Al-Qaeda's Continuing Threat To The Homeland: "Diversity Is Definitely The Word"

Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, had his day in court on 21 June 2010.  And, it was a remarkable performance.  Spurning both a trial and any kind of plea agreement, Shahzad brazenly pleaded guilty to all ten counts of terrorism stemming from his failed attempt to detonate an improvised explosive device concealed in an SUV that he had parked in the heart of New York City’s entertainment district on the evening of 1 May 2010.

Had the plot succeeded, according to a New York City Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence Division senior analyst, it would have been “our 7/7”——a reference to the 7 July 2005 London terrorist attack.  Indeed, Shahzad’s defiant mien and his unrepentant justification of his actions were eerily reminiscent of similar declarative statements made five years ago by two of the four bombers responsible for the London attacks.

This Is “War” And An Ineluctably Defensive Struggle

On 1 September 2005, al-Jazeera television station broadcast a martyrdom video produced and distributed by as-Sahab (Arabic: “The Clouds”), al-Qaeda’s media arm.  It featured the ringleader of the London attacks, a thirty-year-old resident of a Leeds, England suburb, named Mohammed Siddique Khan.  In the video, recorded in Pakistan in expectation of the forthcoming attack——Khan, as terrorists throughout history have, framed his choice of tactic and justification of his actions in pure defensive terms.  He described his struggle as an intrinsically defensive one and his act as a response to the repeated depredations and unmitigated aggression perpetrated by the West against Muslim peoples worldwide.  In strident language, Khan explained how,

Ten months later, on the first anniversary of the London bombings, another martyrdom tape was released by as-Sahab: this one recorded by Khan’s traveling companion and fellow bomber, Shahzad Tanweer.  Titled, "The Final Message of the Knights of the London Raid," it depicted Tanweer expressing similar views to those of Khan.  “To the non-Muslims of Britain,” he begins,

The video concludes with Tanweer warning “all you British citizens to stop your support to your lying British government, and to the so-called ‘war on terror,’ and ask yourselves why would thousands of men be willing to give their lives for the cause of Muslims.”[3]

Since his arrest, Shahzad has articulated many of the same arguments.  Indeed, one of the first things he asked the law enforcement officers who arrested him as he was attempting to flee the United States on a commercial flight bound for Dubai was “How would you feel if people attacked the United States?  You are attacking a sovereign Pakistan.”  In a New York City courtroom less than two months later, he amplified that comment, declaring himself a “holy warrior” (mujahid) and a “Muslim soldier,” much as Khan and Tanweer previously had.  He saw himself ineluctably as fighting what he termed as a “war” and described himself as “part of the answer to the US terrorizing Muslim nations and the Muslim people.”  Shahzad promised that if the U.S. did not cease invading Muslim lands and did not leave Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, there would be more attacks on the U.S. Americans, Shahzad explained, "don’t see the drones killing children in Afghanistan… [They] only care about their people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."  Accordingly, attacks on children and innocents in his view, were both justified and should be expected in the future.[4]

Not Just Empty Rhetoric

How seriously should we take Shahzad’s remarks and threats?  Were these the mad ravings of a homicidal lunatic and an incompetent wannabe terrorist or the statement of someone who both presented——and whose likely successors will present——a serious challenge to the security of the U.S. and the safety of its citizens and residents?  In other words, do we ignore Shahzad’s statements at our peril?  The answer, unfortunately, is yes, for at least three significant reasons.

First, Shahzad’s attack may have been rushed and botched, but that does not mean it was not deadly serious.  The grand jury investigation into the Times Square plot revealed that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Pakistani Taliban)——beyond any doubt a formidable terrorist force in Pakistan——provided Shahzad with explosives and other training in Waziristan, Pakistan during December 2009.[5] The training may have been cursory and too compressed in terms of time to provide Shahzad with the requisite skills needed to succeed in Times Square last May.  However, we can be confident that the terrorist movement responsible for deploying the next attacker to the U.S. will ensure that person receives the sufficient training to ensure the success of that future operation.  Indeed, as the aforementioned NYPD analyst notes, “A successful Faisal Shahzad is our worst case scenario.”

Second, a Times Square-style plot is by no means an expensive proposition for any terrorist group to contemplate. The grand jury indictment in the Times Square case further details how two payments totaling approximately $12,000 (roughly the same cost of the 7 July 2005 London attacks) were rather effortlessly transferred from overseas bank accounts to Shahzad via locations in Massachusetts and New York State on two separate occasions. Given the minimal cost of orchestrating such an operation, foreign terrorist groups will likely continue to regard U.S. homeland operations as both desirable and at least financially feasible options. They also understand that even failed plots, such as Shahzad’s bungled effort, still pay vast dividends in terms of publicity and attention. Indeed, such incidents virtually guarantee a disproportionate return on a very modest investment given the febrile media coverage that they generate; the heightened security measures that invariably follow in their wake; and, the widespread fear and concern and that remain.

Third, as Shahzad’s own words proclaim, his attempted attack should not be regarded as a “one-off” or an isolated incident perpetrated by a lone individual acting on his own, but as part of a continuing effort by al-Qaeda and its allies to target the U.S. Indeed, this is made clear in the superseding indictment filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on 7 July 2010 in connection with the terrorist plot uncovered the previous September to attack the New York City subway. That indictment unambiguously details a plot directed by “leaders of al-Qaeda’s external operations program dedicated to terrorist attacks in the United States and other Western countries” involving an “American-based al-Qaeda cell.” It further describes how the plot was organized by three longstanding senior al-Qaeda operatives ——Saleh al-Somali, Rashid Rauf, and Adnan El Shukrijumah.[6] All three are well known to al-Qaeda watchers.

Al-Somali, for instance, was among al-Qaeda’s earliest recruits from outside the inner circle of Saudis, Yemenis, and Egyptians who had either served or fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s and formed the movement’s original hardcore.  Al-Somali is believed to have joined al-Qaeda at least as far back as the early 1990s.  He is said to have participated in the attacks on U.S. and coalition peacekeeping military forces in Somalia during 1993 that culminated in October 1993 with the bloody events in Mogadishu made famous by the book and the film of the same name, “Black Hawk Down.”

Shukrijumah is similarly well known to authorities.  A 34-year-old native of Saudi Arabia, Shukrijumah lived in Brooklyn during the 1990s, where his father worked for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” an Egyptian-born cleric who was implicated both in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a follow-on plot to attack New York City bridges, and tunnels, and the United Nations building.  Shukrijumah later moved to Florida and in 2003 was placed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list as a result of his growing role in al-Qaeda attack planning.  The subject of a $5 million reward, Shukrijumah was described at the time by American law enforcement as an “imminent threat to U.S. citizens and interests.”[7] That assessment remains highly relevant, if not prescient, today

Finally, British-born Rashid Rauf has long been involved with al-Qaeda plots both in Pakistan and abroad.  He played a key role in the two assassination attempts made on then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 and was regarded as a protégé of then al-Qaeda number three commander Abu Faraj al-Libi.  Rauf was also pivotal to the planning and orchestration of the 2006 airline plot to blow up seven U.S. and Canadian passenger airliners en route from London to North America.  Like Al-Somalia, he is believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

According to the indictment, Al-Somali and Shukrijumah were directly responsible for recruiting Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan native and former New York City pushcart operator turned Denver, Colorado airport limousine driver, as well as two of his fellow conspirators, Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin.  While in Pakistan, Zazi, Ahmedzay, and Medunjanin received instruction from al-Qaeda trainers in the fabrication of improvised explosive devices from such commercially available materials as hydrogen peroxide (e.g., hair bleach), acetone, flour, and oil in order to carry out the suicide bomb attacks planned for the New York City subway in September 2009.  Zazi pleaded guilty to his role in the New York subway plot last February 2010; Ahmedzay similarly pleaded guilty in April 23, 2010.

The superseding indictment also added new charges to the pending indictment against Medunjanin.  He is charged with attempting to crash his car into another one on the Whitestone Expressway in Queens, New York as part of a desperate bid stage out a suicide attack on American soil after learning of Zazi’s arrest.  This chilling epilogue to the subway plot should leave no doubts about the perpetrator’s homicidal intentions.

Finally, the indictment also linked the New York plot to a similar attack that was planned for Manchester, England in April 2009.  A senior al-Qaeda operative referred to in the indictment only as “Ahmad” was the key organizational and communications link for both.  Further, when British authorities arrested Abid Naseer and Tariq Ur Rehman in Manchester, they discovered large quantities of flour and oil as well as surveillance photographs of public areas in Manchester and maps of Manchester’s city center posted on the wall, with one of the locations from the surveillance photographs highlighted in searches of the two mens’ homes.  Naseer is currently in custody in England and the U.S. intends to seek his extradition to face trial.  Rehman is not being held.

It is significant too that both Zazi and Shahzad had tribal and family ties in Pakistan that they used to make contact either with al-Qaeda and Pakistani jihadi groups which facilitated their recruitment.  British authorities have always regarded the high volume traffic between Britain and Pakistan, involving upwards of 400,000 persons annually, as providing prime opportunities for recruitment and radicalization of British citizens and residents.  These same concerns likely now exist among U.S. authorities as well.

A Deliberate Strategy of Diversification

In assessing the proliferation of terrorist threats to the American homeland, senior U.S. counterterrorism officials now repeatedly call attention to al-Qaeda’s strategy of “diversification”——mounting attacks involving a wide variety of perpetrators of varying nationalities and ethnic heritages to defeat any attempt to “profile” actual and would-be perpetrators and overwhelm already information-overloaded law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Indeed, this development has previously been identified by inSITE as a major new security challenge. “Diversity,” one senior analyst opined, “is definitely the word.” Similarly, in a 30 June 2010 interview at the Aspen Security Forum, Michael E Leiter, Director, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) also identified this trend. “[W]hat we have seen, which is I think most problematic to me and most difficult for the counterterrorism community,” he explained,

is a diversification of that threat.  We not only face Al-Qaeda senior leadership, we do face a troubling alignment of Al-Qaeda and some more traditional Pakistani militant groups in Pakistan, and is as well known to this group and most Americans, the threat of Abdulmutallab that has highlighted the threat we see from Al-Qaeda in Yemen, the ongoing threat we see from Al-Qaeda elements in East Africa.[8]

Yet, as previous inSITE analyses have also pointed out, there remains no federal government agency or department specifically charged with identifying radicalization and interdicting recruitment of U.S. citizens or residents for terrorism.  As one senior intelligence analyst recently lamented, “There’s no lead agency or person.  There are First Amendment [Constitutional] issues we’re cognizant of.  It’s not a crime to radicalize, only when it turns to violence.  There are groups of people looking at different aspects of counter-radicalization.  [But it] has to be integrated across agencies, across levels of government, public-private cooperation”——which, unfortunately, it is not.  America is thus vulnerable to a threat that is not only diversifying, but arguably intensifying.