Al Queda in Iraq...surprisingly sophisticated

[XT]

I guess this would fall under the heading of witnessing more than debate as the only real debate I have is ‘thoughts’. I was reading this article on CNN and thought I’d share it with 'dopers to see what folks think about it:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) – With Christmas 2005 approaching, the princes of al Qaeda’s western command were gathering. They’d been summoned for something special – to plot a three-month campaign of coordinated suicide, rocket, and infantry attacks on American bases, checkpoints, and Iraqi army positions.

In al Qaeda in Iraq’s hierarchy, prince designates a senior leader, and these princes had been gathered by the most senior among them, the prince for all of Anbar province itself.

This commander, his name not recorded in al Qaeda’s summaries of the meetings and referred to only by rank, spent that December fleshing out his vision for the wave of assaults with the gathered subordinates who would lead his combat brigades.

The gathering was a council of war, its meetings remarkably detailed in al Qaeda records. In minutes of their secretive meetings, a grim notation was made: Project “Operation Desert Shield” had been approved and would “hopefully commence in mid-January 2006.”

It is interesting that they called their efforts ‘Operation Desert Shield’.

The overall plan, too, was similar to any that the U.S. army would devise. First, the military committee chairman outlined plans to seal off the U.S. targets as much as possible by harassing supply lines, damaging bridges, and targeting helicopters and their landing zones, in a bid to restrict reinforcement or resupply.

Then the security chairman spoke of the need to maintain strict “operational security,” ordaining that only the princes, or leaders, involved in the meetings be informed of the grand strategy, leaving cell leaders and battalion commanders to believe their individual attacks were being launched in isolation.

All this would be “Phase I,” a precursor to the 90 days of attacks of “Phase II,” to be timed across not just Anbar, but across much of Sunni Iraq to stretch and distract America’s war commander, Gen. David Petraeus.

Flowing from the memo approving “Operation Desert Shield,” a stream of reports follow.

On January 7, 2006, a memo called for Iraqis who’d infiltrated various U.S. bases to conduct site surveys to help identify the camps that would be hit. The two-page note also spoke of placing ammunition stores well in advance of the attacks so the fighters could resort to them during the battles.

Phase II, the 90-day offensive, commenced around March 2006, with al Qaeda’s records from Anbar that month reading like a litany of what the U.S. Army would call AARs, or After Action Reports, listing each attack’s successes and failures. It also noted the losses suffered by both al Qaeda or, in what Americans would call Battle Damage Assessments, the losses suffered by the coalition.

Al Qaeda’s folder on “Operation Desert Shield” expresses the depth, structure and measure of its military command. It is perhaps the most compelling illustration of how al Qaeda works.

Yet the Desert Shield folder is but one found among the thousands of pages of records, letters, lists, and hundreds of videos held in the headquarters of al Qaeda’s security prince for Anbar province, a man referred to in secret correspondence as Faris Abu Azzam.

Killed 18 months ago, Faris’ computers and filing cabinets were captured by anti-al Qaeda fighters from a U.S-backed militia, or Awakening Council (the militias made up of former Sunni insurgents, now on the U.S. payroll and praised by President Bush for gutting al Qaeda in Iraq). The Awakening militiamen handed the massive haul of al Qaeda materials to both their U.S handlers from the Navy, Marine Corps and Army, and to CNN.

So, what do these captured documents from 2006 tell us about al Qaeda in Iraq today? A lot, according to a senior U.S. intelligence analyst in Iraq, who cannot be named because of the sensitivity of his position.

“We’re still finding documents like these throughout the country, but I would say that’s starting to lessen in amount as the organization shrinks,” the analyst said.

The al Qaeda command mechanism and discipline seen in the documents, he said, persist.

“The hard-core senior leadership is still trucking along, and there are always going to be internal communications, documents, and videos,” he said.

With as many as six suicide attacks and three car bombings in the past 10 days in Iraq (including one attack that killed a U.S. soldier and wounded 18 others), Driscoll agrees the picture the documents paint of a well-oiled, bureaucratic organization is relevant today.

“Certainly we see that in several different ways how they communicate … as they’ve got to be able to talk to their troops in the field to maintain morale, especially when we’re pursuing them very aggressively,” Driscoll said.

Al Qaeda’s bookkeeping was orderly and expansive: death lists of opponents, rosters of prisoners al Qaeda was holding, along with the verdicts and sentences (normally execution) the prisoners received, plus phone numbers from a telephone exchange of those who’d called the American tip line to inform on insurgents, and motor pool records of vehicle roadworthiness.

And there are telling papers with a window into al Qaeda’s ability to spy on its pursuers. One is a document leaked from the Ministry of Interior naming all the foreign fighters held in government prisons. Other documents discuss lessons al Qaeda learned from its members captured by American forces and either released or still in U.S.-run prisons. The leadership studied, and discussed, the nature of the American interrogations, the questioning techniques used, and the methods that had been employed to ensnare its men.

And an Iraqi contractor even wrote to the Anbar security prince asking permission to oversee a $600,000 building project on a U.S. base, attaching the architectural drawings of the bunkers he was to make, with an offer to spy and steal weapons during the construction.

It seems al Qaeda in Iraq is almost as pedantically bureaucratic as was Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party – a trait that really shouldn’t surprise.

Though al Qaeda was denied a foothold in Iraq during Hussein’s regime, with its ideology unappealing to the mostly secular professional military officers in the former dictator’s armies, that has now changed.

According to the internal al Qaeda correspondence in the files, Iraqis have taken to, and effectively run, al Qaeda in Iraq. Foreign fighters’ roles seem mostly relegated to the canon fodder of suicide attacks.

Though the upper tiers of the organization are still dominated by non-Iraqis, in Anbar, at least, all the princes and brigade and battalion commanders are homegrown.

“Correct. They’re all Iraqis,” said Abu Saif. “In my house [one time] there were about 18 Arab fighters under Iraqi commander Omar Hadid, mercy of God upon him, and the [foreigners] did not object, they just did their duty.”

I thought this next part was very interesting as it shows the reasons why the US is doing (a bit) better in Iraq…and why AQ sort of stepped on their own dick really hard with golf shoes.

That Iraqification of the network is what perhaps enabled al Qaeda to foresee its demise years before the Americans did.

Documents from 2005 and 2006 show top-ranking leaders feared the imposition of strict religious law and brutal tactics were turning their popular support base against them.

One memorandum from three years ago warned executions of traitors and sinners condemned by religious courts “were being carried out in the wrong way, in a semi-public way, so a lot of families are threatening revenge, and this is now a dangerous intelligence situation.”

That awareness led al Qaeda to start killing tribesmen and nationalist insurgents wherever they began to rally against it – long before America ever realized they had potential allies to turn to.

Yet those same practices that accelerated al Qaeda in Iraq’s undoing were breathtakingly documented.

In a vein similar to the Khmer Rouge’s grisly accounting of its torture victims, within the files of one al Qaeda headquarters in Anbar alone was a library of 80 execution videos, mostly beheadings, none of which had been distributed or released on the Internet. And all were filmed after al Qaeda in Iraq ended its policy of broadcasting such horrors.

So why keep filming? According to former member Abu Saif and the senior U.S. intelligence analyst: to verify the deaths to al Qaeda superiors and to justify continued funding and support.

From this article at least it seems that AQ in Iraq was MUCH more sophisticated than was previously believed. This is definitely not the run of the mill terrorist organization…not with a command and bureaucratic structure like this. It’s also interesting that despite all of those advantages that THEY also miscalculated and fucked up in Iraq and are definitely paying the price for it now as a large percentage of their former allies have turned against them.

I have no idea what, if anything, this will mean for the US in Iraq…but it looks rather grim for AQ there, at least from what I’m reading here. I can’t say that the prospect of AQ on the run and being hunted down in Iraq exactly leaves me teary eyed or heart broken.

Thoughts?

-XT

[Der_Trihs]

@xtisme

I have no idea what, if anything, this will mean for the US in Iraq…but it looks rather grim for AQ there, at least from what I’m reading here. I can’t say that the prospect of AQ on the run and being hunted down in Iraq exactly leaves me teary eyed or heart broken.

Thoughts?

-XT

• yawn * They would never have been there in any numbers save for us, and have never been that important or numerous. Even if all the Al Qaeda in Iraq die, that just means we’ve killed tens of thousands and spent billions to end up where we started in regards to them. And, regardless of what happens, we’ve already inflicted more damage on ourselves than they ever could have.

[XT]

Um…you didn’t actually read the article did you? Is that just a standard strawman that you reel off whenever you see Iraq? Because, you know, I actually wasn’t talking about any of that.

-XT

[RedFury]

What’s the debate? I don’t see any “thoughts” other than the usual “Rah rah, USA” and “we did the right thing.”

[RedFury]

PS-Just in case you weren’t aware, AQ’s presence in Iraq was not just insignificant but counter to Saddam’s Bath Party ideology.

IOW, they were enemies.

[mswas]

xtisme According to John Robb in the book “Brave New War”, Saddam Hussein’s lesson learned from Desert storm was that there was no way to compete with the US conventionally, so he planned for an insurgency in the aftermath that would harry the occupational forces until he could be returned to powers. As such they left weapons caches all over Iraq, and organized the Republican guard to fight an assymetric battle.

The book is quite interesting. Robb is a former Marine who worked anti-terrorism, and then moved to the private sector and built some software startups. His theory in “Brave New War”, is to compare terrorist organizations to open-source software movements. His prescription is to change the way we use data analysis to combat the threat. If you’re really interested in this sort of stuff, that book is a must read.

Al Qaeda is without a different breed from other terrorist organizations. The two cutting edge implementations are Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, at least in the Arab world. Narco-Terrorists in South America are also a highly bureaucratic and organized breed. Though, I think that this kind of bureaucratic implementation is probably more common amongst the world class terrorist organizations than maybe you previously gave credit for. When I found out the Colombians were using a super-computer to analyze phone records in order to catch snitches, I realized that this sort of shit was at a much higher level than I ever would have expected. I read about that probably in 2000.

xtisme Do everyone a favor and ignore the peanut gallery. Some of us are interested in this topic.

[mswas]

@RedFury

PS-Just in case you weren’t aware, AQ’s presence in Iraq was not just insignificant but counter to Saddam’s Bath Party ideology.

IOW, they were enemies.

As it stated in the article.

Though al Qaeda was denied a foothold in Iraq during Hussein’s regime, with its ideology unappealing to the mostly secular professional military officers in the former dictator’s armies, that has now changed.

[RedFury]

@mswas

As it stated in the article.

Yeah. So? Point being they never had a foothold until you just had to meddle-in.

The rest is apologists BS.

Pay me no mind. I’d appreciate it.

[mswas]

@RedFury

Yeah. So? Point being they never had a foothold until you just had to meddle-in.

The rest is apologists BS.

Pay me no mind. I’d appreciate it.

Actually this is a thread about organization. Not about apologism. There is no moral component to the OP, just an article about how Al Qaeda operates as an entity.

[XT]

@RedFury

What’s the debate? I don’t see any “thoughts” other than the usual “Rah rah, USA” and “we did the right thing.”

‘Rah rah, USA’?? The article is talking about a new depth of sophistication for AQ…it’s only tangentially about the USA. Seriously…did you READ the article or is this just a knee jerk post?

@RedFury

PS-Just in case you weren’t aware, AQ’s presence in Iraq was not just insignificant but counter to Saddam’s Bath Party ideology.

Um…had you read the article you would have seen that they are talking about events that happened long AFTER Saddam and the Baath party were out of business. And you would have seen that there were several factions that WERE supporting AQ wholeheartedly (and who were even filling the upper ranks of AQ in Iraq) but were turned against them due to some of their more distasteful practices.

Well, you WOULD have seen these things if you had actually bothered to read the article.

@RedFury

IOW, they were enemies.

No shit? That’s probably why AQ wasn’t IN Iraq in significant numbers while Saddam and the Baath party were in charge, ehe? 'Doyathink?

@mswas

xtisme According to John Robb in the book “Brave New War”, Saddam Hussein’s lesson learned from Desert storm was that there was no way to compete with the US conventionally, so he planned for an insurgency in the aftermath that would harry the occupational forces until he could be returned to powers. As such they left weapons caches all over Iraq, and organized the Republican guard to fight an assymetric battle.

I figure this probably formed the core of the hardware that the insurgency used initially (hell, probably even today). What was interesting to me was how sophisticated AQ was (and is)…I don’t think anyone expected that level of C&C from such an organization. Oh, the ruthlessness, to be sure…but they were VERY sophisticated and I think this explains how the insurgency in 2005 and 2006 was so very vicious…and why even today they are still effective.

@mswas

The book is quite interesting. Robb is a former Marine who worked anti-terrorism, and then moved to the private sector and built some software startups. His theory in “Brave New War”, is to compare terrorist organizations to open-source software movements. His prescription is to change the way we use data analysis to combat the threat. If you’re really interested in this sort of stuff, that book is a must read.

I will definitely check it out when I get back from my current trip abroad. I am definitely interested in this stuff as it’s rather important these days. I appreciate the recommendation.

-XT

[elucidator]

At this point, I have some doubt as to whether Al Queda exists as an entity rather than a brand name with no defined leadership. Fact is, we pretty much only know what we are told, and pretty much everybody who tells us doesn’t know either or is lying in support of an agenda.

[mswas]

@elucidator

At this point, I have some doubt as to whether Al Queda exists as an entity rather than a brand name with no defined leadership. Fact is, we pretty much only know what we are told, and pretty much everybody who tells us doesn’t know either or is lying in support of an agenda.

That’s a fairly dogmatic assumption. At a certain point there has to be some degree of truth or people cannot operate and do their jobs. That’s what we call, “corruption”, total corruption makes it difficult to accomplish anything.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

AQI is a negligable presense in Iraq. They’re less than 2% of the insurgency, so who gives a shit? AQI is not really al Quaeda proper, so I don’t see what the debate is. They wouldn’t be there if the US wasn’t there, and they won’t be there when we leave. The alleged “sophistication” of a trivial guerilla group in Iraq is no reason to stay there, no reason for concern and certainly no justification for having invaded in this first place.

[mswas]

@Diogenes the Cynic

AQI is a negligable presense in Iraq. They’re less than 2% of the insurgency, so who gives a shit? AQI is not really al Quaeda proper, so I don’t see what the debate is. They wouldn’t be there if the US wasn’t there, and they won’t be there when we leave. The alleged “sophistication” of a trivial guerilla group in Iraq is no reason to stay there, no reason for concern and certainly no justification for having invaded in this first place.

Where do you get the 2% figure? The article is specifically about their level of organization before their demise.

I don’t know why the obligatory US bashing which is OT is coming in.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@mswas

Where do you get the 2% figure?

The State Department

In 2006 the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research estimated that AQI’s membership was in a range of “more than 1,000,” putting AQI’s forces at less than one percent of the insurgency. In 2007 the State Department dropped its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, “the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number”

Here’s a good article from Washington Monthly. The Myth of AQI:

The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI’s membership was in a range of “more than 1,000.” When compared with the military’s estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence’s much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR’s estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, “the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number.”

How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I’ve heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. “Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” according to Nance, “is a microscopic terrorist organization.”

AQI is nothing, but even if it was anythging to worry about, that’s easily solved by leaving Iraq.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

double post

[RedFury]

Mix of old news, lies and plain bullshit:

McCain/Lieberman dissemble on AQ in Iraq

Plenty of links and cites debunking this “news” article by the ever-impartial OP.

Much more where that came from:

The Myth of AQI

Bush’s misleading Al Qaeda/Iraq rhetoric

AQ in Iraq becoming irrelevant
More disassembling from the infamous duo:

Listening to Petraeus The president had the courage to change course on Iraq. Does Congress?

Finally:

“Victory” Over Al-Qaeda in Iraq?

So, once again, again, what’s the “debate”? A bunch of lies we all already know?

Please. This ignorance is coming-up up on a decade…if you haven’t figured it out by now.

Enlist.

[Frank]

Though al Qaeda was denied a foothold in Iraq during Hussein’s regime, with its ideology unappealing to the mostly secular professional military officers in the former dictator’s armies, that has now changed.

It appears to me that this is what made them surprisingly sophisticated: that they absorbed professional military officers. I’ll note, as well, that the article makes it clear that these military officers saw that the fundamental religious elements and influences were costing them support, and did something about it.

So if the religious elements and influences no longer have power, do you still have Al Qaeda? Or do you have a brilliantly co-opted ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ type of resistance?

[mswas]

@Frank

It appears to me that this is what made them surprisingly sophisticated: that they absorbed professional military officers. I’ll note, as well, that the article makes it clear that these military officers saw that the fundamental religious elements and influences were costing them support, and did something about it.

So if the religious elements and influences no longer have power, do you still have Al Qaeda? Or do you have a brilliantly co-opted ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ type of resistance?

My impression of Al Qaeda was always that loose affiliation in the name of the cause was worth it. Anything to promote the brand. The name after all means, “The Base”, which is a delightfully generic term. As though they are the foundation for a broader mass movement.

[RedFury]

Perhaps the best and most comprehensive link – for those that have given up on the Chinese flag-lapel faux nationalism:

Perpetuating the al-Qaeda-Iraq Myth

Rah rah, USA, #1!

I know, I know, all those damn Ayrab terrarist’ takin’ over The Good Ol’ US of A.