Crusader Corner: The ISIS Paradox, Strength in Weakness

ISIS is a terrorist group attempting to become a state. It inherited al Qaeda’s strengths, including international networks, battle tested military doctrine and strategy, and a radical religious ideology, Jihadi Salafism. The ISIS ideology has a proven record in recruiting foreign fighters worldwide to support jihadist insurgencies and terror cells.

ISIS also has some competitive advantages over al Qaeda that make it currently more dangerous to American interests and security. These advantages include the powerful imagery of the Islamic Caliphate battling the forces of tyranny and corruption in the fires of the end-times and a mastery of online social media platforms to deliver its messages and establish its global brand. ISIS has also exceeded al Qaeda in its mastery of Islamic religious apologetics. Recruited Baathist military and intelligence specialists help plan brutally coercive governance strategies inherited from the master of rule-through-terror, Saddam Hussein. The organization’s character as an adaptive guerrilla group is allowing it to spread to dozens of new locations, vastly complicating America’s military and intelligence campaign against it.

All of these advantages, however, have inherent weaknesses to be exploited, if we have the will, patience, and a coherent strategy to attack them. For example, the ISIS group’s greatest achievement, seizing and holding territory, is also a strategic flaw, because it must defend its base with forces that cannot match the military power of the United States and its coalition. Losing territory at the center has the potential to weaken its appeal, if the United States finally mounts an effective counter-narrative and prevents  “provinces” from seizing and governing new territories.

ISIS Military Doctrine: the Guerrilla Strategic Wrapper

Much has been made of the ISIS group’s graduation from a terrorist group in Iraq to a proto-state between Iraq and Syria with a conventional military force and an actual government. However, most of its successful military engagements involve small unit guerrilla tactics, suicide bombings, and ferocious propaganda. Moreover, its government has proven to be hollow with sadistic executions a key to its survival.

Like al Qaeda, ISIS follows a three-stage Maoist guerrilla warfare strategy adapted to the Islamic context:

• First ISIS engages in terrorism and light guerrilla attacks to destabilize an area and induce government forces to retreat.
• Next, they seize the area and set up primitive governance offering security, food, and basic services.
• And Finally as they seize more areas, they loosely consolidate “liberated” areas into a larger region that takes on the aspect of a more permanent proto-state with more conventional military forces and government.

This process is iterative, as they demonstrated in Syria and Iraq, where they can be in stage one in one location and stage two or three in others. For example, if they are driven out of a city such as Ramadi or Tikrit, they may revert there to stage one (terrorism), while preparing to retake the city and escalate to stage two. In addition, when they sustain smaller losses in areas they hold, they increase terrorist activity in a newsworthy area such as Baghdad. In fact, an increase in random terrorist attacks may often be a sign that ISIS is suffering setbacks, not as a demonstration of its strength. This is the paradox of guerrilla strategy in which weakness manifests as strength and strength often is disguised weakness.

As ISIS faces an uncertain future: regular setbacks in Syria/Iraq motivate them to expand into other areas, and their slogan, “surviving and expanding,” entails increased needs for fighters, and money to support them and their expanded holdings. Ultimately, the ISIS strategy is about influencing international news media to see them as winners, while terrorizing local population to accept what they cannot love. Both of these tactics are showing early signs of failure.

Are ISIS Wilayat as Dangerous as al-Qaeda Affiliates?

ISIS is currently fraying in Iraq and Syria as a result of the coalition effort against it and its own brutal governance. Supply lines between Turkey and Syria are problematic at best, as are lines of communication between Raqqa and both Aleppo and Mosul. Furthermore, this fractured proto-state has been forced to reduce its fighters’ pay by half and is struggling to maintain control of its captive populace. Unfortunately, this weakness at the center inevitably means that there will be signs of strength elsewhere, as long as its foundational narrative and ideology remain intact. And should the proto-state fail without a strong government to take its place, ISIS will revert to its jihadist guerrilla roots.

The ISIS group’s dramatic move of fighters to reinforce its outpost in oil-rich, chaotic Libya has the potential to become extremely dangerous. Similarly, ISIS moves to Afghanistan and Pakistan are already showing troubling progress. Pakistani police are struggling with an ISIS group in nearly ungovernable Karachi and investigating ISIS inroads among Pakistani university professors working to radicalize students. Jordan’s security forces recently thwarted an ISIS attack inside Jordan. The examples continue to multiply.

We can also be confident that ISIS is desperately planning dramatic suicidal attacks in Europe and the United States. For the moment, ISIS outposts are more dangerous than al Qaeda’s affiliates. However, al Qaeda is showing signs of a comeback in a number of areas, including Yemen, and should be expected to compete with ISIS for the title of most dangerous. The bottom line is that we are slowly making significant gains in the battle against ISIS, but we still lack a comprehensive strategy, including a strategic narrative, to stop its metastasis.

Read the Original Article at The Cipher Brief

Espionage Files: Time for a New CIA?

By John Sipher of the Cipher Brief

Across the Central Intelligence Agency lobby from the iconic stars memorializing officers killed in the line of duty is a less well-known memorial.  It is an understated relief in honor of those foreign spies who risked and lost their lives to provide secret information to the United States.  It is a reminder that the CIA remains at its core, the nation’s espionage arm.  Apparently, however, CIA Director John Brennan doesn’t see it that way.

In what was otherwise a thoughtful interview with National Public Radio last week, CIA Director John Brennan expressed his personal view that the CIA should be not be viewed as a spy agency.  In the 24 February interview he said, “I don’t support government spying…. We don’t steal secrets…  We uncover, we discover, we reveal, we obtain, we elicit, we solicit.  All of that.”  What?  We don’t steal secrets?  Is he joking?  Brennan has reportedly also made clear to the officers under his charge that he eschews the term espionage, and does not view the CIA as an espionage service.

Fortuitously, former CIA Director Michael Hayden’s new book, “Playing to the Edge” was released on the same day that Brennan made his comments, and he seems more comfortable advocating for CIA’s espionage role.  The title of Hayden’s book is sports metaphor meant to highlight how he viewed his responsibility as the Director of the NSA and CIA.  That is, in an effort to secure the safety of the American people, U.S. officials should use all of their authorities under the law.  They should use the entire playing field, even right up to the boundary.  In the book, Hayden refers to a speech in which he comments that “the American people expect CIA to use ever inch we are given to protect her fellow citizens,” adding his view that espionage is essential to a democracy.  Sadly, Brennan’s remarks on the same day suggest that he does not see his authority in the same way.

While his comments might not resonate outside of the Intelligence Community, make no mistake, it is a long term danger to our security when the head of the nation’s espionage organization says that he doesn’t support spying.  It sends a chill through those who work in the shadows to keep us safe and makes them wonder if their boss has their back.  It also confirms the fears of many CIA employees and alumni that Brennan’s recent efforts to restructure and change CIA culture were a furtive means of weakening the clandestine service.

CIA houses several very different cultures under one roof.  The three main tribes are the analysts, the spies and the techies.  For outsiders, the analysts are in-house academics and experts who brief and write papers for the President and policymakers.  The spies are those officers of the Clandestine Service (now called the Directorate of Operations, or DO) who live overseas and manage human spy networks.  They tend to be the cocky jet pilots of the CIA.  The techies spend the money and manage huge, sophisticated, cutting edge programs.  They are engineers, scientists and visionaries.  Housing these three tribes under one roof has always been both CIA’s strength and weakness.  The training, mission and career progression of the three tribes are very different and don’t always mesh.  When they work together it is magical.

However, in order to maintain that magic, one tribe cannot seek to dominate the others.

Since his arrival in 2012, there has been a fear in the clandestine side of the house that Brennan, a career analyst, was intent on taking the clandestine service down a peg.  There is a view that he has never been comfortable with the DO culture and was looking to neuter them.  Some view the highly publicized restructuring (“modernization”) as means to accomplish this culture change.  The Washington Post even reported that the previous Chief of the Clandestine Service abruptly retired in opposition to the restructuring plan that he believed was a calculated effort to weaken the spy side of the house at the expense of the Intelligence Directorate (the analysts).  Despite the whispers, I didn’t believe that the CIA Director could be so petty.  Now I wonder if I was wrong.

Let me be clear.  Despite what Mr. Brennan says, what my colleagues and I did in the CIA was espionage – stealing secrets.  We didn’t “discover,” we stole.  Our sources were not taxi drivers, social media feeds, or newspapers.  They were people with access to secrets who were well aware that they were risking their lives, and possibly those of their families, to steal information for the U.S.

The CIA steals secrets and will always need to do so.  We don’t do it for fun or because we can.  The clandestine arm of the CIA is the collector of last resort.  The USG should use all means—open, technical, and diplomatic—to gather the information it needs to inform policy.  Collecting information openly is certainly preferable to stealing it.  However, if a critical piece of information is determined in our national interest and nobody else can get it, we have to steal it.  The officers of the clandestine service take their responsibilities seriously and often put themselves in harm’s way to get the job done.  We are not always successful, and sometimes create political scandals, but we succeed more often that the public knows.

Also, for those of us in the business, it is hard to fathom why a CIA Director would even bother to claim that he doesn’t steal secrets.  Our adversaries are not likely to take him at his word.  Further, we don’t really get to define what counts as espionage and what doesn’t.  Other countries decide what constitutes treachery and secrecy in their countries.  As far as I know, every country in the world views espionage as a crime and punishes those who engage in it with prison or death.  I certainly took my responsibility seriously and worked diligently to protect those in my care – always well aware of what would happen to them if caught.  No government in the world would see what we did as “discovering or eliciting” information consistent with their laws.  We scrupulously followed U.S. law, while consistently breaking foreign laws.

Surely, the CIA is much more than just an espionage Agency.  It is a central clearing house for open source information, human intelligence, diplomatic reporting, military reporting, academic expertise, signals intelligence, electronic intelligence, covert action, relations with foreign security services, and a world class analytical shop.  CIA’s magic is that it can do so much under one roof.  It needs to put all data and information in context for policymakers.  That said, its life blood is secret information – information that no other organization can provide.

While Mr. Brennan can claim that the CIA doesn’t engage in espionage, that would come as a surprise to those sources sitting in foreign prisons for allegedly cooperating with the CIA.  Dr. Shakil Afridi is still sitting in a Pakistani jail for reportedly helping the CIA find Osama Bin Ladin.  According to press accounts, he is the Pakistani physician who ran a fake hepatitis vaccine program in Abbottabad to collect DNA and confirm Bin Ladin’s presence.  Over the years, many brave foreigners provided information to the U.S. and paid the ultimate price.  Dozens of Russian spies were killed due to the treachery of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.  Pyotr Popov was reportedly thrown into a fire pit in front of his GRU colleagues in an effort by the KGB to show its officers the price of treachery (see the book “Mole” by William Hood).  And sadly, many more.  Those brave souls would be surprised to hear that CIA doesn’t engage in espionage.

Shortly after its stand-up in 2004, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence tried to create lead agencies for all of the various functions of the Intelligence Community – NSA for signals intelligence, FBI for domestic intelligence, DIA for military support, NRO for space based collection, NGA for imagery, and CIA for human intelligence – spying.  If Brennan is not comfortable with the spying side of the house and is intent on re-crafting the CIA into an analytical agency, the time has come to look to our history and re-create a separate espionage service along the lines of the WWII era OSS.  Spying, stealing, suborning, and pilfering is often dirty work, but someone has to do it if CIA won’t.

Read the Original Article at the Cipher Brief

Cartel Corner #51: El Chapo’s Arrest Won’t Impact War on Drugs

There was a sigh of relief when the Mexican government successfully re-captured drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman last week.  El Chapo, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, is arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world, exporting volumns of illegal narcotics globally and spreading violence in its wake.  However,  DEA Agent Mike Vigil told The Cipher Brief that El Chapo’s capture will not have a significant impact on the drug trade, or what he believes will be a permanent campaign against illicit drugs, until the United States can reduce its demand for drugs. 

The Cipher Brief: How was El Chapo captured? How did the U.S. and Mexico work together to capture El Chapo?

Michael Vigil: The United States and Mexico have a good working relationship and continue to share an abundance of information derived from both technical and human sources on transnational organized crime networks operating in Mexico.  This includes the powerful Sinaloa Cartel headed by Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka Chapo, the most ruthless and cunning drug lord in the world.  With very little formal education, he has built a criminal empire that operates in 6,000 U.S. cities and over 40 countries.  It supplies about 60 percent of the drugs consumed in our country.

The daring escape of Guzman six months ago resulted in the largest manhunt in the history of Mexico.  The Mexican government, greatly embarrassed, committed thousands of security forces and hundreds of intelligence analysts in order to capture him.  Mexican security forces began conducting numerous telephone wire intercepts on individuals associated with Guzman.  This included several of his attorneys who were in constant contact with Guzman.  The intercepted calls led to a Mexican actress, Kate del Castillo.  She is an attractive actress who played a seductive cartel leader in a television series called La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South).  Guzman became enamored with her and began to communicate directly with her through blackberry telephones.

The Mexican marines also effectively began to constrict the terrain that Guzman used in maneuvering and concealing himself.  This forced Guzman to flee the rugged mountainous areas in the state of Sinaloa and flee to the city of Los Mochis, where he was captured after an intense gun battle, in which five traffickers and one marine were killed.  The DEA and other U.S. agencies worked closely with the Mexican government in providing information on Guzman since his escape, but all the credit goes to Mexico’s security forces, especially the marines who have become the spear point of Mexico’s counter-drug efforts.

TCB: What impact will El Chapo’s capture have on Mexican drug production and distribution? What does this tell us about combatting the War on Drugs?

MV: The capture of Guzman provides a great moral victory, but it will not have a significant impact on drug production and distribution. The Sinaloa Cartel is the most powerful drug trafficking network in the world, and its overall leadership is extremely strong.  Ismael “Mayo” Zambada, the underboss of the cartel, was in charge when Guzman was incarcerated.  He is one of the last remaining “old guard” capos in Mexico and is highly respected by the drug trafficking community.  Although he is wanted in the U.S. and Mexico, Zambada has been able to elude capture by maintaining a low profile and paying large sums of money for protection.  He has expanded the cartel’s operations and ensured its survival in the violent conflict with other drug trafficking organizations such as the Zeta’s, Tijuana cartel, Juarez cartel, and the Knights Templar.

In order to dismantle the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico now has to attack its infrastructure in a strategic manner.  Its security forces have to identify and seize cartel assets, such as properties and bank accounts.  Furthermore, it has to arrest and bring to justice those officials who provide protection to the organization.  With the recapture of Guzman, the work of Mexico is actually only beginning, and it will need strong will and full support of its judiciary for a top to bottom destruction of the Sinaloa cartel.

I do not describe counterdrug efforts as a “war,” because all wars have an end and therefore, to me, it is better described as a permanent campaign against illicit drugs.  It is a campaign that will continue until we reduce the insatiable demand in the U.S., which drives drug trafficking and its related crime and violence.  This requires a strong commitment by each and every community—families, schools, and religious institutions—to educate our young at a very early age of the dangers regarding drug abuse.  It is not an issue that should only involve law enforcement but every citizen of our country.

TCB: After having escaped prison twice, there are fears that El Chapo will do it again.  Can you explain the extradition process and the debate surrounding it? How could extradition prevent El Chapo’s escape, and what are the consequences of not extraditing him?

MV: Extradition requests to Mexico must be made through diplomatic channels and needs to contain a description of the offense, which is the basis for the solicitation.  It must be accompanied by a statement of the facts of the case; the text of the legal provisions describing the essential elements of the offense; the facts and personal information of the person sought; a copy of the arrest warrant issued by a judge or other judicial officer; evidence which would justify the apprehension and commitment for trial of the person sought; when the request relates to a convicted person, a certified copy of the judgment of conviction must be submitted.

In the case of urgency, a provisional arrest may be requested, which will initiate the necessary steps to arrest of the individual.  However, the provisional arrest will be terminated within a period of 60 days after the arrest of the individual if the formal extradition package has not been received.  A judge will review the merits of the request and then make a determination.  If the recommendation is to extradite, it will be sent to the Ministry of Foreign Relations that will make the final decision.

The extradition treaty between Mexico and the U.S. was signed in 1978 and ratified in 1980.  Unfortunately, the history of extradition between both countries has not been characterized by emphatic cooperation on either side.  It has been overshadowed by reluctance and mistrust.   Although it seems to be getting better, it is still sporadic, but Mexico has in the recent past sent several Mexican drug lords to the U.S.

The debate surrounding extradition focuses on many issues, such as the potential mistreatment of nationals extradited to the U.S. or the fact that they will not receive a fair trial.  Mexico doesn’t believe in the death penalty and will not extradite anyone unless it  receives assurances that capital punishment will not be imposed. Another significant factor is that of national dignity, in which Mexico will appear to be weak and not be able to deal with its own criminals.

Extradition proceedings in Mexico can last anywhere from six months to six years.  Guzman has the best legal representation money can buy and can stall the process for years unless the Mexican government acts decisively.

All drug lords fear extradition, and Guzman is no exception.  If he remains in Mexico, he will continue to have access to his criminal organization.  He will also be able to bribe and intimidate authorities and possibly engineer a third escape.  If extradited, Guzman would no longer have this support system, and bribery and intimidation will be extremely difficult.  He knows that once convicted, he will never be a free man again.

TCB: The Rolling Stone interview has been really controversial throughout this entire ordeal.  How could law enforcement have used the article to help locate El Chapo?

MV: The article in the Rolling Stone didn’t play a role in the capture of Guzman.  It was telephone wire intercepts and other investigative tactics that resulted in his arrest.  Unfortunately, the interview was actually quite superficial and did not reveal anything new.  The value comes from self-incriminating statements made by Guzman, which can be used in criminal proceedings in the U.S.

Read the Original Article at The Cipher Brief