[Air-l] Decentralized terror networks ....

[Ken Friedman]

Dear Colleagues,

A recent post wonders,

At 03:20 PM 9/17/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Has anyone else on this list been struck by the parallel between the
>current portrait of de-centralized terrorist networks emerging in the
>media coverage and the organizational logic of distributed computer
>networks? [...]

Here follows a report on a related theme
from Stratfor, a global intelligence
analyst.

I pass it on with permission. Stratfor
publishes a free daily summary that is
available at their Web site.

Ken Friedman



Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 16:37:08 -0500
From: <alert at stratfor.com>
To: redalert at stratfor.com
Subject: No Easy Battle


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____________________________________________________13 September 2001
COMPLIMENTARY INTELLIGENCE REPORT - FULL TEXT
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____________________________________________________No Easy Battle2000
GMT, 010914SummaryIn the wake of this week's terrorist attacks in the
United States, the U.S. government is trying to decide how it can defeat
its new style of enemy. The key to victory is finding the enemy's center
of gravity, or what enables it to operate, and destroying it. But what
has worked for the U.S. military in the past may not be enough this time
around.AnalysisThe foundation of any successful military operation is
defining and attacking the enemy's center of gravity: the capacity that
enables it to operate. A war effort that does not successfully define the
enemy's center of gravity, or lacks the ability to decisively incapacitate
it, is doomed to failure. The center of gravity can be relatively easy to
define, as was the Iraqi command and control system, or relatively
difficult to define, as was Vietnam's discovery of America's unwillingness
to indefinitely absorb casualties. In either case, identifying the
adversary's center of gravity is the key to victory.In the wake of this
week's terrorist attacks in the United States, this question is now being
discussed in the highest reaches of the American government. The issue,
from a military standpoint, is not one of moral responsibility or legal
culpability. Rather, it is what will be required to render the enemy
incapable of functioning as an effective force. Put differently, what is
the most efficient means of destroying the enemy's will to resist?This
is an extraordinarily difficult process in this case because it is not
clear who the enemy is. Two schools of thought are emerging though. One
argues that the attackers are essentially agents of some foreign
government that enables them to operate. Therefore, by either defeating or
dissuading this government from continuing to support the attackers, they
will be rendered ineffective and the threat will end.Such a scenario is
extremely attractive for the United States. Posing the conflict as one
between nation-states plays to American strength in waging conventional
war. A nation-state can be negotiated with, bombed or invaded. If a
nation-state is identified as the attackers' center of gravity, then it
can by some level of exertion be destroyed. There is now an inherent
interest within the U.S. government to define the center of gravity as
Iraq or Afghanistan or both. The United States knows how to wage such
wars.The second school of thought argues that the entity we are facing
is instead an amorphous, shifting collection of small groups, controlled
in a dynamic and unpredictable manner and deliberately without a clear
geographical locus. The components of the organization can be in
Afghanistan or Boston, in Beirut or Paris. Its fundamental character is
that it moves with near invisibility around the globe, forming ad hoc
groups with exquisite patience and care for strikes against its enemies.
This is a group, therefore, that has been deliberately constructed not to
provide its enemies with a center of gravity. Its diffusion is designed to
make it difficult to kill with any certainty. The founders of this group
studied the history of underground movements and determined that their
greatest weakness is what was thought to be their strength: tight control
from the center. That central control, the key to the Leninist model,
provided decisive guidance but presented enemies with a focal point that,
if smashed, rendered the organization helpless. This model of underground
movement accepts inefficiency -- there are long pauses between actions --
in return for both security, as penetration is difficult, and
survivability, as it does not provide its enemies with a definable point
against which to strike.This model is much less attractive to American
military planners because it does not play to American capabilities. It
is impervious to the type of warfare the United States prefers, which is
what one might call wholesale warfare. It instead demands a retail sort of
warfare, in which the fighting level comprises very small unit operations,
the geographic scale is potentially global and the time frame is extensive
and indeterminate. It is a conflict that does lend itself to intelligence
technology, but it ultimately turns on patience, subtlety and secrecy,
none of which are America's strong suits.It is therefore completely
understandable that the United States is trying to redefine the conflict
in terms of nation-states, and there is also substantial precedent for it
as well. The precursor terrorist movements of the 1970s and 1980s were far
from self-contained entities. All received support in various ways from
Soviet and Eastern European intelligence services, as well as from North
Korea, Libya, Syria and others. From training to false passports, they
were highly dependent on nation-states for their operation.It is
therefore reasonable to assume the case is the same with these new
attackers. It would follow that if their source of operational support
were destroyed, they would cease to function. A bombing campaign or
invasion would then solve the problem. The issue is to determine which
country is supplying the support and act.There is no doubt the entity
that attacked the United States got support from state intelligence
services. Some of that support might well have been officially sanctioned
while some might have been provided by a political faction or sympathetic
individuals. But although for the attackers state support is necessary
and desirable, it is not clear that destroying involved states would
disable the perpetrators.One of the principles of the attackers appears
to be redundancy, not in the sense of backup systems, but in the sense
that each group contains all support systems. In the same sense, it
appears possible that they have constructed relationships in such a way
that although they depend on state backing, they are not dependent on the
support of any particular state.An interesting development arising in the
aftermath is the multitude of states accused of providing support to the
attackers: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Algeria and Syria, among
others, have all been suggested. All of them could have been involved in
some way or another, with the result being dozens of nations providing
intentional or unintentional support. The attackers even appear to have
drawn support from the United States itself, as some of the suspected
hijackers reportedly received flight training from U.S. schools. The
attackers have organized themselves to be parasitic. They are able to
attach themselves to virtually any country that has a large enough Arab or
Islamic community for them to disappear into or at least go unnoticed
within. Drawing on funds acquired from one or many sources, they are able
to extract resources wherever they are and continue operating.If such is
the case, then even if Iraq or Afghanistan gave assistance, they are still
not necessarily the attackers' center of gravity. Destroying the
government or military might of these countries may be morally just or
even required, but it will not render the enemy incapable of continuing
operations against the United States. It is therefore not clear that a
conventional war with countries that deliberately aided the culprits will
achieve military victory. The ability of the attackers to draw sustenance
from a wide array of willing and unwilling hosts may render them
impervious to the defeat of a supporting country. The military must
systematically attack an organization that tries very hard not to have a
systematic structure that can be attacked. In order for this war to
succeed, the key capability will not be primarily military force but
highly refined, real-time intelligence about the behavior of a small
number of individuals. But as the events of the last few days have shown,
this is not a strength of the American intelligence community. And that
is the ultimate dilemma for policymakers. If the kind of war we can wage
well won't do the job, and we lack the confidence in our expertise to wage
the kind of war we need to conduct, then what is to be done? The easy
answer -- to fight the battle we fight best -- may not be the right answer,
or it may be only part of the solution.
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