The CIA allows itself a little victory lap (or two)
Five years after the raid that killed 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden, the CIA decided to throw itself a little party.
On its Twitter feed, that did not exist in 2011, the CIA live-tweeted the event minute by minute, five years late, providing all former West Wing addicts the thrill that accompanied fervid sessions in the virtual situation room.
For instance:
4:08 pm EDT – Assault Team destroys crashed helicopter #UBLRaid
And, later:
7:01 pm EDT – @POTUS receives confirmation of high probability of positive identification of Usama Bin Ladin #UBLRaid
It was an appropriate homage to a signal success of the Obama presidency and, no less, to the growth of social media as a tool that can both transmit news and get in the way of it.
The Bin Laden raid was first reported by an insomniac IT technician named Sohaid Athar, who, bothered by noise, late on the night of May 1, 2011, reached out to the Twitterverse and posted “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” Athar, not a journalist, now has over 54,200 followers.
Marking the anniversary, CIA director John Brennan wrote a fulsome letter of praise and recognition to his staff, ending with the optimistic but cautionary line: “as we continue the fight against Al-Qa‘ida, ISIL, and like-minded groups, the raid in Abbottabad reminds us that if we work together—with patience, courage, and purpose—nothing is beyond our reach.”
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On NBC, he continued in a similar vein about the possible elimination of Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
“He’s important, and we will destroy ISIL, I have no doubt in my mind,” Brennan told Chuck Todd. “And we have to remove the leadership that directs that organization to carry out these horrific attacks. Bin Laden had a very important symbolic as well as strategic significance for Al-Qa’ida, and it was important after 9/11 that we remove the person responsible for that.”
“If we got Baghdadi, I think it would have great impact on the organization and it will be felt by them. But this is a large, not just organization, it’s a phenomenon. We see it not just in Syria and Iraq, we see it in Libya, Nigeria, and other countries. So we’re going to have to remain very focused on destroying all the elements of that organization.”
National catharsis aside, experts on international Islamist terror express more a skeptical view of the potential benefits of the dramatic assassinations of well-known terror leaders.
Firas Abi-Ali, the Senior Principal Analyst for London’s IHS Country Risk, who focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, told The Media Line he’d “be surprised if they weren’t trying to kill Al-Bagdhadi.”
“But there’s some confusion here, because you get the sense some people think that since Bin Laden is gone Al-Qa’ida is over as an organization, which is very far from the truth. There’s some confusion over the value of an individual and an organization versus the role of the ideology.”
In fact, Abi-Ali says, five years later “Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian peninsula is stronger than ever. Al-Qa’ida in the Magreb is resurging and getting stronger. Their branch in Syria, Jabhat Al-Nusra, is one of the most influential factors– even where they are not popular they can defeat any opponent. They are very organized and very capable.”
In the interview on NBC, Brennan came close to acknowledging as much, when he described the current double threat posed by Al-Qa’ida, ISIS and the myriad organizations in between.
Saying that “we have destroyed a large part of Al-Qa’ida,” Brennan conceded that “it is not completely eliminated, so we have to stay focused on what it can do. But now, with this new phenomenon of ISIL, this is going to continue to challenge us in the counterterrorism community for years to come.”
ISIS, he explained, alluding to the ideology highlighted by Abi-Ali, “has put its roots down in territory. It has been able to attract a number of individuals from outside of that Syria and Iraq area, over tens of thousands of individuals who have traveled to join this so-called caliphate. So I think it has had a resonance, unfortunately. It does appeal to the hearts and minds and souls of individuals who have been misled by their narrative of it being a religious banner.”
Brennan’s mention of the possible elimination of Baghdadi provoked numerous contemplations about the ramifications his elimination by Western forces.
Anat Hochberg-Marom, an expert on international terror who spoke with The Media Line from Brussels, said “an event of this magnitude would have geopolitical implications on the international sphere in general and in the Middle East in particular, and, of course, in Iraq and Syria.”
But the implications she alluded to are not what the CIA director would want to hear. “In a nutshell, the impact of such an event on global terrorist organizations would be that ISIS and Al-Qa’ida would modify their organizational structure in a way that would strengthen them.”
“In the short term,” she foresees, “the process could lead to the dispersing of new and commanding power hubs for global Jihad throughout the Middle East and Africa.”
But she cautioned that “it isn’t the first time announcements are made about the possible capture or elimination of ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi, so I’d take a step back. I would not rush to conclusions about the real-world chances of such a raid.”
Abi-Ali, for his part, stressed that the focus of those seeking to eliminate extremism from the Middle East would do better to focus their efforts on countering an ideology that has swept over the region in the past half century.
“Look at pictures of any Arab university in the 1950s or 1960s, and you’ll see that the number of veiled women is minuscule and women’s presence is seen to be as something normal. Today, you will see the exact opposite: the vast and overwhelming number of women you’ll see are in veils or niqab, and even a woman in a veil is likely to get harassed. It is not a question of organizations but of an ideology that is very highly adaptive and very resilient in the face of facts, and it is an ideology has been growing stronger not weaker.”
“That is this the issue to be addressed,” he concludes.