’s radical Muslim population is expanding. The arrest and prosecution of a small number of violent Islamic extremists inside the United States…(indicates the) Homeland Muslim terrorist threat is not as severe as it is in Europe.

· We assess that other, non-Muslim terrorist groups…probably will conduct attacks over the next three years…on a small scale (in the Homeland).

Another Reluctant Belligerant: THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM

THESIS: Although the UN could be developing into a stronger enforcer and promoter of anti-terrorist measures around the world; for many reasons, it is not really expanding its capabilities in this area.

INTRODUCTION TO A DILEMMA: UN seems to understand they must address terrorism, right now they “seem to wish it would go away or that someone else would take care of it”. UN did take steps post 9/11 to ratchet up opposition to terrorism but tangible measures seem to be stalled due to what is called a “persistent ambivalence”. Post 9/11 was a perfect opportunity for the UN to demonstrate leadership fighting what is arguably the most acute current threat to peace and security worldwide. A host of historical, conceptual, structural and political forces keep the UN from going beyond playing a limited role.

HISTORY, CONTEXT AND STANDARDS: League of nations addressed one of earliest forms of terrorism, political assassinations in 1930s by establishing conventions that were never ratified by enough governments to take effect. Although drafters in 1937 foresaw that terrorist violence could complicate relations among states, they could not get enough support to bring national laws into unison to “cope with the use of criminal violence for political ends.” The one thing the Terrorism Convention did do that the UN still can not is define terrorism as “ criminal acts directed against a state and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons, or a group of persons, or the general public”

Since inception, the UN has been focused mostly on cold war tensions and the threat of nuclear Armageddon. Essentially it was a body setup to moderate the major powers and limit the chance to respond with violence. In 1990s UN rediscovered its enforcement provisions of Chapter VII when sanctions were imposed on Libya, Sudan, and Afghanistan to persuade them to forsake support of terrorist actions and groups. UN began undertaking measured response to suppressing terrorism. There have now been 10 conventions and 2 protocols outlawing various terrorist acts.

After 9/11 the General Assembly led by India drafted a comprehensive convention against all aspects of terrorism. At time of writing, the convention remained a draft but a Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC) resolution was also established and rapidly approved 2 and a half weeks after 9/11. Resolution also called for all members to “refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts”. CTC is performing functions of helping to align nations against terrorism

CONCEPTUAL PUZZLES: UNs strongest public constituencies are distinctly uncomfortable with taking a more prominent place in the war on terrorism. Secretary General’s policy group working the issue “ does not believe the UN is well placed to play an active operational role in efforts to suppress terrorist groups, to preempt specific terrorist acts or to develop intelligence gathering capacities.” They see themselves in the limited role of working to affect the policy choices of member states.

STRUCTURAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS: Global nature of the problem provides a problem that the UN is not actually structured for. Department of Political Affairs (DPA) is the executive committee that has been given the mantle of serving as UNs focal point for dealing with terrorism.
This has three issues: 1) DPA is divided geographically into regions 2) No newstaffing or funds have been added to deal with issue 3) no specific office in DPA for addressing terrorism.

Terrorism Prevention Branch in Vienna is the existing part of system with terrorism in its title and actually funded to address problem. Staff here went from 2 to 5 after 9/11. CTC does not even really fit into the standing organization and is staffed by about a half dozen outside short term experts. Financed through a special fund for political missions and gets the money left over.

POLITICS, POLITICS, POLITICS After 9/11 there was a good opportunity to raise the UN measures against terrorism. This started working with regard to Afghainistan, however three factors are now getting in the way: American Power, Middle East Developments, and Institutional inertia.

A powerful America makes it a more attractive and vulnerable target with less empathy from rest of world. Alignment with Israel and Israeli use of military force to counter terrorism is classified as “state terrorism” by Arab diplomats. UN as an institution is focused on being the impartial mediator or “peace-keeper”. UN is seen as already making a unique contribution to the anti-terrorism effort by dealing with the “root causes” of terrorism.

The UN is now focused on the softer side of terrorism and reminding powerful states not to rely too heavily on military and coercive means. If the UN has been doing things correctly, why has there been a surge in global terrorism? More needs to be done by UN, but issues outlined in this article prevent it from rapidly moving in the right direction. Unfortunately the terrorists “hold the wildcards” and their actions in the future will affect the developing scenario and the UN’s continued evolution of involvement in this area.

Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim majority country. 200 Million Muslims (88% of a total population of 230 Million) There is a long held consensus that the vast majority of Indonesian Muslims are steadily moderate in their political views.

Indonesia became a sovereign nation following WWII. Following this they had a very brief democratic period with only one set of elections in 1955. From 1959 to 1999 they experienced authoritarian rule under Presidents Sukarno then Suharto after Sukarno and the army staged a coup in 1959. During the authoritarian regimes, political polling was outlawed.

In November 2002, the research Center for the Study of Islamconducted one of the first political polls ever in Indonesia. The comprehensive survey determined that only 14 % of the respondents could be classified as strong or even moderate Muslims. 67% are categorized as neutral, and 19% are opposed to Islamism.

Among Indonesian muslims nearly all are sunni but there are two distinct types that can be broken out, the Orthodox and the Syncretic. The Syncretic Muslims have allowed a significant influence from Hinduism and animism to creep into their religious beliefs and practices. Although there are no concrete figures it is believed that about 2/3s of Indonesia’s Muslims are Syncretic. This correlates well with the results of the polls that are detailed in the article.

Some good graphs and data on pages 114 and 120 that show how Indonesian Muslims break out on significant issues. Article goes into a lot of detail on the polling methods and the results but the graphs and data capture the picture pretty well.

Many Indonesian Muslims are content to define their beliefs quite narrowly in that they abide by the five pillars: Avowal of faith, five daily prayers, fasting during Ramadan, Giving alms, and making the pilgrimage to Mecca.

The strongest Islamist blocks are associated with rural areas where the values have been less influenced by modern social change. Some observers see Islamism as a contemporary response by some Muslims to the strains and challenges of the modern world.

Conclusions: A large majority of Indonesians say they favor Islamic leadership and the government should rule with Sharia law, however the details of the polling data show that a consistent majority of Indonesians do not actually desire to be held to strict Sharia requirements and when they vote for political leaders only a very small amount (14%) actually vote for the Islamist parties.

Al-Qaeda’s Global Strategy

Now a global terrorist network, Al Qaeda’s definitive objective is to create a new world order--an Islamic caliphate. Their seven-phase strategy spans 20 years, attacking the "Far Enemy" (the United States) and the "Near Enemy" (corrupt Muslim states), all before standing up the new Islamic state that rejects Western influence. Here are Al Qaeda's Seven Phases:

Phase I: The Awakening Phase (2000 – 2003) includes the opening salvo, the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Phase II: The Opening the Eyes Phase (2003 – 2006) includes opening a front in Iraq, establishing a base of operations, and moving outward.

Phase III: The Rising and Standing Up Phase (2007 – 2010) includes attacks on Israel and other countries in the region.

Phase IV: The Rejuvenation Phase (2010 – 2013) in which al Qaeda will mount direct attacks at resistant regimes to topple and replace them with Islamic governments while simultaneously mounting attacks on oil supplies, cyber attacks, and other assaults on the US economy to exhaust and overextend US power.

Phase V: The Announcing the Nation Phase (2013 – 2016) where an Islamic caliphate will be declared, Western and Israeli power will be in final decline, and a new Islamic world order will emerge with the new alternative superpowers being China and India.

Phase VI: The Comprehensive Confrontation Phase (2016 + ) where the Islamic caliphate’s army will fight the “global infidel” in a final showdown to establish believers’ rule globally.

Phase VII: The Final Victory Phase (2020) in which the complete caliphate will emerge to unite all Muslims under one Islamic government.

“This strategy represents a new, far more aggressive sort of militancy and radicalism than anything that preceded it…As more recruits are funneled through the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, a greater pool of experience will be available to carry out these objectives. This experience, combined with an increasing internet capability and proven tactics, techniques, and procedures, indicates that a new generation of Muslim radical Islamic groups will be in a position to act in accordance with these strategic guidelines.”

-Center for International Issues Research