The lack of reliable metrics that can be
used to measure progress or the lack thereof in
the "war on terrorism" is a continuing problem.
This is particularly the case when trying to
assess what appears to be an evolving and common
approach to the war against US-led coalitions in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
In examining this
phenomenon, there is inevitably a large portion of
informed observation and outright guesswork, and a
smaller than desirable portion of hard facts and
statistical data. Still, the
current situations in Iraq
and Afghanistan, even on an impressionistic level,
suggest the Islamists are shaping a common
approach to war against Western conventional
military forces and that there is some
cross-fertilization between the theaters in terms
of operational tactics.
In both
Afghanistan and Iraq, Sunni Islamists have made
enormous and substantively similar strides in
their effective use of electronic media. In
Afghanistan, Taliban leaders paid practically no
attention to waging domestic or international
media campaigns before the 2001 US-led invasion.
By mid-2002, however, Taliban leaders had
inaugurated a widespread traditional propaganda
campaign that included "the distribution of
dictums, leaflets, cassettes and books that call
for jihad and explain the punishment for those who
cooperate with or work for the crusaders".
Today, the Taliban are focused on using
electronic media for news and instructional and
propaganda purposes. Indeed, beyond using such
traditional media venues as the Afghan Islamic
Press, the Taliban have formed their own media
organization which is modeled on al-Qaeda's
al-Sahab (The Clouds).
Interviews with
Taliban chiefs like Mullah Omar and others, the
designation of a Taliban press spokesman, daily
news pieces covering events in Afghanistan and the
Muslim world and well-made videotapes depicting
Taliban military attacks on the units or firebases
of the US-led coalition are now commonplace.
In Iraq, the insurgents have built an
extraordinary media organization from a near-zero
base; there was no opposition or dissenting media
apparatus in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Today,
this organization supplies Iraqis and much of the
Arab and Islamic worlds with daily, near real-time
coverage of military and political developments in
the country and shapes their perceptions
accordingly.
The Islamists in Iraq are
especially effective in using videotapes of their
military operations to visually refute oral claims
of military progress made by spokespeople for the
coalition and the Iraqi government. Clearly, the
Sunni Islamist insurgents in both countries have
heeded al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri's
mid-2005 advice that the Islamists' struggle
cannot be won without an effective media arm.
Foreign fighters While much of
the Western media continue to mistakenly identify
attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan as "al-Qaeda
attacks" or "strikes by foreign Islamists", there
appears to be no reason to doubt that the
insurgencies in both countries are now led by
national and not foreign elements.
Last
week, for example, many Western media reports
announced that al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed credit for
the suicide attack on the Iraqi Parliament in
Baghdad's Green Zone. This, of course, is
incorrect. The attack was claimed by the "Islamic
State of Iraq, Information Ministry", a grouping
of which al-Qaeda in Iraq is an important member,
but one in which it has all but submerged its
individual identity since the death of al-Qaeda in
Iraq's first chief, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In retrospect, Zarqawi's death erased two
significant threats that his philosophy and
actions had posed to al-Qaeda's future viability
as a vanguard Sunni Islamist organization: the
intensifying Shi'ite-Sunni civil war in Iraq is no
longer identified as the responsibility of
al-Qaeda in Iraq, and al-Qaeda is no longer
accused of usurping the leadership of the Sunni
Iraqi insurgency.
In Afghanistan,
al-Qaeda's forces and the other foreign fighters
operating there - Kashmiris, Pakistanis,
Bangladeshis, Central Asians, among others - are
active and effective, but nearly invisible. Since
October 2001, the Taliban and several mujahideen
leaders from the anti-Soviet-jihad era - such as
Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - have
been the public face of the Afghan Islamist
insurgency, a factor that is absolutely essential
if the insurgency is to maintain the support of
the intensely nationalistic Afghan people.
Cross-fertilization of tactics
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq,
al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders have said and written
that Islamist fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq
would be traveling to each other's theaters of
operations to observe, participate and learn. "We
have full contacts with the mujahideen in Iraq,"
Mullah Dadullah announced in early 2006. "We are
one and the same mujahideen. We are all united
against infidels. We are fighting in the same
trench; our Islam is the same".
Today, the
process thus described seems to be ongoing. In
Iraq, it seems clear that Afghan instructors have
slowly inculcated among Iraqi fighters the skills
they acquired while learning to counter Soviet
attack and transport helicopters with such weapons
as heavy machine guns (12.7mm and 14.5mm) and
rocket-propelled grenades.
During the
anti-Soviet jihad, the Afghans gradually developed
this skill which tellingly punished the Soviet
helicopter fleet, and which was later greatly
augmented by the addition of shoulder-fired
Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. The transfer of
this skill to the Iraqis appears to have taken
some time as it is only in the past year that a
significant number of US helicopters have been
downed.
The other major skill the Iraqi
Sunni insurgents have acquired from the Afghan
theater is, as noted above, the use of electronic
media. The Iraqis' skill in this regard almost
certainly represents the major contribution made
by the al-Qaeda fighters who came from Afghanistan
to support the Iraqi jihad under the leadership of
long-time senior Osama bin Laden insurgent
commander Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.
In
Afghanistan, the contribution of the Iraqi
insurgents is clear in three areas. First, the
Afghan Islamists' use of remotely detonated
improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has expanded
both in number and skillful employment during the
past two years. The use of IEDs was haphazard and
minimally effective during the jihad against the
Soviets and in the first year after the US
invasion.
By late 2003, however, the use
and lethality of IEDs in Afghanistan were
increasing and a senior British officer there
attributed that reality directly to skills
acquired by the Afghans from the Iraqis. "There is
no doubt," Colonel Mike Griffiths told the media.
"There are now indications of technology transfer
from Iraq. Some of the things we have seen in Iraq
we are beginning to see here." Today, highly
lethal IEDs are a fact of daily life for coalition
forces.
The second contribution from Iraq
appears to be the suicide bomber, although the
Afghans are not yet as skilled and accurate as the
Iraqis in using this weapon. Suicide attacks were
all but unheard of during the 13-year struggle
(1979-1992) between the Afghan mujahideen and the
Soviet and Afghan communists. Since the Afghan
election in September 2005, however, the number of
insurgent attacks featuring suicide operatives has
grown from a few dozen to hundreds, a reality that
senior Taliban leaders have suggested is the
result of the "Iraqi mujahideen" who are in
Afghanistan "to support us in suicide attacks and
operations".
Finally, the Taliban appear
to have adopted a set of brutal
counter-intelligence techniques that are common in
Iraq, but have previously been applied in a
hit-and-miss manner in Afghanistan. In the last
year or so, for example, the Taliban have
developed a fairly systematic process of
identifying Afghans who are providing information
to President Hamid Karzai's regime, coalition
forces or Pakistani intelligence, kidnapping and
killing them and often members of their family,
and then broadcasting the news of the executions
to dissuade others from similar activity.
At times, Taliban intelligence has even
beheaded suspected informers, an action which has
not yet induced the same level of popular
revulsion that it did in Iraq in 2005-2006. All
told, the 2005 words of Iraq-trained Taliban field
commander Mohammed Daud ring true: "I am
explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I
learned and my experience in Iraq. I want to copy
in Afghanistan the tactics and experience of the
glorious Iraqi resistance."
Michael
Scheuer served as the chief of the bin Laden
Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from
1996 to 1999. He is now a senior fellow at The
Jamestown Foundation.
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