There has been a lot of chatter in intelligence and academic circles about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) bombmaker Ibrahim al-Asiri and his value to AQAP. The disclosure last week of a thwarted AQAP plot to attack U.S. airliners using an improved version of an “underwear bomb” used in the December 2009 attempted attack aboard a commercial airplane and the disclosure of the U.S. government’s easing of the rules of engagement for unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in Yemen played into these discussions. People are debating how al-Asiri’s death would affect the organization. A similar debate undoubtedly will erupt if AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi is captured or killed.

AQAP has claimed that al-Asiri trained others in bombmaking, and the claim makes sense. Furthermore, other AQAP members have received training in constructing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) while training and fighting in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This means that al-Asiri is not the only person within the group who can construct an IED. However, he has demonstrated creativity and imagination. His devices consistently have been able to circumvent existing security measures, even if they have not always functioned as intended. We believe this ingenuity and imagination make al-Asiri not merely a bombmaker, but an exceptional bombmaker.

Likewise, al-Wahayshi is one of hundreds — if not thousands — of men currently associated with AQAP. He has several deputies and numerous tactical field commanders in various parts of Yemen. Jihadists have had a presence in Yemen for decades, and after the collapse of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, numerous Saudi migrants fleeing the Saudi government augmented this presence. However, al-Wahayshi played a singular role in pulling these disparate jihadist elements together to form a unified and cohesive militant organization that has been involved not only in several transnational terrorist attacks but also in fighting an insurgency that has succeeded in capturing and controlling large areas of territory. He is an exceptional leader.

Individuals like al-Asiri and al-Wahayshi play critical roles in militant groups. History has shown that the loss of exceptional individuals such as these makes a big difference in efforts to defeat such organizations.

Exceptional Individuals

One of Stratfor’s core geopolitical tenets is that at the strategic level, geography is critical to shaping the limits of what is possible — and impossible — for states and nations to achieve in the long run. Quite simply, historically, the strategic political and economic dynamics created by geography are far more significant than the individual leader or personality, no matter how brilliant. For example, in the U.S. Civil War, Robert E. Lee was a shrewd general with a staff of exceptional military officers. However, geographic and economic reality meant that the North was bound to win the civil war despite the astuteness and abilities of Lee and his staff.

But as the size of an organization and the period of time under consideration shrink, geopolitics is little more than a rough guide. At the tactical level, intelligence takes over from geopolitics, and individuals’ abilities become far more important in influencing smaller events and trends within the greater geopolitical flow. This is the level where exceptional military commanders can win battles through courage and brilliance, where exceptional businessmen can revolutionize the way business is done through innovative new products or ways of selling those products and where the exceptional individuals can execute terrorist tradecraft in a way that allows them to kill scores or even hundreds of victims.

Leadership is important in any type of organization, but it is especially important in entrepreneurial organizations, which are fraught with risk and require unique vision, innovation and initiative. For example, hundreds of men founded automobile companies in the early 1900s, but Henry Ford was an exceptional individual because of his vision to make automobiles a widely available mass-produced commodity rather than just a toy for the rich. In computer technology, Steve Jobs was exceptional for his ability to design devices with an aesthetic form that appealed to consumers, and Michael Dell was exceptional for his vision of bypassing traditional sales channels and selling computers directly to customers.

These same leadership characteristics of vision, daring, innovation and initiative are evident in the exceptional individuals who have excelled in the development and application of terrorist tradecraft. Some examples of exceptional individuals in the terrorism realm are Ali Hassan Salameh, the operations chief of Black September, who not only revolutionized the form that terrorist organizations take by instituting the use of independent, clandestine cells, but also was a visionary in designing theatrical attacks intended for international media consumption. Some have called Palestinian militant leader Abu Ibrahim the “grandfather of all bombmakers” for his innovative IED designs during his time with Black September, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and his own group, the 15 May Organization. Ibrahim was known for creating sophisticated devices that used plastic explosives and a type of electronic timer called an “e-cell” that could be set for an extended delay. Another terrorism innovator was Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh, who helped pioneer the use of large suicide truck bombs to attack hardened targets, such as military barracks and embassies.

In the jihadist realm, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is being tried by a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was such an individual. Not only did Mohammed mastermind the 9/11 attacks for al Qaeda in which large hijacked aircraft were transformed into guided missiles, but he also was the operational planner behind the coordinated attacks against two U.S. embassies in August 1998 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Mohammed’s other innovations included the idea to use modular IEDs concealed in baby dolls to attack 10 aircraft in a coordinated attack (Operation Bojinka) and the shoe bomb plot. Mohammed’s video beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002 started a grisly trend that was followed not only by jihadists in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia but also by combatants in Mexico’s drug war.

Leadership

One of the places where exceptional individuals have been most evident in the terrorist realm is in leadership roles. Although on the surface it might seem like a simple task to find a leader for a militant group, in practice, effective militant leaders are hard to come by. This is because militant leadership requires a rather broad skill set. In addition to personal attributes such as ruthlessness, aggressiveness and fearlessness, militant leaders also must be charismatic, intuitive, clever and inspiring. This last attribute is especially important in an organization that seeks to recruit operatives to conduct suicide attacks. Additionally, an effective militant leader must be able to recruit and train operatives, enforce operational security, raise funds, plan operations and methodically execute the plan while avoiding the security forces that are constantly hunting down the militants.

The trajectory of al Qaeda’s franchise in Saudi Arabia is a striking illustration of the importance of leadership to a militant organization. Under the leadership of Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, the Saudi al Qaeda franchise was extremely active in 2003 and 2004. It carried out a number of high-profile attacks inside Saudi Arabia and put everyone there, from the Saudi monarchy to multinational oil companies, in a general state of panic. With bombings, ambushes and beheadings, it seemed as if Saudi Arabia was on its way to becoming the next Iraq. However, after the June 2004 death of al-Muqrin, the organization began floundering. The succession of leaders appointed to replace al-Muqrin lacked his operational savvy, and each one proved ineffective at best. (Saudi security forces quickly killed several of them.) Following the unsuccessful February 2006 attack against the oil facility at Abqaiq, the group atrophied further, succeeding in carrying out only one more attack — an amateurish small-arms assault in February 2007 against a group of French tourists.

The disorganized remaining jihadists in Saudi Arabia ultimately grew frustrated at their inability to operate on their own. Many of them traveled to places such as Iraq or Pakistan to train and fight. In January 2009, many of the militants who remained in the Arabian Peninsula joined with al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen to form a new group — AQAP — under the leadership of al-Wahayshi, the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen who served under Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan before being arrested in Iran. An extradition deal between the Yemeni and Iranian governments returned al-Wahayshi to Yemen in 2003. He subsequently escaped from a high-security prison outside Sanaa in 2006.

Al Qaeda in Yemen’s operational capability improved under al-Wahayshi’s leadership, and its operational tempo increased (although those operations were not terribly effective). Considering this momentum, it is not surprising that the frustrated members of the all-but-defunct Saudi franchise agreed to swear loyalty to al-Wahayshi and join his new umbrella group, AQAP. The first widely recognized product of this merger was the attempted assassination of Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef on Aug. 28, 2009, using a device designed by al-Asiri and carried by his brother, Abdullah al-Asiri.

As with the Saudi group, the fortunes of other al Qaeda regional franchises have risen or fallen based on the ability of the franchise’s leadership. In Indonesia, for example, following the arrests and killings of several top jihadist commanders, the capabilities of the regional jihadist franchise there were deeply degraded. Al Qaeda announced with great fanfare in August 2006 that a splinter of the Egyptian jihadist group Gamaah al-Islamiyah had become al Qaeda’s franchise in Egypt, and in November 2007 al Qaeda announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had become a regional franchise. But neither of these franchises ever really began operations. While a great degree of the groups’ ineffectiveness could have resulted from the oppressive natures of the Egyptian and Libyan governments — and those governments’ aggressive efforts to control the new al Qaeda franchises — Stratfor believes the groups’ failures also stem in large part from their lack of effective, dynamic leadership.

Arms Race

Leadership is not the only factor that influences a militant group’s ability to carry out terrorist attacks. Groups planning to conduct bombing attacks also require a proficient bombmaker, and an innovative bombmaker like Abu Ibrahim or Hamas’ Yahya Ayyash can greatly expand a group’s operational reach and effectiveness. This is especially true for groups hoping to conduct attacks in the United States and Europe.

As outlined in last week’s Security Weekly, those planning terrorist attacks against aircraft have been in a continual arms race with airline security measures. Every time security is changed to adapt to a particular threat, whether it be 9/11-style hijackings, shoe bombs, liquid bombs or underwear bombs, the terrorist planner must come up with a new attack plan to defeat the enhanced security measures. This is where innovation and imagination become critical. A master bombmaker might be able to show a pupil how to build a simple IED or maybe even something like a shoe bomb. The pupil may even become quite proficient at assembling such devices. But unless the pupil is innovative and imaginative, he will not be able to invent and perfect the next technology needed to stay ahead of security countermeasures.

There is a big difference between a technician and an inventor, and perhaps the best way to illustrate this principle is by drawing a parallel to the music world. A student can learn to play the saxophone, and perhaps even to mimic a jazz recording note for note. But it is quite another thing for that student to develop the ability to improvise a masterful solo like saxophonist John Coltrane could. In music, individuals like Coltrane are rare, and in terrorism, so are exceptional bombmakers — masters of destruction who can create imaginative and original IEDs capable of defeating security measures.

Following the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, AQAP’s English-language preacher, we noted that we did not believe his death would have much operational impact on the group due to his role as the group’s English-language ideologue. That argument was based upon the fact that al-Wahayshi, al-Asiri and AQAP operational leader Qasim al-Raymi, who were much more responsible for the group’s operations, were still alive. However, if the group were to lose an exceptional individual — such as its dynamic and effective leader, al-Wahayshi, or its imaginative and creative bombmaker, al-Asiri — the loss would make a significant difference unless the group could find someone equally capable to replace that individual.

In past Security Weeklies we have often noted how analyzing terrorism is like assembling a puzzle. After an attack has transpired, it is easier to piece the disparate clues together because you have the luxury of knowing what the finished puzzle should look like. You know the target, the method of attack, the time, the place, etc. These factors frame your approach to the bits of evidence you gather and allow you to assemble them into a cohesive, logical framework. While there will certainly be missing pieces at times, having the reference point of the attack itself is helpful to investigators and analysts.

On the other hand, analyzing a potential threat before an attack takes place is far more difficult. It is like sifting through pieces of thousands of different puzzles, all jumbled together in one big pile, and attempting to create a complete picture without knowing what the end result — the attack — will look like. Sometimes pieces look like they could be related, but it is often difficult to determine if they really are without having the picture of the finished attack and the important framework for investigative reference: target, method of attack, time and place. It is often easy to look back after an attack and criticize authorities for not making a critical connection, but it is difficult to piece things together before the attack occurs without the assistance of hindsight.

Over the past few weeks we have been studying a number of interesting puzzle pieces pertaining to potential threats to U.S. interests by transnational jihadists. It is currently unclear if they all fit together to form a seamless narrative, but the implications of a potential convergence are too big to ignore. We feel compelled to write about this potential convergence in much the same way we did in September 2009, when we discussed the possibility of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) using innovative bomb designs to bring down passenger aircraft rather than to assassinate individuals. The earlier convergence came to fruition on Dec. 25, 2009, when AQAP attempted to destroy a Northwest/Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit using an improvised explosive device (IED) concealed in the suicide operative’s underwear. Time will tell if the current grouping of events is a true picture of what is about to happen or is simply a false positive.

The Pieces

The pieces of the current case began emerging a few weeks ago, before the May 2 anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death. Reports began to surface that AQAP’s lead bombmaker, Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri, had been seen again. American officials originally said al-Asiri was killed in the Sept. 30, 2011, airstrike that also resulted in the death of AQAP’s English-speaking ideologue, Anwar al-Awlaki. A few days after the strike, reports surfaced that al-Asiri had in fact survived the attack, but he has maintained a low profile since then.

While al-Asiri is certainly not AQAP’s only bombmaker, he is an innovative, out-of-the-box thinker. Not only was he behind the device that his brother, Abdullah al-Asiri, used in his suicide bombing attempt against Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef on Aug. 27, 2009, and the underwear bomb used in December 2009, he was also responsible for the attempted attack against two U.S. cargo aircraft in October 2010 using IEDs hidden in computer printer ink cartridges. Indeed, he is the technical author of every AQAP transnational attack attempted so far. Even though all of those attacks have failed, he is still considered a threat. This fact was highlighted by the May 7 reports of a thwarted bomb plot using an improved version of al-Asiri’s underwear device.

A second, AQAP-related piece of the puzzle surfaced on May 2, when the group published two editions of its English-language Inspire magazine, ending the publishing hiatus that began after the magazine’s editor, Samir Khan, died in the same Sept. 30, 2011, airstrike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki. AQAP watchers wondered why the group released two editions of the magazine so closely together, and the revelation of a plan for another transnational bomb plot directed against American aircraft appears to provide the answer to that question.

Last week, we wrote about the third piece of the puzzle: the proliferation of Libyan shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as MANPADS, among jihadist militants in Africa and perhaps elsewhere. Many of these missiles are older SA-7s that have limited utility against modern military aircraft equipped with countermeasures, but they could be employed effectively against a commercial airliner during the vulnerable takeoff or landing phases of a flight. While this threat has existed for some time, we are hearing recent reports of missile dissemination and planning discussions.

Another important piece of the puzzle is the ongoing trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed, better known by his initials KSM, is the captured al Qaeda operational planner who was named the principal architect of the 9/11 operation in the 9/11 Commission Report. He was also involved in a number of other plots prior to 9/11, including the 1994 Operation Bojinka plot in the Philippines, the 2001 shoe-bomb plot and the 2002 Library Tower plot.

KSM’s operational style had several distinctive hallmarks, including the frequent choice of aircraft as targets; the notion of multiple, simultaneous strikes; and the use of modular IEDs smuggled aboard the aircraft. Although KSM was arrested in March 2003, he continued to influence other jihadist planners. This influence was clearly seen in the August 2006 Heathrow liquid-bomb plot, which targeted nine American airliners. AQAP’s cargo bombing attempt, which targeted multiple aircraft, reflected KSM’s preference for multi-pronged plots, and the reports of the thwarted May 7 bombing attempt indicate that aircraft are still considered desirable targets for jihadist groups.

KSM’s trial began May 5, three days after the anniversary of bin Laden’s death. With the trial in the world’s media spotlight, it is quite possible that jihadists are planning an operation in homage to KSM and bin Laden, and that KSM’s operational hallmarks could be seen again.

Paradigm Shifts

Of course, this is nothing new. Commercial aviation has been threatened by terrorism for decades now, and as discussed above, airliners have been under constant threat from jihadist groups because they are highly visible targets that are readily associated with specific nations, and a successful attack generates a large number of casualties and a high level of press coverage.

But as airline security measures have shifted in response to threats, so too have the modes of attack. When security measures were put in place to protect against Bojinka-style attacks in the 1990s – attacks that involved modular explosive devices smuggled onto planes and left on board — the jihadists adapted and conducted 9/11-style attacks. When security measures were put in place to counter 9/11-style attacks, jihadists quickly responded by shifting to onboard suicide attacks with concealed IEDs inside shoes. When that tactic was discovered and shoes began to be screened, they switched to camouflaging containers filled with liquid explosives. When security measures were adjusted to restrict the quantity of liquids that people could take aboard aircraft, jihadists altered the paradigm once more and attempted the underwear bombing using a device with no metal components. When security measures were taken to increase passenger screening in response to the underwear bombing, AQAP decided to attack cargo aircraft with IEDs hidden in printer cartridges.

It is notable that, after the failed underwear-bomb attack in December 2009, air security measures began to include additional pat downs and an increased use of body scanners that have the ability to identify items hidden under passengers’ clothing. As with the previous changes in security procedures, al-Asiri and AQAP’s operational planners likely accounted for these changes while planning the devices for the latest plot. They would need to use a device that would not be detected by a pat down or a body scanner. The reports indicate that they attempted to do this by creating a more form-fitting device hidden inside briefs.

Another way planners could evade detection is by using devices that are either implanted inside a suicide operative or hidden inside a body cavity. The advantage to using a body cavity to smuggle the device is that the device could then be removed from the body and detonated in close proximity to a critical component of the aircraft. Removing it from the body would also prevent the body from attenuating the force of the blast, which is what appeared to have happened in the Nayef attack. Creating security measures to search for devices hidden inside a potential bomber’s body would be difficult and more intrusive than current procedures.

The original underwear IED reportedly contained less than three ounces of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a high explosive. One could fabricate five such devices with a single pound of PETN, and explosives have always been extremely easy to acquire in Yemen — even more so now that the country has been ravaged by civil war and AQAP and tribal elements have ransacked government arms depots. To date, al-Asiri’s imaginative bombs have been successfully deployed in the underwear-bomb, printer-bomb and Nayef plots, but they all failed to destroy their targets. If AQAP is able to address this quality-control issue, the only thing effectively limiting AQAP from launching multiple suicide IED attacks is the availability of operatives who are willing to conduct such attacks and able to travel abroad.

Since the suicide operative is a critical node in this type of operation, the United States and its allies have a place to focus their efforts. If they can find the suicide operatives before they depart Yemen, the threat can be minimized. It is worth noting that the suicide operative involved in the plot disclosed May 7 was reportedly a double agent. It is unclear if the purported bomber in the recent threat case was a plant sent in to penetrate AQAP, a loyal jihadist who was intercepted and turned, or an operative that simply got cold feet — something we have seen in the past. It is also not clear if the group hoped to deploy more than one of the devices in a KSM-style, multi-pronged attack, as it did in the printer-bomb plot. We have noted recent reports of European citizens arrested in Yemen for having ties to AQAP, but we have seen no indication that they are related to this threat.

An attack against multiple airliners would be the type of spectacular terrorist strike that would have international repercussions and would deeply affect international air transportation. If such an attack was coordinated with, or followed closely by, an attack against multiple airliners using MANPADS, it could have an even deeper impact. This would affect the American people — and, consequently, the American government — especially given that 2012 is a presidential election year in the United States, and President Barack Obama would almost certainly take measures to demonstrate that he was tough on terrorism. We stress the impact on the United States because, as the latest edition of AQAP’s Inspire magazine indicated, the United States remains the prime jihadist target and U.S. airliners will likely be targeted again in any plot.

Of course, it would not be easy for AQAP to recruit multiple suicide operatives and transport the operatives and their IEDs out of Yemen without detection. (Although it does appear the operative in the thwarted plot was able to successfully get the device out of Yemen.) It would also be quite difficult for different al Qaeda franchises to coordinate their attacks in either a multi-pronged or parallel attack scenario. We have not seen them take such an approach in the past, although we have in recent months seen increased indications of communication and coordination between AQIM, Boko Haram, al Shabaab and AQAP. This lends itself to the idea of a convergence, especially one related to the MANPADS threat, but it does not provide any direct evidence.

Still, with so many puzzle pieces suggesting some sort of merging of threats is taking place — even if it is only accidental — a possible convergence is worth discussing because of the significant consequences it could have.

I know first hand that getting warrants can be a pain in the ass, but too bad, its our job to defend and protect the constitution, not whine about how hard it is to do our jobs and still abide by the “current” law, or to look for shortcuts and ways to get around the only document that stands between freedom and totalitarianism.

But don’t worry, I’m clearly over reacting because if I wasn’t, those vigilant watchdogs of the Fourth Estate would surely mention the trampling of our fundamental freedoms in their newspapers, websites and TV news shows, wouldn’t they?

Here is the latest assault on our freedoms from the EFF

DOJ Official: Any Privacy Protection is Too Much Privacy Protection for Cell Phone Tracking

Jason Weinstein, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s criminal division, told a panel at the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee’s ”State of the Mobile Net” conference yesterday that requiring a search warrant to obtain location tracking information from cell phones  would “cripple” prosecutors and law enforcement officials. We couldn’t disagree more.

For years, we’ve been arguing that cell phone location data should only be accessible to law enforcement with a search warrant. After all, as web enabled smart phones become more prevalent, this location data reveals an incredibly revealing portrait of your every move. As we’ve waged this legal battle, the government has naturally disagreed with us, claiming that the Stored Communications Act authorizes the disclosure of cell phone location data with a lesser showing than the probable cause requirement demanded by a search warrant. 

Since the new year, a number of significant developments has led to increased awareness on this important topic. First, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in United States v. Jones which held that the warrantless attachment of a GPS device on a car violated the Fourth Amendment’s right to be free from unreasonable government searches. In concurring opinions, Justices Sotomayor and Alito both noted that technology had the power to shrink privacy, particularly with respect to locational privacy, as the information gleaned from web enabled smartphones supplanted the need for law enforcement to physically install GPS devices in order to track someone. Then in March, we filed an amicus brief along with a number of other civil liberties organizations, urging the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule that cell phone location data requires a search warrant. In April, the ACLU released the results of a coordinated FOIA request that found law enforcement officials throughout the country were routinely obtaining cell phone location tracking information with differing legal methods and standards, and were frequently getting this information without a search warrant.

Its this last point — the differing standards for disclosure and legislative attempts to make those standards uniform — that sets up Weinstein’s comments (you can hear the full audio here). Noting that Jones requires a warrant for GPS data, but that courts have reached conflicting opinions on whether a search warrant is necessary for cell phone location tracking records that are held by wireless company providers, he rightfully noted ”there really is no fairness and no justice when the law applies differently to different people depending on which courthouse you’re sitting in.” But unfortunately, the DOJ’s solution for this problem is for Congress to say that cell phone location tracking records held by third parties — typically the cell phone providers — are not subject to the search warrant’s probable cause requirement, as it would “cripple” law enforcement. To be clear, despite Weinstein’s comments that he’s only speaking for himself, DOJ’s explicit position is that no warrant is necessary, as that’s what they’ve consistently told courts, including the Fifth Circuit.

The problem with the DOJ’s position is that it fails to take into account privacy. The only way to ensure “fairness” and “justice,” is to demand that our Fourth Amendment rights not be violated by law enforcement working closely with cell phone providers to access your location information without your knowledge. We’ve already seen that despite the ruling in Jones, law enforcement and the wireless industry are finding ways to continue their pre-Jones practices of warrantless surveillance amid a stunning lack of transparency. We’re slowly seeing legislative action in the right direction on these important issues. On the federal level, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Or) has proposed the GPS Act, that would require law enforcement to obtain a search warrant to access location information. In California, we sponsored a bill with the ACLU of Northern California, to require law enforcement to get a search warrant anytime it wants location information about another person in California. And earlier this week, Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass) sent a request (PDF) to the biggest wireless carriers, demanding information about their relationship with law enforcement.

Requiring the police to obtain a search warrant — the traditional method for balancing law enforcement needs with individual privacy — and demanding the wireless industry be transparent about how they deal with law enforcement requests for location information are critical steps in the right direction, towards “fairness” and “justice,” location privacy and transparency.

On Apr. 7, 2011, five days before Microsoft patched a critical zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer that had been publicly disclosed three months earlier on a security mailing list, unknown attackers launched a spear-phishing attack against workers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. More

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

By Scott Stewart

In March 2011, while many of the arms depots belonging to the government of Libya were being looted, we wrote about how the weapons taken from Libyan government stockpiles could end up being used to fuel violence in the region and beyond. Since then we have seen Tuareg militants, who were previously employed by the regime of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, leave Libya with sizable stockpiles of weapons and return to their homes in northern Mali, where they have successfully wrested control of the region away from the Malian government.

These Tuareg militants were aided greatly in their battle against the government by the hundreds of light pickup trucks mounted with crew-served heavy weapons that they looted from Libyan depots. These vehicles, known as “technicals,” permitted the Tuareg rebels to outmaneuver and at times outgun the Malian military. Moreover, we have recently received reports that Tuareg rebels also brought back a sizable quantity of SA-7b shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS).

While we have not yet seen reports of the Tuaregs using these missiles, reports of close interaction between the Tuaregs in northern Mali and regional jihadist franchise al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) raise concern that AQIM could buy or somehow acquire them from the Tuaregs. We have seen unconfirmed reports of AQIM fighters possessing MANPADS, and Algerian authorities have seized MANPADS among the weapons being smuggled into the country from Libya. For example, in mid-February, Algerian authorities seized 15 SA-24 and 28 SA-7 Russian-made MANPADS at a location in the southern desert called In Amenas.

For the Tuareg militants, the MANPADS are seen as a way to protect themselves against attack by government aircraft. They also serve the same function for AQIM, which has been attacked by Mauritanian aircraft in northern Mali. However, the possession of such weapons by a group like AQIM also raises the possibility of their being used against civilian aircraft in a terrorist attack — a threat we will now examine in more detail.

Uses and Weaknesses of MANPADS

MANPADS were first fielded in the late 1960s, and since that time more than 1 million have been fielded by at least 25 different countries that manufacture them. These include large countries such as the United States, Russia and China as well as smaller countries such as North Korea, Iran and Pakistan.

By definition, MANPADS are designed to be man-portable. The missiles are balanced on and fired from the shooter’s shoulder, and the launch tube averages roughly 1.5 meters (5 feet) in length and 7 centimeters (3 inches) in diameter. Since MANPADS are intended to be operated by infantry soldiers on the front lines, durability is an important part of their design. Also, while the guidance mechanism within the missile itself can be quite complex, a simple targeting interface makes most MANPADS relatively easy to operate.

The SA-7 has a kill zone with an upper limit of 1,300 meters, while some newer models can reach altitudes of more than 3,658 meters. The average range of MANPADS is 4.8 kilometers (about 3 miles). This means that most large commercial aircraft, which generally cruise at around 9,140 meters, are out of the range of MANPADS, but the weapon can be employed against them effectively during the extremely vulnerable takeoff and landing portions of a flight or when they are operating at lower altitudes.

Despite their rugged design, MANPADS are not without limitations. Some research suggests that battery life makes the weapon obsolete after about 22 years. Missiles treated roughly, stored poorly and not maintained well may not last anywhere near that long. Since replacement batteries can be found on the black market, battery life is not necessarily a key limiting factor. For example, two SA-7s used by al Qaeda to target an Israeli civilian flight over Mombasa, Kenya, in 2002 were 28 years old and appeared to be fully functional. It is believed they did not hit their target due to countermeasures employed by the aircraft. Some of the classified U.S. military reports released by WikiLeaks indicted that, many times in Iraq and Afghanistan, the older SA-7s were ejected from their tubes and had engine ignition but failed to acquire and lock onto the intended target. This may also have been the case in the Mombasa attack.

Perhaps the most limiting factor to MANPADS’ utility has to do with the kind of aircraft being targeted. As MANPADS were developed and refined for military use, so were countermeasures for military aircraft. This means that most modern military aircraft are equipped with countermeasures that are effective against older models of MANPADS. Due to budget constraints, however, most commercial airliners and general aviation aircraft are not equipped with military-style countermeasures systems, which can alert a pilot that a missile has been launched so proper action can be taken, including evasive maneuvers, the deployment of infrared flares to decoy the missile or lasers to blind the missile’s seeker. Industry estimates indicate that outfitting and maintaining the entire U.S. airline fleet with countermeasures that could foil missiles would cost $40 billion. Because of the high cost of such defensive systems, the bulk of the civilian aviation fleet worldwide remains undefended and vulnerable to MANPADS.

MANPADS in Terrorist Attacks

The SA-7 was first deployed by the Soviet army in 1968 and was sent to North Vietnam, where it was used in combat against American military aircraft in the early 1970s. But it did not take long for militant groups to understand how the weapons could be utilized in a terrorist attack. In January and September 1973, Black September militants attempted to use SA-7s against Israeli civilian aircraft in Rome (the January flight was carrying then-Prime Minister Golda Meir). Both attempts were thwarted in their final minutes.

Two years later, the first successful MANPADS attack against a civilian aircraft occurred when North Vietnamese forces launched an SA-7 missile against an Air Vietnam flight, resulting in the deaths of all 26 passengers and crewmembers. One of the most famous civilian MANPADS attacks was in 1994, when two SA-16s were used to shoot down a Rwandan government flight, killing the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and sparking the Rwandan genocide, which resulted in approximately 800,000 deaths in 100 days (the identity of the attackers remains a matter of debate). Over the years, MANPADS attacks have been plotted and actively attempted in at least 20 countries, resulting in more than 900 civilian fatalities. The most recent MANPADS attack that resulted in loss of life was the strike by al Shabaab over Somalia in 2007 against a Belarusian cargo plane. Eleven people were killed. The attack reportedly involved a Russian SA-18 that was manufactured in Russia in 1995. It was one of a batch of SA-18s sent from Russia to Eritrea, some of which were provided to the Somali jihadist group.

A MANPADS attack does not necessarily mean certain death for an aircrew and passengers. In fact, some civilian airliners hit by MANPADS have made emergency landings without loss of human life. In November 2004, a DHL Airbus 300 was struck in the left wing by a MANPADS after leaving Baghdad International Airport on a mail delivery flight. While the aircraft was badly damaged and one engine caught fire, the pilot still was able to land safely.

The man-portable facet of MANPADS severely limits the size of the warhead that the weapon can carry compared to larger surface-to-air missile systems. They are also designed to engage and destroy low-flying military aircraft densely packed with fuel and ordnance. Because of this, MANPADS are not ideally suited for bringing down large civilian aircraft. Though airliners are hardly designed to absorb a missile strike, the damage a single MANPADS can inflict may not be catastrophic. MANPADS systems employ infrared seekers that are drawn to the heat signature of an aircraft’s engine, and therefore tend to hit the engine. Large commercial jets are designed to be able to fly and land if they lose an engine, and because of these factors, nearly 30 percent of the commercial aircraft struck by MANPADS have managed to make some sort of emergency or crash landing without loss of life, despite, in some cases, sustaining significant structural damage to the aircraft.

Still, the threat is not insignificant. The other 70 percent of civilian planes that have been hit by MANPADS have crashed with considerable loss of life. Indeed, on departure from or approach to an airport, airliners do have to traverse predictable airspace at low altitudes — well within the engagement envelope of MANPADS — and their airframes are under considerable stress. An attack at low altitude also provides the pilot less time to react and recover from an attack before the aircraft strikes the ground. These lower-level phases of flight also frequently occur over large swaths of built-up urban terrain that would be impossible to search and secure, even temporarily. Due to the noise involved with living under a flight path, this is usually low-rent real estate. With flight paths so well established, even casual observers generally have a sense of when and where large, low-flying aircraft can be found at any given time over their city.

Outlook

As noted in Stratfor’s previous coverage of the MANPADS threat, since 1973 at least 30 civilian aircraft have been brought down and approximately 920 civilians have been killed by MANPADS attacks. These attacks brought about the concerted international effort to remove these weapons from the black and gray arms markets. Because of these efforts, attempts to use MANPADS against civilian airliners were down about 66 percent from 2000 to 2010 compared to the previous decade. Nevertheless, sting operations and seizures of illicit arms shipments clearly demonstrate that militant groups continue to work to acquire the weapons. There are at least 11 active non-state militant groups that are believed to possess MANPADS, and we have seen MANPADS employed sporadically in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are more than 10 other groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, that have been making efforts to obtain them. While there is no evidence that these groups now have them in their arsenals, their efforts may have become easier as missiles from Libya have trickled onto the black arms market.

Estimates vary widely, but it appears that the Libyans had an inventory of 20,000 MANPADS. It appears that the SA-7b seems to have been the most common MANPADS in the Libyan inventory, though there were also several far more advanced SA-24 missiles (the latest Russian design) that were intended to be used in vehicle-mounted launchers sold to the Libyans but that could be used as MANPADS if they were paired with the proper gripstocks and battery coolant units. Of those 20,000 missiles, teams from the United States and NATO have secured roughly 5,000; another 5,000 are thought to be in the hands of the various Libyan militias and to still be in the country. That leaves a remainder of 10,000 missiles. While a number of them were destroyed by NATO airstrikes or launched at aircraft, it is believed that somewhere around half have been smuggled out of the country. For obvious reasons, obtaining an accurate number of missiles is very difficult. Indeed, with a variety of parties involved in the smuggling, it is doubtful that anyone knows for sure how many missiles have been smuggled out of Libya.

The U.S. government has designated $40 million for a program intended to buy back Libyan MANPADS, but clearly many of them have already made it out of the country. In addition to the February seizure in Algeria, Egyptian authorities seized eight SA-24 missiles in the Sinai Peninsula in September 2011. A month earlier, two Israeli Cobra helicopters came under fire from a MANPADS fired from Sinai during a multi-stage attack launched from Sinai that resulted in the deaths of eight Israelis. The missile missed the Cobras. Indeed, the Jerusalem Post reported that, due to the perceived increase in the MANPADS threat from Sinai, commercial aircraft landing in Eilat have changed their approach pattern.

To date, we are not aware of any attacks or attempted attacks against commercial airliners using MANPADS taken from Libyan stocks. But with the missiles in the hands of Palestinian militants in Sinai and Gaza as well as in the inventory of groups such as AQIM, there is a legitimate concern that they will be used in an attack in the immediate future. Jihadists have long had a fixation on aviation as a target. With increases in airline passenger and luggage screening, MANPADS provide jihadists with the means to bypass those security measures and conduct attacks against civilian aircraft. They may have problems getting missiles into Europe or North America, but with active jihadist franchises in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa, there is a very real threat of a MANPADS attack directed against U.S.- or European-flagged carriers in those regions. But with a year now gone since the Libyan weapons stockpiles were looted, Libyan MANPADS could be almost anywhere in the world, and it is somewhat surprising that they have not been more widely used.

The IDF has issued emergency call up orders to six reserve battalions in light of new dangers on the Egyptian and Syrian borders. And the Knesset has given the IDF permission to summon a further 16 reserve battalions if necessary, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.

The council will send a letter to Scott asking him to consult with the Cabinet and legislative leaders on how to address the public safety issue.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/26/2769462/officials-want-guns-banned-from.html

By Scott Stewart

By Scott Stewart

Institutional Revolutionary Party presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, the front-runner in the lead-up to Mexico’s presidential election in July, told Reuters last week that if elected, he would seek to increase the size of the current Mexican federal police force. Pena Nieto also expressed a desire to create a new national gendarmerie, or paramilitary police force, to use in place of the Mexican army and Marine troops currently deployed to combat the heavily armed criminal cartels in Mexico’s most violent hot spots. According to Pena Nieto, the new gendarmerie force would comprise some 40,000 agents.

As Stratfor has previously noted, soldiers are not optimal for law enforcement functions. The use of the military in this manner has produced accusations of human rights abuses and has brought criticism and political pressure on the administration of President Felipe Calderon. However, while the Calderon administration greatly increased the use of the military in the drug war, it was not the first administration in Mexico to deploy the military in this manner. Even former President Vicente Fox, who declared war on the cartels in 2001, was not the first to use the military in this manner. For many decades now, the Mexican government has used the military in counternarcotics operations, and the Mexican military has been used periodically to combat criminals and bandits in Mexico’s wild and expansive north for well over a century.

In recent years, Mexico has had very little choice but to use the military against the cartels due to the violent nature of the cartels themselves and the rampant corruption in many municipal and state police forces. The creation of a new paramilitary police force would provide the Mexican government with a new option, allowing it to remove the military from law enforcement functions. But such a plan would be very expensive and would require the consent of both houses of the Mexican Congress, which could pose political obstacles. But perhaps the most difficult task will be creating a new police force not susceptible to the corruption that historically has plagued Mexican law enforcement agencies.

Paramilitary Police Forces

The concept of a paramilitary police force is not new. Such police forces have existed for years in Europe in the form of the Carabinieri in Italy, the Guardia Civil in Spain and Gendarmerie Nationale in France. As the name of the Italian paramilitary police agency implies, such police normally were deployed in remote areas and armed with carbines, heavier arms than those employed by most urban police officers. Indeed, even the British, whose police officers were traditionally unarmed, created well-armed paramilitary police agencies in their rugged and remote colonial holdings.

Some of these organizations still exist, including the Pakistani Frontier Constabulary and the Indian Assam Rifles. In Latin America, the Chilean Carabineros have a long, and sometimes checkered, history. In 2006 the Colombian government established a modern paramilitary police force under the Directorate of Carabineros and Rural Security that was intended to help address the threats posed by the insurgent groups, former-paramilitary criminal bands (“bacrim”) and narcotics traffickers in Colombia’s hard-to-police rural regions.

Due to the Colombian government’s success in combating drug cartels and the country’s growing military proficiency, the Colombians increasingly have become involved in training personnel from other countries in a variety of skills, such as helicopter flying and long-range jungle patrolling. This Colombian training is very attractive to countries such as Mexico. For this reason, the Colombians have begun exerting a growing influence on Mexican counternarcotics thinking and strategy. In fact, the Mexican and Colombian attorneys general just signed an agreement April 17 to share information pertaining to narcotics smuggling. Because of this influence, it is likely that the Colombian Carabineros have played a big part in shaping the thinking of Pena Nieto’s advisers who suggested a similar paramilitary police force for Mexico.

Unlike military troops, paramilitary police are police officers and receive police training, which is quite different from military training. But paramilitary police officers are normally more heavily armed than regular police officers and receive supplementary military-type training, which involves things like fire and maneuver and patrolling. They also have law enforcement authority, which means they can conduct investigations and make arrests. Although paramilitary police have been accused of human rights abuses in some places, by and large they are better suited for dealing with civilians than are soldiers, and they tend to create less tension. Tensions arising from military actions can be significant: In 2011, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission received 2,200 complaints against the Mexican army and navy.

Pena Nieto also has called for the Federal Police to be expanded from 40,000 to 50,000 officers. Calderon submitted a police reform plan to the Mexican Congress in September 2008 that created the current federal police force. Calderon’s reform plan integrated the two existing federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Preventive Police and the Federal Investigation Agency, into one organization called simply the Federal Police.

Other Recent Police Reforms

In addition to consolidating the federal police forces, Calderon’s 2008 police reform plan also called for existing agents and new recruits to undergo a much more thorough vetting process and to receive higher pay. The idea was to build up a more professional force less vulnerable to corruption and better able to fight the cartels. The 2008 reform plan also included consolidating municipal police departments — arguably the most corrupt institutions in Mexico — into unified state police commands under which officers could be subjected to better screening, oversight and accountability.

In an attempt to mitigate the problems created by the interaction of the population with the military, especially in urban areas, the Calderon administration also has used a combination of the Federal Police and the military. For example, in Coordinated Operation Chihuahua, Federal Police assumed all law enforcement roles from the military in the urban areas of northern Chihuahua, including police patrols, investigations, intelligence operations, surveillance, first-response and operation of the emergency 066 call center for Juarez (equivalent to a 911 center in the United States). The Federal Police also were tasked with operating mainly in designated high-risk urban areas to locate and dismantle existing cartel infrastructure using law enforcement methods rather than military methods.

The military then assumed a supporting role, patrolling and monitoring the vast desert expanses of the state’s rural areas and manning strategic perimeter checkpoints to help stem the flow of narcotics, weapons and gunmen. These roles and areas of operations were intended to better reflect the training and capabilities of each force. While the enhanced Federal Police are designed to operate in an urban environment and trained specifically to interact with the civilian population, the Mexican military is trained and equipped to engage in more kinetic operations in a rural environment. The new paramilitary police agency would assume this rural, kinetic role.

The Main Obstacle to Reform

The Calderon administration’s police reform process has faced several setbacks in weeding out corrupt elements. Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles was encountered right away in October 2008, when the drug czar-designate at the time, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was found to have been receiving $450,000 a month from the Beltran Leyva Organization for providing information about the Mexican government’s counternarcotics operations. Since that time, there have been numerous instances in which these “new and improved” federal- and state-level police officers have been arrested for corruption. The military has not been immune to the problem of corruption either. Soldiers have been caught protecting loads of narcotics, and even a member of the military’s elite Estado Mayor Presidencial was arrested in December 2008 and charged with being on a cartel payroll.

If Pena Nieto were elected president, it would be difficult for his administration to create a new, incorruptible police agency. Certainly, the Mexican government has aggressively pursued police reform for many years now, with very little success. Indeed, the lack of trustworthy law enforcement was a major factor in the Mexican government’s decision to turn to the military to counter the power of the Mexican cartels. As noted above, this lack of reliable law enforcement has also led the Calderon administration to aggressively pursue police reform.

An examination of Mexico’s corruption reveals that the country’s ills go far deeper than just corrupt government institutions. The corruption seen in government institutions is really just a symptom of deeper, systemic and cultural problems. Quite simply, unless these deeper issues are addressed, reforming an institution or creating a new institution will not result in any meaningful change. In fact, the surrounding environment will ensure that the revamped institutions will soon be corrupted like the ones they replaced. This corruption of new institutions has happened repeatedly in Mexico and elsewhere.

The Guatemalan Department of Anti-Narcotics Operations, known by its Spanish acronym DOAN, provides an excellent example of how deep-seated corruption in the environment can affect a totally new institution created to be impervious to corruption. Created in the mid-1990s in response to rampant corruption in the Guatemalan police, DOAN was meant to be immune from corruption via the use of hand-picked “clean” recruits, who would receive proper training and be paid wages sufficient to support their families. The Guatemalan government received significant assistance from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, which helped the Guatemalans select, train and equip the DOAN officers.

Unfortunately for the Guatemalan government and its U.S. benefactors, providing state-of-the-art training, modern equipment and a living wage still did not ensure integrity when DOAN officers were placed into the Central American country’s (still) corrupt environment. Within a few years, the highly trained and heavily vetted officers of the DOAN had begun to torture and kill narcotics smugglers, then steal and sell their shipments. The DOAN was disbanded in 2002 because it had essentially become a drug trafficking organization.

Mexico also has a long history of law enforcement agencies being disbanded and folded into new agencies due to corruption. For example, the Mexican Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) that Fox created in 2001 was a replacement for an agency, the Federal Judicial Police, which was disbanded due to rampant corruption. The AFI was patterned after the FBI and was structured to block corruption from other agencies. Despite those safeguards, by late 2005 the Mexican Attorney General’s Office reported that almost 1,500 of the AFI’s 7,000 agents were under investigation for suspected criminal activity and that 457 agents faced criminal charges. Because of this corruption, Calderon’s 2008 police reforms disbanded the AFI and assigned its mission to the Federal Police in early 2009.

The Mexican AFI and Guatemalan DOAN demonstrate that even a competent, well-paid and well-equipped police institution cannot stand alone in a culture unprepared to support it and help maintain its integrity. Over time an institution will take on the characteristics of the society surrounding it. This means that the creation of a new paramilitary police agency by the next Mexican administration would help solve some of the problems affecting Mexico as far as deploying the military to conduct law enforcement functions, but it is not the answer to Mexico’s deeper problems.

Solving these deeper problems in Mexico will require a holistic approach reaching far beyond police and military institutions to address the country’s profound economic, sociological and cultural issues. Such holistic change will not be easy to accomplish. It will require a great deal of time, money, effort and — critically — leadership. Mexico’s next president will have his hands full.