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When terrorism
numbers don't add up
By B Raman
Under Title 22 of the US Code, Section
2656f, the US State Department is required to
submit to Congress when it re-assembles after the
Easter recess every year a report on the state of
international terrorism during the previous year,
with recommendations regarding the role of state
sponsors of international terrorism.
The
report, as laid down by Congress, has to include,
inter alia, information on terrorist groups and
umbrella organizations under which falls any
terrorist group known to be responsible for the
kidnapping or death of any US citizen during the
preceding five years; groups known to be financed
by state sponsors of terrorism about which
Congress has been notified during the past year in
accordance with Section 6(j) of the Export
Administration Act; and any other known
international terrorist group that the secretary
of state determines should be the subject of the
report.
These annual reports, submitted
since 1980, came to be known as the "Patterns of
Global Terrorism" report and have enjoyed a
certain credibility in the eyes of international
counterterrorism analysts, who look forward to the
publication of these annual statistics. However,
some analysts, such as this writer, have been
skeptical about the accuracy of the statistics
provided in the reports, which are prepared not by
the intelligence community, but by the
Counterterrorism Division of the State Department.
This writer and others who share this
skepticism have felt the State Department is not
beyond fudging the statistics and manipulating the
analyses in order to serve the policy interests of
the current administration. Thus, while the
analyses in the reports on the alleged role of
Iraq and Iran were often based on fudged
statistics and false data, the analysis relating
to Pakistan went out of its way to give the
benefit of the doubt to Islamabad.
The
report for 2003 submitted to Congress in April
last year was considerably discredited because of
its attempts to portray, through fudged
statistics, the number of international terrorist
incidents as having registered a decline; whereas,
the truth was these incidents had increased
considerably. One suspected a conscious attempt in
the months preceding the US presidential election
to disseminate blatantly fudged statistics in
order to project the counterterrorism policy of
the George W Bush administration as producing
positive results.
Subsequently, when these
fudged statistics were found out, the State
Department's shame-faced Counterterrorism Division
admitted the error and disseminated corrected
figures. At the same time, it maintained there was
no mala fide intention in the release of a
report that turned out to be inaccurate.
In light of this controversy, major
changes to the format of the report were
introduced by Condoleezza Rice, the new secretary
of state after taking over from Colin Powell. It
is no longer called the annual report on the
Patterns of Global Terrorism. Instead, it is now
called the "Country Reports on Terrorism", with an
overview of the state of terrorism in the world
during 2004, followed by another overview of the
state of international jihadi terrorism and a
countrywide narrative of the state of terrorism in
different countries, the action taken by each
country against terrorism and its cooperation with
the United States and the rest of the
international community in dealing with terrorism.
The report also highlights the role of the US in
assisting other countries in the field of
counterterrorism.
All these aspects used
to be included in previous years' reports too, but
what was missing in the latest report submitted to
Congress was a statistical analysis of
international terrorism during 2004. This gave
rise to suspicions and allegations that Rice had
dispensed with this type of analysis because she
apparently feared that a statistical analysis
could show the public that despite the Bush
administration's claims to the contrary, the
international terrorism situation has worsened
since the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The world has seen more suicide attacks
since the US occupied Iraq than it had during the
previous two decades in which suicide terrorism
made its appearance. If the invasion and
occupation of Iraq was part of the so-called "war
against terrorism" designed to make the world safe
from jihadi terrorism, as is often claimed by the
Bush administration, victory is not yet in sight.
The many tactical successes scored by the US in
the Afghanistan-Pakistan region cannot conceal the
fact that strategically the overall effect of the
war as fought under the US leadership has been to
drive many more Muslims into the arms of
international jihadi terrorist groups than before
2003.
Rice seemed to have concluded that
the best way to avoid admitting this was to
dispense with any statistical analysis. In an
interview, she tried to defend herself against
allegations of intellectual dishonesty by claiming
that she merely wanted to leave the statistical
analysis to be done by the new National
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), set up under the
reorganization of the intelligence community as
recommended by the 9-11 Commission. According to
her, the NCTC would have greater professional
competence to undertake such an analysis than the
State Department's Counterterrorism Division.
Following concerns reportedly expressed by members of
Congress and others regarding the decision not
to include a statistical analysis in the State
Department's report, the department simultaneously released
to the media, at a joint press conference
held in Washington on April 27, its own
report in the new format as well as a separate statistical
analysis prepared by the NCTC. The
press conference was jointly addressed by Philip
Zelikow, counselor of the State Department, and
John Brennan, acting director of the NCTC.
(President George W Bush has not yet nominated a
permanent incumbent to this post.)
When
explaining the new format being followed from this
year, Zelikow said the following:
For years statistical data on global
terrorism has been published as part of an
annual State Department report called "Patterns
of Global Terrorism" that was last provided to
Congress in April 2004. The law itself requires
basically two things: it requires detailed
assessments of specified countries, and
information about specified terrorist groups.
The compilation of data about terrorist attacks
is not a required part of the report, but
traditionally had been provided by the State
Department, going back to the years in which the
State Department was basically the public voice
of the US government on international terrorism,
generally.
That situation has been
changing in recent years. In July 2004, the 9-11
Commission recommended creation of a National
Counterterrorism Center to provide an
authoritative agency for all-source analysis of
global terrorism. The president implemented the
recommendation by Executive Order in August. And
the agency was created by statute in December
2004, in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act, which is Public Law 108-458.
But what's important for our purposes is
what the law said the NCTC should do. It said
the NCTC was the primary organization for
analysis and integration of "all intelligence
possessed or acquired by the United States
government pertaining to terrorism or
counterterrorism". The law further stated that
the NCTC would be the United States government's
"shared knowledge bank on known and suspected
terrorists and international terror groups, as
well as their goals, strategies, capabilities,
and networks of contact and support".
Therefore, given that statutory mandate,
the State Department has focused its own report
to Congress on the issues in its mandate,
renamed "Country Reports on Terrorism: Assessing
Countries and Providing Information on Terrorist
Groups", which we are still statutorily required
to do. And it has deferred to the National
Counterterrorism Center to assume its prescribed
role as the "shared knowledge bank" for data on
global terrorism.
We are publicly
presenting our required report to Congress and
the public today. In conjunction with that
presentation, the NCTC will present current 2004
terrorist-incident data that is compiled using
the old statutory criteria, the old counting
rules and past practices. We're presenting this
data today in a period of transition. The NCTC
will present its own approach to compiling
statistics that need to be and will be
significantly revised and improved, including
its plans for providing a more comprehensive
accounting of global terrorism incidents by June
of this year. Thus, Zelikow
indirectly allowed for the possibility of errors
in this year's analysis too, though it had been
prepared by the NCTC. According to him, this was
because the same parameters for compilation and
analysis that were followed by the State
Department last year had been followed by the NCTC
in its analysis this year as it is still in the
process of being set up and, hence, would be in a
position to formulate its own parameters only by
June.
According to the analysis, during
2004 there were 651 attacks that met the criteria
for significant international terrorist incidents,
resulting in 1,907 fatalities. Of these, 284
attacks (a little more than 40%) took place in the
state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in India.
However, only 434 fatalities (less than 25%) were
reported from J&K. The large level of attacks
but low level of fatalities in J&K was due to
the fact that there was no mass-casualty incident
in India. In other countries, such as Spain and
Russia, there was a low level of attacks, but a
high level of fatalities due to mass-casualty
attacks such as those in Madrid and Beslan
(Russia).
There were 64 significant
international terrorist attacks directed against
US nationals and interests, that is, about 10% of
the total, resulting in 68 fatalities. The vast
majority of these anti-US attacks - 83% - took
place in West Asia.
The NCTC's Brennan
himself admitted during the media briefing that
continuing ambiguities in definitions as given in
US laws relating to terrorism resulted in
inaccurate analysis. Thus, terrorism, for the
purpose of the analysis, is defined as a
premeditated and politically motivated violent act
against non-combatants (civilians) in any area and
against even combatants in a non-conflict area.
International terrorism is defined as terrorism
"involving the citizens or territory of more than
one country". For being included in the
compilation and analysis, a "significant
international terrorist attack" has been defined
as an act involving killings or severe injuries or
property damage of more than $10,000.
Among the anomalies admitted by Brennan,
which have crept into the analysis as a result of
the ambiguities in definitions, are the following:
On February 27, 2004, a member of the Abu
Sayyaf Group in the Philippines sank Superferry
14, killing more than 100 people. This was an act
of terrorism directed against innocent civilians.
But because the perpetrator and the victims were
all Filipinos, this is not reflected in the
analysis.
In Iraq, only attacks on Americans and other
foreign nationals have been covered in the
analysis and not attacks on Iraqi nationals, which
were in the vast majority.
In Uzbekistan, there were three significant
terrorist attacks on July 30, 2004, against the US
and Israeli embassies and a building of the local
government. The attack against the local
government has been excluded.
In August 2004, two Chechen suicide bombers
blew up two Aeroflot flights. One flight had only
Russian citizens and hence was excluded. In the
other flight, there was one Israeli citizen and
hence it has been included in the analysis. The
attack against the school in Beslan has been
included because the Chechen terrorists involved
were assisted by a Uzbek and a Kazakh.
In Turkey, there were attacks against four
HSBC banks on the same day by suspected al-Qaeda
elements, but all of them have been excluded
because there were no human casualties and the
property damage in each instance did not exceed
$10,000.
Brennan indicated that the NCTC
would be releasing in June another analysis of the
significant international terrorist incidents of
2004, which would be more comprehensive and seek
to address some of these distortions. In response
to a question, he admitted that the total number
of all terrorist attacks in Iraq registered an
almost 10-fold increase, from 22 in 2003 to 201 in
2004. The number of fatalities increased from 117
in 2003 to 554 in 2004.
Zelikow said the
State Department would have preferred to wait
until a more comprehensive and accurate analysis
by the NCTC was ready in June, but decided to
release the present incomplete and often
inaccurate analysis because of media allegations
of a cover-up of the statistics by the State
Department, which were baseless. Zelikow faced
considerable grilling over the state of the
so-called US-led "war against international
terrorism".
A journalist pointed out
that the number of significant international
terrorist incidents has gone up from 175 in 2003 to 651
in 2004, thereby negating the claims of the
Bush administration that it was winning the
war. Zelikow refused to admit this and said: "The
short answer is it [the statistics] doesn't tell
us anything about the war on terror. The
statistics are simply not valid for any inference about
the progress, either good or bad, of American
policy. I think that's the honest answer. If you just
look at what the statistics are and what kind
of inferences can legitimately be drawn from them,
I can't come up with a defendable inference."
If the statistics, as compiled and
analyzed by the State Department in the past and
by the NCTC, now do not enlighten the public, but
only confuse them, of what use are such
statistics? On what basis does the Bush
administration periodically make claims of winning
the "war against terrorism"? One is as confused as
ever.
Zelikow and Brennan tied themselves
in knots in their attempts to defend Secretary of
State Rice from allegations of a cover-up of
statistics in order to conceal from the public the
fact that the so-called "war against international
jihadi terrorism" is going from bad to worse,
despite the fact that there has been no terrorist
incident on US home soil since September 11 and
the terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan has
been destroyed.
What clearly came out of
their often contradictory answers was that the
annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" reports
released by the State Department for more than 20
years now were highly politicized documents
prepared to suit the political agenda of the
incumbent administration and did not reflect the
correct state of affairs.
The continuing
confusion and misleading statements were apparent
in their replies to questions relating to J&K
and the role of the state sponsors of
international terrorism. Examples:
Zelikow: "Well, okay, so we've
discovered, you know, hundreds of additional
incidents in Kashmir, because we actually - people
went out and looked at local newspapers from
Kashmir and so on and said, 'Okay, now what larger
inference should I then draw from that for the
conduct of the global war on terror?' Hard
argument."
Zelikow: "There were 52
incidents in Kashmir that were included in the
chronology that was issued last year; 284 in 2004.
The number of victims in Kashmir in 2003 was 776;
in 2004, it was 1,872. The number of killed in
Kashmir in 2003 was 111; and in 2004, it was 434.
And in the chronology that we are issuing, you
will see that is listed under - for each of the
individual incidents - listed under India, but it
identifies Kashmir as the location for the attack.
And just to clarify, of course, all attacks in
Kashmir occurred in either India or Pakistan."
(Laughter)
Zelikow could not
satisfactorily explain whether the figures
relating to J&K in the latest analysis
included only incidents that had taken place
inside J&K or also included incidents in
Indian and Pakistani territory outside Kashmir
which, in the NCTC's view, were related to
Kashmir.
Zelikow: "Notably, 2004
was also marked by progress in decreasing the
threat from states that sponsor terrorism -
state-sponsored terrorism. Iraq's designation as a
state sponsor of terrorism was formally rescinded
in October 2004. Though they are still on the
list, Libya and Sudan took significant steps to
cooperate in the global war on terrorism.
Unfortunately, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and in
particular, Iran continued to embrace terrorism as
an instrument of national policy. Most worrisome
is that these countries also have the capabilities
to manufacture weapons of mass destruction [WMD]
and other destabilizing technologies that could
fall into the hands of terrorists. Iran and Syria
are of special concern for their direct, open, and
prominent role in supporting Hezbollah and
Palestinian terrorist groups, for their unhelpful
actions in Iraq and in Iran's case, the
unwillingness to bring to justice senior al-Qaeda
members detained in 2003, including - I will add
personally - senior al-Qaeda members who were
involved in the planning of the 9-11 attacks."
Zelikow again tied himself in knots while
trying to explain what he meant by referring to
Cuba's WMD capabilities. He said: "If you expect
me to walk into the minefield of discussing the
Cuban biological weapons program, I'm going to
disappoint you. The Cuban government has the
capability to manufacture some weapons of mass
destruction. The US government has discussed what
those capabilities are in other settings and I
don't want to get into that here. The same is true
for Syria and the other countries we named. What
we're focusing on here principally is less what is
the WMD capability of the states, is simply what
is the role of those states in state sponsorship
of terrorism. And then please look at that against
the background of what we have already said
publicly about the capabilities of those states in
the WMD world. And then you can draw some
inferences about whether that's disturbing or
not."
Beyond al-Qaeda
In my
articles written and speeches made since 1995, I
have been drawing attention to the emergence in
Pakistan of a new brand of jihadi ideology called
international Islamism, which advocates a "jihad
world-wide" against perceived enemies of Islam in
general and against the US and Israel in
particular; the significance of the formation of
the International Islamic Front (IIF) in
Afghanistan in February 1998, under the leadership
of al-Qaeda in the conduct of this global jihad;
the attempts of the jihadi elements to take the
jihad to US territory; and the projection of this
global jihad by its proponents as a new third
world war which, according to them, would end in
the triumph of Islam.
I have also been
repeatedly pointing out the pernicious role of
many Pakistani jihadi organizations of
Wahhabi-Deobandi persuasion in the IIF, the
secretive role of the Tablighi Jamaat of Pakistan
in the spread of this ideology, how many of these
organizations had come into existence long before
al-Qaeda, how al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were
inspired by their ideology and not the other way
around, how bin Laden's arguments on the right and
the religious obligation of the Muslims to acquire
and use, if necessary, weapons of mass destruction
against the US and Israel were borrowed from the
ideology of the Islamic bomb propagated by the
Deobandi-Wahhabi clerics of Pakistan, such as the
late Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of the Binori
madrassa (religious school) and Fazlur Rahman
Khalil of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), etc.
It was also my analysis that most of the
post-1998 jihadi terrorist incidents were carried
out by the Pakistani and other components of the
IIF and not by al-Qaeda and that the Americans
were distorting the analysis by trying to see the
hand of bin Laden and al-Qaeda in every incident.
It was my apprehension that by over-focussing on
al-Qaeda because of its traumatic experience of
September 11 and by not paying adequate attention
to the various individual components of the IIF
operating from the Pakistani territory, the US was
drawing attention away from the jihadi iceberg,
while keeping the spotlight only on its al-Qaeda
tip.
Another point which I have been
stressing whenever and wherever I could is that
the US has been unwise in projecting Islam as a
monolithic religion, the global jihadi movement as
a monolith, and bin Laden as the undisputed leader
of the global jihadi movement and in imparting to
him a larger-than-life-size image as a master
strategist, a Napoleon of the global jihadi
movement.
In this context, nothing gave me
greater satisfaction than to read the third
chapter of the latest report by the US State
Department. The chapter, "Global Jihad: Evolving
and Adapting", says:
The global jihadist movement -
including its most prominent component, al-Qaeda
- remains the preeminent terrorist threat to the
United States, US interests and US allies. While
the core of al-Qaeda has suffered damage to its
leadership, organization, and capabilities, the
group remains intent on striking US interests in
the homeland and overseas. During the past year,
concerted anti-terrorist coalition measures have
degraded al-Qaeda's central command
infrastructure, decreasing its ability to
conduct massive attacks. At the same time,
however, al-Qaeda has spread its anti-US,
anti-Western ideology to other groups and
geographical areas.
It is therefore no
longer only al-Qaeda itself but increasingly
groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, or independent
ones adhering to al-Qaeda's ideology, that
present the greatest threat of terrorist attacks
against US and allied interests globally. US and
coalition successes against al-Qaeda have forced
these jihadist groups to compensate by showing a
greater willingness to act on their own and
exercising greater local control over their
strategic and tactical decisions. As a result of
this growing dispersion and local
decision-making, there is an increasing
co-mingling of groups, personnel, resources, and
ad hoc operational and logistical coordination.
These groups affiliated with al-Qaeda or
indoctrinated with al-Qaeda's ideology are now
carrying out most of the terrorist attacks
against US and allied interests.
Their
decreased power projection and limited resources
mean that an increasing percentage of jihadist
attacks are more local, less sophisticated, but
still lethal. Some groups, however, are seeking
to replicate al-Qaeda's global reach and
expertise for mass casualty attacks. This trend
underscores that America’s partners in the
global war on terror require the capabilities to
identify and eliminate terrorist threats in
their countries for their own security and
ultimately to stop terrorists abroad before they
can gain the ability to attack the US homeland.
The report adds:
The apparent mergers or declarations
of allegiance of groups such as Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's organization with al-Qaeda suggest
that al-Qaeda is looking to leverage the
capabilities and resources of key regional
networks and affiliates - a trend that al-Qaeda
could also use to try to support new attacks in
the United States and abroad.
The global
jihadist movement predates al-Qaeda's founding
and was reinforced and developed by successive
conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and
elsewhere during the 1990s. As a result, it
spawned several groups and operating nodes and
developed a resiliency that ensured that
destruction of any one group or node did not
destroy the larger movement. Since 2001,
extremists, including members of al-Qaeda and
affiliated groups, have sought to exploit
perceptions of the US-led global war on
terrorism and, in particular, the war in Iraq to
attract converts to their movement. Many of
these recruits come from a large and growing
pool of disaffected youth who are sympathetic to
radical, anti-Western militant ideology.
At the same time, these extremists have
branched out to establish jihadist cells in
other parts of the Middle East, South Asia, and
Europe, from which they seek to prepare
operations and facilitate funding and
communications. Foreign fighters appear to be
working to make the insurgency in Iraq what
Afghanistan was to the earlier generation of
jihadists - a melting pot for jihadists from
around the world, a training ground, and an
indoctrination center. In the months and years
ahead, a significant number of fighters who have
traveled to Iraq could return to their home
countries, exacerbating domestic conflicts or
augmenting with new skills and experience
existing extremist networks in the communities
to which they return.
Al-Qaeda's
ideology resonates with other Sunni extremist
circles. Some affiliated groups - including
Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia - look to
their own spiritual leaders, yet historically
have shared close ideological and operational
ties to al-Qaeda. In recent years, however, the
resonance of al-Qaeda's message has contributed
to the formation of an assortment of grass-roots
networks and cells among persons that previously
have had no observable links to bin Laden or
al-Qaeda aside from general ideological and
religious affinity.
Examples of this
trend include Salafiya Jihadia, a loosely
organized Moroccan movement that carried out the
bombings in May 2003 in Casablanca, and the
terrorists who executed the March 2004 attack in
Madrid. Although these cells do not appear to
have been acting directly on al-Qaeda orders,
their attacks supported al-Qaeda's ideology and
reflected al-Qaeda's targeting strategy.
Although the jihadist movement remains
dangerous, it is not monolithic. Some groups are
focused on attacking the United States or its
allies, while others view governments and
leaders in the Muslim world as their primary
targets. There is now a growing
convergence between the US analysis and mine, but
there are still important differences. While
throwing the spotlight on local and regional
jihadi organizations, the State Department's
analysis still fails to see them in the larger
context of the role of the International Islamic
Front for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the
Jewish People. It projects the ideologies of the
local organizations as inspired by that of
al-Qaeda and fails to take note of and analyze the
impact of the Deobandi ideology of the Pakistani
jihadi organizations on the thinking of bin Laden
and his organization.
In my assessment,
the birth of the concept of a global jihad against
the US and Israel could be traced to the Binori
madrassa of Karachi; and the role of Ramzi Yousef
of Pakistan and other perpetrators of the
explosion at the New York World Trade Center in
February 1993 in the spread of this concept has
not been adequately analyzed by Western, Israeli
and Australian experts. The New York explosion of
February 1993 was the first shot in this global
jihad and the preparations for it were made in the
Binori madrassa and not in any set up of al-Qaeda.
It is surprising that these experts, who
often tend to over-focus on the writings and
statements of the late Abdullah Azam, have paid so
little attention to the interview given by an
unidentified leader of the HUM (then known as the
Harkat-ul-Ansar) to Kamran Khan of the News of
Islamabad in February 1995, which was carried by
the paper under the title Jihad World-Wide. This
interview contained a detailed account of the role
of the HUM in the jihad in the southern
Philippines. Kamran Khan subsequently came out
with another investigative report on the efforts
of Ramzi Yousef to export jihad to Saudi Arabia.
The repeated mistakes in analysis of the
US could be attributed to the inclination of its
experts to make their analyses suit the political
agenda of their leaders, thereby failing to read
the writing on the wall. Unless and until there is
adequate self-correction, one cannot rule out a
repeat of the terrorist attacks in the US, Bali,
Mombasa, Casablanca, Madrid, etc.
The
latest report by the State Department indicates
the beginning of such a process of
self-correction. In that sense, it needs to be
welcomed.
B Raman is additional
secretary (retired), cabinet secretariat,
government of India, New Delhi, and, presently,
director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai,
and distinguished fellow and convener, Observer
Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.
E-mail: itschen36@gmail.com
(Copyright 2005 B Raman)
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