carapace – Not your father's america

 

By Scott Stewart, Vice President of Analysis, and Sidney Brown

On March 26, the Belgian federal police’s counterterrorism force, or Special Units, conducted a felony car stop on Hakim Benladghem, a 39-year-old French citizen of Algerian extraction. When Benladghem reacted aggressively, he was shot and killed by the police attempting to arrest him. The Special Units chose to take Benladghem down in a car stop rather than arrest him at his home because it had intelligence indicating that he was heavily armed. The authorities also knew from their French counterparts that Benladghem had been trained as a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion.

Additional intelligence showed that Benladghem had traveled extensively and that, through his travels and email and cellphone communications, he appeared to be connected to the international jihadist movement. Rather than risk a confrontation at Benladghem’s apartment, where he had access to an arsenal of weapons as well as a ballistic vest and helmet, the police decided to arrest him while he was away from home and more vulnerable. The Belgian authorities did not want to risk a prolonged, bloody siege like the one that occurred in April 2012 in Toulouse, France, when French police attempted to arrest shooter Mohammed Merah.

The intelligence regarding Benladghem’s arsenal was confirmed when a search of his apartment revealed several weapons, including an assault rifle, a submachine gun and a tactical shotgun. He also possessed a large collection of tactical equipment, including a ballistic vest, a Kevlar helmet, a ballistic shield and two gas masks. With such equipment and training, Benladghem would have been well-equipped to not only handle an assault on his apartment but also to conduct an armed assault — intelligence indicating that he was preparing to conduct such an attack March 27 is reportedly what led the police to try to arrest him. Authorities are still closely guarding the identities of Benladghem’s targets, but given France’s involvement in the case, it is likely they were transnational in nature; there are a number of such targets in Brussels, which houses NATO and EU headquarters.

Belgian authorities are now undoubtedly working with their European and other allies to investigate Benladghem’s contacts in order to determine the scope of the network he was a part of and what threat his associates still pose. This potential threat is a reminder of the challenges that radicalized European Muslims present for European authorities.

The Roots of the Problem

There are long, historical ties between the Muslim world and Europe. From the earliest days of Islam and the Umayyads’ invasion of Spain and France in the early 700s, through the Crusades and the European colonization of North Africa and South Asia in the 1700s and 1800s, to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I and the European colonization of the Middle East, the threads of Europe and the Muslim world have been tightly woven together by geopolitics into a vivid tapestry of conflict and cooperation.

The proximity of North Africa to southern Europe and the Europeans’ colonization efforts, combined with the many people in the Muslim world seeking education and employment in Europe, have resulted in large populations of Muslims living on the Continent.

But this close relationship has not been without friction. Though a large portion of Muslims in Europe come from families who have lived there for four or five generations, many have not become integrated into European society and frequently live in isolated, Muslim-dominated areas. Moreover, while Europe as a whole is suffering from the economic crisis, the Muslim population has been hit particularly hard and the unemployment rate for young Muslims is alarmingly high in many parts of Europe. This, in addition to the frequent discrimination against Muslims in the job market, leaves many Muslims feeling alienated, disenfranchised and resentful. When this resentment is combined with the European welfare state, in which working is not necessary to survival, many of these Muslims have the opportunity to be exposed to radical discourse and to become involved in radical political or even militant activity.

Europe’s immigration and asylum laws, which granted refuge to many jihadist ideologues who were persecuted in their home countries, have exacerbated this situation. Men like Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza al-Masri and Mullah Krekar, among many others, were allowed to set up shop on the Continent, and Europe’s Muslim areas provided target-rich environments for the jihadist preachers, who were looking to recruit disaffected young Muslims to their cause.

Although European countries have taken steps to expel or extradite many of these jihadist theologians since the 9/11 attacks, they have been replaced by a second generation of preachers and the issue of disaffected Muslim populations has persisted and grown. Large numbers of vocal Islamist fundamentalists currently attend European universities. Incidents such as the French burqa ban and anti-Islamic rhetoric of politicians like Geert Wilders reinforce the narrative put forward by jihadist recruiters that Islam is under attack from Europeans and help the preachers’ efforts to recruit new followers.

There is a great deal of variety in the way Muslims are radicalized, but recruiters have consistently used mosques, gyms and university Islamic associations as places to spot potential recruits. The recruits usually are then taken aside, away from the view of the community, and radicalized in a one-on-one or small-group setting. These recruiters often have contacts with other radical cells inside Europe, as well as links to jihadist and militant groups overseas, and use these links to facilitate travel to training camps and war zones.

It is important to recognize that while young Muslim men can become radicalized and are often sought for the purpose of recruitment, they are not the only demographic group susceptible to radicalization. We have also seen older adults become radicalized — men like 39-year-old Benladghem or the 37-year-old French particle physicist, Adlene Hicheur. Such individuals with degrees, practical career experience and clean criminal backgrounds can more easily travel between Europe and other foreign countries if necessary and are less likely to raise suspicions than the younger men. Women can also become radicalized and can serve as important conduits for funds and intelligence or as recruiters and propagandists.

There are no accurate counts of European Muslims currently fighting or training abroad, but there are at least several hundred, and there have been thousands over the past decades. Not all are jihadists; many who have traveled to Libya and Syria are nationalists or non-jihadist Islamists. Nevertheless, there are many jihadists among them, along with other Muslims who become heavily influenced by the jihadists after fighting with them.

Taken together, these conditions have made it very difficult to mitigate the jihadist threat in Europe. If anything, based on the tempo of attacks, plots and arrests, the threat is growing more acute.  

The Outlook for Europe

A timeline of attacks and thwarted plots in Europe shows that the pace of jihadist activity on the Continent is increasing. As was the case in the United States, major attacks like the March 2004 Madrid train bombings and the July 2005 London subway bombings have caused European authorities to become far more focused on this threat, and consequently they have become more proactive in their approach to combating it.

However, the nature of the jihadist threat is slightly different in Europe than it is in the United States due to differences in the Muslim communities. In the United States, where the Muslim community is more integrated and less likely to be isolated in their own districts, plotters tend to be more self-radicalized and aspirational. Once they become radicalized — frequently via the Internet — it is quite common for them to be arrested as they seek assistance with their plots from individuals who are FBI agents or police informants working on sting operations. The Oct. 17, 2012, arrest of Qazi Nafis, who tried to bomb the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and the Sept. 15, 2012, arrest of Adel Daoud, who thought he was bombing a Chicago bar, are recent examples of this trend. Aspiring terrorists in the United States also tend to be younger and have less experience than their European counterparts, though there have been some notable exceptions, such as U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan. In addition, there are fewer cases of radicalized females in the United States.

Due to Europe’s concentrated and disenfranchised Muslim population, it is not difficult for radicalized European Muslims to find confederates who are not police informants. Even more aspirational and inept groups — such as the four men who were arrested in April 2012, in Luton, United Kingdom, and who pled guilty to plotting to attack a British army base on March 1, 2013 — can be part of a larger radicalized community and have friends and relatives who have been involved in prior plots or who have traveled overseas to fight jihad. This was true for Toulouse shooter Merah: Although he conducted his shooting attacks alone, Merah had long been part of a larger militant community and had traveled to places like Pakistan and Afghanistan to train and fight. French authorities also reportedly investigated Merah’s older brother, Abdelkader, in 2007 for helping European Muslims travel to Iraq to fight.    

The portrait of Benladghem that is beginning to emerge is somewhat similar to that of Merah. Benladghem maintained contact with a number of people associated with jihadist networks in France and Belgium as well as with jihadists overseas. According to news reports, he came to the attention of the French government after being denied entry to Gaza from Egypt while carrying ballistic vests and gas masks. Pressure by the French government after his return from Egypt may have caused his immigration to Belgium. Stratfor sources have said that French authorities alerted their Belgian counterparts about Benladghem when he moved to Belgium and that he was under close scrutiny due to his history. 

Nevertheless, Benladghem does appear to have been able to participate in some illegal activity while in Belgium. He was reportedly involved in the March 21 armed robbery of a restaurant outside Brussels as he attempted to steal weapons from the restaurant’s owner. According to news reports, two accomplices accompanying Benladghem during the armed robbery were arrested, and both implicated Benladghem during the police interrogation. 

It is not clear if Benladghem was aware of his colleagues’ arrest. He apparently did not attempt to cache or otherwise dispose of his weapons and equipment, nor did he flee the country, as he might have done if he had feared arrest.

Like Merah, Benladghem had armed himself and was competent with the weapons he had acquired. He did not have to reach out to a police informant to obtain the weapons. He also somehow had managed to support himself and acquire an expensive four-wheel drive vehicle, though he reportedly had not worked for years. It is not yet clear if he received outside support or if he supported himself through armed robberies like the one he conducted March 21.

Trained, dedicated and armed operatives with international connections, such as Merah and Benladghem, pose a very different threat than the aspiring and incompetent jihadists frequently seen in the United States. This means that European authorities will have their work cut out for them. But this is not only bad news for Europeans; it could also portend more anti-American attacks in Europe or even attacks outside Europe, as militants with European passports travel elsewhere.

Send us your thoughts on this report.

Read more: The Acute Jihadist Threat in Europe | Stratfor

"The Acute Jihadist Threat in Europe is republished with permission of Stratfor."

 

 

February 28, 2013

By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis

People sometimes obsess over the potential threat posed by terrorist attacks that use things such as chemical weapons, electromagnetic pulses or dirty bombs. Yet they tend to discount the less exciting but very real threat posed by fire, even though fire kills thousands of people every year. The World Health Organization estimates that 195,000 people die each year from fire, while according to the Global Terrorism Database an average of 7,258 people die annually from terrorism, and that includes deaths in conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are also instances in which fire is used as a weapon in a terrorist attack. U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and embassy communications officer Sean Smith, the two diplomats killed in the attack on the U.S. office in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, did not die from gunfire or even rocket-propelled grenade strikes but from smoke inhalation. This fact was not lost on the U.S. Department of State Accountability Review Board that investigated the Benghazi attack. In an interview published by Reuters on Feb. 24, former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, the head of the Accountability Review Board, said more attention should be paid to the threat fire poses to diplomatic posts.

Fire can be deadly and destructive. But whether a fire is intentionally set, as in the Benghazi example above, or is the result of an accident or negligence, there are some practical steps individuals can take to protect themselves.

Fire as a Weapon

The use of fire as a weapon, especially against diplomatic facilities, is not new. It was seen in the November 1979 sacking and burning of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and in the April 1988 mob and arson attack against the U.S. Embassy annex in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In February 2008, the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, was heavily damaged when a mob lit its lobby on fire. More recently, on Sept. 14, 2012, three days after the Benghazi attack, millions of dollars’ worth of damage was done at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, after a mob set outbuildings and vehicles ablaze. Fires set by demonstrators also caused extensive damage to the adjacent American school.

Fire has been used to attack non-diplomatic facilities as well. During the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, the group of attackers holed up in the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel started fires in various parts of the hotel. Anarchists and radical environmental and animal rights activists have also conducted arson attacks against a variety of targets, including banks, department stores, the homes and vehicles of research scientists and even a ski resort.

Fire has also been a weapon frequently mentioned by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in its longstanding efforts to encourage Muslims living in the West to conduct simple attacks. In an interview featured in the first edition of Inspire magazine, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wahayshi encouraged would-be jihadists to burn down forests and buildings as a way to strike terror into the hearts of their adversaries. This theme was expanded upon in Inspire magazine’s ninth edition, which actually contained a photo tutorial on how to construct timed incendiary devices as well as a fatwa noting that it was religiously permissible to light forest fires as an act of war. It is suspected that Palestinian groups have also been responsible for a number of fires in Israel and the West Bank.

But fire is not a weapon to be used against only buildings and forests — it can also be used to attack transportation targets. In March 2008, a Uighur separatist attempted to light a fire in the restroom of a China Southern Airlines flight from Urumqi to Beijing using two soft drink cans filled with gasoline that she had smuggled onto the flight. Fire is extremely dangerous aboard aircraft because of the oxygen-rich environment, the sensitive nature of avionic controls, the presence of thousands of gallons of jet fuel and the toxic smoke that results from burning plastics and other materials that make up a plane. Examples of deadly fires aboard aircraft include the September 1998 incident involving Swissair Flight 111, in which all 229 people aboard were killed after the crew was overcome by smoke, and the May 1996 ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades. In a case similar to the one at hand, a June 1983 fire that started in the restroom of Air Canada Flight 797 resulted in the deaths of 23 of the 46 passengers on board. Autopsies showed that most of them died as a result of smoke inhalation.

Trains have also been targeted for arson. In August 2006, an attack against two German trains failed when the timed incendiary devices placed onboard failed to ignite. A February 2007 attack against a train in India proved far more deadly. Two timed incendiary devices placed aboard the Samjhauta Express killed 68 people and injured another 50. Two additional unignited devices were later found in other cars aboard the train. Had they functioned properly, the death toll would have been much higher.

Incendiary devices are not only quite deadly if properly employed, they also have an advantage over explosive devices in that they can be constructed from readily available materials such as gasoline and kerosene. Even the aluminum powder and iron oxide required to manufacture a more advanced incendiary compound such as thermite can be easily obtained or even produced at home.

Another consideration is that quite often other forms of attacks, such as those using explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades or even tracer ammunition, can spark fires. Many of the victims of the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings were affected not by the bombs’ blast effect but by the smoke from the resultant fires.

Precautions

In addition to the threat of fire as a weapon or resulting from another form of attack, many deadly fires result each year from accidents or negligence. Such fires are deadly enough in the United States and Europe, where there are strict fire codes, but their impact is often magnified in less-developed countries, where fire codes are nonexistent or poorly enforced. For example, while sprinkler systems are mandatory for hotels in the United States, in many parts of the world they are not required.

When I was working on protective details overseas, I learned that it is not uncommon to find items stored in emergency stairwells, leaving them obstructed or sometimes impassable. It is also not unusual to find fire doors that have been chained shut due to the criminal threat.

One thing that can be done to mitigate the threat from fire is to check emergency exits to ensure that they are passable. This applies not only to hotels but also to apartment and even office buildings. In the August 2011 Casino Royale attack in Monterrey, Mexico, the attackers ordered the occupants out of the building before dousing it with gasoline and lighting it on fire, but 52 people died in the incident because they were trapped inside a building by a fire exit that had been chained and locked shut.

While we recommend that travelers staying at hotels overseas should attempt to stay above the second floor for security reasons, we also recommend that they not stay above the sixth floor so that they will be within range of most fire department rescue ladders. We also recommend checking that functional and tested fire extinguishers and fire hoses are present.

In fires, smoke inhalation is a huge problem. According to studies, it is the primary cause of fire deaths and accounts for some 50-80 percent of all deaths from indoor fires. While this is somewhat obvious in confined spaces such as an aircraft fuselage or a subway tunnel, it also applies to buildings. Even buildings that are constructed of concrete or cinderblock and would therefore seem to be resistant to the effects of fire can serve to confine smoke to deadly levels. The U.S. office in Benghazi is a very good recent example. Video of the building after the attack showed that the fire had not badly damaged the building’s structure itself; what killed Stevens and Smith was the smoke.

As Stratfor has noted for many years now, smoke hoods are a very important piece of safety equipment and should be part of everyone’s personal safety plan. Smoke hoods can be carried in a purse or briefcase and can provide the wearer with 15-30 minutes of safe air to breathe. This period of time can make a world of difference to a person caught in a burning building, subway tunnel or aircraft and attempting to escape to fresh air.

Due to past fire incidents on aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration mandates that airlines furnish a smoke hood for each crew member on commercial flights. They do not provide smoke hoods for each passenger, although high-end executive aircraft normally do. Commercial passengers who would like access to a smoke hood in the case of a fire need to carry their own. Another useful tool in such situations is a small, high-intensity flashlight that can help you find your way through the smoke or dark once you have donned your smoke hood.

Fire is a potentially deadly weapon, one that should not be forgotten, but steps can be taken to mitigate the danger it poses.

Send us your thoughts on this report.

Read more: Fire: The Overlooked Threat | Stratfor

"Fire: The Overlooked Threat is republished with permission of Stratfor."

 

 

Feb. 14, 2013

By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis

From time to time, I will sit down to write a series of analyses on a particular topic, such as the fundamentals of terrorism series last February. Other times, unrelated events in different parts of the world are tied together by analytical threads, naturally becoming a series. This is what has happened with the last three weekly security analyses — a common analytical narrative has risen to connect them.

First, we discussed how the Jan. 16 attack against the Tigantourine natural gas facility near Ain Amenas, Algeria, would result in increased security at energy facilities in the region. Second, we discussed foreign interventions in Libya and Syria and how they have regional or even global consequences that can persist for years. Finally, last week we discussed how the robust, layered security at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara served to thwart a suicide bombing.

Together, these topics spotlight the heightened and persistent terrorist threat in North Africa as well as Turkey and the Levant. They also demonstrate that militants in those regions will be able to acquire weapons with ease. But perhaps the most important lesson from them is that as diplomatic missions are withdrawn or downsized and as security is increased at embassies and energy facilities, the threat is going to once again shift toward softer targets.

Soft Targets

Obviously, individuals desiring to launch a terrorist attack seek to strike the highest-profile, most symbolic target possible. If it is well known, the target can magnify the terror, especially when the operation grabs the attention of international media. Such extensive exposure not only allows people around the globe to be informed minute by minute about unfolding events, but it also permits them to become secondary, vicarious victims of the unfolding violence. The increased exposure also ensures that the audience affected by the operation becomes far larger than just those in the immediate vicinity of the attack. The attack on the U.S. diplomatic office in Benghazi and the killing of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens led to months of media coverage that has included televised congressional hearings and fierce partisan and bureaucratic squabbles in the media. It was the terrorist equivalent of winning the lottery.

However, in the wake of terrorist attacks, increased situational awareness and security measures make successful attacks difficult to replicate. Targets become more difficult to attack — what we refer to as hard targets. When this happens, attackers are forced to either escalate the size and force used in their attack, identify a vulnerability they can exploit or risk failure.

In the August 1998 attacks against the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, al Qaeda planners turned to the first option: a larger attack. They attempted to use large truck bombs to overcome the embassies’ layered security. The embassies had decent perimeter security but lacked enough distance between the street and the buildings to protect them from a large blast. In both attacks, the attackers also tried unsuccessfully to get the bomb-laden trucks through perimeter security vehicle checkpoints to detonate them closer to the embassy buildings.

After those bombings, security enhancements made most diplomatic facilities more difficult to attack, leading militant groups to turn their attention to hotels. A strike on an international hotel in a major city can make almost the same kind of statement against the West as a strike on an embassy. Hotels are often full of Western business travelers, diplomats, intelligence officers and, not insignificantly, members of the media. This has made hotels target-rich environments for militants seeking to kill Westerners and gain international media attention without having to penetrate the extreme security of a hard target like a modern embassy.

But increased security is not the only factor that leads those wishing to conduct a terrorist attack to gravitate toward softer targets. For the better part of a decade, we have chronicled how the global jihadist movement has devolved from an organizational model based on centralized leadership and focused global goals to a more amorphous model based on regional franchises with local goals and strong grassroots support. For the most part, these regional franchises lack the training and funding of the al Qaeda core and are therefore less capable. This means franchise groups are often unable to attack hard targets and tend to focus on softer targets — such as hotels or the U.S. ambassador while he is staying at a poorly protected office in Benghazi rather than at his residence in Tripoli.

Changing Threats in North Africa

As hotels in places like Amman and Jakarta became harder to attack with large vehicle bombs, attackers began to smuggle in smaller devices to bypass the increased security. There was also a trend in which attackers hit restaurants where Westerners congregated rather than the more secure hotels.

The same dynamic will likely apply today in the Sahel. We believe that the attack at the Tigantourine natural gas facility in Algeria was greatly aided by the complacency of the security forces. The attackers did not demonstrate any sort of advanced terrorist tactics or tradecraft. It would be very hard to replicate the attack on another energy facility in the region today due to increases in awareness and security. The increase in security will be compounded by the fact that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its jihadist brethren in the Sahel lack sophisticated terrorist capabilities and have lost their bases in northern Mali. This means they will be hard-pressed to conduct a successful attack against a hard target.

Furthermore, having lost substantial quantities of men and materiel, and with French and African forces potentially interdicting their lucrative smuggling routes, these jihadist groups will be looking to refill their coffers. Kidnapping is a longstanding way for militant groups in the region to resolve precisely these issues. Although they have lost control of the towns they captured in northern Mali, these groups will continue to pose a threat of kidnapping over a wide swath of North Africa.

Turkey and Lebanon

While the jihadist militants in Syria are currently fixated on attacking the Syrian regime, there is nonetheless a non-jihadist threat in Turkey — and perhaps Lebanon — that emanates from the Syrian intelligence and its proxy groups in the region. However, the Feb. 1 attack against the U.S. Embassy in Ankara demonstrated the limitations of the capabilities of one of those proxies, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front.

Carrying on the operational legacy of its parent organization, Devrimci Sol, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front aspires to conduct spectacular attacks, but its attacks frequently fizzle or fail. Successfully striking a hardened target such as the U.S. Embassy is beyond the group’s capability. In fact, the group frequently botches attacks against softer targets, as in the attack against an American fast food chain outlet in May 2012 that failed when the explosive device malfunctioned.

The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front’s limited tactical capability supports the theory that the attack against the U.S. Embassy in Ankara was commissioned by the Syrian regime. The group has even failed in suicide bombings against Turkish police stations with far less security; it knew it was attacking something beyond its reach. But at the same time, the group’s limited capability and the failure of the attack against the U.S. Embassy will likely result in a shift to softer targets if the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front was acting at Syria’s behest and the Syrians have asked for additional anti-American attacks.

As noted last week, Devrimci Sol conducted dozens of attacks against U.S. and NATO targets in Turkey during late 1990 and early 1991 at the behest of Saddam Hussein. The majority of these attacks were directed against soft targets such as U.S. corporate offices, nongovernmental organizations, hotels and restaurants. We believe these same targets are in jeopardy of attack by the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front now.

Syria maintains a number of proxy militants in Lebanon, including Hezbollah. Hezbollah has its own calculations and may not be as willing as Syria’s smaller proxy groups to act on Syria’s behalf. Hezbollah maintains a far more sophisticated militant capability than these small groups and is able to attack hard targets, unlike the smaller groups. Therefore, if the Syrians commission a terrorist attack in Lebanon and Hezbollah does not help them, the attacks their proxy groups will carry out will be quite limited — and will again focus on soft targets.

For the most part, soft targets are soft by their very nature. It is not only impractical to employ embassy-like security at a fast food restaurant, but it is inordinately expensive — too expensive to be economically feasible for a business. Still, there are some simple and practical security measures that can be taken to make them slightly more secure and hopefully cause anyone planning an attack to divert their operation toward an even softer target.

Additionally, individuals living in or traveling to these places can and should practice good situational awareness, review their personal contingency plans and mentally prepare to respond to any crisis.

Send us your thoughts on this report.

Read more: Soft Targets Back in Focus | Stratfor

 

"Soft Targets Back in Focus is republished with permission of Stratfor."

 

 

January 24, 2013

By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis

The recent jihadist attack on the Tigantourine natural gas facility near In Amenas, Algeria, and the subsequent hostage situation there have prompted some knee-jerk discussions among media punditry. From these discussions came the belief that the incident was spectacular, sophisticated and above all unprecedented. A closer examination shows quite the opposite.

Indeed, very little of the incident was without precedent. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who orchestrated the attack, has employed similar tactics and a similar scale of force before, and frequently he has deployed forces far from his group’s core territory in northern Mali. Large-scale raids, often meant to take hostages, have been conducted across far expanses of the Sahel. What was unprecedented was the target. Energy and extraction sites have been attacked in the past, but never before was an Algerian natural gas facility selected for such an assault.

A closer look at the operation also reveals Belmokhtar’s true intentions. The objective of the attack was not to kill hostages but to kidnap foreign workers for ransom — an objective in keeping with many of Belmokhtar’s previous forays. But in the end, his operation was a failure. His group killed several hostages but did not destroy the facility or successfully transport hostages away from the site. He lost several men and weapons, and just as important, he appears to have also lost the millions of dollars he could have gained through ransoming his captives.

Offering Perspective

Until recently, Belmokhtar and his group, the Mulathameen Brigade, or the "Masked Ones," which donned the name "Those Who Sign in Blood" for the Tigantourine operation, were associated with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Prior to their association with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, they were a part of Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which operated in the Sahel. As part of these groups, Belmokhtar led many kidnapping raids and other operations throughout the region, and these past examples offer perspective for examining the Tigantourine operation and for attempting to forecast the groups’ future activities.

In April 2003, Belmokhtar was one of the leaders of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat operation that took 32 European tourists hostage in the Hoggar Mountains near Illizi, Algeria, which is roughly 257 kilometers (160 miles) southwest of the Tigantourine facility. Seventeen hostages were freed after an Algerian military raid, and the rest were released in August 2003 — save for one woman, who died of sunstroke.

Prior to 2006, when the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat essentially became al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, kidnappings and attempted kidnappings occurred roughly once a year. But after 2006, the operational tempo of kidnappings in the Sahel quickened, with about three to five operations conducted per year. According to U.S. Treasury Department Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, al Qaeda earned approximately $120 million in ransoms from 2004 to 2012. Cohen added that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had become the most proficient kidnapping unit of all al Qaeda’s franchise groups.

Examples of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s proficiency abound. In September 2010, the group took seven hostages from a uranium mine in Arlit, Niger, and kidnapped four European tourists in Mali in January 2009. More recently, it kidnapped three aid workers in Tindouf, Algeria, in October 2011.

Typically the group prefers to kidnap more than one person. Having multiple hostages allows the captors to kill one or more of them to ratchet up pressure for the ransom of the others. Guarding multiple hostages requires more resources, but Belmokhtar has plenty of human resources, and the additional ransom makes guarding them worth the extra effort.

Holding multiple hostages also enables the kidnappers to make political statements — often connected to outrageous demands. In the Tigantourine attack, much attention was paid to the militants’ demands to the U.S. government to release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as "The Blind Sheikh," and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist convicted of terrorism charges. But again, such demands are not unprecedented. Edwin Dyer, one of the four European tourists kidnapped in January 2009, was beheaded in June 2009 after the British government refused al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s demand to release imprisoned jihadist cleric Abu Qatada. The group again demanded the release of Abu Qatada in April 2012 in exchange for British-South African citizen Stephen Malcolm, who was kidnapped in Timbuktu, Mali, in November 2011. Certainly the militants had no realistic expectation that the British would meet their demands; the demands and Dyer’s subsequent execution were meant as political statements, not realistic objectives.

Botched Missions

Tactically, how the Tigantourine attack transpired remains unclear. What we do know is that the amount of militants used in the attack is not unprecedented. While serving as a unit leader for the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in 2005, Belmokhtar led a group of 150 militants in a raid on a military outpost in Lemgheiti, Mauritania, that left 15 Mauritanian soldiers dead and another 17 wounded.

According to a Jan. 21 statement made by Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal on Jan. 21, it appears that Belmokhtar’s Tigantourine operation was a two-pronged attack. One team appears to have been tasked with intercepting a bus taking Western employees from the facility to the airport. Militants reportedly used vehicles marked as oil company security or as belonging to the Algerian government. Sellal noted that the objective of the operation was to take a group of the hostages out of the country, presumably transporting them to northern Mali’s Kidal region, where in recent years al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has held its foreign hostages.

Notably, the Tigantourine facility is located only about 32 kilometers from the Libyan border. The attackers probably took advantage of the chaos in Libya to gather weapons and prepare for the attack and then came across the border from Libya to conduct the attack. They could have covered very quickly the distance from the Libyan border to the facility, and this likely provided them an element of tactical surprise.

The second prong of the attack was directed against the facility itself. Heavily armed attackers surprised the security forces at the facility and subdued them by concentrating their forces and using overwhelming firepower. Algerian forces recovered from the assailants a recoilless rifle, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and several medium and light machine guns. We are currently unsure if this group was tasked with taking additional hostages at the facility and fleeing with them, staging a drawn-out hostage drama, as in Beslan, or sabotaging the facility and fleeing. Such an operation may have meant to divert attention from the group of militants that was transporting hostages out of the country. Having a group of hostages in custody outside Algeria could have helped them extract the second team from the facility.

In any case, the first unit apparently failed to achieve its objective, and it does not appear that the militants were able to take hostages from the bus and quickly transport them out of the country. (Currently, not all of the hostages are accounted for, but they are most likely among the unidentified dead. It will take time for forensics teams to identify them.) Moreover, on the second day helicopter gunships thwarted the escape efforts of some militants, who had used foreign hostages as human shields.

Some reports indicate that the attackers set explosive charges around the plant and attempted to destroy it Jan. 19, an action that apparently triggered the final assault to neutralize the militants at the facility. We have not seen photos of any demolition charges or any other indication that the attackers employed any sort of sophisticated improvised explosive devices in the operation. If the attackers went to the trouble to bring large quantities of explosives with them on the raid, they likely did so intending to use the explosives to damage the plant or to facilitate a drawn-out hostage drama — or both. The militants wouldn’t need large quantities of explosives to seize hostages, and they would not have spent the money to buy them or the effort to transport them unless they are critical to their mission.

But tactically, both missions — stopping a vehicle to kidnap foreigners and storming a facility — are within the demonstrated capabilities of Sahel-based jihadist militants. In addition to numerous vehicular ambushes al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has conducted to steal cargo or grab hostages, it has also raided hotels, homes and clinics to seize hostages. Perhaps the attack most similar to Tigantourine was the September 2010 raid on the Areva uranium mining facility near Arlit, Niger. The facility was more than 320 kilometers from the Malian border and more than 160 kilometers from the border with Algeria. The militants demonstrated their ability to operate hundreds of kilometers from their bases in northern Mali, successfully storm a facility and return to northern Mali with Western hostages. These militant groups have also staged large-scale raids on military bases across the Sahel.

Several indicators suggest the Tigantourine operation was intended to seize hostages, not kill hostages. According to a June 2007 classified cable released by Wikileaks, the U.S. Embassy in Algiers said that Belmokhtar had criticized al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s suicide operations that mean to kill civilians. Moreover, the attackers did not immediately begin to shoot foreigners as they did during the November 2008 Mumbai attack and the June 2004 attack against foreign energy workers in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. They failed to hold these hostages for any period of time, and by all accounts they failed to take Western hostages back to northern Mali. This amounts to a significant loss for Belmokhtar.

Avoiding Complacency at Energy Sites

Despite a long history of militant activity in Algeria, energy facilities had largely escaped unscathed — until last week. When al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb began to conduct large vehicle bombings in Algiers and roadside bombing attacks against buses carrying foreign energy workers in or near the capital, energy companies countered the threat by flying workers directly into airports near energy facilities like the one in In Amenas.

This lack of attacks led to some complacency on the part of Algerian officials and security forces at Tigantourine. But in the wake of the recent attack, security at such facilities will be increased, and any sense of complacency will disappear — at least for a while. And because militants prefer to hit softer targets, we are unlikely to see follow-on attacks at similar facilities in the region in the immediate future. It may also take Belmokhtar some time to replace the leaders and materiel unexpectedly lost in the attack.

However, with targets in the region becoming scarcer and harder to attack, these groups will likely continue to extend their range of operations for new kidnapping victims. Doing so would not only replace the resources they lost in the attack but would also circumvent the French and African military offensive in Mali, where their traditional smuggling activities will be disrupted.

Another lingering concern is the presence of large quantities of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles in the region. If Belmokhtar or other militants decide to attack Westerners working at energy facilities in the region instead of merely kidnapping them, and if increased security prevents them from other direct assaults, like Tigantourine, these militants could attack aircraft used to ferry Westerners to airports near these remote sites.

As Mali becomes a more difficult environment in which to operate, these groups likely will retreat, at least initially, to Mali’s Kidal region and possibly Niger’s Air region. Once those areas face the French-backed African intervention forces, a retreat farther back into southern Libya is likely, due to the vacuum of authority there and the close links they have with Libyan militants.

Contrary to what has been widely discussed, the Tigantourine attack fit well within the range and capability of Sahel-based jihadist militants like those of Belmokhtar’s group. Thus the attack was more of a reminder of the region’s chronic problems and less a startling new threat. Militancy and banditry were fixtures in the Sahel well before the jihadist ideology entered the region. This history — combined with the vacuum of authority in the region brought on by the Malian coup and the overthrow of Gadhafi, the prospect of millions of dollars in ransom and the large quantities of available weapons — means we will see more kidnappings and other attacks in the years to come.

Editor’s Note: A comprehensive assessment on al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb can be found here.

Read more: The Unspectacular, Unsophisticated Algerian Hostage Crisis | Stratfor

"The Unspectacular, Unsophisticated Algerian Hostage Crisis is republished with permission of Stratfor."

 

 

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 21, 2013

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-qaeda-in-the-islamic-maghreb-whos-whos-who-is-behind-the-terrorists/5319754

Who is behind the terrorist group which attacked the BP -Statoil-Sonatrach In Amenas Gas Field Complex located on the Libyan border in South Eastern Algeria? (see map below)

The operation was coordinated by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, leader of the Al Qaeda affiliated Islamist al-Mulathameen (Masked) Brigade, or “Those who Sign with Blood.”

Belmokhtar’s organization has been involved in the drug trade, smuggling as well kidnapping operations of foreigners in North Africa. While his whereabouts are known, French intelligence has dubbed Belmokhtar “the uncatchable”.

Belmokhtar took responsibility on behalf of Al Qaeda for the kidnapping of 41 Western hostages including 7 Americans at the BP In Amenas Gas Field Complex.

Belmokhtar, however, was not directly involved in the actual attack. The field commander of the operation was Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a veteran jihadist fighter from Niger, who joined Algeria’s Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in 2005. (Albawaba, January 17, 2013)

The In Amenas kidnapping operation was carried out five days after the conduct of air strikes by France directed against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) militants in northern Mali.

French special forces and Malian troops regained control of Diabaly and Konna, two small towns North of Mopti. The town of Diabaly had apparently been taken over a few days earlier by fighters led by one of the leading AQIM commanders Abdelhamid Abou Zeid.

While the terrorist attack and kidnapping directed against the In Amenas Gas plant was described as an act of revenge, it was not in any way improvised, Confirmed by analysts, the operation had in all likelihood been planned well in advance:

“European and U.S. officials say the raid was almost certainly too elaborate to have been planned in so short a time, although the French campaign could have been one trigger for fighters to launch an assault they had already prepared.”

According to recent reports (January 20, 2012) there are some 80 casualties, including hostages and jihadist fighters. There were several hundred workers at the gas plant, most of whom were Algerian. “Of those rescued, only 107 out of 792 workers were foreign”, according to the Algerian Ministry of Interior.

The British and French governments laid the blame on the jihadists. In the words of Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron:

“Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack. (Reuters, January 20, 2013).

News reports confirm, however, that a large number of the deaths of both the hostages and the Islamic fighters was the result of the bombing raids led by Algerian forces.

Negotiations with the captors, which could have saved lives, had not been seriously contemplated by either the Algerian or Western governments. The militants had demanded an end to France’s attacks in northern Mali in return for the safety of the hostages. Al Qaeda leader Belmokhtar had stated:

“We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali’s Muslims” (Reuters, January 20, 2013)

Within the ranks of the jihadists were mercenaries from a number of Muslim countries including Libya (yet to be confirmed) as well as fighters from Western countries.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Who’s Who?

There are a number of affiliated groups which are actively involved in northern Mali:

• Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) led by Abdelmalek Droukdel, “the emir of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”,
• Ansar Ed-Dine led by Iyad Ag Ghaly,
• the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA).

The Armed Islamic Group, or Groupe islamique armé (GIA) which was prominent in the 1990s is largely defunct. Its members have joined AQIM.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is a Tuareg secular nationalist and independence movement.

Historical Background

In September 2006, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) joined forces with Al Qaeda. The GSPC was founded by Hassan Hattab a former GIA commander.

In January 2007, the group officially changed its name to the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Also in early 2007, the newly formed AQIM established a close relationship with the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

The commanders of the GSPC had been inspired by the religious teaching of Salafism in Saudi Arabia, which historically played an important role in the training of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

The history of AQIM jihadist commanders is of significance in addressing the broader issue:

• Who is behind the various Al Qaeda affiliated factions?
• Who is supporting the terrorists?
• What political and economic interests are being served?

The Washington based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) traces the origins of AQIM back to the Soviet-Afghan war:

Most of AQIM’s major leaders are believed to have trained in Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 war against the Soviets as part of a group of North African volunteers known as “Afghan Arabs” that returned to the region and radicalized Islamist movements in the years that followed. The group is divided into “katibas” or brigades, which are clustered into different and often independent cells.

The group’s top leader, or emir, since 2004 has been Abdelmalek Droukdel, also known as Abou Mossab Abdelwadoud, a trained engineer and explosives expert who has fought in Afghanistan and has roots with the GIA in Algeria. It is under Droukdel’s leadership that AQIM declared France as its main target. One of the “most violent and radical” AQIM leaders is Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, according to counterterrorism experts. Abou Zied is linked to several kidnappings and executions of Europeans in the region. (Council on Foreign Relations, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, cfr.org, undated)

What the CFR report fails to mention is that the Islamic jihad in Afghanistan was a CIA initiative, initially launched in 1979 during the Carter administration. It was actively supported by president Ronald Reagan throughout the 1980s.

In 1979 the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in Afghanistan. Wahabi missionaries from Saudi Arabia set up the Coranic schools (madrassahs) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Islamic textbooks used in the madrassahs were printed and published in Nebraska. Covert funding was channeled to the Mujahideen with the support of the CIA:

“With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, who wanted to turn the Afghan Jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually, more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.” (Ahmed Rashid, “The Taliban: Exporting Extremism”, Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999).

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), using Pakistan’s military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:

In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166,…[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987… as well as a “ceaseless stream” of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.” (Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992)

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, mastermind behind the terrorist attack by the Islamist al-Mulathameen (Masked) Brigade on the In Amenas Gas complex is one of the founding members of AQIM.

He was trained and recruited by the CIA in Afghanistan. Belmokhtar was a North African volunteers, an “Afghan Arab” enlisted at age 19 as a Mujahideen to fight within the ranks of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, at a time when the CIA and its Pakistani affiliate –the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)– were actively supporting the jihadists in both recruitment and training. Mokhtar Belmokhtar fought in the Afghan “civil war”. He returned to Algeria in 1993 and joined the GSPC. Belmokhtar’s history and involvement in Afghanistan suggests that he was a US sponsored “intelligence asset”.

The Role of America’s Allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from the outset in 2007 had established a close relationship to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), whose leaders had also been trained and recruited in Afghanistan bu the CIA. The LIFG is supported covertly by the CIA and Britain’s MI6.

The LIFG was directly supported by NATO during the 2011 war on Libya, “providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya’s government.” (Tony Cartalucci, The Geopolitical Reordering of Africa: US Covert Support to Al Qaeda in Northern Mali, France “Comes to the Rescue”, Global Research, January 2013)

. British SAS Special Forces had been brought into Libya prior to onset of the insurrection, acting as mlitary advisers to the LIFG.

More recently, reports confirm that AQIM has received weapons from the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). LIFG mercenaries have integrated AQIM brigades. According to commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who coordinated the In Amenas kidnapping operation:

“We have been one of the main beneficiaries of the revolutions in the Arab world. As for our benefiting from the (Libyan) weapons, this is a natural thing in these kinds of circumstances.” http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/oci/ci_terrorist.cfm?dossier=174

The BP In Amenas plant is located directly on the Libyan border. One suspects that there was a contingent of Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) combatants involved in the operation.

AQIM also has ties to the Al Nusra Front in Syria which is supported covertly by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is indelibly tied into a Western intelligence agenda. It is described as ” one of the region’s wealthiest, best-armed militant groups”, financed covertly by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

France’s Canard enchaîné revealed (June 2012) that Qatar (a staunch ally of the United States) has been funding various terrorist entities in Mali including the Salafist Ansar Ed-Dine:

Both the Tuareg rebels of the MNLA (independence and laity), Ansar Ed Dine, AQIM (Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb) and Mujao (Jihad in West Africa) were assisted with dollars from Qatar, according to one report (The Examiner)

The satirical French paper Canard Enchaîné reported [June 2012] that Qatar has allegedly been funding armed groups in northern Mali made their way into Algerian and west African outlets.

Suspicions that Ansar Ed-Dine, the main pro-shari’ah armed group in the region, has been receiving funding from Qatar has circulated in Mali for several months.

Reports (as yet unconfirmed) that a ‘Qatari’ aircraft landed at Gao, full of weapons, money and drugs, for example, emerged near the beginning of the conflict.

The original report cites a French military intelligence report as indicating that Qatar has provided financial support to all three of the main armed groups in northern Mali: Iyad Ag Ghali’s Ansar Ed-Dine, al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA).

The amount of funding given to each of the groups is not mentioned but it mentions repeated reports from the French DGSE to the Defense Ministry have mentioned Qatar’s support for ‘terrorism’ in northern Mali. (emphasis added)

The role of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as an intelligence asset must be carefully assessed. The Islamic insurgency creates conditions which favor the political destabilization of Mali as a nation state. What geopolitical interests have been served?

Concluding Remarks: “The American Sudan”

In a bitter irony, the kidnapping operation in Southern Algeria and the tragedy resulting from the Algerian led military “rescue” operation provide a humanitarian justification for Western military intervention led by US AFRICOM. The latter not only pertains to Mali and Algeria. It could also include the broader region extending across the sub-Saharan Sahelian belt, from Mauritania to the Western border of Sudan.

This process of escalation is part of a US military and strategic “road-map”, a subsequent stage in the militarization of the African continent, “a followup” to the US-NATO 2011 war on Libya.

It is a project of neo-colonial conquest by the US over a vast area.

While France is the former colonial power, intervening on behalf of Washington, the end-game is to eventually exclude France from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. This displacement of France as a colonial power has been ongoing since the war of Indochina in the 1950s.

While the US is prepared in the short-run to share the spoils of war with France, Washington’s ultimate objective is to “redraw the map of the African continent”, and eventually, to transform francophone Africa into an American sphere of influence. The latter would extend across the continent from Mauritania on the Atlantic to the Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia.

A similar process of excluding France from francophone Africa has been ongoing since the 1990s in Rwanda, Burundi and the Republic of the Congo.

In turn, French as an official language in francophone Africa is being encroached upon. Today in Rwanda, English is an official language, alongside Kinyarwanda and French. Starting with the RPF government in 1994, secondary education was offered in either French or English. Since 2009 it is offered solely in English. The University since 1994, no longer operates in French. (The president of Rwanda Paul Kagame does not read or speak French).

What is at stake is a vast territory which during the colonial period included French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa (See map left as well as maps below)

Mali during the French period was referred to as Le Soudan français (the French Sudan).

Ironically, this process of weakening and eventually excluding France from francophone Africa has been carried out with the tacit endorsement of both (former) president Nicolas Sarkozy and president François Hollande, both of whom are serving US geopolitical interests to the detriment of the French Republic.

The militarization of the African continent is part of the mandate of US Africom.

The longer term goal is to exert geopolitical as well military control over a vast area, which historically has been within France’s sphere of influence. This area is an rich in oil, natural gas, gold, uranium and strategic minerals. (See R. Teichman, The War on Mali. What you Should Know: An Eldorado of Uranium, Gold, Petroleum, Strategic Minerals …, Global Research, January 15, 2013)

The colonial re-division of Africa decided at the 1884-85 at the Berlin Conference (right). For the maps of French colonial Africa, see below.

 

The Zero Dark Thirty File

Lifting The Government’s Shroud Over the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 410

Posted — January 17, 2013

Edited by Nate Jones and Lauren Harper with Documents from Jeffery Richelson and Barbara Elias

For more information contact:
Nate Jones, Freedom of Information Coordinator
202/994-7045 nsarchiv@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, January 17, 2013 — The poster for the blockbuster movie Zero Dark Thirty features black lines of redaction over the title, which unintentionally illustrate the most accurate take-away from the film – that most of the official record of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is still shrouded in secrecy, according to the National Security Archive‘s ZD30 briefing book, posted today at www.nsarchive.org. The U.S. government’s recalcitrance over releasing information directly to the public about the twenty-first century’s most important intelligence search and military raid, and its decision instead to grant the film’s producers exclusive and unprecedented access to classified information about the operation, means that for the time being — for bad or good — Hollywood has become the public’s "account of record" for Operation Neptune Spear.

As often happens when the government declines on secrecy grounds to provide an authoritative account of a controversial event, leaked, unauthorized and untrustworthy versions rush to fill the void. In this extraordinary case, a Hollywood film, with apparent White House, CIA, and Pentagon blessing and despite its historical accuracies, has now become the closest thing to the official story behind Operation Neptune Spear.

Zero Dark Thirty ‘s screenwriter, Mark Boal, has claimed that the film is "a movie not a documentary" and should not be treated as history. But the U.S. government’s widely reported support and its official silence about the raid have made Zero Dark Thirty (the military designation for 12:30 AM) more than a mere thriller. Today, in an effort to balance the record, to the extent currently possible, the National Security Archive has collected, posted, and analyzed in one Electronic Briefing Book all of the available official documents on the mission to kill the notorious al-Qaeda leader.

Check out today’s posting at the National Security Archive website – http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB410/

Find us on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive

Unredacted, the Archive blog – http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/