Al Qaeda Acts
In our quarterly forecast, we wrote:
We regard the second quarter of 2003 as one of the highest-risk periods for al Qaeda action against the United States. It is unclear whether the group has the ability to act -- but if it does, the pressure to strike at the United States is enormous. The psychology of the Islamic world is such that unless al Qaeda can act, it will be seen as having dragged the Islamic world into a disaster. The organization must show that it has not been defeated and that the United States is not invincible. It is impossible to know what al Qaeda's capabilities are at this point, but if it retains the ability to act, by sheer logic, this is the quarter in which it should.
Obviously, we have seen at least the beginning of that counteroffensive. The May 12 al Qaeda strikes in Riyadh were followed by an attack in Casablanca on May 16. It is speculative -- but not unreasonable -- to assume that two attacks in Chechnya around the same time also were in some way coordinated with the strikes in Saudi Arabia. Certainly, the coincidence of the timing raises serious questions.
The following, therefore, have been established:
1. Al Qaeda remains operational.
2. The capabilities demonstrated thus far do not indicate that al Qaeda retains the capabilities it showed on Sept. 11, 2001.
This means that al Qaeda has passed its first hurdle. There was serious question in the Islamic world about whether the network remained operational. Over time -- and not very much time -- a quiescent al Qaeda would begin losing support personnel and operatives who were detached from the main organization. Extended silence and inaction would raise the possibility that the group had been destroyed. This would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Logic would argue that al Qaeda would lead with its strongest attack to prove its continued viability. The United States lowered its security level after the Iraq war; after the initial al Qaeda action, it would be expected that the United States and other countries would raise their alert status while increasing effective security as well. Therefore, the most ambitious attack in a series ought to come first. Al Qaeda has shown a deep and reasonable aversion to attacking hardened targets that are under intensified security. Therefore, while nothing is ever certain when it comes to reading al Qaeda, it would seem reasonable to assume that its main attack would come first and that secondary operations would take place only if the primary strike failed. Al Qaeda clearly likes to maintain a slow tempo of operations, using scarce resources sparingly.
If our reasoning has any validity -- and again, al Qaeda's ability to surprise is not minor -- then it would mean that the coordinated strikes in Riyadh were the main thrust of this cycle. Taken together, this was not a trivial attack. There are those who argue that anyone with some explosives would be able to carry out the strike. That might be the case, but al Qaeda's sophistication does not have to do with the munitions used, but rather with its ability to evade security forces. For at least nine people to mount an operation without being detected sufficiently to prevent the attack represents a substantial degree of sophistication. To be able to plan a campaign that encompasses Saudi Arabia and Morocco -- as well as possibly Chechnya -- represents an achievement in security practices. This is where al Qaeda's sophistication lies. It is sometimes the simplest sophistication -- allowing local groups to operate independently.
It would appear from the outside that the United States has improved its intelligence ability against al Qaeda to some extent. If the U.S. claim is true, then Washington warned officials in Riyadh about the possibility of al Qaeda attacks. If the Saudis are telling the truth, then the U.S. report focused on a particular compound where an attack was thwarted, rather than on the other facilities that were bombed. However this plays out, no one is denying that the United States had intelligence that an attack in Saudi Arabia was in the offing; that alone represents a substantial improvement in U.S. capabilities.
It is not, however, a perfect picture by any means. Washington also said that it had intelligence of potential operations being planned for Kenya and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Officials did not say anything about Casablanca. Thus far, no post-Riyadh attacks have come in the places where attacks were expected. An attack did occur in a place where no forecast was made. Thus, it would seem reasonable to say that the United States has increased its insight into al Qaeda's operations. Increased insight does not mean that Washington has achieved anything approaching comprehensive intelligence: It knows more than it once did, but not enough to consistently forecast -- let alone prevent -- al Qaeda attacks.
On the other side of the equation, al Qaeda used 19 men to strike the United States on Sept. 11. They used nine men to carry out an operation in Riyadh that had a tiny fraction of the impact of the Sept. 11 operation. Given al Qaeda's goals, we must assume that it would wish to expend scarce resources in the most effective manner possible. If this was the most effective operation available, it represents a substantial decline in the group's capabilities.
This is not to say that the May 12 strike was trivial. It had two important effects, apart from demonstrating the network's ability to act.
The first was to create a crisis of confidence in the expatriate community in Saudi Arabia. This community is critical for the operation of the Saudi economy, and the attacks raised serious questions among the expats about their safety and that of their families. A serious exodus of expatriates would be a crippling blow. The strike has not achieved that yet, but if there are follow-on attacks, that very well might occur.
Second, the attack drove a wedge between Washington and Riyadh -- a wedge we believe that al Qaeda's leadership fully understood. The United States has been making two demands of the Saudi government: First, that it step up internal operations against al Qaeda and its supporters, and second, that U.S. intelligence and security services be permitted to operate inside the kingdom. Saudi leaders have claimed to be doing the best they could in the first case, while claiming that formal Saudi sovereignty had to be respected even though informal operational arrangement could be made. For their part, officials in Washington did not believe that the Saudis were doing all that they could, and felt that their personnel were not being given sufficient access.
This was the case prior to the Iraq war. One of the purposes of the war was to put Saudi Arabia in a position in which it felt vulnerable to the United States. The Saudis walked a fine line, permitting U.S. forces to use some of their facilities during the war while almost immediately announcing -- with U.S. compliance -- the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the kingdom. Washington's expectation was that this would set the stage for more effective and collaborative action against al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. The expectation on the part of Saudi leaders -- more a hope, really -- was that the withdrawal would buy them sufficient slack that they could comply with U.S. demands to some degree.
The al Qaeda attacks in Riyadh struck at the very heart of this complex arrangement. U.S. officials immediately claimed that the Saudis had ignored their warnings -- raising the old charge that the Saudis were unprepared to act against al Qaeda -- while Saudi leaders denied any lack of initiative on their part. The United States flew a team of FBI and CIA agents into the country very publicly, demanding access to the investigation. The Saudis, caught in a public challenge to their sovereignty, trapped between the danger of increased al Qaeda operations and U.S. pressure, could not find a firm standpoint from which to operate. Both U.S.-Saudi relations and the image of the Saudi government domestically and abroad were weakened.
Al Qaeda, which now clearly sees the Saudi regime as an American collaborator, therefore achieved a political victory in creating this crisis. This, in addition to simply showing it could act, was an achievement. It was not, however, a definitive achievement, nor was the network's apparent action in Casablanca. This is al Qaeda's problem: As a result of Sept. 11, the Afghan and Iraqi regimes have been toppled, U.S. military forces are deployed in both countries as well as in other Islamic states and U.S. intelligence has deeply penetrated the region. Al Qaeda has not triggered a rising in the "Arab street," has not toppled any governments and established Islamic regimes in their place and has not managed to sustain an intense tempo of operations against the United States. In other words, al Qaeda has not done particularly well.
If, therefore, the operation in Riyadh is the strongest move that al Qaeda has at this point, it would indicate to us that while the United States might not be winning the war, al Qaeda might be losing it. In other words, the direct effectiveness of the United States against al Qaeda might be limited, but the internal dynamic of al Qaeda might be undermining the group's ability to act. We therefore doubt that the actions taken so far can halt the unraveling of al Qaeda, even if they might slow the group. If this attack is followed by another six months of relative quiescence, the same doubts that surfaced in the past few months will resurface with an intensified ferocity.
Obviously, al Qaeda leaders know this. Equally obviously, they want to do something about it. The issue is whether they have the resources to do so. Al Qaeda might be planning at this moment to replicate the Sept. 11 strikes, in terms of magnitude, yet we find that unlikely. We simply think that it would not have waited until European and American security organizations were at their highest level of alert, and have risked the capture of key operatives in other countries that might have compromised a U.S. or European operation, to strike. It's possible -- but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
At the same time, it does not appear to us that al Qaeda can avoid carrying out further attacks. This leads us to the conclusion that the most likely scenario is one of other attacks, probably against U.S. targets, in less expected countries. We are particularly interested in the possibility of an attack in Latin America -- which would be relatively unexpected, and where there are substantial U.S. targets. Asian targets are also possible, although the psychological affect of an attack in Latin America would be more substantial. Al Qaeda and its sympathizers are well placed in Latin America to carry out a strike: The tri-border region of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina is rife with Hezbollah members and associates, who are known to swap arms for drugs with the FARC in Colombia. There also is a precedent for Islamic violence in Latin America as well.
As with all things al Qaeda, this is speculation. However, if one accepts the premise that al Qaeda does not like to attack hard targets in the midst of security alerts -- and that it must continue to act for the sake of its credibility -- we think attacks on the flanks are most likely. Remembering that al Qaeda does not have infinite personnel, these must be fairly substantial operations.
