Palestinian strategy (stratfor)

[alexbmn]

http://www.stratfor.com/fib/topStory_view.php?ID=204972

[Vic]

An excellent analysis. Since Startfor tends to make freely accessible articles vanish quickly, I'm reposting it here for public benefit:
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The Palestinian Strategy
24 June 2002

Summary

It is difficult to see the strategy behind Palestinian tactics. Suicide bombing has clearly become a mainstream Palestinian tactic, one that makes the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip unlikely to the point of impossibility. It not only locks Israel into a war-fighting mode but also eases diplomatic pressure on Israel to make a settlement. The Palestinians know this. So why have the Palestinians adopted this tactic?

The answer lies in what must be a fundamental strategic shift on the part of the Palestinians. They no longer see the creation of a rump Palestinian state as a feasible or desirable end. Rather, despite the hardship of an extremely extended struggle, they have moved toward a strategy whose only goal must be the destruction of Israel. Since that is hardly likely to happen any time soon, the Palestinians must see forces at work in the Islamic world that make this goal conceivable and not just a fantasy.

Analysis

Embedded in the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli war is the fundamental question: What is the ultimate Palestinian strategy? We see the tactics unfolding daily, but it is neither clear what the Palestinians expect to achieve nor what strategy links these tactics to their ultimate goal.

The suicide bombing campaign, involving both Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs, a unit of Fatah, is a well-defined and well-coordinated, mainstream Palestinian movement, not an errant action by splinter groups. Certainly, the Palestinians do not expect to be able to defeat Israel militarily by conducting suicide attacks. Nor do they expect to succeed at driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. To the contrary, the Palestinians are quite sophisticated managers of Western public opinion, and they understand that the suicide attacks decrease the probability of such an outcome, regardless of Israeli response.

The lack of strategic clarity stems from the murkiness of their ultimately incompatible goals. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's public goal, and the foundation of all third-party peace efforts, is to create an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza. There are, however, two other possible goals: to reclaim all of the lost territories and create a Palestinian state throughout the former Palestine, not incidentally destroying Israel, or to reconcile the two goals and create a hybrid of a smaller Palestinian state as a springboard for broader operations aimed at ultimately defeating and occupying Israel.

The Palestinians' current tactics are only slightly compatible with a strategy aimed at creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. For this to be their goal, the Palestinians would have to believe that the bombing campaign will drive a wedge between the Israeli government and the Israeli public who will demand an end to the war and willingly give the Palestinians an independent state in return, overriding any security considerations of the Israeli government. The Palestinians observed a similar process take place over the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Possibly they believe they can achieve the same end on a much grander scale through this campaign.

Were this the goal, it would suffer from two serious defects. Historically, bombing campaigns designed to drive a wedge between the public and the regime have failed. When delivered from the air -- as in the Battle of Britain or the bombings of Germany, Japan or Vietnam -- they did not succeed, even at much greater numbers of casualties than are likely to be experienced in Israel.

The Palestinians must be aware that bombing campaigns against the homeland tend to fail. They also know Israeli sentiment very well and are too sophisticated to believe this campaign will result in a groundswell in Israel demanding negotiations. Quite the contrary, it is likely to freeze Israeli public opinion in an intransigent mode.

But even if the suicide bombings forced Israel to capitulate on creating a Palestinian state, a Palestine consisting of the West Bank and Gaza would be an untenable solution, and the leadership knows it. First, a consensus would never be reached, and someone would object sufficiently to organize new attacks and undermine any agreement.

Second, a small Palestine would be economically and militarily untenable: It would never be free of Israel's orbit. Therefore, Palestinian nationalism could accept a small Palestine only as an interim measure on the way to a greater Palestine. Most important, the Palestinians know that the Israelis are completely aware of this and therefore are not going to reach a settlement with Palestine on something that cannot be guaranteed: the complete cessation of warfare and an absolute commitment to accept the permanence of Israel. Which still leaves the question of why they are waging this type of campaign.

One explanation is that the Palestinians no longer believe a solution to their problem is attainable on a local basis. This means they do not believe they can reach their goals through negotiations with Israel sponsored by third parties, such as the United States. Rather, they believe now that their goals can be reached only in the broader context of a transformation of the Islamic world and a redefinition of the relationship of the Islamic world not only to Israel but also to the West in general.

From the Palestinians' standpoint, their fundamental problem is hostility or indifference on the part of Islamic states and Arab states in particular. Jordan has been actively hostile to Palestinian interests after Arafat almost overthrew the Hashemite monarchy in 1970. Egypt's peace treaty with Israel has kept it from redefining its relationship to Israel while paying only rhetorical attention to the Palestinian issue. The Syrians have supported factions of the Palestinian movement, still dreaming of annexing Palestine into a greater Syria. Other, more distant states have been more bellicose but no less ineffective. The Palestinians' fundamental problem of being isolated from Arab resources and power enables Israel to act against them without real concern for its other frontiers. Therefore, the Palestinians cannot hope to win.

----------------------------------------
cont'd

[Vic]

Stratfor Analysis: The Palestinian Strategy: Summary

cont'd
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The needed transformation of the Islamic world will take a long time to achieve. On the other hand, from the Palestinian point of view, time is on their side. Given that all quickly attainable solutions leave them in an unacceptable condition, they have nothing to lose by playing for the long-term solution. Given Palestinian psychology, a long-term strategy of enormous proportions is politically more viable than short-term strategies that cannot deliver genuine solutions. They can either capitulate or continue to struggle, but a small Palestinian state would not satisfy their needs. Nor could it preclude the continuation of war by Palestinian rejectionists and therefore would not be accepted by Israel. The Palestinians' only hope is a redefinition of the general geopolitics of the region.

It is in this sense that the ongoing suicide campaign must be understood. Having accepted that no political settlement in the smaller context of Israel and Palestine is possible, the Palestinians have accepted a long-term strategy of unremitting warfare using whatever means is available -- for now, suicide bombers -- as the only alternative. The price is high, but given the stakes, their view is that it is worth it. It follows that the Palestinians will accept reoccupation by Israel and use that reoccupation not merely to drain Israeli resources but also to create an atmosphere of war designed to energize the Islamic world for a broad redefinition of relationships.

The suicide bombing campaign cannot be intended to achieve any significant short-term goal. First, it is not likely to generate a peace movement in Israel --quite the contrary. Second, it locks the United States into alignment with Israel, rather than driving a wedge between the two. Finally, it creates an extreme psychology within the Palestinian community that makes political flexibility all the more difficult. The fervor that creates suicide bombers also creates a class of martyrs whose sacrifices are difficult to negotiate away. The breadth and intensity of the suicide bombings force us to conclude that the Palestinian leadership is focusing on a long-term strategy of holding the Palestinians together in a sense of profound embattlement, transforming the dynamics of the Arab world and then striking at Israel from a position of strength. In short, the Palestinians think that time is on their side and that sacrifices for a generation or two will yield dividends later. If they wait, they will win.

Here Palestinian strategy, intentionally or unintentionally, intersects with that of al Qaeda, which also is committed to a radical transformation of the Islamic world. Its confrontation with the United States is designed to set the stage for this transformation, enabling the Islamic world to engage and defeat the enemies of Islam.

For al Qaeda one of the pillars of this confrontation is the Palestinian question, which it defines as the recovery of Islamic land usurped by Israel, a tool of the United States and Great Britain. For al Qaeda, the Palestinian question represents the systematic repression and brutalization of the Islamic world at the hands of both Christianity and the secular West. Israel is merely the most extreme and visible dimension of Western injustice. Palestine is, at the same time, a primary means of energizing the Islamic world. The ongoing injustice of the Palestinian situation combined with the martyrdom of the bombers creates, in al Qaeda's view, both a sense of embattlement and religious fervor with profound political consequences. Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs are powerful recruiting tools for al Qaeda.

If the Palestinians have adopted the long-term strategy we described, then al Qaeda is the means of achieving their geopolitical end. If the precondition for the defeat of Israel is a transformation of the internal politics of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the rest of the Arab world, then al Qaeda is currently the only force fighting toward this end. In the same way that Arafat's generation aligned itself with Egypt's Gamel Abdel Nasser, Arab socialism and the Soviet Union in an attempt to find a geopolitical lever to destroy Israel, so today's generation has to look for geopolitical salvation among Islam's religious fundamentalists. Al Qaeda is the only group operating effectively at the moment and therefore, by default if not by intention, al Qaeda is serving the Palestinians' interest and vice versa.

For al Qaeda, a Palestinian settlement would be politically and morally unacceptable: Morally, it would represent a betrayal of Islam; politically, it would defuse a critical, energizing issue. Any agreement that would accept the permanent loss of territory to Israel would increase the power of accommodationists in the Islamic world. Al Qaeda needs an ongoing confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis to serve its ends; the Palestinians need tremendous pressure brought on the Arab world to serve their interests. The Palestinians also need a transformation in the Arab world. Here the two interests coincide. Israel, then, becomes a foundation of al Qaeda's political strategy in the Islamic world, as well as a test bed for tactics and military strategies.

Palestinian strategy makes no sense except in the context of alignment with al Qaeda. We need to be very careful here. We are not saying that there is deep cooperation going on between the Palestinians and al Qaeda although we would be very surprised if representatives of the two entities have not met and coordinated at times. Rather, what we are saying is that the goals of the Palestinians and those of al Qaeda have converged. Whether this was by design or by the logic of their situation is not really relevant. What is relevant is the convergence not only of tactics but also of a strategic and geopolitical perspective. Unless the Palestinians undergo a profound change of goals, they need al Qaeda to be successful to aid their own success. Al Qaeda is helped enormously by Palestinian behavior. If not a word had ever been exchanged --which we doubt -- the interests would still have converged. And the alliance that grows naturally is the most powerful one.

This means that no real peace process is any longer possible and that Israel can expect to be under constant pressure from the Palestinians. Then the question is, can Israel define a strategy for containing the Palestinians without simultaneously inflaming the Islamic world? More important, can the U.S.-Israeli relationship survive when what Israel must do to suppress the Palestinians flies in the face of American coalition-building in the Islamic world? Of course the Palestinians may hope to provoke a response from Israel that the United States cannot tolerate. However, this is not 1973. Israeli dependence on the United States is much less today than it was then, and therefore U.S. influence on Israel is much lower. Second, the United States is not likely to break with Israel when the trigger is suicide bombing -- not what the Palestinians want to hear, but it is exactly what al Qaeda would want.

This is precisely the crisis both the Palestinians and al Qaeda want to create. Al Qaeda hopes to use U.S. commitment to Israel as a tool for political mobilization in the Islamic world, since the United States cannot accept the destruction of Israel and nothing less can satisfy the needs of the Palestinians. The forecast, therefore, is for pain.

[Vic]

A similar report:

QAEDAT AL-JIHAD: NEW NAME ON THE ROAD TO PALESTINE
By Reuven Paz

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/watch/Policywatch/policywatch2002/623.htm

[cerulean]

That report gets into the web sites used by Al-Qaeda.

Here is another one I read about today (veracity of this report unknown): http://www.drasat.com

[Vic]

Fits in, doesn't it?

Palestinian may be link to al-Qaeda network in U.S.
By Reuters
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=181328&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

[cerulean]

The Drasat site is gone now. When visiting the http://www.drasat.com/ site just now, I was redirected to
http://nitro.liquidweb.com/suspended.page/
The message there was:

Suspended Account
This account has been suspended for either a violation in
Liquid Web Inc.'s terms of service or an issue with payment.
Liquid Web Inc.

(Previously there was a great deal of Arabic writing and a few pictures at the site.)

There's some nonsensical info when I do a WHOIS:
http://opensrs.org/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?domain=DRASAT.com

This appears to be a typical pattern for al-Qaeda sites. They appear for a few days, are discovered, and are then taken down.

[cerulean]

This is an article about a separate Florida man, a professor, who is linked to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
http://www.naplesnews.com/02/06/florida/d785027a.htm

[Vic]

Originally posted by cerulean
This appears to be a typical pattern for al-Qaeda sites. They appear for a few days, are discovered, and are then taken down. Wonder what's the point of it.

Can someone put up a site (under a separate domain name) in the US without presenting proper identification documents and naming a functioning bank account to the provider, btw.?

[cerulean]

Originally posted by Vic
Wonder what's the point of it.


The sites serve as al-Qaeda codes. For example, one day there might be a picture of a flower, and the next day there isn't, and this has some sort of coded meaning. (I'm not sure if this is what you are asking, though.)



Can someone put up a site (under a separate domain name) in the US without presenting proper identification documents and naming a functioning bank account to the provider, btw.? [/B]

All that is needed is a credit card. No need to show any ID documents. It's all done online.

[Vic]

Originally posted by cerulean
The sites serve as al-Qaeda codes. For example, one day there might be a picture of a flower, and the next day there isn't, and this has some sort of coded meaning. (I'm not sure if this is what you are asking, though.)Are you sure that this is more than a rumor? They will need some system in the background to advertise the URLs/IP numbers too for this to function. If the system is intact, why bother with such public displays? If I were doing it, I'd use some perfectly innoncent sites. They'd have a better chance to stay online for a long time too. Here it is all too evident for anyone who clicks on it what it is all about.

All that is needed is a credit card. No need to show any ID documents. It's all done online. How well can individuals be traced through their credit card numbers? In some European countries they are accepted very carefully because of fraud cases, most service providers etc. ask the banks for confirmation of the account validity first. Can every person be traced over his/her credit card (provided it's not stolen)in the US?

Afaik one does need to present ID papers to register a domain name of one's own over an ISP down here. (But never mind, we still have our Islamists :D)

[Mediocrates]

What you do is you pay some professional hackers to steal some credit card numbers from a website, use them w/in one hour and dump them. If you can't hack them you just buy them from a fence.

The stolen cc numbers are used to create a billing entity for another website from an ISP/Hosting company. They bill by the month with a one time charge + first month up front. By the time the CC company catches up the site is up and down and gone.

Lather rinse repeat.

BTW ~70% of credit card fraud occurs at the place of business of the retail walk-in vendor. Most of the remainder occurs in the calling center where you give your CC number over an 800 (toll free in the US) phone number. About 20% of all call centers in the US are run in prisons. That's right it's the new growth industry for private prison management - retail calling centers. They sell merchandise, telemarket and solicit for charities. There is very little straight up CC fraud online - most of the problems are the result of poor security.

[Vic]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
About 20% of all call centers in the US are run in prisons. That's right it's the new growth industry for private prison management - retail calling centers. They sell merchandise, telemarket and solicit for charities. There is very little straight up CC fraud online - most of the problems are the result of poor security. Great. Why are the credit cards are still so easily accepted though? This must be quite damaging for businesses, if so many accounts are constantly getting blocked by the banks.

[Mediocrates]

Credit card companies don't care. They merely shift the risk back on the consumer in the form of high interest rates. The total debt load of households in the US is ~109% of total household income and most of that debt is serviced at near usury rates. In the US there is in fact NO LIMIT on a credit card interest rate. Nominally it's about 16-17% and can typically exceed 24% but legally if a CC company wants to charge 40% or 40000% there is nothing to stop them.

[sikanderhind]

WHOIS for DRASAT.com

IP ADDRESS : 64.91.237.185

Registrant:
drasat
scan
scan
ks, ks ks
SA

Registrar: Dotster (http://www.dotster.com)
Domain Name: drasat.com Enter amount (min $200.00)
Created on: 12-MAR-02
Expires on: 12-MAR-03
Last Updated on: 12-MAR-02

Administrative Contact:
Al-Ali, Ali alnedaorg@hotmail.com
drasat
scan
scan
ks, ks ks
SA
41792680470
41792680470

Technical Contact:
Al-Ali, Ali alnedaorg@hotmail.com
drasat
scan
scan
ks, ks ks
SA
41792680470
41792680470


Domain servers in listed order:
NS.LIQUIDWEB.COM
NS1.LIQUIDWEB.COM

WHOIS for .net

abdulah alswat

Registrar: Go Daddy Software (http://registrar.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: drasat.net Enter amount (min $200.00)

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.MNAFE.COM
NS2.MNAFE.COM


WHOIS for .org

Registrant:
abdulah alswat

Registrar: Go Daddy Software (http://registrar.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: drasat.org Enter amount (min $200.00)

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.MNAFE.COM
NS2.MNAFE.COM


Look how cleverly this person has used different DNS for .net/.com and .org This IP is still active.
ISP is Michigan, Lansin based compnay.

This could be an AL QUEDA website. FBI better get their butts on it, if they find time from eating donuts and coffee.

[Vic]

Originally posted by sikanderhind

This could be an AL QUEDA website. FBI better get their butts on it, if they find time from eating donuts and coffee. Unless they are still learning how to send e-mails: http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php3?postid=10739#post10739 :p

[Vic]

And they'd better hurry up:

Terror Alliance Has U.S. Worried
Hezbollah, Al Qaeda Seen Joining Forces

By Dana Priest and Douglas Farah
Washington Post
June 30, 2002

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization, one of the world's most formidable terrorist groups, is increasingly teaming up with al Qaeda on logistics and training for terrorist operations, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials and terrorism experts.

The new cooperation, which is ad hoc and tactical and involves mid- and low-level operatives, mutes years of rivalry between Hezbollah, which draws its support primarily from Shiite Muslims, and al Qaeda, which is predominantly Sunni. It includes coordination on explosives and tactics training, money laundering, weapons smuggling and acquiring forged documents, according to knowledgeable sources.

This new alliance, even if informal, has greatly concerned U.S. officials in Washington and intelligence operatives abroad who believe the assets and organization of Hezbollah's formidable militant wing will enable a hobbled al Qaeda network to increase its ability to launch attacks against American targets.

[...]

Unlike al Qaeda, Hezbollah has never targeted Americans on U.S. soil. But its operatives have killed nearly 300 Americans overseas in the last 20 years, including 241 service members in a Marine barracks in Beirut.

The concerns over the new partnership have reached the Senate and House intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen, who, under special rules, are regularly briefed by CIA Director George J. Tenet and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III on highly classified information and operations not revealed to other committee members.

"Hezbollah is the A-team of terrorism," said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the chairman of the Senate panel, who has been briefed on the subject.

The new collaboration illustrates what analysts say is an evolving pattern of decentralized alliances between terrorist groups and cells that share enough of the same goals to find common ground: crippling the United States, and forcing the U.S. military out of the Middle East and Israel out of Palestinian territory.

"There's a convergence of objectives," said Steven Simon, a former National Security Council terrorism expert. "There's something in the zeitgeist that is pretty well established now."

Although cooperation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah may have been going on at some level for years, the U.S. war against al Qaeda has hastened and deepened the relationship. U.S. officials believe that after al Qaeda was driven from Afghanistan, leader Osama bin Laden sanctioned his operatives to ally themselves with helpful Islamic-based groups, said a senior administration official with access to daily intelligence reports.

Bin Laden or his top associates have used the Internet to convey this message, the official added. There is "no doubt at all" that Hezbollah and al Qaeda have communicated on logistical matters, the official said.

Loose partnerships are being facilitated by members' ability to communicate using Internet chat rooms accessible with constantly changing passwords. The connections, intelligence officials believe, are made case by case, depending on the needs of a particular local group. "When someone's traveling and needs assistance in passing through, whomever happens to have that capacity will be turned to," said Paul R. Pillar, former deputy director of the CIA counterterrorism center and author of "Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy."

The chat rooms are set up to avoid detection. New recruits can enter only rooms where "holy war" against America or other general topics are discussed. Only trusted and vetted operatives can access chat rooms where specific deals are discussed.

Hezbollah's original goal was to create an Islamic state in Lebanon. For 18 years, with financial and intelligence support from Iran and Syria, the group fought to end Israel's military occupation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon. It attacked American targets in a bid to drive the United States from the country.

Hezbollah first devised suicide bombings as a terrorist tactic, and its successes inspired a generation of terrorists in the Middle East.

In 1983, a Hezbollah suicide bomber attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans and six of the CIA's best Middle East experts. Six months later, two suicide bombers drove trucks into western military barracks in Lebanon, killing 58 French paratroopers in one and 241 American service members in the other -- the largest peacetime loss ever for the U.S. military. It prompted President Ronald Reagan to withdraw American troops from the country.

[...]

There is little dispute that al Qaeda and Hezbollah operatives work together, but some analysts reject the notion that the two groups have buried their differences, which have long been sharp because they derive their support from the two competing branches of Islam. "I just don't see it," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service. "There's not a lot of commonality there."

Although all of Hezbollah's attacks have taken place overseas, the FBI is investigating close to a dozen Hezbollah groups in the United States. Their overt purpose is to raise money for Lebanese charities. In the United States, Hezbollah's "objective is to facilitate illegal funding . . . sometimes through sophisticated cyber-crimes," Graham said. "Today they aren't here plotting to blow up anything, they are in a support role."

But a recent criminal court case in Charlotte -- in which eight defendants pleaded guilty and two were later found guilty by a jury -- showed how what prosecutors alleged was one Hezbollah cell involved in cigarette smuggling conspired to aid the organization as a whole. One of the men, Mohamad Hammoud, was caught on wiretaps speaking on the phone with Hezbollah's military commander in Lebanon, Sheik Abbas Harake.

Court documents in the United States and Canada say Hezbollah members in both countries have tried to procure military equipment, including laser-range finders, aircraft-analysis software, global positioning gear, night-vision goggles, blasting equipment and mine detection machinery for fighters in Lebanon.

U.S. law enforcement officials and terrorism experts fear the infrastructure and personal relationships established to facilitate illicit arms and document purchases could easily be used to launch attacks on U.S. soil.

"It gives you an infrastructure you can potentially build on," Pillar said. That is what analysts believe happened in Argentina in 1996, when Hezbollah, which had longtime financial and logistics networks in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.

In the last 18 months, Hezbollah has reactivated some of its overseas assets in South America, Europe and Central Asia, Simon said. "They appear to be cocking their guns again."

The more recent relationship between Hezbollah and al Qaeda first surfaced publicly in testimony in October 2000 by Ali Mohamed, a former U.S. Green Beret who pleaded guilty to conspiring with bin Laden to bomb U.S. embassies in Africa.

He testified to having provided security for a meeting in Sudan "between al Qaeda . . . and Iran and Hezbollah . . . between Mughniyah, Hezbollah's chief, and bin Laden." Hezbollah, he testified, provided explosives training to al Qaeda while Iran "used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks."

Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accused Iran of sheltering al Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan. "Iran has served as a haven for some terrorists leaving Afghanistan," he said.

Among the more important al Qaeda operatives believed to be in Iran is Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused of helping plot a bombing at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman during the millennium celebrations.

Administration and intelligence officials also say they have multiple confirmations of a meeting in March in Lebanon between al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah figures.

The new alliances challenge the traditional analysis of militant Islamic-based groups, which were seen as competing and noncooperative, divided by their personalities and each group's particular brand of Islamic militarism.

Understanding the workings of a more diffuse network of terrorists may determine whether the CIA and FBI can adapt quickly enough to the post- Sept. 11 world to prevent more attacks, said terrorism experts and operatives far from Washington.

European and U.S. intelligence operatives on the ground in Africa and Asia said they have been trying to convince headquarters of the new alliances but have been rebuffed.

"We have been screaming at them for more than a year now, and more since September 11th, that these guys all work together," an overseas operative said. "What we keep hearing back is that it can't be because al Qaeda doesn't work that way. That is [expletive]. Here, on the ground, these guys all work together as long as they are Muslims. There is no other division that matters."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2324-2002Jun29?language=printer

[cerulean]

"We have been screaming at them for more than a year now, and more since September 11th, that these guys all work together," an overseas operative said. "What we keep hearing back is that it can't be because al Qaeda doesn't work that way. That is [expletive]. Here, on the ground, these guys all work together as long as they are Muslims. There is no other division that matters."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2324-2002Jun29?language=printer

Once upon a time, I read repeatedly that Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims hated each other, would always fight each other, and cooperation was impossible. Sometimes this is the case. For example, in Pakistan, the majority Sunni Muslims do kill and persecute the Shi'ites, and I think something similar happens in Afghanistan too.

Clearly this is not the case with Hezbollah (Shi'ite) and al-Qaeda (Sunni). This supposed animosity has not stopped Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims from working together in their various terrorist groups to destroy Israel either.

=========
There is a June 17, 2002 Newsweek article that is no longer accessible, except for paid subscribers, titled "Hiding (and Seeking) Messages on the Web." Here's the blurb that is available for free:

Colin Soloway, Rod Nordland and Barbie Nadeau

One day last October, an intelligence-community analyst noticed something strange about a radical Islamist Web site she had been monitoring for several months. A previously open, innocuous part of the site was suddenly blocked. She checked her notes, found the old address for the link and typed it in--to find an otherwise empty page commanding in Arabic, missionaries attack!Other "hidden" pages on the site included seemingly nonsensical phrases and quotations from the ....

Edit: (I was able to find the full article on FreeRepublic at
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/701375/posts )
===
This is one article where I remember reading about the various codes (mentioned in a previous post). I can't answer why they would use a radical Islamic site to give coded messages, instead of a more innocuous topic.

Edit: Here is a similar article:
http://washtimes.com/world/20020622-3170426.htm

[Vic]

Originally posted by cerulean
I can't answer why they would use a radical Islamic site to give coded messages, instead of a more innocuous topic.Kidding? Diverting attention?

-------------------------------------------------------

INTELLIGENCE

Are Terrorist Suspects Duping Us?

By MILT BEARDEN
Milt Bearden was CIA chief in Pakistan from 1986 to '89 and was responsible for the covert assistance to the Afghan moujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet Union. He is the author of "The Black

June 30 2002

RESTON, Va. -- As we approach the nation's first Fourth of July celebration since the Sept. 11 tragedy, a recent CNN-Time magazine poll shows that many Americans believe that terrorists will strike somewhere in the United States on Independence Day.

Beyond that, the public hasn't a clue about the specifics of the threat; nor do many bother to know the color-coded threat level of the day. This is not because Americans are uninterested in the war on terrorism--the opposite is markedly true. It is because they are utterly confused by endless, plainly incomprehensible government alerts or cannot incorporate into their lives conflicting information slickly packaged by a new crop of dubious "terrorism experts" in the broadcast media.

Increasingly, the public suspects that the warnings are being issued by a government more driven by self-protection than by the security of its citizens, as each new warning is conditioned by the tortured construct "out of an abundance of caution." Today's threat level is, by the way, yellow, which means "elevated," which means that "there is a significant risk of terrorist attacks." That can't be good enough.

Much of the confusion can be linked to the difficulties of interrogating 500 or so detainees now in U.S. or allied custody. Getting the truth out of committed terrorist insiders is difficult enough, often impossible. In the case of Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, U.S. authorities learned nothing beyond the ominous warning that the job on the twin towers would one day be finished. Zacarias Moussaoui, the indicted "20th hijacker" suspect now facing trial in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, has, similarly, given up nothing of value. Both men were in total isolation and under the complete control of U.S. authorities for months (Moussaoui) and even years (Yousef).

But getting the truth out of the current crop of detainees in U.S. custody presents another, in some ways more troublesome, challenge. Few of the men we hold in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay are known quantities, genuine insiders with the crucial information we need to prevent another outrage. Yet they all have been exposed to enough of the Al Qaeda lore to keep us at an elevated state of alert. The detainees' common "cover story" is a composite based on their rote memorization of the Islamic Jihad encyclopedia and training manual, liberally sprinkled with scuttlebutt from Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. The training manual, it seems, is the likely source of most of the threat alerts keeping the nation on edge.

A 5,000-page handbook that runs from dangerous (cut-and-pasted U.S. Army training manuals) to silly (wildly errant instructions on how to make a nuclear fusion device), the training manual has been found on compact discs and in printouts in dozens of Al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan. It was apparently left lying about as sort of a Gideon's Bible of terror. It contains most of the target information central to the alerts of the last several months, including nuclear, gas and electric power plants, bridges, dams, airports, railroads, skyscrapers, the U.S. Capitol, football stadiums, apartment buildings and banks.

U.S. intelligence has had the manual for about five years and has known it recommends skyscrapers, nuclear plants and crowded football stadiums as the best targets for spreading fear. The handbook also lists targets of "sentimental value"--the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, for example--as well as advising attacks on major public gatherings such as Christmas and Fourth of July celebrations.

Those who interrogate the men held in Pakistan, Guantanamo Bay or other locations and then process the intelligence--and who ultimately issue the warnings--must always be concerned that they may be simply recycling and reconfirming the threats contained in the manual.

When, in Pakistan, alleged Al Qaeda kingpin Abu Zubaydah speaks of plots to attack the Statue of Liberty, another detainee at Guantanamo Bay or in Morocco admitting he knew something about such a plan cannot automatically be taken as a confirmation. Even an abundance of caution need not lead to calling the nation to general quarters every time a few detainees say the same thing.

Another problem involves contamination. In the cases of the prisoners from Afghanistan and Pakistan, their first experiences with hostile interrogation will have been at the hands of the U.S. military. They would have been aggressively questioned on the locations of key Taliban or Al Qaeda personalities and on threats against U.S. forces.

The interrogators probably lacked a genuinely deep familiarity with the cultures and settings of the prisoners, who almost always answered through interpreters. By the time the detainees were sent to Guantanamo Bay, they understood the strengths and weaknesses of their interrogators and their interpreters, and many would already know what information could be given up without opening themselves to reprisals. As a result, there seem to have been repeated "confirmations" of much of the information we already knew years ago in the Islamic Jihad training manual.

Are we being duped or is this just the nature of the challenge? It is probably a bit of both, and we have to get a grip on it.

In 30 years in the CIA's Operations Directorate, I can count on both hands the number of men and women I would consider true experts in the art of interrogation, a handful of Americans and a few from friendly intelligence services. In every case where I saw a genuine breakthrough in a terrorism interrogation, it came after months of patient probing, mind games and manipulation. Invariably it involved a completely isolated detainee who ultimately bonded with his interrogator.

One such interrogation by an intelligence service in a friendly country took months of patient "reality adjustment." The terrorist, a man captured at the scene of a terrorist act, and whose guilt was never in question, was held in total isolation. Over the months, his interrogator gradually fed him bits and pieces of fabricated newspaper accounts that rewrote the history of the months since he had been captured. The detainee was never openly confronted with the newspapers; instead, he was allowed to catch a furtive glimpse of them every couple of days while the interrogator's file lay "carelessly" open across the table.

Gradually, however, the terrorist developed a totally contrived picture of his world. The first faked news clips told of U.S. military strikes against his homeland. Then the dictator to whom the detainee had sworn allegiance went missing, then he was reported gravely wounded. Finally, the detainee's personal idol was reported dead from his wounds. The terrorist's world collapsed, and he turned to the only human being left in his new world, his interrogator. He calmly told him the whole story.

The process took a year.

We will have to be patient. To counter the confusion, we need a national dialogue on the war against terrorism, one that will include a candid discussion of what is known, what is not known and what may never be known about our enemy. Part of the dialogue must be what should be shared with the public, when and why, and what should not be shared and why not.

To carry this off, we need a reliable interlocutor, a Rudolph W. Giuliani-type national figure, who would speak clearly on the nature of the enemy and of the threat and who would be believed when he spoke. This terrorist threat against America is real. It will be with us for a while, but if we settle down and get control of the challenge, we'll beat it back.

http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2Dop%2Dbeardenjun30

-------------------------------------------------------



From a much-quoted article that appeared recently in a military publication:
Policymakers and decisionmakers will need to adapt to counter future “chaos strategies,” where our adversary’s essential aim is to achieve victory through avoiding defeat. Potential, though plausible, national security responses include the increased use of covert actions, as well as special forces, in place of more traditional wartime forces and resources. In the end, it does not matter much if future chaos attacks will be illogical or disjointed. Chaos—and its intended effects—will prove more significant than a cohesive strategy that viably links means to ends. As an adage in India claims, one way to kill a tiger is to distract it from so many different sides that it tries to run in every direction at once.
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/02summer/liotta.htm

[Mediocrates]

I'm very jaded about Terror Alerts. They're like ozone alerts. It's a RED day, stay indoors.

Do you get the sense that Camp Xray is a little like the House Committe on UnAmerican affairs? "Are you or have you ever been a member of Al Quaeda? Can you name names?"

[Vic]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
Do you get the sense that Camp Xray is a little like the House Committe on UnAmerican affairs? "Are you or have you ever been a member of Al Quaeda? Can you name names?" The difference is that in this case the threat is much more real :(

[Mediocrates]

I don't doubt that except that even the DoD and the White House can't tell you who they've got or why they are important and what if anything they have to say. I get the sense one of them could claim that bums are being recruited as terror Santa Clauses during the XMas season and we'd hear about iton the news w/in 30 minutes and Uncle Tom Ridge would call for new Santa Claus vetting procedures and possibly turning over the Santa Claus responsibilities to each state's national guard.

What do they call that in England; "blimpery", "invincible stupidity"?

This morning I heard on the news americans are warned quoate 'to be extra aware this holiday weekend because terrorists might use our holiday to commit terrorist acts.'unquote.

Holy ****ing ****. Rednecks, Alcohol, Firearms, Patriotism and a Cause. That's the REAL danger. Get me a mobile Gundam Suit.

[Vic]

Originally posted by Mediocrates

This morning I heard on the news americans are warned quoate 'to be extra aware this holiday weekend because terrorists might use our holiday to commit terrorist acts.'unquote. Do they offer any practical advice too? Like "keep your finger on the trigger of your Stinger and watch out for any planes flying overhead during your picnic"?

Well, in the Soviet Union they did teach us what to do in case of a nuclear attack. All I remember from my schooldays was that the first thing members of the Communist Party should do is to contact their party committees immediately, no matter where they are.

But seriously, what's the point of creating useless panic?

[cerulean]

What I remember from school about preparing for nuclear attacks is doing some drills that involved crawling under the desk.

I hope that all of the billions of dollars poured into Homeland Security have done some good and averted attacks. All this money and effort will of course be most successful if we never see any actual results.

[Mediocrates]

Yeah we had those duck and cover drills for when you Rooskies would send an H Bomb over our way.

"When you hear the siren get under your school desk and wait for the all clear."

I hope your desks were made out of that anti H bomb material too.

[Vic]

Originally posted by cerulean
I hope that all of the billions of dollars poured into Homeland Security have done some good and averted attacks. All this money and effort will of course be most successful if we never see any actual results. Go on hoping :)

I wonder why the signatures here match the posts so beautifully:
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose./The more things change, the more they stay the same.


Anyway here is more on "fear-mongering" (what a lovely expression, btw.):


Soon al-Qaeda will kill you on the Internet
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 28/06/2002 at 10:16 GMT

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), known for kicking doors with dogs and brownshirts to sniff out expired licenses and for extorting vast sums of cash from non-compliant victims even more frightened of a visit from that federal Copyright-911 force also known as the FBI, has taken it upon itself to cobble up a survey which, in the addled minds of the mainstream press, indicates that al-Qaeda has obtained the weapons of mass, digital destruction, and is poised to use them. Western Europe and North America will be razed by a holy onslaught of SYN floods and VB worms and buffer overflows. All Christendom will be laid waste.

Actually, if you bother to read the 'report', you'll find that the BSA drivel does nothing more than record the fears of "IT pros" convinced that this is an eventuality. It offers not one shred of evidence that plans are in the works; not one hint of how this diabolical assault on your life and you daughter's virginity might be accomplished; not one scrap of actual, firsthand research.

Their entire FUD campaign is based solely on the perceptions, imaginations and fears of unnamed "IT pros" -- more than 300 of them, we're assured.

And yet, CNN went so far as to declare a crushing al-Qaeda cyber blood-fest inevitable. The Washington Post went one further, liberally quoting the eternally alarmist Richard Clarke, Ron Dick and John Tritak, and publishing a six-page FUD tome by staff twinkie Barton Gellman, who lapped up every word. (He's a Pulitzer Prize winner, kids.)

"US analysts believe that by disabling or taking command of the floodgates in a dam, for example, or of substations handling 300,000 volts of electric power, an intruder could use virtual tools to destroy real-world lives and property. They surmise, with limited evidence, that al-Qaeda aims to employ those techniques in synchrony with 'kinetic weapons' such as explosives," the pathetically credulous Gellman warns us.

So they're going to crash planes in flight in spite of the pilots on board. They're going to poison food supplies by hacking into the Kellogs mainframe and pumping toxic chemicals into your precious brat's cereal in spite of the workers and inspectors on the production line. They're going to open flood gates and drown your entire town, in spite of the scores of monitors working there.

Remember, "IT pros" are frightened. You should be too.

So what the hell does the BSA have to gain from this exercise in fear mongering? You tell me. Email me and I'll do a roundup of your more interesting letters. My guess is that this is somehow meant to bolster MS' announcement of Palladium, by which means the software colossus would foist an impotent desktop appliance on us in place of our computers. The argument here might be that once you've had your balls surgically removed by Redmond and capitulated to its new, trusted network, the naughty un-Christian buggers of the world will be stopped at the border. We'll be singing soprano to Redmond's tune, but happily so and, most importantly in this age of doubt and fear, safely so. The Chinky-Chinky Chinaman and the Turbaned Chupacabra will be unable to strike us in our beds once Trustworthy Computing takes root.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25938.html

How did our wise Mediocrates put it?
Holy ****ing ****. Rednecks, Alcohol, Firearms, Patriotism and a Cause. That's the REAL danger. Get me a mobile Gundam Suit.

[cerulean]

When there is the next attack, though, however it is implemented, there will be plenty of handwringing that everyone was too complacent.

My problem is that I regularly think of all sorts of ghastly scenarios that could be enacted, and if I can think of them, why not a few hundred evil terrorists with lots of cash?


Rednecks, Alcohol, Firearms, Patriotism and a Cause. That's the REAL danger.

Yes, but I can avoid all of these almost entirely and have rarely felt in danger from any of these. (It may be different in Raleigh, NC.)

It's sort of like the situation where a statistician pulls out statistics proving that a family member is far more likely to kill you than a stranger. To me, those statistics mean nothing, because I have zero expectation a family member will kill me.

[elke]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
Yeah we had those duck and cover drills for when you Rooskies would send an H Bomb over our way.

"When you hear the siren get under your school desk and wait for the all clear."

I hope your desks were made out of that anti H bomb material too.

Funny you guys should mention this, but my husband insists those were tornado drills! I guess, they didn't explain well enough what they meant by "Tornado" ;)

[cerulean]

It's not because of the Declaration of Independence, but because "on July 4, 1197, Saladin (Salah al-Din) completely annihilated the 20,000-man Crusader army at the battle of the Horns of Hattin, driving the 'Christians' from the Holy Land until the 20th century."

That's the claim of this article at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28159

It also points out that bin Laden has made a reference in his videos to September 11, 1922, which was the date that the US Congress passed a resolution approving the partition of what was then Palestine.

The article also says that bin Laden writes poetry in the style of Saladin. I recall having read somewhere or other that bin Laden aspires to be the third greatest Islamic leader, after Mohammed and Saladin. But I've also read that Arafat is also vying for the same title. One has to wonder if there is any rivalry between the two at some level.

[James]

Originally posted by Vic
Stratfor Analysis: The Palestinian Strategy: Summary

cont'd
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The needed transformation of the Islamic world will take a long time to achieve. On the other hand, from the Palestinian point of view, time is on their side. Given that all quickly attainable solutions leave them in an unacceptable condition, they have nothing to lose by playing for the long-term solution. Given Palestinian psychology, a long-term strategy of enormous proportions is politically more viable than short-term strategies that cannot deliver genuine solutions. They can either capitulate or continue to struggle, but a small Palestinian state would not satisfy their needs. Nor could it preclude the continuation of war by Palestinian rejectionists and therefore would not be accepted by Israel. The Palestinians' only hope is a redefinition of the general geopolitics of the region.

It is in this sense that the ongoing suicide campaign must be understood. Having accepted that no political settlement in the smaller context of Israel and Palestine is possible, the Palestinians have accepted a long-term strategy of unremitting warfare using whatever means is available -- for now, suicide bombers -- as the only alternative. The price is high, but given the stakes, their view is that it is worth it. It follows that the Palestinians will accept reoccupation by Israel and use that reoccupation not merely to drain Israeli resources but also to create an atmosphere of war designed to energize the Islamic world for a broad redefinition of relationships.

The suicide bombing campaign cannot be intended to achieve any significant short-term goal. First, it is not likely to generate a peace movement in Israel --quite the contrary. Second, it locks the United States into alignment with Israel, rather than driving a wedge between the two. Finally, it creates an extreme psychology within the Palestinian community that makes political flexibility all the more difficult. The fervor that creates suicide bombers also creates a class of martyrs whose sacrifices are difficult to negotiate away. The breadth and intensity of the suicide bombings force us to conclude that the Palestinian leadership is focusing on a long-term strategy of holding the Palestinians together in a sense of profound embattlement, transforming the dynamics of the Arab world and then striking at Israel from a position of strength. In short, the Palestinians think that time is on their side and that sacrifices for a generation or two will yield dividends later. If they wait, they will win.

Here Palestinian strategy, intentionally or unintentionally, intersects with that of al Qaeda, which also is committed to a radical transformation of the Islamic world. Its confrontation with the United States is designed to set the stage for this transformation, enabling the Islamic world to engage and defeat the enemies of Islam.

For al Qaeda one of the pillars of this confrontation is the Palestinian question, which it defines as the recovery of Islamic land usurped by Israel, a tool of the United States and Great Britain. For al Qaeda, the Palestinian question represents the systematic repression and brutalization of the Islamic world at the hands of both Christianity and the secular West. Israel is merely the most extreme and visible dimension of Western injustice. Palestine is, at the same time, a primary means of energizing the Islamic world. The ongoing injustice of the Palestinian situation combined with the martyrdom of the bombers creates, in al Qaeda's view, both a sense of embattlement and religious fervor with profound political consequences. Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs are powerful recruiting tools for al Qaeda.

If the Palestinians have adopted the long-term strategy we described, then al Qaeda is the means of achieving their geopolitical end. If the precondition for the defeat of Israel is a transformation of the internal politics of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the rest of the Arab world, then al Qaeda is currently the only force fighting toward this end. In the same way that Arafat's generation aligned itself with Egypt's Gamel Abdel Nasser, Arab socialism and the Soviet Union in an attempt to find a geopolitical lever to destroy Israel, so today's generation has to look for geopolitical salvation among Islam's religious fundamentalists. Al Qaeda is the only group operating effectively at the moment and therefore, by default if not by intention, al Qaeda is serving the Palestinians' interest and vice versa.

For al Qaeda, a Palestinian settlement would be politically and morally unacceptable: Morally, it would represent a betrayal of Islam; politically, it would defuse a critical, energizing issue. Any agreement that would accept the permanent loss of territory to Israel would increase the power of accommodationists in the Islamic world. Al Qaeda needs an ongoing confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis to serve its ends; the Palestinians need tremendous pressure brought on the Arab world to serve their interests. The Palestinians also need a transformation in the Arab world. Here the two interests coincide. Israel, then, becomes a foundation of al Qaeda's political strategy in the Islamic world, as well as a test bed for tactics and military strategies.

Palestinian strategy makes no sense except in the context of alignment with al Qaeda. We need to be very careful here. We are not saying that there is deep cooperation going on between the Palestinians and al Qaeda although we would be very surprised if representatives of the two entities have not met and coordinated at times. Rather, what we are saying is that the goals of the Palestinians and those of al Qaeda have converged. Whether this was by design or by the logic of their situation is not really relevant. What is relevant is the convergence not only of tactics but also of a strategic and geopolitical perspective. Unless the Palestinians undergo a profound change of goals, they need al Qaeda to be successful to aid their own success. Al Qaeda is helped enormously by Palestinian behavior. If not a word had ever been exchanged --which we doubt -- the interests would still have converged. And the alliance that grows naturally is the most powerful one.

This means that no real peace process is any longer possible and that Israel can expect to be under constant pressure from the Palestinians. Then the question is, can Israel define a strategy for containing the Palestinians without simultaneously inflaming the Islamic world? More important, can the U.S.-Israeli relationship survive when what Israel must do to suppress the Palestinians flies in the face of American coalition-building in the Islamic world? Of course the Palestinians may hope to provoke a response from Israel that the United States cannot tolerate. However, this is not 1973. Israeli dependence on the United States is much less today than it was then, and therefore U.S. influence on Israel is much lower. Second, the United States is not likely to break with Israel when the trigger is suicide bombing -- not what the Palestinians want to hear, but it is exactly what al Qaeda would want.

This is precisely the crisis both the Palestinians and al Qaeda want to create. Al Qaeda hopes to use U.S. commitment to Israel as a tool for political mobilization in the Islamic world, since the United States cannot accept the destruction of Israel and nothing less can satisfy the needs of the Palestinians. The forecast, therefore, is for pain.

Reoccupation by Israel? I love it! It's so, how shall i say it, supporting of Arab causes? Islam doesn't care how it distorts the truth,as long as they receive support from the WORLD!

[cerulean]

I seem to remember reading there would be a new bin Laden video on July 4. This doesn't seem to have happened. I have to wonder why. Production problems? Has the courier been waylaid?

[sikanderhind]

He is probably sitting now with General Musharaaf and laughing at US on how it paying $$$ to pakistan for anti al queda war money.

Pakistan is the master in fleecing uncle sam under terrorism excuse. Rigth hand of paki is on US wallet. Left hand is inside Al Queda pockets.

IF laden is caught, it is gonan be in pakistan and in a city, not a mountain cave.

That, only if he is alive in the first case :)

[cerulean]

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=16637
Bin Laden no longer exists: Here is why
By Amir Taheri, Arab News Staff

Remember you first read it here: Osama Bin Laden is dead.
[...]
With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama Bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long. He had always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. So, would he remain silent for nine months during which his illusions have been shattered one after another? If his adjutants can smuggle a video to Al-Jazeera in Qatar, why couldn’t he?
[...]
(referring to the elements that made bin Laden possible )
The fourth element was the cynical attitude of many Western powers that sheltered the terrorists in the name of freedom of expression and dissent. We now know that London was the world capital of Al-Qaeda and that New York was its financial nerve center.

The murder of the Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masood, for example, was planned in the British capital. Al-Qaeda militants operated in Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, among other democracies, without any restraint.

The fifth element that made Bin Ladenism possible was the West’s, especially America’s, perceived weakness if not actual cowardice. A joke going round the militant Islamist circles until last year was that the only thing the Americans would do if attacked was to sue the attackers in court. That element no longer exists. The Americans, supported by the largest coalition in history, have shown that they are prepared to use force against their enemies even if that means a long war with no easy victory in sight. ...
======
I realize that a paper that calls itself Saudi Arabia's first English daily is probably designed to have some propaganda reasons to establish itself as a "moderate" voice, but I found the analysis interesting.

[Mediocrates]

...that sounds like the John Derbyshire article from National Review; he said pretty much the same thing.

[cerulean]

This article, from June 30, ends the discussion with a mention of with www.drasat.com, the last appearance that I have heard regarding this al-Qaeda web site.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/2002/Jun/30/TEK2.htm

...
A federal law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, speculated the site was being used by al-Qaida to spread low-priority information.

The site may also be a way for operatives to contact and direct each other toward other, more secure methods of communication, the official said.
[...]
Setting up a Web site can be done without the business and the customer ever meeting, thanks to e-mail, online registration and remote payment. Host companies rarely know whether a false registration identity has been used.

The site was originally registered in Malaysia using a phony address in Venezuela and a Yahoo e-mail address. ...

[cerulean]

I wasn't clear in the last post. The article mentions Liquid Web, which was the host, for a short time, of the last incarnation of this web site that I know of, drasat.com.

[cerulean]

Nothing much new here, but the analysis touches on several important points.

====
July 8, 2002 8:45 a.m.
Where’s Osama?
The video that never surfaced.
On June 23, Sulyman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti expatriate, former teacher and official spokesman of al Qaeda, posted an audio file on the terrorist website alneda.com (currently down) claiming that Osama bin Laden "is well and in good health" and that "reports that Shaykh Osama is ill or was wounded in Tora Bora are completely unfounded." Furthermore, he stated that bin Laden would soon appear in a televised interview. On that same day the website posted a 105-minute video produced by al-Sahab productions entitled "Destroying the Destroyer Cole," which contains images of the attack, and old footage of bin Laden praising the attackers. The website promised that he would appear on television before July 4.
...
Controlling the money must be another important concern. This is an organization composed of criminals with vast amounts of untraceable funds, and no accountability. A multimillion-dollar enterprise like this would have a natural propensity to loot itself. The Wall Street Journal's recent revelations of infighting in al Qaeda number-two man Ayman al-Zawahri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad is illustrative. He chastised an underling for buying a $470 fax machine, and the junior terrorist basically responded, "Take this jihad and shove it." My guess is the fax machine went with him. It is reasonable to suspect that some intermediaries in the al Qaeda network who have access to much larger sums of money would abscond with them the moment they knew the CEO had been forced into early retirement.
...

[Mediocrates]

Osama is in reruns already? Damn summer television is the same all over the world!

[cerulean]

Earlier on in the thread, Mediocrates mentioned how the scam of registering web sites with stolen credit cards works. Here's an article about that sort of thing being used to fund terrorism:

Identity theft increasingly used to fund terrorism, official says
By DAVID HO, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (July 10, 2002 1:31 a.m. EDT) - The rapidly growing crime of identity theft is a "key catalyst" behind the funding of terrorist groups like al-Qaida, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Terrorists use stolen credit cards, passports and Social Security numbers to pay for their operations and create false identities to hide behind, Dennis Lormel, chief of the FBI's financial crimes unit, told a Senate subcommittee.

Lormel said 14 pending FBI terrorism investigations involve some form of identity theft.

"The methods used to finance terrorism range from the highly sophisticated to the most basic," Lormel said. "There is virtually no financing method that has not at some level been exploited by these groups. Identity theft is a key catalyst fueling many of these methods."

Lormel said an al-Qaida terrorist cell that was broken up in Madrid, Spain, used stolen credit cards in sales scams and for small purchases that did not require other identification. The group also used fake passports to open bank accounts, which were used to send money to and from countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
...

[cerulean]

Sept. 11 Hijackers Said to Fake Data on Bank Accounts

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/10/national/10TERR.html
WASHINGTON, July 9 — The Sept. 11 hijackers were able to open 35 American bank accounts without having legitimate Social Security numbers and opened some of the accounts with fabricated Social Security numbers that were never checked or questioned by bank officials, a senior F.B.I. official said today.
[...]
The SunTrust accounts and the financial transactions made through them provide strong evidence of links between hijackers from different groups, he added. In fact, Mr. Lormel said the bureau of investigation had discovered direct financial connections between members of the four hijacking groups involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, providing some of the most concrete evidence yet uncovered that the 19 men involved closely coordinated their actions.

Since the attacks, American investigators have found relatively few direct links among the four groups who each hijacked a different airliner, and officials have said they have been impressed by the strict security procedures that the hijackers seem to have practiced to avoid detection. Telephone, travel and e-mail records strongly indicate that Mohamed Atta played a central coordinating role among the four groups, and the financial records would appear to provide compelling evidence of ongoing links among the groups.
...

[Vic]

Militants wire Web with links to jihad
By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/07/10/web-terror-cover.htm

Looks like they are using "neutral" sites too.
Lately, al-Qaeda operatives have been sending hundreds of encrypted messages that have been hidden in files on digital photographs on the auction site eBay.com. Most of the messages have been sent from Internet cafes in Pakistan and public libraries throughout the world. An eBay spokesperson did not return phone calls.Better read the whole article, the details are stunning. Ever heard of a site called "Jihad unspun"?

[Mediocrates]

That's called steganography - embedding a message inside another file. It doesn't even have to be encrypted. You merely have to know where to look for it.


BTW one of the most secure types of electronic messaging is a handwritten fax. Unless it's intercepted and read by a person there is no way to tell what's being sent. No machine on earth can pluck it. That is you have to run an active tap, just like a phone line. This is commonly known in all circles of electronic interception.

[cerulean]

Interesting article. One of the sites mentioned, azzam.com, has the following article (and many other interesting ones):

http://66.197.135.110/~azzam/html/articlesabstain.htm

It looks to me like it's good brainwashing material for would-be reluctant martyrs. The parts in which a jihadi is urged in detail to not let ties of affection to children, friends, and wives stop him is chilling.

[cerulean]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992543

Hunt for hidden web messages goes on
18:13 12 July 02

NewScientist.com news service
Computer enthusiasts have been searching for messages hidden in web site images following new claims that the al-Qaeda terrorist network is using this technique - steganography - to communicate.

However, one expert in the field warns the images that have been flagged up as suspicious after initial examination are almost certain to be cleared after full analysis. Peter Honeyman, at the University of Michigan, told New Scientist: "You get a lot of these. We call them false positives."
...

======
The article mentions that some recent research has been posted on the email list Politechbot.

It seems to me still that any serious communication is probably going on in a site we don't know about.

[cerulean]

The American Foreign Policy Council
http://www.afpc.org

It has three relevant articles this month, linked from the front page.
One is on the new links between al-Qaeda and Hezbollah in Lebanon, one is on the renaissance of Iran, and the third is about long-term American engagement in Afghanistan.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by cerulean
[B
The article mentions that some recent research has been posted on the email list Politechbot.

It seems to me still that any serious communication is probably going on in a site we don't know about. [/B]

Yes, and notice that steganography refers to messages hidden in files. So we aren't talking here about the background color on a Web page changing as a "go" signal to terrorists. We are talking about the ability to hide more expansive communications in large files such as those used with images.

The problem is that the detection systems only flag files that have a higher probability of containing hidden messages. You would still need to decode the messages.

Personally, I doubt Al Qaeda is this sophisticated. Also, in rounding up suspects, the U.S. confiscates PCs. If Al Qaeda were using steganography, somebody would have to have programs for encoding and decoding messages. Plus, there would have to be a "drop off" known to all or most Al Qaeda members.

It would not be so easy for them to use this technology, except perhaps for communicating with one or two cells.

[cerulean]

Personally, I doubt Al Qaeda is this sophisticated.

That's an interesting question. On the one hand, the most prominent suspects caught lately, Richard Reid and Jose Padillo, have not seemed particularly intelligent. However, given that Al-Qaeda was able to fund flight training for dozens of people, surely the organization should be able to fund a few classes in Internet cryptography.

======
Here is the Politech e-mail list link mentioned a few posts back in the thread:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03735.html

======
The case of the missing code
Are al-Qaida terrorists hiding their secrets in eBay photographs?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/07/17/steganography/index.html

Page 1 is a rehash of the USA today article. Page 2 has some interesting technical info.

Quote: Chet Hosmer, the president of WetStone Technologies, the company that first reported the possibility of hidden messages on eBay and which makes what many people say is the most advanced publicly available steganographic-detection software, said that in his research, very few messages on eBay show signs of being infected by terrorists. About one in 100,000 pictures "appears suspicious," but a much smaller number -- "one in every 15 to 20 million files" -- is "something that we really believe is a real hidden message."

Under this standard, for the government to have found 100 stego files, it would have had to have analyzed something on the order of 1 or 2 billion images. According to eBay's first quarter financial results, the site hosted a record 138 million auctions last quarter. Extrapolating that number out for the 300 or so days since Sept. 11, we see that there have been less than half a billion eBay listings since the attacks -- simply not enough to account for "hundreds" of hidden messages.

Now, this back-of-the-envelope calculation rests on several assumptions; the most important is that the government isn't using a stego-detector more sophisticated than WetStone's. WetStone has received funding from the Department of Defense, but Hosmer says that the government could have much fancier technology, and so it could find stego-messages at rates much higher than one in 15 million. There's also a chance that the feds have information that allows them to narrow their search to specific sections of eBay, which would make their job considerably easier.

[Mediocrates]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53873,00.html


Early Monday morning, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops took over the offices of Palnet, the leading Palestinian Internet service provider, shutting down the firm's operations. The move -- part of Israel's 3-week-old "Operation Determined Path," which has kept seven of the eight major Palestinian cities under strict curfew -- reduced Internet access to a trickle in the West Bank and Gaza.

[cerulean]

Opinion on Bin Laden's Death Part of Psychological War
18 July 2002

Summary
The FBI's top counterterrorism official said July 17 that in his opinion Osama bin Laden is probably dead. His comment came just days after the editor of a London-based Arab newspaper said bin Laden is alive and will not appear in another video until the United States is attacked again. Whether bin Laden is alive or dead may be less important than how Washington and al Qaeda use the current ambiguity for psychological warfare.
http://www.stratfor.com/fib/topStory_view.php?ID=205345

[cerulean]

Pro-Islamic Hackers Uniting
Protest groups collaborate on defacement targets.
By Becky Worley, Tech Live

http://www.techtv.com/news/security/story/0,24195,3392443,00.html
Pro-Islamic hackers have joined forces to deface sites in the United States, India, and Israel. British security group Mi2g believes that USG (Unix Security Guards), WFD (World's Fantabulous Defacers), and AIC (Anti-India Crew) have coordinated attack strategies on selected online targets. Tonight's "Tech Live" reports.

The groups' combined agendas now include protesting the Middle East conflict, the War on Terrorism, and the Kashmir standoff between India and Pakistan. Mi2g has mapped correlations between the hacks and seen similarities not only in the defacements, but also in the methods of entry and the destructive payloads distributed by all three groups. ...

===
This sounds plausible, but hard proof of an alliance would be difficult to find, I think.

[cerulean]

The $25 million bounty on bin Laden is producing a grisly trade in ears and heads.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/whisphome.htm
(I think this link may expire within a week or so.)

[Mediocrates]

Originally posted by cerulean
Pro-Islamic Hackers Uniting
Protest groups collaborate on defacement targets.
By Becky Worley, Tech Live

http://www.techtv.com/news/security/story/0,24195,3392443,00.html
Pro-Islamic hackers have joined forces to deface sites in the United States, India, and Israel. British security group Mi2g believes that USG (Unix Security Guards), WFD (World's Fantabulous Defacers), and AIC (Anti-India Crew) have coordinated attack strategies on selected online targets. Tonight's "Tech Live" reports.

The groups' combined agendas now include protesting the Middle East conflict, the War on Terrorism, and the Kashmir standoff between India and Pakistan. Mi2g has mapped correlations between the hacks and seen similarities not only in the defacements, but also in the methods of entry and the destructive payloads distributed by all three groups. ...

===
This sounds plausible, but hard proof of an alliance would be difficult to find, I think.


I suddenly feel the urge to hurl a stream of 50,000 byte frames at some people. Or traceroute someone's entire subnet. Or maybe some malformed jabber. Or forged source addresses.

Yum.

[cerulean]

Azzam.com was mentioned earlier as being an al-Qaeda web site.

This may now be it:
http://202.43.163.180/~acom/articles/index.php

I hope someone somewhere is mirroring all these sites as they constantly switch locations.

[ibrodsky]

The demand that Israel withdraw to the '67 cease-fire line (Saudi Arabia has never recognized Israel's borders) is just part of the two-phased plan for destroying Israel that the PLO discussed quite openly before joining the Oslo "Peace Process."

The PA rejected a real plan for a Palestinian state in 2000.

The Saudis, when they aren't busy ranting against the West, spreading slanders against Jews, and maintaining their racist/apartheid cities, demand that Israel withdraw to indefensible positions based on nothing but the vague promises of pathological liars.

Trainspotter, I grant you know something about BS. You are an expert, in fact.

[Vic]

To return to the original subject of the thread (http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php3?postid=13497#post13497), Stratfor's claim that Al-Qaeda is behind both Palestinians terrorism and Palestinian politics in general:

Qaida men in Lebanese refugee camp with Syrian consent
By Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz Correspondent
Last update - 08:21 02/09/2002
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=204129&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0
Damascus has allowed some 150-200 Qaida operatives to settle in the Palestinian refugee camp Ein Hilwe near Sidon in Lebanon. The group, including senior commanders, arrived from Afghanistan through Damascus, Iran and directly to Lebanon.

These Qaida operatives are responsible, among other things, for the latest outbreak of fighting inside the refugee camp, as part of their effort to take over the camp.

These details and others have lately been gathered by various intelligence services.

Among the new details now known: Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Qaida group that conducted the Sept. 11 airplane suicide attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, flying the first plane into the towers, visited Syria twice or three times. The Syrians did not give that information to the Americans on their own volition.

Osama bin Laden's son, Omar, left Syria together with his mother Nagwa, three weeks before the attack on the Twin Towers, after receiving anonymous instructions to do so. The son returned to Syria after 9-11, and has since visited twice more. Bin Laden's wife and son lived in the Alawite stronghold in Latakiya in an arrangement that gave refuge to bin Laden's close relatives. The two are not now in Syria.

Intelligence services have also managed to find detailed information about contacts between one of the leading Hezbollah military figures, Imad Mourghniyeh, and a Qaida operative in Sudan. There is no evidence yet of that relationship developing into continuing ties, but there is no doubt the meeting could not have taken place without Syrian intelligence knowing of it.
[...]

[sikanderhind]

It is almost 1 year when i saw 3000 people die and 2 towers fall.

I was changed and I am still very much in shock as i look out of my window and see the bald skyline.

I could have been there in that dust and derbis.

Well so much for sentiments lets get back to business.

What has the US govt done ?

I would say nothing so far.

Simple fact : 17 of 23 hijackers were saudis.
YET NOTHIGN HAS BEEN DONE TO Saudia Arabia.
WOW ! Now GW Bush boy invites the saudi ambassador to barbeque at his ranch.
Jolly good anal problign they must be havign in the wilderness.

What use is banning Iraquis, Iranis and Syrians from US?

We know and we are not fools to know that 99% of funds for terrorism comes from Saudia.

And US is fooling us tyring to go war against Iraq.

Have you seen an Iraqi terorist? Neither has Iraq.

Well those who do not learn from past experinces, pay for it in the future.
US will if Saudia ia not brought to the sands.

We need to get that Royal Family out of KSA and get democracry.
Opps I forgot.
How much of our policticians have their pockets full withRoyal cash?

I want to say all of them have the blood of innocents in their hands.

Well simple fact is this :

As long as there is a Saudia Arabia ruled by Kings, there will be terrorism on US soil and on ISreal soil and Indian soil.

We need to nuke Saudia Arabia and get FORCED democracy.

Same with pukistahn.

I do not see any GOD Dammed change in 1 year whatsoever and I certainly will not sleep in peace knowing 3000 fellow citizens of democratic nations died for NOTHING !!!!!

[Vic]

A related(?) article from the same Stratfor:Withdrawal of U.S. Holdings by Saudis Could Affect Lebanon
27 August 2002

Summary

Recent Saudi-U.S. tensions allegedly are leading to a withdrawal of as much as $200 billion in Saudi investments from the United States, according to news reports. If true, a large portion of this money could find itself in Lebanon, which would shift the balance of power toward the Sunnis and likely would alarm Syria.

Analysis

The Financial Times reported Aug. 21 that as much as $200 billion in Saudi investments is being withdrawn from the United States, possibly due to fears of seizure by the U.S. government. The potential flight of Saudi capital comes in the wake of a briefing to Pentagon officials earlier this month by analysts from the Rand Corp., who reportedly portrayed Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States due to alleged financial and moral support of Islamic terrorists.

The report was quickly followed by the announcement of multi-trillion-dollar lawsuits by families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks against Saudi groups and individuals -- including three princes -- who allegedly "aided and abetted" the attack. Both incidents have exacerbated concerns among the kingdom's elite that they have become a target of the United States and that their money is no longer safe there.

It remains to be seen just how much of the estimated $400 billion to $600 billion in U.S. holdings currently held by Saudi investors will leave the country. But the money that does leave no doubt will go to banks in Europe or closer to home in other Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon, whose proximity and stable banking system are attractive to Riyadh.

http://www.stratfor.com/fib/fib_view.php?ID=205898