Tuesday, May 02, 2006
The rendering of Mustafa Setmarian Nasar
The good news is that the Pakistanis captured another al Qaeda veteran from the glory days. The better news is that they did it "some time ago" and we are only learning about it now. The best news of all is that they turned him over to us, and we spirited him out of the country to God knows where.
Nasar was captured in a November sting in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta that left one person dead, the American official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The official spoke to the AP late last week.
If the "American official" isn't a traitor, we have long since learned what we are going to learn from Mr. Nasar.
What might we have learned?
Pakistani and American officials have long been tightlipped on the status of Nasar. He has been described by the U.S. Justice Department as a former trainer at bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan who helped teach extremists to use poisons and chemicals....
Media reports have linked Nasar, who holds Spanish citizenship, to the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people, and to the July 7 attacks in London that left 56 dead, including the four bombers.
In September 2003, Nasar was among 35 people named in a Spanish indictment for terrorist activities connected to al-Qaida. His exact role, if any, to either the Madrid or London bombings is unclear.
He is also wanted for a 1985 attack on a restaurant near a military base close to Madrid airport that left about 20 people dead - regarded as the first international Islamic terrorist attack to take place in Spain.
How excellent is it that we nailed this guy?
Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said Nasar's capture is a major blow to the al-Qaida movement because he was the "most prolific writer" of jihadi propaganda and held close links with extremists throughout Europe and South Asia.
"The ideologues are as equally important as the operational people and he was in close contact with very prominent figures with movements in different countries, particularly the North African region," Gunaratna said.
In 2004, Nasar released a 1,600-page book titled "The International Islamic Resistance Call," which lays out strategies for attacking Islam's enemies.
Jeffrey Cozzens of the Counterterrorism Blog has the low-down on the importance of Nasar's ideological writings.
There will be those who say that the capture of yet another "senior al Qaeda operative" means nothing, first because we don't know how many there are, and second, because there is always another who will volunteer. Under the "hydra" theory of the jihad, killing jihadis isn't progress.
But it buys time. As I wrote last weekend over at The Belmont Club,
Al Qaeda and its followers are of greatly varying training and competence. A veteran of Afghanistan who can travel in the West is extremely dangerous. An untrained Dutch Muslim on the streets of Amsterdam can kill a few people, but probably cannot kill a great many people and certainly will not be trusted by the people in al Qaeda with that organization’s most precious secrets or assets.
It is therefore important to kill or capture al Qaeda veterans. Yes, others will spring up as long as the ideology remains sufficiently credible to attract new blood. But -- and this is a huge "but" -- the new recruits will take time to train (especially now that Afghanistan is interdicted) and an even longer time to earn the leadership's trust. Every new recruit is a potential spy, and will not soon be trusted with weapons of mass destruction ... even if the network acquires them in deployable form.
When we grab a veteran, we create a hole in the organization that will have to be filled by a new guy. Every time that happens, the counterinsurgency has an opportunity to insert a spy. We know that, and al Qaeda knows that. It forces them to lower internal trust, and that will interfere with the planning and execution of operations, especially long-distance mass casualty attacks. Since it is long-distance mass casualty attacks that we most want to prevent, rejoice in the killing or capture of a veteran.
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu May 04, 04:56:00 PM:
Your point about replacements is well taken.
Toward the end of WWII, both the Luftwaffe and the Japanese air force were combat ineffective because their experienced pilots had been killed--the replacements might have had 20 hours of stick time before heading into combat. Most were shot down well before they hit their targets.
In the US military, it takes 13 weeks to train a basic rifleman, and many of the NCOs have a dozen or more years of study.
Presumably, even in the terrorist world, smart, cool recruits who can speak passable English (Spanish, French, German, etc) don't exactly grow on trees.
