U.S. response to still murky terror threat scrutinized
Washington (CNN) -- First came the closing of U.S.
embassies and consulates throughout the Middle East and North Africa
this week, along with a worldwide travel alert warning of a possible al
Qaeda attack in the region.
In addition, Americans
were told to leave Yemen, the epicenter of al Qaeda militancy in the
Middle East, and the State Department pulled out non-emergency embassy
personnel on military aircraft that flew them to Germany.
U.S. forces in the region
were put on two-hour alert for mission readiness, and now there have
been seven suspected U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, where the local al
Qaeda leader is now believed to be the terror group's global
second-in-command.
The seriousness of the
U.S. response indicated that al Qaeda was not as decimated and
on-the-run as President Barack Obama's administration has claimed for
some time, including in last year's presidential campaign.
Critics, including a
miffed Yemeni government, quickly said the U.S. adoption of such a
defensive posture only bolstered the bad guys, giving al Qaeda a
propaganda victory.
However, security
analysts noted a strategic underpinning to the very public defensive
posture that generated headlines around the world.
Closing diplomatic
facilities that could be targeted can disrupt the planning of the
attackers, creating an opening to go after them, noted CNN National
Security Contributor Frances Fragos Townsend.
"Once you take targets
away, it buys you additional time to try and disrupt, to identify the
cell, the operators in country and the region, and work with your
partners in the region to try and ... get them in custody or disrupt the
plot," said Townsend, a former homeland security adviser in the Bush
administration. "So, some of this operationally is about buying time."
Stepped up drone strikes
The intensifying drone strikes against militants in Yemen may be one result.
Seven reported in the past two weeks have killed at least 31 people, according to a tally by Yemeni officials.
The latest occurred on
Thursday, including one in Mareb province in central Yemen that targeted
two vehicles and killed four people with links to al Qaeda, along with
two civilians, local security officials said.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, the terror group's Yemeni affiliate, shot down a Yemeni
military helicopter in the province on Tuesday, according to a
government official said. However, Yemeni officials note that no
high-value targets have been hit by the drone strikes so far.
The leader of AQAP,
Nasir al-Wuhayshi, was recently appointed by al Qaeda leader Ayman
al-Zawahiri as his top deputy, U.S. intelligence officials believe.
A recently intercepted
message from al-Zawahiri to al-Wuhayshi telling AQAP to "do something"
set off the embassy closings by the United States, Britain and some
other countries.
What intelligence
officials still don't know includes the specifics of any al Qaeda plot
and exactly how al-Zawahiri -- believed to be somewhere in the
mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan --
communicates with al-Wuhayshi and other top operatives.
Other intel info
CNN Pentagon
Correspondent Barbara Starr reported that other steps by the U.S.
intelligence community includes scouring National Security Agency
intercepts; studying imagery from drones as satellites, as well as
websites, chat rooms and webhosting services; looking at financial
transactions and other connections of known operatives, and talking to
known couriers and others on the ground.
Obama touched on the
latest threats during a speech on Wednesday to military forces at Camp
Pendleton in California, where he heralded the U.S. successes in taking
out Osama bin Laden and putting what he called "the core of al Qaeda" in
Afghanistan and Pakistan "on the way to defeat."
"Even as we decimated
the al Qaeda leadership that attacked us on 9/11, al Qaeda affiliates
and like-minded extremists still threaten our homeland," Obama said.
"They still threaten our diplomatic facilities. They still threaten our
businesses abroad. And we have got to take these threats seriously, and
do all we can to confront them. We have been reminded of this again in
recent days."
Some are questioning the
U.S. response, with veteran journalist Ted Koppel writing in the Wall
Street Journal on Tuesday that al Qaeda is getting exactly what it wants
in the embassy closings and other actions taken.
Terrorism, Koppel wrote,
"is the means by which the weak induce the powerful to inflict damage
upon themselves -- and al Qaeda and groups like it are surely counting
on that as the centerpiece of their strategy."
"It appears to be working," he continued, noting the closing of diplomatic facilities and drone strikes.
"We have created an
economy of fear, an industry of fear, a national psychology of fear,"
Koppel concluded. "Al Qaeda could never have achieved that on its own.
We have inflicted it on ourselves."
Taking threat seriously
Yemen's government also
criticized the United States, saying that closing diplomatic facilities
and withdrawing staff "serves the interests of the extremists and
undermines the exceptional cooperation between Yemen and the
international alliance against terrorism."
However, former U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told CNN on Wednesday that
the administration had little choice in mounting a potent defense
against the perceived threat.
"I respect Ted Koppel as
a journalist, but he never had the responsibility of having American
lives on his shoulders," Chertoff said. "And I think you have to
understand that when you're a president or a senior leader in the
government and you have that responsibility, there's a different lens
that you use."
The experiences of
dealing with terrorism in past decades, including the Boston Marathon
bombing in April, had brought authorities to "a place where people do
take the threat seriously, but are not getting hysterical," Chertoff
said.
To CNN Law Enforcement
Analyst Tom Fuentes, the U.S. response to the al Qaeda threat could
provide a propaganda boost by sending a message that the group "is so
powerful and so pervasive all over the world that they could do this to
us anywhere, any time."
"When you see TV images
of tanks in front of U.S. embassies, because al Qaeda said we might do
something to you, somewhere, some time, I know the concern of wanting to
protect the facility, but on the other hand, those images being
displayed worldwide do play into their hands," said Fuentes, a former
FBI assistant director.
Chertoff agreed that
closing U.S. embassies and consulates might have been a mistake, noting
that security could have been increased without the symbolic step of
shutting the doors.
"It's the same problem
we had back in the day of the color code," he said, referring to the
Bush administration system of security alerts. "It's easier to go up to
orange than it is to come down from orange. They may have boxed
themselves in a little bit with respect to the actual closures."
A new generation
At the same time,
Chertoff noted that militant groups such as al Qaeda now have a new
generation of battle-hardened fighters from wars in Iraq and Syria, as
well as enhanced bomb-making techniques.
Attackers may lack the
resources and scale to pull off another 9/11-style mission, but they are
better poised for smaller attacks on U.S. and Western targets in many
places.
Fuentes agreed, saying
the terrorists "have gradually over time shifted to realizing that the
American people will not tolerate even one or two people being killed,
much less 3,000."
Bruce Riedel of the
Brookings Institution said most of the focus of al Qaeda and al-Zawahari
was on post-Arab Spring crises such as Egypt's political limbo. He
noted that al-Zawahiri recently reminded Egyptian Islamists loyal to the
Muslim Brotherhood of ousted President Mohamed Morsy that al Qaeda
always said the path to power was through jihad and not the ballot box.
"The new generation of
al Qaeda—AQ 3.0, if you like—is more focused on the nearby enemy close
to home than the faraway enemy in America and Europe. For now at least,"
Riedel wrote in an opinion piece this week on The Daily Beast website.
"But easy targets like
the natural gas plant in Algeria attacked last winter by an al Qaeda
cell based in Libya and Mali allow local groups to kill dozens of
foreign 'crusaders.' And embassies are always favorite targets. After
all, that is how al Qaeda started 15 years ago this month when it blew
up our missions in Kenya and Tanzania."
Condemnation from Nobel laureate
In Yemen, many of AQAP's
operatives, including its leadership, have retreated into remote areas
to regroup after a military offensive against them last year.
Yemeni security forces
have over the past 18 months recaptured swathes of territory that were
briefly held by AQAP, particularly in the south.
AQAP has not mounted a
large-scale suicide attack on Yemen's security forces since May 2012,
when more than 100 soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber as they
trained for a parade in Sanaa, the capital. In July, a bomb killed
several soldiers there.
Now the U.S. drone
strikes have stoked anger, with the country's Nobel peace laureate,
Tawakkol Karman, condemning the latest attack.
"The killing conducted
by unmanned planes in Yemen is outside the law and worse than the
terrorist activities of individuals and groups," she said, adding that
the drone strikes were "degrading" to Yemenis and violate their human
rights.
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