An Analysis of 3000 Islamic State Entry Documents

April 7th, 2016 - I have recently had a chance to take a good look at just over 3000 foreign fighter entry documents of the "Islamic State" (IS), a collection that I believe to be partly or even largely identical to the ones that Zaman al-Wasl, SkyNews and several German media have reported about a few weeks ago. I have published an analysis of these documents in today's new issue of DIE ZEIT, the paper I work for. The article can be found online here, but is entirely in German.

For the sake of non-German speakers, I have decided to share my main findings in English here.

I have used two approaches in analyzing the documents. One is a systematic, number-based approach, one is an anecdotal approach. I believe both to be revealing in their own way.


1.- The forms itself 

The forms are standardized and they ask for answers to 23 questions. The IS wants to know about the real name and the kunya of the recruit, they ask for the name of the mother, nationality, date of birth, the blood typ, the point of border crossing, an address, prior Jihad experience and specializations, among other things. Two questions are multiple choice: Does the recruit want to become a) a fighter, b) a suicide bomber or c) an Inghimasi. And the recruit is asked to classify his level of Sharia literacy: a) weak or b) medium or c) student/scholar level. Recruits are also asked for an address or phone number to contact in the case of their deaths. And lastly, there is a column called "comments", which IS cadres have in some cases used to add interesting additional information.



2.- "Statistical" findings

The IS cadres who filled in the forms where not all equally diligent. In many cases, the forms are not fully complete. Also the ways in which answers have been taken down are not 100 per cent coherent. So it can happen that someone who has the kunya "Abu XYZ al-Almani" may not have listed an address in Germany or a German nationality, but a phone number in Tunisia. Is he to be considered a German? And if not: What then?

It is therefor only possible to reach conclusions that cannot be considered hard statistical science. I have nonetheless tried to work the numbers as much as I could.

Here are the most important results:

• Just under ten per cent offer to die as suicide bombers ("Istishhadi"). Even less want to be an Ighimasi. The vast majority opts to become a "fighter" ("muqatil"). 
• Roughly three quarters think of their own knowledge of Sharia as "weak". 
• The large majority of recruits is aged between 20 and 30 and appears to have had no real jobs or jobs that require little training or have had no advanced schooling. 
• The biggest contingents reflected in the documents are from Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, followed by Libya, Morocca and Egypt. 

3.- Anecdotal observations 

The "comments" that IS cadres added are very revealing even if they are very diverse. Each entry consists of a few words only but sometimes feel like a short story, giving us an idea of the personalities attracted to the IS.

Following is a small list of such comments I found particularly interesting:

• "Used to be with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan for 5 years"
• "Can see very well, even in the night, ma shah Allah!" 
• This brother came spontaneously after he met other brother at the airport who were on their way here
• Used to be with Jabhat al-Nusra 
• Radar operator! 
• "Important ** has chemical experience"
• This brother has buried 400 moroccan dirhams in Europa before he travelled here
• The effects of this brother are meant as a present for the Mujahidin when he dies (these effects are listed as 2 phones and 4000 euros worth of currency)
• "Has switched to 'suicide bomber'"
• His parents are to be notified of his death, but without mentioning it was a suicide bombing 
• "Please tell my father and my mother to forgive me"
• trained on a 23 cannon 

If one looks at the backgrounds and prior occupations of the recruits, other interesting find can be made. Here are a few examples: 

• a former Kuwaiti soldier
• a former Saudi soldier
• a former Cairo Imam 
• an ex soccer player
• an unemployed truck driver with six kids
• a student of Sharia from an Islamic university 

4.- A careful Assessment 

3.000 out of what are possibly 30.000 IS fighters is a pretty good sample but there may be serious distortions we don't know of and we can't say if our sample is fully representative.

Certainly the sample contains little in the way of sensations, even though known terrorists are among those whose entry forms are available like Mohamed Belkaid, recently killed in a Brussels raid. Much rather, the sample solidifies some of our assumptions.

Further research into these docs is needed, for example in order to find out who travelled to the IS with who, something that is especially interesting in regard to European foreign fighters and the terrorist network they have established between France and Belgium.

The anecdotal observations give un an idea of the spectrum we can find within the IS: veterans of Jihad next to beginners, professionals next to scared people, educated and skilled people next to untrained and probably not very intelligent recruits. Not all of these will turn out to be master warriors, master terrorists or even master administration officials.

I want to conclude this brief post with two quotes. I asked Leah Farrall of Sydney University, a true expert on the history of Jihadism and an author of a great book (The Arabs at War in Afghanistan) for her opinion on the administrative behavior of the IS. Here is what she said:

Al Qaeda bureaucratised the jihad long before Isis, which benefited from inheriting many of its forms and processes when the two split. Poorly organised terrorist groups have short life spans. Al Qaeda turns 30 next year. The mixing of bureaucratised jihadis with former regime elements makes for an even more paperwork driven organisation.

And I asked Thomas Hegghammer of the FFI and Oslo University, who has focused on Foreign Fighters and Jihadist Culture in his work, about what he thinks these anecdotes tell us. He said this:

The files show that the foreigners come from a wide range of backgrounds and bring different skill sets, but they expect the same outcome: death. They also show that IS is combing the recruit population for special skills or connections for use in operations. 

I fully agree with both of them.


Let the debate begin!

 

A few Thoughts on "Counter Narratives" and "Counter Messaging"

If we look at the lives Western foreign fighters led before they decided to go to Syria, we will find that they are truly diverse. We find former Gangsta Rappers as well as converts from well-to-do, bourgeois families among them; we see former pretty criminals, drug consumers and drinkers, but also university student, workers and pupils. What we usually don't find is recruits who used to be politically active.

That's interesting, because it wouldn't be at all counter-intuitive to assume that radicalization can be the result of frustration over not having been able to achieve anything through political activism. But that's not the case, apparently. What we see instead is that many of those who end up waging war in Syria have been radicalized at a dramatic speed. As if there had been a vacuum that needed to be filled as quickly as possible.

In fact, I think this is actually what happens. Many of those who radicalize do it because the ideology of Jihadism offers them simple and all-encompassing answers to all their questions and problems - and it instills them with a deep sense of purpose and meaning, something most other ideas on offer seem to be failing at. Jihadism basically says that you can leave behind your troubled past this very moment; your slate will be wiped clean; all crises are over; all conflicts from your past life are meaningless. You will be a new person, with a new identity. You are truly re-born. Or: Given a second chance.

You have to understand this mechanism if you want to fight Jihadist ideology. My question is: Does the renewed talk about counter narratives and counter messaging take this into account?

As the New York Times is reporting, the US State Department is in the midst of revamping its respective efforts. There is talk of making use of as many as 350 State department Social Media accounts in order to repel the IS's propaganda flow. The "Think again. Turn Away"-Initiative, which hadn't been faring as well as had been hoped for, will apparently be made part of a broader initiative that will also enlist the help of Pentagon and intelligence analysts so as to make sure that messaging is co-ordinated, not only among US agencies, but also with partner states.

One of the inherent problems with a state-run counter messaging proposal is made aptly visible in this quote by Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center: "We try to find ways to stimulate this kind of counter narrative, this kind of counter messaging, without heaving a U.S. government hand in it." The problem is that, quite frankly, the more state involvement there is, the more it smacks of counter propaganda - a concept which is not easily reconciled with our ideas of a free, liberal society.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think it is a mistake to point out blatant lies by Jihadists. I just think that this effort is not addressing the core of the problem.

I don't even like the term counter narrative. Because in my understanding, Jihadism is the counter narrative here. (And that is true even if you take into account the historical  emergence of the Salafiyya in reaction to the rise of the West.) Our problem is not that we need to find an answer to the ideological challenge of Jihadism - our problem is that our original narrative has become too unattractive. It can not fulfill the needs of those who later become Jihadists.

Our first question therefor should be: Why is our original idea not attractive enough anymore? Is it because we don't teach it well enough (in our schools, for example)? Is it, because it is not exciting enough (since party politics are "boring")? Is its, because we can't offer quick and complete solutions, unlike Jihadism? Or is it because we don't really keep our promises (because, e.g., we are all equal on paper, but it is much harder to find a flat or a job if you are a Muslim with an Arabic name)?

To me, it looks like this: The moment in which a 17-year-old starts believing a Jihadist hardliner, he has already stopped believing "us.

But at the same time, this may be true, too: Another 17-year-old, who in the same moment experiences that he is not powerless because he secured funding for a basketball court from the municipality or perhaps because he just successfully registered a demonstration against the next Gaza war, may become quite immune towards Jihadist recruiters.

I don't want to downplay personal factors. Broken families, lack of (male) examples - all of this plays into radicalization processes, as well. But the sense of being unable to achieve or change anything, is also a big driving force.

The truth is that Jihadism has many thousands of voluntary helpers across the Globe who spend hours on hours in front of their laptops trying to spread their ideology. These people are truly committed. If we want to counter their influence, we need more than state-run and state-instigated programs. We need volunteers ourselves, in order to counter the volunteers of extremism.

I have nothing against help from the state, wherever it is helpful and makes sense. But actually, no-one needs a mandate or even a laptop to his own bit of counter messaging. I guess this is my point. We can't and we shouldn't delegate this to the state or its agencies alone.

--

NB: This is a somewhat different version of a German blog post I published on ZEIT ONLINE today. 

„This threat will stay with us for at least a decade“

What kinds of terror attacks do we have to expect in Europe, and how dangerous are returning Foreign Fighters? Norwegian terror expert Thomas Hegghammer* shares his insights in this interview with DIE ZEIT**.

DIE ZEIT: In the Paris attack, there was a link to Yemen. In Belgium, where the police foiled a terror attack last week, we saw Syria returnees among the suspects. In Germany, the police arrested several Jihadists, some of whom had been to Syria, some of whom hadn't. What do these instances tell us about the current threat?

Hegghammer: Firstly, that it is varied indeed. The security services have to look at different kinds of threats all the time. I would also add to the list the sympathizers of the „Islamic State“ (IS). We have seen plots hatched by IS sympathizers in North America, Australia and Europe. In fact, there have been more plots by IS sympathizers than by actual Syria returnees.

DIE ZEIT: What do all these people have in common?

Hegghammer: Apart from the fact that they are radical Islamists who want to perpetrate violence? Not much, really. They don't organize formally. They take good precautionary measures. That's about it. If you look at their profiles, they are a very mixed bunch.

DIE ZEIT: But it is clear, that the pool of potential terrorists is bigger today than it was a few years ago. Does that mean this threat is going to stay for quite a while?

Hegghammer: O yes, at least for another decade! Syria and the IS phenomonen have given Jihadism in Europe a new lease on life. We will be facing threat levels like this for many years.

DIE ZEIT: Should we expect more attacks, but on a smaller magnitude than we were fearing before?

Hegghammer: It's impossible to make good predication of frequency and scale. The quantity need not go up, but it could. And attacks need not become smaller, there can still be big ones like Madrid or London every now and then. But I believe there are two new trends. We are currently observing more attacks with hand-held weapons than with explosives. And the attackers tend to seek out targets that leave little doubt about the message - like Charlie Hebdo, Jewish schools, Policemen or soldiers -, rather than, say, general transportation systems.

DIE ZEIT: A lot of these plots seems to be results of calls to „individual Jihad“ via „Inspire“ and other Jihadist propaganda. Has this phenomenon now taken centre stage?

Hegghammer: I am not sure. Look at Paris: the Kouachi brothers were part of an old network, exactly like what we used to have in the 2000s. In Belgium, we saw a rather large network of 10 to 15 people. That's not exactly „invidiual Jihad“. The attacks in Ottawa and Sydney, on the other hand, were. We have to understand that new tactics are being added, but old ones are being kept.

DIE ZEIT: You have worked extensively on „Foreign Fighters“. What's more important as a driving factor: adventure and life stlye or religion and ideology?

Hegghammer: People leave for different reasons, but if I were to hightlight one, it’s the desire to be part of a historical project. It's partly escapism. These people want to get away from the West, from corruption and discrimination, and they want to move into this assumedly pure zone where they think they can find true Islam.

DIE ZEIT: We like to think of the Western world as free and able to accomodate all kinds of religious lifestyles. Why does this concept not work for these people?

Hegghammer: Disillusionment is not limited to radical Islamists. Many young people across Europe are frustrated, see no future, are in opposition to the current order. But they have no alternative. The secular, drug-using delinquent in a Paris suburb – where is he going to go? Islamists, in contrast, are being offered an escape route. So availability is a factor here: Syria is easy to get to. It's an utopia that is at hand.

DIE ZEIT: Some Israeli soldiers escape to Goa after military service; some leftists start communes when they are sick of consumerism; but they usually don't turn into terrorists. Where does this element come from?

Hegghammer: Jihadism is a destructive project, concealed in a constructive one. They don't join in order to become terrorists. But they can become terrorists in the process. And our problem is that radicalizing and preparing to go abroad to fight is a kind of activity that is just below the threshold of police intervention. In a way, the reason we have a radicalization problem in Europe is that the Islamists are not that radical. Because a lot of these networks stay clear of terrorist plotting, there is little the state can do against them. If these people were all organized terrorists, we wouldn't have any problem defeating them. But as long as they are operating below that threshold, our hand are tied. All these gateway groups, like Sharia4Belgium, Sharia4Denmark, etc., they have become masters at toeing the line.

DIE ZEIT: So the window to act is too tiny?

Hegghammer: Exactly. And we can't just lower the threshold, or we will end up punishing people for opinions.

DIE ZEIT: Is there any indication of how long it takes foreign fighters to cool down once they return? Or do they stay radical?

Hegghammer: We know very little about Syria returnees so far. But what we do know is the proportion of people who returned from previous battlefields and then plotted attacks. Before Syria, that rate was 1 out of 15 to 20. If you look at open source data about returnees from Syria who were involved in terror plots across Europe, we have so far seen about 10 plots with roughly 20 returnees involved. That is 20 out of 3000 who left to fight abroad, or 20 out of just over 1000 who have already returned, repectively. So far, it is only a small minority who have become terrorists. The question before us is: How do you stop that minority without over-reacting towards the relatively harmless majority?

DIE ZEIT: But many returnees have only returned recently. Some of them still may become active as terrorists...

Hegghammer: Yes, that number will increase. But I think we can already say that the rate is not going to be extremely high. Given the sheer numbers, however, the absolute number of terror plots may well be higher than previously.

DIE ZEIT: How should our societies deal with this long-term threat?

Hegghammer: Some intelligence services in Europe will have to substantially grow, they need more analysts. Not necessarily new methods or new survaillance powers. Adding data usually just means having to process more data. Smarter analytical software can help, but we need more brains, too. Our publics also need to be prepared for more news like what we have heard in the past two weeks, and they need to be persuaded not to panic. Mind you, we are still no-where near the level of terrorist activitiy we had in the 70s and 80s from the far left and far right. We should be able to psychologically tolerate even an increase in terrorist activity.

DIE ZEIT: What other measures are sensible?

Hegghammer: We need a sophisticated system to deal with returnees. We need soft measures to re-integrate those who can be re-integrated, and tough measures to incarcerate those who need to be incarcerated. And there is the internet. I am very aware of free speech concerns, but we have reached a point where something needs to be done about the access of Jhadis to broadcasting tools. JM Berger makes a really good point about this when he argues that the question at stake is not in fact free speech, given that Twitter and Facebook are really like TV stations. Should these people have the right to voice their opinion? Of course! Should they also have the right to broadcast them? Well, I don't think so.

DIE ZEIT: Prisons are also a problem in regard to radicalization.

Hegghammer: And that is a true dillemma. You have three options, none of which is great: Put Jihadists in a prison together, and they will wind each other up. Spread them out, and you will have the risk of the radicals radicalizing other people. Third option: Solitary confinement. But that's inhumane. This dillemma is accentuated by the European tradition of short sentences. In the US, Jhadists get very long sentences. They die in prison or grow old there. In Europe, they will be back on the streets after a few years. For me, all this is a good argument for putting as few people in prison as possible.

DIE ZEIT: How do you prepare for day X? Can resiliance be learnt?

Hegghammer: That's almost impossible, because whether an attack has a unifying or polarizing effect, has to do with the target. And you have no control over that. Take Paris, for example: There is a lot of tension now, the country hasn't simply united after the attack. And that has to with the nature of the target. It was very controversial. When the Twitter-Hashtag „JeSuisCharlie“ came up, that kind of forced people to identify with that controversial target. And lo and behold, within hours you had alternative Hashtags like „JeSuisAhmed“ or „IamnotCharlie“. It was very different in Norway, when Breivik killed 77 people, because it is hard to disagree that killing children is bad. That made it much easier to stand together. 

* Thomas Hegghammer is the director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment and an internationally renowned expert on Jihadist ideology, Foreign Fighters and Saudi Arabia. (Foto Credit: Christian Vinculado Tandberg / FFI)

** This interview was conducted by Yassin Musharbash for DIE ZEIT. A slightly edited and shortened German version of this interview was published in the current issue of DIE ZEIT which can be purchased online here. We have a cover story this week called "Living with Terror", apart from the interview you will find an in-depth-story on German reactions to the Paris attack and the Belgian arrests as well as a report from Belgium (and other good stuff). 

Truth, Ambiguity and Covering Terrorism

By Yassin Musharbash (c) 

I trust the ambiguous over that which appears certain; I believe it comes closer to the truth. As a journalist this sometimes causes difficulty, because the ambiguous dwells in cumbrous words: allegedly; supposedly; reportedly... I have spent more than one deadline day shielding words like these from editors. These words don't make for beautiful articles. My hope is they make for more truthful articles. It is rare enough we stumble across something truly true.

The last time I felt this happen was in November 2013. I was standing on a tiny balcony in the city centre of Alexandria in Egypt, smoking a cigarette. Two persons sat in the living room that led to the balcony; over the past two days I had spent a total of 14 hours with them. What went through my head on that balcony was that I wanted to write about how Leah Farrall, a former counter terrorism officer of the Australian Federal Police, and Mustafa Hamid, a former Taliban adviser, had gotten to know each other and built enough trust between them to be able to write a book together over the course of two years, here in Alexandria.

I assume that most professions have their own déformation profesionelle; journalists tend to look for the truth in details: When exactly did you hear about it? What went trough your head in that moment? Was is while you were having coffee? Did you learn about it from the radio, or from television? Or did someone call you? What station was it again? And what were you wearing that day, what did you do after you learned about it? What was the weather like?

I, for one, was walking past a café in Southern Greece on that day, noticing the oddness of patrons sitting at their tables, all eyes glued to the TV set, but no one saying a word. I approached the TV set, only to witness the second tower collapsing.

It is of course not interesting at all how I experienced 9/11. But from that day on I, as a journalist, worked mainly on al-Qaida and Islamist Extremism. On 9/11, I was still a student of Arabic Studies, but I had already begun to work as a freelancer for several papers. I had written about Islamism before. On that day, Terrorism as a topic came to me, and I very much accepted it as my topic.

I could not help but think about that moment in Greece as I was standing on the balcony in Alexandria more than 12 years later. Why? Perhaps because it is always special to meet someone who knew Osama Bin Laden. More, I suspect, because in Mustafa Hamid’s case it is indeed interesting how he experienced that day.

On 9/11, he was in the Afghan city of Kandahar, where sweets were handed out when news about the terror attacks in New York and Washington broke. Others may have been celebrating that day, but Mustafa Hamid wasn't. He was angry. Only three weeks prior, he had met with Osama Bin Laden. On that occasion, the Saudi al-Qaida chief had let on plans were in place for a „big strike“ that would kill thousands. Mustafa Hamid asked Osama Bin Laden to stop his plan: „I knew what this would mean for Afghanistan“, he told me. It was a frosty meeting. It turned out to be their last encounter.

After I got back to Berlin from Alexandria I asked Mustafa Hamid to describe to me in yet more detail how that last encounter took place. What was the weather like that day? Where exactly had they met? What had Bin Laden been wearing? Had he smiled when he talked about his „plan“?

Mustafa Hamid kindly sent me two pages in Arabic. But by the time his email arrived, an unexpected process had already been set in motion: I had begun to sense that the real story was not what I thought it was when I was standing on that balcony in Alexandria.

Detail is usually hard currency in journalism. I remember that I once wrote an article about a German convert to Islam who had joined a militant Jihadi group in Pakistan. On the day before his departure from Germany he had taken his cat to the veterinarian. What a great piece of detail! But unfortunately it didn't reveal anything. And it explained nothing.

So I asked myself: What difference does it make to know what clothes Osama Bin Laden had been wearing that day?

Wasn't it more important that Mustafa Hamid was angry at the Saudi? Wasn't it more important that Mustafa Hamid and Leah Farrall managed to write a book together? Wasn't it more important to ask if there was something to learn from this, for all of us? I don't want to be romantic, but: If a former counter terrorism official and a former Taliban adviser can laugh together, as Farrall and Hamid do – why can't all of us?

I asked them both about the common ground in their endeavour and they agreed it was to set the historical record straight. Hamid, the eye witness; Farrall, the academic who had read literally everything on the role of Arab fighters in Afghanistan from 1979 onwards. This common ground is the reason their book is as powerful as it is (The Arabs at War in Afghanistan will be published later this summer).

But at the same time I sensed another element beyond their shared academic interest. It is significant that Mustafa Hamid recalls he chose to be intentionally discourteous towards Leah Farrall when they first met: „I thought she was like those in Abu Ghuraib“. Soldiers, torturing Iraqis, heaped in naked piles: That, apparently, was what came to his mind when he learned that Leah Farrall had been with the Australian Federal Police – even though neither Australians nor Police were involved in the Abu Ghuraib scandal. „But I quickly realised she was different, she was honest and serious, and she gave me honest answers when I asked her something.“

And how about Leah Farrall? “I remember sitting with colleagues years ago, discussing whom we would most like to talk to from the mujahidin world (a surprisingly common topic of conversation). Mr Hamid topped my list and had done so since I chanced upon two stories he had recounted in his books. In one, he told of forgetting to buy his children sweets while on a trip away and returning to face their wrath; the other, recalling encountering the body of a dead Soviet soldier, and the sadness he felt, even for his enemy.”

When Leah Farrall met Mustafa Hamid in person years later, she addressed him as „Mustafa“, and not by his nom de guerre „Abu Walid“. „That reminded me of my humanity“, says he. What was the bridge that made them trust one another? I daresay: A degree of respect for another person's life. But foremost: Honesty about themselves and openness towards the other.

The US TV series “Homeland” is a global success and critics often praise it, saying that it sheds light on the shades of grey in “Great War on Terror” that unfolded after 9/11. A CIA-Agent, a former US-Marine, who was (or was not) turned by al-Qaida during captivity in Iraq: That's the set-up. It is true that “Homeland” plays skillfully with viewers' expectations. But shades of grey? The truth is that in “Homeland” there is black and there is white. The suspense of the show really only comes from the question of who, behind his last mask, turns out to be evil. And who, at the bottom of it all, is good.

But that is not what shades of grey are about. Shades of grey don't mean that you don't know enough. Shades of grey mean that sometimes there are no simple answers.

Mustafa Hamid makes a point of the fact that he always felt in alignment with the Taliban movement but was never a member of the terrorist network Al-Qaida. Leah Farrall says: “I was happy I worked in law enforcement and not secret services because I never had to lie, and I wasn’t part of an apparatus that was involved in activities now widely viewed as repugnant and very much dictated by this black and white distinction of evil and good and with us or against us that dictated how some of the covert agencies operated in their less accountable space.” That is what shades of grey are about.

In January 2011, when millions took to the streets in Egypt to protest the Mubarak regime, I spent two weeks in Cairo. One morning I spoke to a young revolutionary who had not been attending work for days in order to live in the protesters' camp on Tahrir Square. He was very tired and had all but lost his voice. But he was euphoric. One thing he said touched me in particular: „One day it will be cool to be an Arab!“ There was so much pain mirrored in that sentence. Pain because anywhere outside of the Muslim world for all of his adult life that young man had been considered, as a Muslim and an Arab, a security risk.

Sometimes I ask myself if we can actually remember what life was like before 9/11. And how we used to look at one another and at the world. This “we” I am referring to is an almost global “we”: It encompasses almost all people considering themselves part of “the West” as well as almost all people considering themselves part of the “Muslim world”. Plus those who believe they are part of both worlds - a huge number of people.

I believe that prior to 9/11 we all used to accept shades of grey to a higher degree than after. I believe that 9/11 is the day that killed all shades of grey. The day on which many of us, as individuals, as citizens, as members of nations, consciously or unconsciously organised ourselves in patterns like shards of metal under the influence of a magnetic field.

But if one day, if that day, has such a power, I want to understand it. And by that I mean: Not as symbol; not as warning but in its concrete historical genesis. Not as a deed with its own specific operational history and perpetrators, that's what the US 9/11 commission report is for. But as that which unfolded as opposed to those which did not.

In Alexandria, I asked Leah Farrall about the single most interesting thing she learned from her studies and her conversations with Mustafa Hamid. She replied: “The role of chance.” Chance? Chance is not usually a category that plays a role in the discussions of historians or terror experts when they talk about al-Qaida and 9/11.

In hindsight, it is always tempting to interpret history as an inevitable chain of events. In the case of 9/11, one such “inevitable chain” goes like this: In 1996, Osama Bin Laden declared war upon the United Stated; pronouncing every US soldier anywhere in the world a legitimate target. On August 7^th, 1998, two huge bombs exploded in front of the US embassies in Nairobi and Daressalam, killing more than 200 people. On October 12^th, 2000, 17 US sailors died when al-Qaida operatives attacked the USS Cole off the Yemeni port of Aden in a suicide mission. Given this prehistory, what could 9/11 possibly be other than the next logical step?

That is true. But is also not true. It is only true in as much as all three events have already been the result of a dynamic within the al-Qaida nexus that was all but inevitable. What happened was that Osama Bin Laden gained the upper hand and the means to pursue this particular course of action – even though many in the al-Qaida leadership and close to it were not in favour of attacking the US at all. It is important to understand this: While many inside al-Qaida were against 9/11, some of those who planned the attacks had only reluctantly become members of al-Qaida in the first place. Like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.

In the summer of 2009, I received an unusual email. “I have a message for you”, it read. Then there was a link to an uploader website. I followed the link and found a letter in which a group of Jihadists from Germany, who had migrated to Waziristan and joined a terrorist group there, invited me to interview them. Naturally, I immediately informed my editors. A short while later my phone rang, a number from Pakistan: It was the spokesman of said group, a Turkish-German militant. He said I should fly to Quetta in Pakistan, and I would be brought to their camps from there. I would be allowed to take pictures, interview who I wanted to interview, etc. My editors and I agreed quickly that I would not take that trip. It was way too risky and we could not trust these people. But we agreed to send them a number of questions. If their answers were more than just propaganda, we would decide how to deal with their proposal later. A few weeks passed. Then I learned the Americans had contacted the German Office of the Chancellery and had supplied them with the complete correspondence I had had with the militants.

The Americans? I suppose, more precisely, the NSA. Honestly, it felt horrible. I remember gesturing my wife into the bathroom and then, like in a bad movie, turning on the tap of the bathtub. I whispered to her that we would have to assume that our communications were being monitored.

"Even if there's just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty”: This is how US journalist Ron Suskind in 2006 cites what he calls the “One per cent Doctrine”, also known as the “Cheney Doctrine”, for then Vice President Dick Cheney was the creator of this doctrine, formulated in the White house in November 2001, only weeks after 9/11.

The Iraq War, Guantanamo, Waterboarding, CIA Black Sites and renditions: Through the prism of the Cheney Doctrine all of these events seem less arbitrary, don't they? The same is true for global surveillance: Until this day, nothing explains NSA's greed for data better than this doctrine.

There is no need to compare Dick Cheney to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad to see that not only inside al-Qaida, but also within the US administrations the more extremist positions had the upper hand. Sure, Al-Qaida never distanced itself from 9/11 whereas in the US there was a process of democratic revision of all of these practices. But again: This isn't a comparison. It's just meant to re-iterate the fact that we are – in neither sphere – talking about inevitable chains of events.

Nobody knows what the world would look like if 9/11 had not happened. But what if we forced ourselves to try and look at the world as if that was the case? Bearing in mind that those responsible for 9/11 and the doctrine by which reaction was shaped are a handful of people – not millions.

I don't want to gloss over things: I am half-Jordanian, and I long for the times I experienced there as a kid. My Jordanian family is part of the country’s Christian minority. And until very recently what my aunt told me at my last visit there would have been unthinkable: That the guy in the bakery who used to bake all the cakes for our family events let it be known that he wouldn't put crosses on cakes anymore.

But by the same token I don't want to withhold that I am nervous whenever I have to travel to the US. Sure, so far I have always been allowed in. But the last time it really helped that the officer who screened me knew me from Twitter and thus was able to understand that my visa entries from Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia didn't mean I was a risk but were proof of my profession.

I believe in a way we are all prisoners – prisoners in a kind of Guantanamo of the Mind. But I don't want to live there. I want to continue to meet with and talk to people like Mustafa Hamid, even if the US decides to designate them as terrorists, and without accepting that judgment as something I have to agree with. Just as I want to keep meeting with and talking to CIA analysts and operatives without immediately categorising them as torturers or murderers. I want to draw my own conclusions. Sometimes I want to pass on drawing my own conclusions. And sometimes I even want to be able to admit that I can't draw my own conclusions.

Because I know and understand that the world is complicated and that almost nothing is either black or white; because I believe that people can change; because I know that our world, really, is a world of shades of grey.

One day we will look back on the “Great War on Terror” and its warpage, and we will realize that it didn't end on the day that Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize; nor on the day that Osama Bin Laden was killed; nor on the day that the last NATO soldier left Afghanistan. The “Great War on Terror” will have ended, because enough people around the world will have understood and remembered that the ambiguous is closer to the truth and to reality than the seemingly certain. 

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NB: This Essay was first published in German by ZEITmagazin on May 28th, 2014. It is copyright-protected. It has been marginally edited for this Blog. 

Germany and the NSA

July, 3rd 2013 - There has been a bit of a debate recently in the US and outside about how many terror attacks have actually been prevented by the NSA - or rather: with the help of information and analysis provided by the NSA (not the same thing, obviously). NSA chief Keith Alexander on June 21st in front of the US Congress put the number at 54 cases, 25 of which he said had concerned Europe. 

In at least two cases I can confirm that based on interviews I had with parties who have knowledge of those cases. One case won't be a surprise to many of you: The detection and subsequent arrest of the "Sauerland Cell" in 2007, who had planned attacks in Germany on behalf of the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU). 

The second case is maybe not exactly a surprise either, but was at least not publicly known until now: It is the arrest of the suspected Al-Qaida cell around Abdeladiem El-K., currently standing trial in Düsseldorf for alleged membership in AQ. (I am mentioning this second case in an NSA story in tomorrow's edition of DIE ZEIT.) 

However, there is more. Because from what I learnt it seems that in both cases the key was that the NSA was able to tap into communications of terror organizations in AfPak at senior levels. 

Let's take a look at how the Sauerland Cell investigation started: According to court documents, in November 2006 police in the German state of Baden-Württemberg passed on the following piece of information to the federal police, which it said it had received from the US Airforce Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) in Stuttgart: 

„GERMANY/ PAKISTAN: In late Oct 06, according to sensitive reporting, the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) established direct links to an ethnic Turkish associate in Germany, possibly in the vicinity of Stuttgart. The associate may be either Muaz or Zafer, two ethnic Turks from accordingGermany who attended IJU-sponsored training in Pakistan, beginning in late Jun or early Jul 06. Muaz was known to have completed his training by late Aug 06, at which time he traveled to eastern Iran. Materials describing the manufacture and use of poisons, the assembly of explosives and detonators, as well as other extremlst training Information, may have already been made available to the ethnic Turk in Germany.“

Now I don't know the exact role of AFOSI. But according to my sources, the original information definitely came by way of the NSA. Perhaps that fact for some reason needed to be obscured and information fed into alternative channels. I wouldn't know. But the actual origin of the information seems to have been email communications inside the IJU that the NSA was able to exploit. 

It was suggested to me that this was similar in the case of Abdeladim El-K. Which is especially interesting since he is alleged to have been in touch with Al-Qaida's high ranking operative Younis al-Mauretani, who must be considered as having been responsible for a lot of the Euro Plot Planning in and around 2009. 

To me that seems to make stronger the case of those who argue that targeted tapping is much more effective than trying to find terrorist networks within the haystack of intercepted big data. But in all honesty: I am not a SIGINT expert; I just thought you might find this interesting. 

Cheers, Y. 

The 18th Document Or: News from Abottabad

March 20^th, 2013 - OK, folks, this is an exclusive: Until today the US government has only published 17 of the probably thousands of documents it seized in Abottabad during the raid on Osama Bin Laden. But now an 18^th document has surfaced – and surprisingy enough here in Germany. I have had a chance to study the document. In this Thursday's issue of DIE ZEIT I have a brief report about it, but there is also an extended online version I did for ZEIT ONLINE, already up on the website. If you can't read German, here are some key points.

• The document is a letter by Junis al-Mauretani to Osama Bin Laden, dated March 2010. It is 17 pages in the original Arabic.
• It was sent to German authorities by the US Department of Justice in April 2012 after the Germans had asked if the US did perhaps have any information about three young men standing trial in Düsseldorf at the moment for alleged membership in al-Qaida.
• The reason the US shared this particular document with the Germans is that in it, al-Mauretani refers to a Moroccan recruit whose date of birth he gives - and which is the same as the date of birth of one of the defendants in said trial.
• In essence, the letter is a sketch or rather a vision of a comprehensive plot against the West, including maritime, economical and other sensitive targets. There is a certain emphasis on critical infrastructure, as al-Mauretani singles out water dams, underwater gas pipelines, bridges between cities and tunnels connecting countries, as well as internet cables as potential targets.
• He even suggests to explore underwater pipelines with civil submarines, and he maintains that the pipelines have safety valves every 10 km – a fact, he says, that would need to be taken into account.
• He also says that airborne terrorism is still a possibility but suggests that AQ cadres after learning how to fly should try to get themselves employed (I assume: by airlines). Then they could, he says, for example put their co-pilot to sleep with a seditive and fly the plane into the intended target. As one possible target he suggests the Saudi oil installation at Abqaiq.
• He also claims that there is a process in place by which followers would be asked to enter into sensitive jobs, e.g. in the transport business for oil and gas. By this, he suggests, it could become easier to attack targets like airports, love parades (sic!) and highly frequented tunnels.
• Other operatives would be asked to study physics or chemistry so that they could be made use of at a later time. The term he uses a lot in this respect is „infiltration“.
• There is also an interesting passage in which he claims that AQIM has enough funds to help finance his ideas and that the cadres there trust him personally.
• He also asks OBL to prepare a speech in which he would threaten Europe. This should be done in sync with the operational planning. Around two weeks after the speech, in which he asks OBL to say that patience with the Europeans had run out, the first strike would happen, al-Mauretani says. And shortly after that, the US would be struck.

These are the key facts in the documents. If you are interested in my analysis, I will say the following:

• First of all, the stlye (and some of the content) of the document does seem generally reconcilable with the 17 documents published thus far. For example, Mauretani addresses OBL as "Zamarai". 
• The content also seems to fit rather nicely with information gleaned from other terror trials. It seems to support the notion that AQ was in and around 2010 trying rather hard to plot attacks against the West. For example, two German Jihadists after their apprehension stated that they had met al-Mauretani in Waziristan and that he had spoken about a plot against the West in which no-one would have to die and that it would concentrate on economic targets.
• I have the impression that al-Mauretani was trying to achieve three objectives by his vision: being economically hurtful; being original; and being risk avert.
• The document as such though is not what most in the West would consider a coherent memo. It is much rather the typcal AQ mixture of megalomania and micromanagement that is also reflected in other documents. This is why I call it a vision or attack sketch rather than a plan. There are fairly wild jumps between what I would consider viable ideas (like letting people train how to fly and have them employed by airlines) and the fantastic – like passages about the future military generals of the future Islamic State.
• In essence, the document has definitely great historical value: It offers a rare glimpse into AQ thinking at that ca. 2010. I daresay though that is not operationally important in the now, even if some ideas may have trickled down and be alive elsewhere in the network. This is mainly for four reasons: Al-Mauretani was captured in September 2011; OBL is dead; many recruits from Western countries possibly involved with this very scheme have been arrested; and AQ 2013 is under much more pressure than AQ 2010. And this is not even taking into consideration other factors like the Arab spting and its repercussions.

Apart from the other 17 Abottabad documents, there is one other set of documents that I suggest should be read together with this new letter, and that's the three English documents German authorities believe to stem from AQ core and which were found on a memory device of another terror suspect. I wrote about those documents in March last year on this blog, too. If you then take into consideration what apprehend terror suspects have said in trials or at other occasions, the Euro Plot Scheme of AQ of 2009/2010 becomes almost palpable. I would argue that three aspects of it are now grounded evident due to what we have seen, heard and observed:

1.- Al-Mauretani seems to have been responsible for the reporting to OBL, perhaps the finances, most likely the "grand vision", too. He seems to have wanted to strike economic targets and infrastructure in the West, using Western recruits who he wanted to infiltrate into potentially interesting positions.

2.- AQ during that time actively recruited Westerners - even from among other Jihadist groups like the IMU. I think this means that they wanted this to be large and comprehensive effort - probably sending all of them back around the same time but not striking immediately but rather asking them to recruit even more people and then lie down until told to act. Al-Mauretani in several cases made sure there would be secure means of communications.

3.- The other set of documents seized here in Germany strongly suggest that there was also a Pakistani contingent working inside the larger AQ effort, probably clustered around Rashid Rauf. It could, I believe, also have included Ilyas Kashmiri.

The whole thing, of course, failed in a lot of ways, as you all are aware. But then again: Our visibility is not very good at the moment. So I will only say it is unlikely the Euro Plot is still on the table in its original form.

Lastly, a little aside:

Johannes Pausch, an attorney for one of the defendants, in fact the one possibly mentioned in the document, told me that he was „doubtful“ of the authenticity of the document. He said he couldn't believe that AQ would be careless enough to e.g. put a real date of birth into writing just like that. Today, three FBI agents will be called as witnesses in the Düsseldorf court and they will be asked to describe how the document was seized, transported and logged and who had access to it. This is supposed to help answer questions like: Was the document put into the right context? And did somebody have a theoretical chance to manipulate it?

What I would say in this regard is that in fact there does remain an issue of authenticity. But this issue relates to all of the Abottabad documents. We now know 17 (– well, 18 –) of what are very likely thousands of documents seized on that day in May 2011. Obviously, there is no material acquired by independent sources to compare it against. We have never really seen documents of this kind before. It is therefor near impossible to prove beyond doubt that any of these documents are authentic. We can believe it and work with them. Maybe we even should. And I am certainly not a conspiracy theorist. But for the sake of academic purity I will nonethelesse maintain that there is no proof of authenticity in the true sense of the word.

But be that as it may, I have to say I had a few very interesting days with this one document. And of yourse I am very interested in your thoughts. So, bring it on, please!

(PS. Please bear in mind that this is my private blog. You can't attribute any of it to DIE ZEIT, the paper I work at. At least not without asking.)

Cheers, Yassin  

Intelligence, foreign and domestic

March 13, 2013 - This is just a brief post about two articles I have in this week's edition of DIE ZEIT where I work. Unfortunately we don't run our stuff in English (yet?), so I am going to provide summaries for those of you interested in intelligence issues.

First item is a brief news bite: According to my information Germany's domestic intelligence agency "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz" or BfV will shut down a unit they founded in 2009 whose task it was to provide background (academic and scientific) on Islamist ideology for the purpose of sharpening analysis of Islamist movements. It was comprised of roughly a half dozen experts, all of whom had studied Islamic Studies. In fact, most of these officials have already been moved to other departments weeks or even months ago. The agency states that they need their expertise in departments that are more pragmatically oriented, so in the end they apparently figured it is more honest to just close the shop. I found the idea behind the original founding of the unit very interesting and I know that internally some of their inout was highly valued; for example, these people seem to have made solid contributions towards a better understanding of Salafism. But be that as it may, they will from know on be working elsewhere inside the agency. Maybe some of them will even enjoy that, we will see. But it is interesting to note that other countries still maintain similar units and deem them important.

Second item is a bigger story I wrote about a case concerning the "Bundesnachrichtendienst", Germany's foreign intelligence agency. It is a bit complicated, but very interesting. So here are some bullet points:

* In late 2011 the agency received complaints about one of their officials who was at the time running a liaison office in the German city of Mainz. According to these complaints, the man, among other things, made right wing populist statements on a regular basis.

* The agency started an internal investigation, seeking disciplinary matters, that would focus on what the agency described as "right wing populist statements". In hearings, witnesses said that they had heard the official in question making numerous statements that would be hostile towards Muslims and Islam as well as black people and foreigner.

* However, in the course of that internal investigations other members of the agency were heard and some of what they said alarmed the agency. There had apparently been talk about the need to train for when things would get ugly, and some witnesses said they overheard the man speaking about how he had already buried a crate of weapons and was having preparatory meetings with high standing, like minded people.

* These bits and pieces led the agency to formally turn the investigation over to a prosecutor. They filed charges, suggesting the official had broken laws regulating weapons. The agency made it clear they believed it possible he was thinking about starting his own militia.

* Police investigated the charges, including measures like wire tapping the agency official, raiding his home and even tailing him. Nothing came of it: they closed the file because they couldn't produce evidence he had broken any gun laws (he does have weapons, but they are all legal and legally stored) or made attempts at starting his own militia.

* After the file was shut, however, the agency took up the internal investigation again (which had to be stopped during the external investigation). The BND is still seeking disciplinary matters because they believe that his alleged islamophobic statements are not in keeping with his obligations as a state official (who by law in Germany have to be balanced or at least can't be extreme in their publicized views).

* The lawyer of the official says it is all mobbing, misunderstandings and misportrayal. He says his client is neither a racist (witnesses claim he had called black people less intelligent) or an islamophob (other witnesses say he said Islam doesn't belong to Germany, and that there was reason to believe Muslims would undermine our society).

* The lawyer also filed charges against another official of the BND, claiming he lied about his client.

It is going to be interesting to see whether the BND will be able to discipline the man and in what ways. This process may take weeks or even months. The argument is now not about weapons anymore, it is about words -- and the question of what things you can say as an intelligence official. Of course there also the question of what things the man actually said - as the lawyer is disputing most of that. In any case, it is the first case of this kind that I am aware of.

Here are links to short German summaries of the stories. 1 & 2.

Alright, good night,

Y.