Negotiating with the Taliban

Reconciliation and reintegration of the Taliban is once again a hot topic given the upcoming conference on Afghanistan in London.  One of the central issues for the US remains whether the Taliban and Al Qaeda are distinguishable.  Mark Lander and Helene Cooper write in today’s NY Times:

As the Obama administration pours 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, it has begun grappling with the next great dilemma of this long war: whether to reconcile with the men who sheltered Osama bin Laden and who still have close ties to Al Qaeda.

Lander and Cooper explicitly state as fact that the Taliban and AQ still have close ties.  This is almost certainly true, although not uniformly across the board between all levels of each group.  Yet the more interesting question to assess is not whether the Taliban and Qaeda have close ties, but why? Is it because their ideology and goals are completely aligned? 

Vahid Brown, writing in the the Combatting Terrorism Center’s superb monthly report called the Sentinel, speaks on this issue and specifically on the relationship between Bin Laden and Mullah Omar:

Yet a historical account by an insider who worked for both organizations in the 1990s challenges one of the key assumptions underlying this fear—that Usama bin Ladin had personally sworn allegiance (bay`a) to Mullah Omar—revealing that al-Qa`ida’s early relations with the Taliban regime were much rockier than is commonly assumed.

Indeed, it alleges that al-Qa`ida’s purported endorsement of the Taliban regime was an “outright deception,” a calculated political move that provided cover for activities that threatened the Taliban’s very existence.

The revelation of Bin Ladin’s dubious oath does not prove that al-Qa`ida and the Afghan Taliban can be decisively split, but it is emblematic of the tensions that have long complicated their often volatile relationship. It also suggests that the “allegiance” to the Afghan Taliban professed today by al-Qa`ida and its Pakistan-based allies—including the Haqqani network and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—is more a strategy of expediency than a sign of real harmony.

Abu’l-Walid’s memoirs, historical sketches, strategic analyses and letters to other al-Qa`ida leaders shed considerable light on the inner workings of the organization and are unique in their candid and often highly critical tone.

In reference to his communications with Leah Farrall, I wrote previously about my reservations about Abu’l Walid. However, Brown makes a good point about any possible disinformation campaign:

He is a Taliban loyalist, and has devoted much of his life to writing jihadist propaganda. His claims must therefore be treated with caution, as they could be advanced in support of a Taliban (or personal) agenda. Yet even if his allegations are tendentious, this would perhaps be no less illustrative of Taliban/al-Qa`ida rifts than if they are accurate, given that Abu’l-Walid’s writings are regularly published in an official organ of the Afghan Taliban.

In other words, the Taliban is explicitly allowing Abu’l Walid to publish articles that undercut the notion that Al Qaeda ever had that strong of a relationship with the group.  His writings are particularly timely in that Mullah Omar himself recently hinted that the goals of his group and Al Qaeda are divergent, essentially contending that the Taliban is a nationalist movement — not a global one. 

Still, Brown’s article raises other questions. 

Given that Mullah Omar and Bin Laden had such a troubled relationship and the latter frequently defied the former’s wishes, why would Omar insist on protecting Bin Laden when he was cognizant of an impending US invasion?  If the answer is simply that Omar was respecting Pashtunwali, then why will this necessarily change in the future?

The Taliban does not necessarily need Al Qaeda anymore — they have more than enough resources, a cadre of willing fighters, a sophisticated propoganda campaign, a largely intact leadership, and a growing influence and resonance in all parts of Afghanistan.  In fact, associating with Al Qaeda in many instances is probably counterproductive.  So why does the leadership remain equivocal about the true nature and depth of relations with Al Qaeda?  It may very well be that the reason is expediency and the necessity of remaining unified against the US and NATO, but there could be other factors and interests that are not necessarily clear. 

Another question is whether the Taliban — if and when it returns to power in Afghanistan in some legally sanctioned capacity — will ever be willing or able to actively prevent, dissuade, or threaten Al Qaeda’s ability to re-infiltrate Taliban controlled areas (although it is admittedly an open question as to whether Qaeda would even want to come back to Afghanistan if it already has adequate safe haven in Pakistan or elsewhere).  If a group of Al Qaeda members show up at a Taliban guesthouse in Kandahar after crossing the border from Pakistan late one night, what will the Talib do?

Second Thoughts on the US Military “Surge” in Afghanistan?

On December 1,  2009, President Obama announced an immediate influx of 30,000 additional US military troops to Afghanistan to reverse the momentum of the increasingly lethal insurgency.  Just under two months later, senior US officials are apprehensive about the odds of success.

The Pakistani Army’s announcement last week that it planned no new offensive against militants for as long as a year has deeply frustrated senior American military officers, and chipped away at one of the cornerstones of President Obama’s strategy to reverse the Taliban’s gains in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When Mr. Obama announced his decision in December to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, he and his aides made clear that the chances of success hinged significantly on Pakistan’s willingness to eliminate militants’ havens in its territory, including in the tribal region of North Waziristan. United States officials described the American and NATO surge of troops as a hammer, but they said it required a Pakistani anvil on the other side of the border to prevent the Taliban from retreating to the mountains.

The critical question is how much the Pakistani decision will undercut Mr. Obama’s strategy. During a speech at West Point on Dec. 1, he said his administration would reassess the plan at the end of 2010, after all the troops deployed as part of the increase were in place. But if the Pakistani position does not change, the operations on Pakistan’s side of the border will not have begun by the time Mr. Obama has made his assessment.

Mr. Obama made no public demands on Islamabad when he announced the troop increase at West Point, but he said he was acting “with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.” He quickly added: “We need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.”

The role of Pakistan is indeed integral to long-term success in Afghanistan.  Yet the decision to send 30,000 additional troops to turn the tide in the insurgency was made despite uncertainty in whether Pakistan would be the “anvil”.  Although senior officials and experts were banking on the fact that the renewed vigor and resolve on the part of the US could significantly influence Pakistan’s strategic calculations about Afghanistan, there was no guarantee that this would occur and yet the strategy was still adopted.

Many scholars, such as Marc Lynch of George Washington University, were arguing that even if the Pakistani’s remained reluctant to challenge the safe havens of militants posing a threat to Afghanistan — allowing fighters to safely retreat across the Durand Line — the strategy could still work.

The surge of troops is meant to blunt the momentum of the Taliban, establish security and provide space for the spread of governance and legitimacy. Should the Taliban choose to retreat and wait out the American mission, this would be a blessing, not a curse. It would allow America to establish control more easily and help build effective local and national governments.

So now that Pakistan has spurned the idea of military operations in North Waziristan in the next year, why and how exactly does this change or undercut the original strategy the Obama administration and senior military advisers envisioned in December of 2009?

Militant Groups in South Asia: All For One and One for All?

On a trip to India, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently “warned” — as if his words were somehow a new revelation — that a number of interconnected militant groups were on a mission to destabilize the region.  Excerpts from the NY Times:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned on Wednesday that the interconnected extremist groups on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border were working to destabilize the entire region and that “a victory for one was a victory for all.”

Speaking in New Delhi at a news conference after meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India and the country’s defense and external affairs ministers, Mr. Gates said Taliban groups and other militant organizations operating under the umbrella of Al Qaeda intended to destabilize not only Afghanistan and Pakistan but also India.

Mr. Gates, who was in the middle of a two-day visit to New Delhi, India’s capital, said that the groups could provoke conflict between India and Pakistan, and that focusing on only one extremist group for elimination was not the solution.

“It’s dangerous to single out any one of these groups and say, ‘If we could beat that group that would solve the problem,’ because they are in effect a syndicate of terrorist operators,” Mr. Gates said. In short, he said, “the success of any one of these groups leads to new capabilities and a new reputation for all.”

While the militant groups operating in Afghanistan/Pakistan do have links to each other,  increasingly coordinating operations and living and operating out of overlapping areas, Gates implies that we should view these groups monolithicly — and that is wrong and dangerous.

Although many of these groups have strong ties to each other, it does not necessarily mean that each group’s goals and primary target’s are in congruence with each other.  Athough Lakshar-e-Taiyba may have some links to Al Qaeda, LeT is primarily concerned with Kashmir while Al Qaeda is primarily concerned with the US and the West.  LeT is much more regionally focused while AQ is much more globally focused.  While these lines do sometimes get blurry, the differences are nonetheless crucial.  Why?

Because we can never hope to defeat all militant, terrorist, or insurgent groups in South Asia –or anywhere else for that matter — and therefore our priority lies in countering the groups that pose a global threat.  It is the global element, the fact that groups like Al  Qaeda are an international network that can galvanize support from sympathizers worldwide, inspire local groups and home-grown cells to adhere to a violent ideology, and potentially strike almost anywhere that most concerns and threatens the US and its interests.  Therefore, to address the problem in the way Gates implies is to potentially draw groups into conflict that may not have otherwise believed the US was the ultimate target to begin with.

At the same time, assisting states like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in countering militant threats to their respective countries is not out of the question — it should just be done from behind-the-scenes with little overt and direct involvement from the US.

Sirajuddin Haqqani Speaks Out

Sirajuddin Haqqani serves as a bridge between almost all the factions of the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and Al Qaeda.  Yet as one of US Intelligence’s most wanted men, Haqqani  apparently still feels protected and secure enough to conduct a video-recorded interview with a major international media outlet.

Yesterday, Al Jazeera released the short segment of its  interview with the key Afghan Taliban commander, who is undoubtedly one of the most ruthless and astute leaders  of the “younger generation” of militants in the region.   The link is here.

My only thought is, if militants such as Siraj Haqqani and Hakimullah Mehsud are ostensibly under so much pressure from US intelligence — particularly CIA drones — wouldn’t they try to remain as reclusive as possible instead of producing videos promulgating success?  I understand propoganda is incredibly important.  But the fact is that the US has launched more drone attacks in Pakistan since the beginning of 2009 than all the previous 8 years combined.  Yet Haqqani, Mehsud and other high-value targets are largely unscathed, undettered, and essentially unafraid to show their faces.

Over-Emphasis on the Qaeda Threat?

Despite the fact that Al Qaeda is still actively plotting to attack the US homeland, is our national security apparatus focusing too much attention toward the group?  On his blog, Bernard Finel makes a persuasive argument that it indeed might be.  In response to an article by Spencer Ackerman in the Washington Independent, Finel writes: 

Half of the analysts focus on AQ. Last year there were over 1,500 terrorist attacks by Islamist groups alone. Perhaps a dozen have a direct AQ-central connection. AQ is responsible for about 1/10 of one percent of Islamist attacks. And Islamist attacks make up less than half of all terrorist attacks around the world. Yeah, the Tamils may not be a threat to the U.S. today, but do we really want to wholly ignore violent non-state actors who have engaged in terrorism in the past? I mean, what percentage of our NCTC analysts do you think should actually be focused on AQ given that AQ is responsible for – at most 1/3000th of global terrorist incidents?

I agree that AQ is a serious national security threat.  But we need to get out of this crazy “lessons of 9/11″ mindset.  We cannot allow the actions of 19 thugs with box-cutters taking advantage of lax cockpit security measures to define American national security policy for a generation or more.

Focusing monomaniacally on AQ is one sure way to guarantee that we will be caught unaware by emerging national security challenges.  We need a balance.  We need to focus on AQ, and yet continue to collect on other threats.  We need to “win the wars we’re in” and yet also build a force for the future.  Balance is key.  And if anything, having half the NCTC focused on AQ is probably too much, not too little.

I am not sure exactly where I stand on this issue.  According to Ackerman, about 75 analysts at the NCTC focus on Qaeda’s overseas operations.  Those 75 analysts are divided even further into geographic areas of responsibility.  Overall, therefore, there are probably about 15-20 analysts working on Al Qaeda operations in South Asia, for example.  Is that too much or too little?  How do you even decide?

Still, I definitely agree with Finel’s broader point.  We are much more likely to miss emerging threats if we focus too much on Al Qaeda.  A pragmatic balance is critical.

Analysis of Terrorism in the US in 2009

Interesting piece by Scott Shane in the NY Times a few days ago, analyzing the terror plots and attacks in the US in 2009.  While Shane usually writes excellent articles, I thought this one was contradictory in some parts and unsettling in others: 

But even that near miss, said Mark M. Lowenthal, assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency for analysis from 2002 to 2005, may offer indirect evidence of the enemy’s diminished strength, compared with the coordinated attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Sending one guy on one plane is a huge step down,” Mr. Lowenthal said. “They’re less capable, even if they’re still lethal. They’re not able to carry out the intense planning they once did.”

Referring to the underwear bomber’s Christmas Day plot, Lowenthal argues that the operation’s simplicity is evidence of Al Qaeda’s weakened state relative to the highly sophisticated attacks of September 11th.  Yet the Christmas Day operation was not planned and executed by Al Qaeda central, as the 9/11 attacks were, they were conducted by an affiliate group — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.  In other words, Lowenthal lumps the two plots and groups together, treating one group’s operations as evidence of another’s diminished strength.   

 A few more paragraphs into the article, Shane writes:

The term “Al Qaeda,” used as a catchall in many of the plots, blurs important distinctions. By most accounts, apart from possibly the Zazi case, none of the 2009 cases appears to be directly tied to “Al Qaeda central,” as experts refer to the Pakistan-based group led by Mr. bin Laden.

This statement is utterly confusing and inconsistent given that Lowenthal is guilty of doing the same thing — yet Shane does not seem to catch it in his own article. 

Towards the end of the article, Shane quotes another Qaeda scholar: 

Audrey Kurth Cronin of the National War College said Qaeda affiliates borrow the name to enhance their appeal but are usually more interested in local goals than in the global jihad proclaimed by Mr. bin Laden.

Sure, that was the accepted theory on Qaeda affiliates, given that there was really no evidence to the contrary.  But, the underwear plot set a new precedent.  I am not arguing that we should sound the alarms or overreact by any means.  However, are we still supposed to assume that AQAP, AQI, or AQIM are not a credible threat to the US homeland? 

What at first glance was another quality article by Shane, by the end just left me with more questions than clarity.  Sorry Scott, I usually enjoy your journalism, but the only thing as amatuerish as the 2009 US terror plots was your attempt to analyze them.

The Al Qaeda Threat to Fellow Muslims

Almost every objective terrorism and Al Qaeda analyst is well aware that the victims of Al Qaeda attacks are much more likely to be Muslims, but the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point recently published a compelling report that substantiates the claim with hard data.

 

The fact is that the vast majority of all fatalities resulting from al‐Qa’ida’s victims are Muslims: the analysis here shows that only 15% of the‐Qa’ida attacks between 2004 and 2008 were Westerners.

Irrespective of the ongoing public debates about takfir and violence against Muslims amongst al‐Qa’ida associates, deeds speak louder than words. Al‐Qa’ida representsitself as the vanguard of the Muslim community, committed to upholding Islamic values and defending Muslim people against Western forces, but its  a callous attitude toward the lives of those the group claims to protect. Al‐Qa’ida absolves responsibility for the deaths of Muslims by claiming that they are either martyrs or apostates.

I would strongly encourage the readers of this blog to disseminate this report as widely as possible.

In the end, Al Qaeda’s demise will be a product of at least as much – if not more — of its own counterproductive actions as the US and the West’s operations.  Unable to reconcile its words with its actions, the group will eventually implode — as long as the US and its allies refrain from playing into Qaeda’s hands and emboldening it (which admittedly is easier said than done).

At the same time, the US and its allies, particularly moderate Muslim leaders, can hasten this implosion as well.  Proliferating the central message of this report (and others like it) ubiquitously is therefore crucial.

Update: The Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies also published a report that quantifies the destruction caused by militants in Pakistan.  The number of civilians killed in Pakistan in 2009 rose by a third, surpassing the number of civilians killed in neighboring Afghanistan.

The CIA-BlackWater-Zionist-Indian-Crusade is Responsible for (Insert Problem Here) in Pakistan

Conspiracy theories are a life-blood of Pakistani society.  Increasingly, however, these stories are shifting from a constant background noise into the forefront of some Pakistani media outlets.  Nicholas Schmidle, fellow at the New America Foundation, writes about an increasingly prominent permutation of this disturbing trend, Shireen Mazari: 

Mazari’s hunt for American spies and undercover defense contractors was only getting started. In September, she was named editor of The Nation, an English-language daily often described as “Fox News in Pakistan.” (Earlier this year, one columnist dubbed Mazari the “Ann Coulter of Pakistan.”) Throughout the fall, The Nation has published multiple front-page stories on the location of new “Blackwater dens” around Islamabad. It featured a news story last month titled “mysterious us nationals,” which described “two suspicious foreigners wandering in the guise of journalists … [who] seemingly belonged to the US spy agency CIA.” The proof? That they “were driven towards the US Consulate.” (The “mysterious US nationals” turned out to be an English freelance photographer and an Australian photographer who works for Getty.)  

The low point, however, came a couple of weeks earlier, when The Nation fronted a story titled “journalists as spies in fata?”–a reference to Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas–that cited anonymous law enforcement sources accusing Matthew Rosenberg, an American correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, of working as a “chief operative” for the CIA, Blackwater, and the Mossad. “We put in a question mark,” said Mazari, referring to the punctuation at the end of the headline, when I asked her whether she realized she was endangering Rosenberg’s life. (Daniel Pearl, also a Journal reporter, was kidnapped in Karachi in early 2002, accused of being a CIA agent, and beheaded.)

In the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the United States and Pakistan are ostensibly on the same side. But, as the Obama administration prepares to pour tens of thousands of new troops into Afghanistan, it faces a daunting array of challenges from its allies in Islamabad. Perhaps none is as disturbing as the anti-Americanism that is being fueled by Pakistan’s mainstream media. In a twisted development, most Pakistanis now view the United States as their greatest threat and enemy, usurping a place that India seemed primed to occupy eternally. And Mazari, who holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, may represent the vanguard of a well-educated, English-speaking, secular elite increasingly charged with hypernationalism and antipathy toward the United States. Mixing fact with demagoguery, and sometimes outright fiction, she represents yet another obstacle to Washington’s war on the Taliban.

Mazari and The Nation, though smaller than The News, were a perfect fit; The Nation’s publisher has advocated nuking India and is also noted for his conspiracy-mongering. Since taking over, Mazari claims that the paper has been “seeing a big revival,” with circulation having “jumped up tremendously.” According to both Pakistanis and Pakistan-watchers, The Nation has become a right-wing outlet like Fox News. But Hamid Mir, the host of “Capital Talk,” cautioned against making the comparison–for fear of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. “The Nation is not very big and not very influential,” he said. “If The Nation becomes Fox News, then Pakistan will burn.”

Already, the Taliban have seized on the propaganda opportunity that Mazari has opened. When a bomb ripped through a Peshawar market in late October, killing more than 100 people, the Taliban, increasingly concerned about alienating the Pakistani public, refused to take credit for the blast. Instead, Mehsud’s successor, the Fu Manchu–styled Hakimullah Mehsud, blamed Blackwater. If that line becomes accepted, then not only will Pakistan continue to burn, but the U.S.-Pakistan relationship may burn along with it.

Schmidle calls Mazari the “Ann Coulter” of Pakistan.  For both the US and Pakistan’s sake, I hope he is right. 

As for the TTP blaming the October 2009 Peshawar market attack on Blackwater, my own surface-level analysis of Urdu language media immediately following the attack suggested that a surprisingly large number of Pakistanis concurred with the TTP’s convenient self-exculpation, projecting blame and responsibility toward the Pakistan government, Blackwater and/or the US, Israel, and India — essentially everyone except the militants within their own borders. 

To top it all off, there is scant evidence that this disheartening trend will recede anytime soon.

The “Dean” of Terrorism Studies Breaks His Silence

World-renowned terrorism scholar and professor at Georgetown University, Bruce Hoffman, finally weighed in on the deluge of recent terrorism cases within or against the US.  Excerpts from his Washington Post op/ed below:

Al-Qaeda’s newfound vitality is the product of a fresh strategy that plays to its networking strength and compensates for its numerical weakness. In contrast to its plan on Sept. 11, which was to deliver a knock-out blow to the United States, al-Qaeda’s leadership has now adopted a “death by a thousand cuts” approach. There are five core elements to this strategy.

First, al-Qaeda is increasingly focused on overwhelming, distracting and exhausting us. To this end, it seeks to flood our already information-overloaded national intelligence systems with myriad threats and background noise.

Second, in the wake of the global financial crisis, al-Qaeda has stepped up a strategy of economic warfare. “We will bury you,” Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev promised Americans 50 years ago. Today, al-Qaeda threatens: “We will bankrupt you.”

Third, al-Qaeda is still trying to create divisions within the global alliance arrayed against it by targeting key coalition partners.

Fourth, al-Qaeda is aggressively seeking out, destabilizing and exploiting failed states and other areas of lawlessness. While the United States remains preoccupied with trying to secure yesterday’s failed state — Afghanistan — al-Qaeda is busy staking out new terrain.

Fifth and finally, al-Qaeda is covetously seeking recruits from non-Muslim countries who can be easily deployed for attacks in the West.

Citizens of countries that participate in the U.S. visa-waiver program are especially prized because they can move freely between Western countries and blend easily into these societies.

But while al-Qaeda is finding new ways to exploit our weaknesses, we are stuck in a pattern of belated responses, rather than anticipating its moves and developing preemptive strategies. The “systemic failure” of intelligence analysis and airport security that Obama recently described was not just the product of a compartmentalized bureaucracy or analytical inattention, but a failure to recognize al-Qaeda’s new strategy.

Hoffman designates this as Al Qaeda’s “grand new strategy”.  Yet almost every aspect of Qaeda’s strategy that Hoffman mentions — exhaustion, economically bleeding the US, targeting US allies, exploiting failed states, and attracting western recruits — has been in place since at least 9/11.  So then, what really has changed?

The most significant change is not the strategy itself but the nature of the overall threat.  Al Qaeda has morphed and decentralized since 9/11, forming increasingly lethal franchises that largely pose a regional threat but  also — as we witnessed with AQAP — have the potential to strike the US homeland.  Al Qaeda is no longer simply just a terrorist group — it is many groups — and it is also an ideological movement that inspires and radicalizes susceptible individuals worldwide.

As a result, the US not only has to direct resources and attention to the Al Qaeda core in Pakistan (which still poses the gravest threat to US national security), but is now forced to shatter long-held assumptions that Qaeda franchises all over the world do not have the ability to strike the homeland.

The potential for another 9/11 type spectacular still exists — the chances of success are just much lower.  On top of that, Al Qaeda franchises such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are now also a legitimate threat to the US homeland.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, this development is a nightmare, further taxing the US intelligence community’s capacity to disrupt future attacks.

Axis of Ev….Oops, I Mean Countries of Interest

Over at Changing Up Pakistan (CHUP), Kalsoom eloquently articulates her position on the new US aviation security rules:

As of January 4, 2010, citizens of 14 nations – Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen – have all been dubbed countries of “interest.” And no, not interest in a good way, as in, “We see you as fellow human beings, let’s have a conversation and get to know one another.” Interest as in, “Hi, we see you as an immediate threat because of your religion and nationality, let’s have a conversation with my ominous rubber glove.”

But riddle me this, Mr. President – if the intelligence agencies screwed up, and the system failed to work, why are scores of people paying the price? Is this a sign of that mutual respect you so powerfully called for during your speech to the Muslim World in Cairo? Because, let me tell you, I don’t feel mutually respected when Don Juan of airport security calls me out of line, and not because he wants to perform a rubber sock puppet show for my enjoyment.

I am all for keeping us safe, and I am all for fending off terrorist threats. I am from a country whose citizens have been victimized by terrorism, that has been waging its own war, however successfully, against a similar threat. Last year alone, over 3000 people died in terrorist attacks in Pakistan. So believe me, I understand that you don’t want that threat on your soil. But neither do we. Treating each individual as one massive threat will only add to the problem, because it fails to recognize the nuances of this conflict, or the tremendous importance of perceptions. It is sad that in the eight years after 9/11, that lesson still has to be learned.

Kalsoom makes a very good point.  This is a prime example of a knee-jerk policy that is all too often implemented under these circumstances.  This policy seemingly takes care of a big chunk of the issue, but under closer examination it only obfuscates the threat in order to expeditiously allay public fear and outrage. 

It is common knowledge for anyone paying attention to trends in terrorism that an increasing number of terrorist operatives are coming from western countries, carrying western passports (check out the National Intelligence Estimate from July 2007, over two years ago, if you somehow haven’t heard this).  Al Qaeda is markedly adapting to the post 9/11 world and it is therefore no surprise the group is actively searching for such individuals. 

Consequently, while the grandmother from Pakistan trying to visit her family in the US succumbs to an invasive full-body search, a future  butt-crack bomber — who holds a passport from the United Kingdom — will not be subject to any of the additional screening measures.  Will the UK ever make to the “country of interest” list? I wouldn’t bet on it. 

The threat from Al Qaeda is so dangerous precisely because it is so global.  Therefore, unless our “country of interest” list covers almost all of the rest of the 200 or so sovereign states in the world, we are fooling ourselves by believing that Al Qaeda and those intent on attacking the US will be all that demoralized by this grand new policy. 

Furthermore, in the case of Umar Farooq Abdulmutallab, we were even more lucky than most realize.  Yes, we were all lucky that the plot failed.  But I also find it highly unlikely that we will see too many cases in the future where the parents were even aware that their son could be radicalized, let alone a situation in which they would go to such great lengths to alert the appropriate authorities.  My point is, if a similar attack is plotted by Al Qaeda in the future, you can bet that the US intelligence community and allies abroad will have much less and more ambiguous information to decipher in time. 

For the most part, I agree with Kalsoom; it is crucial to take a more nuanced, comprehensive, and practical approach to assessing and tackling the threat.