[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
TERRORIST THREAT TO THE U.S. HOMELAND--AL-QAEDA IN THE ARABIAN
PENINSULA (AQAP)
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COUNTERTERRORISM
AND INTELLIGENCE
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 2, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-5
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Peter T. King, New York, Chairman
Lamar Smith, Texas Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Daniel E. Lungren, California Loretta Sanchez, California
Mike Rogers, Alabama Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Michael T. McCaul, Texas Henry Cuellar, Texas
Gus M. Bilirakis, Florida Yvette D. Clarke, New York
Paul C. Broun, Georgia Laura Richardson, California
Candice S. Miller, Michigan Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
Tim Walberg, Michigan Islands
Chip Cravaack, Minnesota Danny K. Davis, Illinois
Joe Walsh, Illinois Brian Higgins, New York
Patrick Meehan, Pennsylvania Jackie Speier, California
Ben Quayle, Arizona Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana
Scott Rigell, Virginia Hansen Clarke, Michigan
Billy Long, Missouri William R. Keating, Massachusetts
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Vacancy
Tom Marino, Pennsylvania
Blake Farenthold, Texas
Mo Brooks, Alabama
Michael J. Russell, Staff Director/Chief Counsel
Kerry Ann Watkins, Senior Policy Director
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
I. Lanier Avant, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE
Patrick Meehan, Pennsylvania, Chairman
Paul C. Broun, Georgia, Vice Chair Jackie Speier, California
Chip Cravaack, Minnesota Loretta Sanchez, California
Joe Walsh, Illinois Henry Cuellar, Texas
Ben Quayle, Arizona Brian Higgins, New York
Scott Rigell, Virginia Vacancy
Billy Long, Missouri Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Peter T. King, New York (Ex (Ex Officio)
Officio)
Kevin Gundersen, Staff Director
Alan Carroll, Subcommittee Clerk
Stephen Vina, Minority Subcommittee Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Statements
The Honorable Patrick Meehan, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Pennsylvania, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence.............................. 1
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on
Homeland Security.............................................. 2
Witness
Dr. Christopher Boucek, Associate, Carnegie Endownment for
International Peace:
Oral Statement................................................. 4
Prepared Statement............................................. 6
Dr. Jarrett Brachman, Managing Director, Cronus Global:
Oral Statement................................................. 9
Prepared Statement............................................. 10
Mr. Barak Barfi, Research Fellow, New America Foundation:
Oral Statement................................................. 15
Prepared Statement............................................. 17
Appendix
Questions Submitted by Honorable Billy Long for Christopher
Boucek......................................................... 37
Questions Submitted by Honorable Billy Long for Jarret Brachman.. 38
Questions Submitted by Honorable Billy Long for Barak Barfi...... 38
TERRORIST THREAT TO THE U.S. HOMELAND--AL QAEDA IN THE ARABIAN
PENINSULA (AQAP)
----------
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in
Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Patrick Meehan
[Chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Meehan, Cravaack, Walsh, Quayle,
Rigell, Long, Thompson, Jackson Lee, Higgins, and Clarke.
Also present: Representative Long.
Mr. Meehan [presiding]. Good morning. The Committee on
Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and
Intelligence is now going to come to order. The subcommittee is
meeting today to hear testimony on the threat posed to the U.S.
homeland by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
I would like to welcome everyone to what is the first
hearing now of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and
Intelligence in this 112th Congress. I look forward to hearing
from today's witnesses on the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula to the United States homeland.
I also look forward to working with the Members of the
subcommittee in a bipartisan fashion to ensure that we are
doing our best to protect the homeland. One of the great, I
think, legacies of this committee has been the bipartisan
approach to looking at our shared interest in both assessing
the nature of the threat as well as protecting our homeland.
Now, this may be the first committee hearing we have held
from this subcommittee, but it is done in the context of some
work that has already taken place just in the course of the
last few weeks. In fact, on February 9 the full committee heard
from Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano that the
terrorist threat to the United States homeland was at its
``most heightened state since 9/11.''
At the same hearing, we heard Michael Leiter, who is the
director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who told
Members that he considered al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula to
be ``the most significant threat to the homeland.''
So it is under these sort of very clear and sobering
assessments that we convene today's hearing to examine this
emerging and multi-faceted threat that is posed by al-Qaeda on
the Arabian Peninsula. We have a panel of outside experts here
to discuss this issue, and I look forward to hearing from their
analysis.
Since 9/11, the threat from al-Qaeda has evolved. Today the
enemy we face is more diverse, diffuse, and decentralized, yet
in many ways more dangerous and more difficult for law
enforcement and the intelligence community to detect. According
to Attorney General Eric Holder, in the last 2 years there have
been 126 people indicted just in the last 2 years on terrorism-
related charges, including 50 United States citizens.
Among those charged include the Christmas day 2009 bomber,
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; the Fort Hood shooter, U.S. Army
Major Nidal Hasan; the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad; the
Little Rock recruiting center shooter, Carlos Bledsdoe; the
Mumbai plotter, David Headley; Colleen LaRose, just recently
dealt with in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where I was
the United States Attorney, aka Jihad Jane. I also had the
opportunity at that point in time to work on the Fort Dix Six.
Now, these plots are just an example of some, and they
differ. But a number of them emanated from Yemen, and they were
inspired or planned by a radical cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki.
They involved the use of the internet as a tool to recruit and
to facilitate terroristic threats.
Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula has shown itself to be
successful at recruiting westerners and allowing the enemy to
reach deeply into the United States to inspire individuals to
wage jihad. One of the tools, one of the mechanisms, has been
not just the internet, but the whole use of this new-age media.
One of the things we want to explore is the extent to which
this is an actual or real facilitator and posing a real element
to the emerging threat.
So this is a dangerous and incredibly challenging problem
in any context. I will close my comments by saying, of course,
all of this takes place in the context of what are currently
rapidly changing events all throughout the Mid-East, but in
Yemen among them.
The ramifications for counterterrorism and intelligence
policy and operations for the United States in months to come
are all going to be very real as we look at the changing nature
of what is going on in Yemen, this place in which there is in
many ways a protected stronghold for al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula.
So I want to thank our presenters here today. We look
forward to the opportunity to learn from your observations.
At this point in time, I would like to turn it over to the
Ranking Member of the Full Committee, the gentleman from
Mississippi, Mr. Thompson, for any comments or statements that
he may have.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
holding this hearing. Congratulations on your new position.
I think it is clear that I am not Jane Harman. As you know,
Ms. Harman recently resigned from Congress and has moved on to
another position. So while we wish her well, her expertise in
the subject matter area will sorely be missed.
However, I also want to join you in welcoming all of our
witnesses, including Mr. Barfi, who just came back from
witnessing history in Egypt and Bahrain. As I am sure he will
tell us, democracy is on the march in North Africa and the
Middle East. While the risk of terrorists exploiting the
instability is real, the possibilities for good are endless.
Yemen is one of the places that has seen its share of
unrest, which continues to make it ripe for al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, to strive. Within the last couple of
years, AQAP has supported two major attempts on the homeland--
the Christmas day bomber and the printer cartridge plot.
Fortunately, these attacks did not materialize.
But AQAP has changed the name of the game, making a failure
that causes us to panic just as good as a successful attack. As
we know, AQAP leaders are trying to spread this message far
beyond the borders of Yemen with flashy magazines aimed at
Western audiences. These threats to the homeland cannot be
ignored, just like the threats from other domestic extremist
groups.
We should also remember that Yemen is an extremely fragile
state, making it fertile ground for violent extremists. Faced
with rebellion in the northern provinces and succession talks
in the south, the Yemeni government has little time to focus
directly on AQAP. The recent political unrest has only
compounded the situation.
Moreover, Yemen's oil reserves, its largest source of
revenue, are dwindling, as is the Nation's water supply, while
the population continues to skyrocket. Extremist groups have
flourished in Yemen by exploiting these weaknesses and the
government's lack of control.
While there is no simple answer to address the problems
that beset Yemen, many experts agree that we need a
comprehensive strategy that addresses governments and
development in addition to military and counterterrorism needs.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses
about how we can bring more stability to Yemen and tackle the
threats of al-Qaeda. I yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Thompson.
I want the other committee Members to be reminded that
opening statements may be submitted for the record.
Now, we are pleased to have three distinguished witnesses
before us today on this very, very important topic. Let me
remind the witnesses that their entire written statement will
appear in the record.
So what I would like to do is to first introduce our first
witness, Dr. Christopher Boucek. Dr. Boucek is an associate in
the Carnegie Middle East Program, where his research focuses on
security challenges in the Arabian Gulf and Northern Africa. He
is a recognized expert on terrorism, security, and stability
issues in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen.
He frequently briefs the United States and European
government and government agencies on terrorism, Islamist
militancy, and security issues in the Arabian Peninsula and
regularly provides expert analysis for domestic and
international media on all of the top media outlets.
His current research project includes clerical politics in
Saudi Arabia and the confluences of challenges to Yemeni
stability, one of the issues that both myself and Mr. Thompson
have already identified. He has provided expert testimony
before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Armed
Services Committee.
Before joining Carnegie, he was a post-doctoral researcher
at Princeton University and a lecturer on politics at the
Woodrow Wilson School. He served as a media analyst at the
royal embassy in Saudi Arabia and Washington, DC, and for
several years at the Royal United States Institute for Defense
and Security Studies in London, where he still remains an
associate fellow.
He has also been a security editor with Jane's Information
Group and is a graduate of the Oriental and African Studies
Program at the University of London and a BA from Drew
University.
Dr. Boucek, you are recognized now to summarize your
testimony for 5 minutes, please. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER BOUCEK, ASSOCIATE, CARNEGIE ENDOWNMENT
FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
Mr. Boucek. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, Members of the
subcommittee, thank you very much for the opportunity to be
here today to discuss the challenges posed by Yemen's
increasingly fragile situation in the rise of al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula. I think what I would like to do is just make
a few very brief points.
First of all, I think it is good to follow on the points
that were initially raised by stressing that Yemen is a country
under enormous stress. Everything that could possibly be going
wrong in the country is going wrong. They have a failing
economy, rapidly growing population, endemic corruption. Soon
the country will run out of both oil and water, as was
mentioned. You have systemic problems with governance,
unemployment, and rising grievances.
In addition to these systemic factors, you have an on-going
civil war in Saada in the north of the country, a secessionist
movement in the south, and a resurgent al-Qaeda organization,
plus the new protest movement that we have seen emerge over the
last several weeks.
It is this resurgent al-Qaeda organization that brings us
here today. I would follow on the observations made in earlier
testimony and say that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP,
represents the greatest threat to American security from any
terrorist organization right now. I would say that AQAP is a
bigger threat than the al-Qaeda senior leadership at the core
al-Qaeda hiding out in Pakistan.
If you look at what happened on Christmas day, this was the
first time that al-Qaeda successfully attacked a domestic
American target, and the plot did not come out of South Asia.
It came out of Yemen.
This was followed 2 months later by the package bomb case.
Again, this was, you know, very worst in development, because
neither of these plots came from South Asia, from Pakistan or
bin Laden or Zawahiri. This is al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula.
I think it is useful to point out that what we have seen in
this organization in the 2 years since it has been created,
AQAP has become an increasingly agile, opportunistic, and
lethal organization. They have an extremely fast learning
curve, where they observe what happened. They are very savvy
consumers of the media and everything that we say and write
about them, and it cycles back into their learning curve.
I think if you look at what is going on in Pakistan, you
see that al-Qaeda's under sustained pressure, and that pressure
does not exist in Yemen. There are two things that are needed
to fight terrorism--the capacity to do so and the political
will. Right now, the Yemeni government is short on both.
All the assets that the Yemeni government focuses on
fighting the civil war or the southern secessionist movement or
staying in power with the protest movement or to do with the
economy or water or population growth are resources not focused
on fighting al-Qaeda. This is a problem for not only the United
States, but for the international community.
I think it would be very easy to look at the deteriorating
security situation in Yemen and think of it as a foreign policy
issue. While it is certainly a foreign policy issue, and a very
important one, there is also a domestic security issue.
I think you can make the argument that you could look at
the majority of plots and plans in this country for the past 18
or 24 months, and you would see the vast majority of them are
tied to either Yemen al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or Anwar
Awlaki, the Yemeni American cleric who is hiding out in Yemen.
It is unfortunate that we do not have a very good
understanding of AQAP. Westerners don't go to Yemen as they
used to. It is an increasingly more difficult place to go do
your research.
But from what we do see, we see the organization has a very
sophisticated media apparatus, which my colleague will speak
about, able to deliver their message in English and in Arabic.
You no longer need to have, you know, Arabic language or know-
how to use jihadi web forums to access this information. It is
out there in English. AQAP has broadened the potential audience
for their message.
I think a very important point is how Yemen has changed.
Yemen used to be a place to train or rest between participating
in jihad abroad. It has been transformed into a place where it
is legitimate to engage in jihad. If you want to resist
American aggression, if you want to fight an illegitimate
government, you can do this in Yemen.
So now being transformed as a source of inspiration, you
don't need to come to Yemen to do this. You can read what the
organization writes, and it says very clearly you can do more
damage staying at home. You can do more damage shooting up a
restaurant in Washington, DC, at lunchtime than you can trying
to come to Yemen to participate in jihad.
The final point I would make is that while this is a
terrorism issue, and it is a terrorism issue for us, the answer
is not all counterterrorism. We need to help the Yemeni
government build the capacity to deal with these issues. If we
focus only on counterterrorism, we run the risk of exacerbating
these issues.
So we need to have a robust counterterrorism posture, and
we need to support the Yemeni government. We can't do this to
the exclusion of everything else. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Boucek follows:]
Prepared Statement of Christopher Boucek
March 2, 2011
Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members of the committee, thank you for
inviting me here today.
Yemen is facing an unprecedented confluence of crises, the
combination of which threatens to overwhelm the beleaguered Yemeni
government. The country's problems include international terrorism,
violent extremism, religious and tribal conflict, separatism, and
transnational smuggling. Attempts to build effective national
governance are frustrated by porous borders, a heavily armed
population, and a historical absence of much central government
control. More than 3 million barrels of oil pass the country's coast
every day, through treacherous waters where Islamist terrorists and
Somali pirates have staged several successful maritime attacks,
threatening to disrupt international commerce and the flow of vital
hydrocarbons. These challenges not only endanger Yemen's stability and
regional security, but they also threaten American domestic security.
Interrelated economic, demographic, and domestic security
challenges are converging to threaten the stability of Yemen. At the
heart of the country's problems is a looming economic crisis. Yemen's
oil reserves are fast running out, with few viable options for a
sustainable post-oil economy. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab
world, with most people surviving on less than one dollar per day. Its
population growth rate, which exceeds 3 percent per year, is among the
world's highest. The government has been unable to provide adequate
educational or other public services for the rapidly expanding
population, more than two-thirds of which is under the age of 24, and
illiteracy stands at over 50 percent (and close to 70 percent for
women). The faltering economy and poorly prepared workforce have pushed
unemployment to almost 40 percent. The country's dire economic
circumstances will soon limit the government's ability to deliver the
funds needed to hold the country together. The population is expected
to double to 40 million over the next two decades, by which time Yemen
will no longer be an oil producer, and its water resources will be
severely diminished. This is currently the greatest source of violence
in the country; an estimated 80 percent of violence in Yemen is about
access to water. A rapidly expanding and increasingly poorer population
places unbearable pressure on the government's ability to provide basic
services. Domestic security is endangered by Islamist terrorism,
magnified by a resurgent al-Qaeda organization, an armed insurrection
in the North, and an increasingly active secessionist movement in the
South.
The recent wave of unrest rocking the Middle East has not spared
Yemen. Popular protests in Sana'a, Taiz, Aden, and other cities against
the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh have been on-going since
January. This latest challenge has mobilized a segment of the
population that has thus far not presented much challenge to the Yemeni
government. In an attempt to short-circuit the protest movement, the
government announced a series of economic concessions. It sought to
maintain the allegiance of the military and security forces by
announcing pay raises and even access to free food and gas. It
addressed the concerns of civil servants by putting into immediate
effect salary increases for the lowest paid employees originally
scheduled for October 2011. It cut the national income tax by half and
reportedly increased some subsidies and introduced new price controls.
The government also waved university tuition fees for currently
enrolled students and announced a scheme to help new university
graduates find employment. Finally, it extended social welfare
assistance to an additional half-million families.
When economic measures failed to quell the discontent, President
Saleh turned to political concessions. In a speech to the parliament
and shura council on February 2, he announced that he would not stand
for re-election in 2013 and that his eldest son and presumed heir,
General Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, commander of the Republican Guard,
would also not run for president. He ``froze'' the implementation of a
controversial constitutional amendment eliminating term limits on the
presidency. Saleh also stated that regional governors would now be
directly elected rather than indirectly elected by local councils, a
little noticed but important change. And finally, he called for the
formation of a national unity government and the re-launching of the
stalled national dialogue process, and postponed parliamentary
elections scheduled for this April to allow time to properly prepare.
Although the regime nominally met almost all of its demands, the
opposition promptly rejected the concessions, not trusting the
president to keep his promises. Saleh has previously pledged not to
seek re-election, but has gone back on his word numerous times in the
past.
Yemen's challenges are compounded by corruption, severe governance
deficiencies, and an absence of central government control in much of
the country, as well as by the pending transition in political
leadership. While Saleh announced last month that he would not stand
for re-election, he has no obvious successor. The post-Saleh government
will be severely strained by a combination of reduced revenue,
diminished state capacity, and three on-going conflicts including the
7-year-old civil war in the North against the Houthi rebels, an
increasingly violent secessionist movement in the South, and a
resurgent al-Qaeda organization.
The deteriorating security situation in Yemen is not purely an
international issue. Greater instability in Yemen is a domestic
American security issue, as evidenced by the emergence of al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula.
AL-QAEDA IN THE ARABIAN PENINSULA
Since its creation in January 2009, the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has eclipsed ``core al-Qaeda'' as the primary
terrorist threat to U.S. National security. Since last year I have
asserted that AQAP has emerged as the organization most likely to kill
American Nationals and to attack U.S. interests. In an address at the
Carnegie Endowment last December, Assistant to the President for
Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan termed AQAP ``the
most operationally active node of the al-Qaeda network.'' In testimony
last month, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter
referred to AQAP as the most significant risk to the U.S. homeland.
AQAP has rapidly evolved into an increasingly lethal and agile
organization, with a proven track record of mounting operations within
Yemen, regionally, and internationally. AQAP thrives on Yemen's
internal disarray. The government's inability to control territory
provides the space al-Qaeda craves, using poverty and legitimate
grievances against a repressive domestic regime to win support.
AQAP learned the lessons of the failed al-Qaeda campaign in Saudi
Arabia. It avoids targeting Yemeni civilians, has a highly
sophisticated media apparatus, and is cautious not to repeat the same
mistakes made in the kingdom. More worrisome, when initial operations
have been unsuccessful, AQAP has re-attacked the same target, such as
the U.S. Embassy in Sana'a (attacked twice in 2009), Saudi Prince
Muhammad bin Nayef (who has survived four reported assassination
attempts by AQAP), and British diplomatic targets in Sana'a (attacked
twice in 2010). This should serve as a very dire warning when we
consider AQAP's two attempted attacks so far against U.S. aviation
targets.
The organization has a very fast learning curve, quickly adjusts
and improvises, and is very adept at exploiting opportunities. AQAP has
been clear in stating its planned objectives, and it has repeatedly
delivered on its threats. These concerns are heightened by the presence
of Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi in Yemen and his alleged role
in inciting English-speaking foreigners to engage in violence and
militancy. Moreover, many of the recent alleged terrorist plots and
plans in the United States appear to be linked to Yemen, AQAP, and
Awlaqi.
The attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 235 over Detroit on
Christmas day 2009 marked the first time since the September 11 attacks
that al-Qaeda had successfully engaged a domestic American target. This
attack was further noteworthy because the plot did not originate in
South Asia with the al-Qaeda Senior Leadership--it came from Yemen. The
Christmas day attack was followed some 10 months later when AQAP again
targeted U.S. aviation assets with the attempted delivery of explosives
concealed as cargo packages mailed from Yemen. The worst-case scenario
was narrowly avoided in both these cases, but not by successful
proactive counter-terrorism efforts. We cannot count on our luck
continuing.
The 2009 Christmas day attack demonstrated an early desire to
attack on American soil. The October 2010 parcel bomb plot is just the
latest evidence that AQAP is now the greatest single terrorist threat
to the security of the United States--a greater danger even than al-
Qaeda's central leadership.
AQAP's growing ambitions and reach have also seen more successful
operations in Yemen itself. In 2010 there were more than 50 AQAP
attacks in Yemen. In the first 2 months of 2011 there have been over 10
attacks. AQAP has targeted energy infrastructure, foreigners, and
domestic security forces. It has also successfully cast U.S. air
strikes and military support--including cruise missile strikes in
December 2009--as examples of American aggression.
We should be clear that there is much that we do not know about
AQAP. While we may want to view AQAP as a formal organization with an
established hierarchy, other analysts have also noted that it is
doubtful that killing or capturing the group's top leaders will
eliminate Yemen's al-Qaeda problem. It would likely degrade AQAP's
ability to mount operations; however, the grievances that fuel
militancy in Yemen would also likely remain.
I would suggest that there are likely several trends within AQAP.
First, the Yemenis active in the organization seem to be focused
primarily on a local agenda. Second, the Saudis active in the group are
generally less focused on local Yemeni politics and more intent upon
returning to the kingdom to strike at the Saudi government. The third
trend is that foreign nationals--as well as some Yemenis and Saudis--
are focusing primarily on international and Western targets. I would
place within this last grouping the Westerners active with AQAP--
including Americans--as well as Anwar al-Awlaqi. These distinctions are
not hard and fast, and there is very likely movement and overlap
between them.
MEDIA USAGE
The group is very skilled at amplifying its message, as seen by the
debut of the AQAP-affiliated English-language magazine Inspire calling
for attacks on the United States. Its powers of communication, along
with growing military successes, have begun to attract increasing
numbers of foreign terrorists into Yemen. The organization has
developed a very sophisticated media operation, in both Arabic and
English. Through the English-language magazine Inspire, now in its
fourth issue, the organization is able to reach a much broader
audience. In addition, just about the time that Inspire was first
released in July 2010, a new YouTube channel appeared featuring many of
AQAP's videos subtitled into English. While the channel is no longer
available, the material remains on-line, reposted by other users. Both
of these developments demonstrate how AQAP has dramatically increased
the size of its potential audience. No longer does one need Arabic or
particular know-how to navigate jihadi web forums. Non-Arabic speakers
can now access this material using Google and YouTube.
YEMEN'S CHANGING ROLE
Over the years, Yemen had been a place to train and prepare for
jihad or to rest between campaigns. It is now being transformed into an
actual theater of jihad. As other observers have noted, Yemen is being
portrayed by AQAP as a place where it is legitimate to engage in jihad.
In this portrayal, aspiring militants can resist American aggression
and fight an illegitimate government in Yemen. AQAP has gone on to
further recast Yemen as a ``source of inspiration'' for potential
extremists located overseas. The organization has noted in Inspire that
volunteers can do greater damage at home, without needing to travel
abroad.
In conclusion, AQAP has quickly eclipsed core al-Qaeda as the most
immediate terrorist threat to U.S. persons and interests. While the al-
Qaeda Senior Leadership may still have the ambition to launch
spectacular attacks against the United States, AQAP has emerged as the
more imminent threat. This is exacerbated by the concern that AQAP has
had success in recruiting Westerners, including converts, who do not
fit traditional terrorist profiles. It will be more difficult to
identify and disrupt plots led by these individuals. Very clearly
Yemen's problems are not staying in Yemen and AQAP poses a grave and
growing threat to American domestic security.
Mr. Meehan. Well, thank you, Dr. Boucek. In addition to
your very insightful observations, I note that you just got
that right done with 3 seconds to go, so you are obviously a
learned hand at this particular issue.
Let me ask our next witness, Dr. Jarret Brachman, the
managing director of Cronus Global, to be ready to make some
comments. But before he does so, let me introduce a bit about
Dr. Brachman's background.
He is an internationally recognized counterterrorism
specialist, author, and public lecturer. In 2003 while
completing his doctorate from the University of Delaware, he
served as a graduate fellow at the CIA's Counterterrorism
Center. In 2004 Dr. Brachman joined the Combating Terrorism
Center at West Point. Dr. Brachman became the Counterterrorism
Center's first director of research and oversaw a number of
research projects about al-Qaeda ideology and strategy.
In 2008 Dr. Brachman resigned from the West Point CTC and
returned to his hometown in North Dakota. He is now the
managing director of Cronus Global, a security and strategy
consulting group. Dr. Brachman published his first book,
``Global Jihadism Theory and Practice,'' in 2008.
Dr. Brachman, thank you for being here. You are now
recognized to summarize your testimony.
STATEMENT OF JARRETT BRACHMAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CRONUS GLOBAL
Mr. Brachman. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, distinguished Members of the subcommittee.
You know, I think maybe the best way to understand the al-
Qaeda media world is to think about it a little bit like
football. So if you think about the actual operatives out there
on the field like the NFL players, beyond that, though, you
have the commentators, who do the play-by-play analysis, right?
These are experts who may have been former players, but then
they step back. Then you have got a broader set of
commentators, who come on the roundtables.
But then you have got this whole on-line world of pundits,
of fans--you have die-hard fans--who are both on-line. If you
think about the role that, say, fantasy football has played in
allowing guys, who don't really go to games but can wear the
jerseys, to become obsessed, to throw themselves, to feel as if
they are right there on the field with their favorite players,
you know, that is kind of what has been going on with al-Qaeda
in terms of their media outlet.
They have taken this ability for people who are--you know,
it used to be very elitist. It was very difficult to get out
there and do something, but now, thanks to the internet, anyone
anywhere can feel empowered to play a part in this.
So if you look back to the way that al-Qaeda media has
developed over the past 10 years, I think it helps to
understand where AQAP fits. Around the time of 9/11, al-Qaeda
was very operationally centric, right? The point was to go
conduct operations and then cover it with the media in the
aftermath.
At the time we went into Afghanistan and we marginalized
their operational abilities, media started to take precedence.
In the absence of doing real operations, you could issue media
statements. Videos became the parallel of actually conducting
attacks.
So by 2005 to 2007, as al-Qaeda started to get back on its
legs, they realized, well, maybe there could be an interesting
symbiosis here between the media and the real world. And al-
Qaeda, I argue, started to shift its focus from being a
terrorist organization that haphazardly used the media almost
into a media organization that kind of haphazardly uses
terrorism, right?
So most of this media was focused in Arabic, so there was a
lot of excitement in the Arabic on-line world--again, this kind
of fantasy football metaphor where people could log on. They
could download these tactical manuals, download the strategic
manuals.
But the English-language speakers always felt like second-
class citizens in this world. You know, they tried to bring in
some populist figures, some Americans, Adam Gadahn, for
instance, who Zawahiri and bin Laden hoped would be kind of an
ambassador to the American, you know, al-Qaeda supporter world.
It just didn't work. They kept falling flat, because these
guys, although they are Americans, they looked and smelled just
like Zawahiri. They acted just like the Arabs did. So it wasn't
really compelling.
You started to see this shift when--there are a couple of
different individuals. One is Omar Hammami, who is an American
who went over to Somalia and released a rap video on-line,
right, a jihadi al-Qaeda rap video. This was all the rage for
these kids, because it was someone who looked like them, acted
like them, but who was out there doing it. It was again that
fantasy football. It was, like, what if I could strap on pads
for a day and go join, you know, my favorite team?
Another guy who became very compelling is Anwar Awlaki.
Again, it is because they had been following him for years. He
looked like them. He acted like them. But he was able to
upgrade. I mean, I call it something like ``al-Qaeda Idol,''
right? These aren't superstars anymore. These are people who
went through the process. They watched them go through the
process. They were just like them, but then they could go do
it.
So I think what AQAP is really focused on is making this
movement more accessible not only with the flashy graphics, but
providing not just objects, but experiences, a quest, an
adventure that kids can be a part of. They can feel as if, you
know, the more I learn, the more status in this world I will
get.
It is like trading baseball cards. It is not really about
the baseball card itself. It is about the process of going to
buy them with your friends, talking about it, researching who
has got the best cards, who can trade them. You know, it is the
knowledge that you gain from being a part of this community.
So I think there is a little misplaced focus within the
Government on, you know, how scary the tactics that are being
promoted in these magazines are. These tactics have been around
for a decade. They have been, you know, venerable.
It is that AQAP has managed to consolidate them in a very
accessible, engaging, more importantly, fun and competitive
way. They have turned al-Qaeda into an on-line game, into a
fantasy football environment where, you know, you can join up
at your own time at your own leisure and, you know, you can do
this from the comfort of your own home. So thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Brachman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jarret Brachman
March 2, 2011
Although there can be no disputing the success that al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) has reaped as of late by using the internet
to inspire and mobilize on-line followers in the United States, the
underlying reasons for that success remains poorly understood within
the American counterterrorism community. This is largely due to the
fact that most analytical attention is being paid to the tactical
dimension of AQAP's media releases--stylistic elements, the Americans
who are mentioned by name or specific threats made--while relatively
little focus is given to the mechanics underlying AQAP's on-line
mobilization strategy. It is as if the counterterrorism community has
been so fixated on the latest bells and whistles of AQAP propaganda
that few analysts have actually popped the hood.
My testimony today will concentrate on examining why AQAP's media
products and personalities have found so much resonance with English-
speaking individuals outside of the Gulf region of the Middle East,
paying specific attention to the threat it poses to the U.S. homeland.
From Texas to Virginia to New York and beyond, AQAP's American
supporters seem to be finding self-actualization in consuming and
reproducing AQAP's internet messaging, both in the virtual world and,
increasingly, in the physical world.
I argue that AQAP's strategic approach to on-line media has allowed
the organization to deliver more than just information to its on-line
supporters. AQAP now provides its on-line community with a compelling,
comic book experience, one that equips individuals with the tools they
need while demystifying the path they must take, to become their own
al-Qaeda superhero.
AQAP provides an arena for escapist fantasy and role-playing by
empowering their audience with new knowledge, skill-sets, role models,
and incentives for actualizing that knowledge. AQAP's role models, like
any comic superhero, are portrayed as average men who discover that
they have superhuman abilities. These ``ordinary guys turned
superheroes'' who comprise AQAP's dominant media personalities must
then wield their superpowers to triumph over evil (the Crusaders) and
save damsels in distress (Islam).
Just as kids in the United States trade comic books and baseball
cards, Tweets, and Facebook comments, American supporters of al-Qaeda
now can trade AQAP media products and insights. They can play along on-
line or try to replicate AQAP's adventures at home. AQAP is not just
about an abstract fight against a faceless enemy for their American on-
line cheerleaders. Thanks to its clever use of English-language media,
AQAP has been able to put those American supporters on a noble quest to
vanquish injustice and save the world from the invading evil.
THE AL-AWLAKI EFFECT
Shaykh Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American-born hardline Islamic cleric
who now serves as a senior member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP), has managed to become the most likeable terrorist among Western
al-Qaeda supporters. Although al-Awlaki has been focused on quietly
desensitizing his audiences to a hardline reading of Islam through his
prolific internet-based video and audio lectures for over a decade, al-
Awlaki's recent shift to openly and directly calling for violence
against the United States has meant new challenges for America's
counterterrorism professionals.
Al-Awlaki offers AQAP something that few al-Qaeda personalities
have been able to do: Speak persuasively to an English-speaking
audience without a deep knowledge of Islamic history or interest in
complex theological arguments. To the contrary, al-Awlaki speaks as a
populist about everyday challenges that Muslims face. This inclusive
approach has helped to brand al-Awlaki as one of al-Qaeda's most user-
friendly personalities--he has become an al-Qaeda gateway drug so to
speak.
Now that he is formally aligned with AQAP, al-Awlaki has focused on
using the internet to repackage al-Qaeda's often elitist, esoteric, and
inhospitable message into something that more individuals in more
geographical locations who hold a wider range of beliefs are able to
both understand and, importantly, aspire to replicate on their own.
Al-Awlaki's accessibility is a function of his stylized persona: He
is a caricature of previous generations of hard-line clerics. He has
replicated all of their surface attributes: He carries himself like
them, preaches like them, and addresses similar issues. But the
difference between al-Awlaki and the legendary jihadist cleric, Abu
Muhammad al-Maqdisi, for example, is that al-Awlaki lacks depth, both
in knowledge and expertise. Ironically, however it is his lack of
religious knowledge that he trades on. In other words, al-Awlaki is a
replica of the real thing that sells precisely because he is perceived
as being more authentic for not being an al-Maqdisi.
Seeing al-Awlaki in video form allows his fans to better comprehend
the difference between who they are and who they want to be--embodied
in him. Thanks to the internet, an army of young individuals who want
to be the next al-Awlaki are now doing their own al-Awlaki
impersonations. The more that they have seen al-Awlaki perform, and the
easier that celebrities like al-Awlaki make it for anyone to act like
them, speak like them, and preach like them, the more these individuals
begin to identify as--and occasionally acting like--these al-Qaeda
celebrities themselves. The line between their physical self that is
performing and the virtual self that they have constructed in the image
of their favorite caricatures begins to blur.
INSPIRING ACTION
Perhaps no AQAP media product has been better for blurring the
virtual and physical worlds than its English-language magazine,
Inspire. Since releasing their first issue of Inspire, AQAP has
continued to pioneer creative ways for empowering and motivating their
on-line supporters. Although the magazine's kitschy tactical advice and
slick graphical featurettes has made for compelling headlines, most
public discussions about the magazine have yet to provide an adequate
explanation for why Inspire actually matters.
Certainly the Inspire series has helped to make al-Qaeda's
personalities and ideology more accessible to more people. But such
intense focus about the magazine's engaging tone and stylistic
attributes reflect the general low-level of theoretical sophistication
in the counterterrorism field today. Inspire is far more than just
another propaganda junket released by al-Qaeda: It is not just about
getting kids to blindly follow Inspire's recipe for building ``a bomb
in the kitchen of your mom.''
The real reason that Inspire should be considered such an
achievement for al-Qaeda is that it lowers the proverbial wall that has
deterred most on-line al-Qaeda supporters from actually going
operational. Until recently, most of al-Qaeda's internet cheerleaders,
or ``jihobbyists'' as I have referred to them previously, have confined
their participation to the bounds of their on-line communities. It was
the exception to the rule that an internet supporter would actually log
off their computers and pick up a weapon to go kill in the physical
world.
Before individuals like Zachary Chesser, Nidal Hasan--both of whom
were in direct contact with al-Awlaki, there had been few ``internet
supporters turned real world terrorists'' because the gulf between
thought and action has been too great. The incentives for bridging that
gulf were not compelling enough to entice a mass migration of on-line
jihadists to the physical world. Political scientists might refer to
this as a free-rider problem, where individuals benefit off of the work
being done by others without paying their share.
With the barriers so high and the incentives for martyrdom so
seemingly distant--most on-line supporters al-Qaeda kept running into a
glass ceiling. No matter what they did, their global on-line supporters
remained, by and large, part-time jihadists, logging on to their
favorite websites after work or on weekends. These armchair enthusiasts
who put on their al-Qaeda costumes when it is convenient for them do
not get al-Qaeda to where they want to go. Inspire, al-Awlaki, and AQAP
is trying to change all that.
Nobody understood that challenge of prodding jihadist supporters
down radicalization road better than Anwar al-Awlaki. The American-
Yemeni born cleric now spearheading AQAP's English-language outreach
division and the Inspire initiative had been trying to incrementally
radicalize his fan club for years. But since joining AQAP, al-Awlaki's
approach shifted from sowing seeds of long-term jihadi radicalization--
as he had been doing historically--to harvesting as many crops as
possible.
Al-Awlaki's personal website, which went down in the aftermath of
the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, served as the virtual home to hundreds of
al-Awlaki's devotees. Many of their web postings reflected a desire to
live up to themselves--to attain in the physical world the kind of
power and influence that they had earned in the virtual world.
As these individuals read Inspire and watch AQAP videos, as they
register on al-Qaeda web forums and build avatars on social networking
sites, they become increasingly ``real'' within al-Qaeda's virtual
space. For some users, these on-line personas, or avatars, are close
mirrors of their physical lives. Individuals may use their own images
on their profile pages or openly discuss things that happen in their
physical lives. Others, however, create stylized personas that differ
significantly from the physical lives they lead. These personas are
generally bad replicas of stylized caricatures of their heroes, such as
al-Awlaki.
Individuals begin interacting within certain on-line environments
and try to replicate identities and attributes that they find ideal. In
the process of registering, programming, uploading, and interacting
with others by posting, tagging, and instant messaging, they gain a
sense for the behavioral norms and expectations within that context. It
is this communication of the kinds of social markers--attributes,
accoutrements, and vernacular--that are common and acceptable among
their peers that Inspire has been able to offer.
Whereas al-Qaeda supporters clamor for authentic experiences, they
embrace what Randall L. Rose and Stacy L. Wood refer to as the ``ironic
mixture of factitious and the spontaneous.'' In other words, al-Qaeda
on-line users have created a world premised on aspiring to the
authentic but they do so in the most inauthentic of places: The
internet. Achieving real-life authenticity on-line is, by definition,
not authentic at all. Rather, it is a fictionalized, stylized version
of authenticity that on-line participants can believe is authentic
because it is as close as most of them will ever come to living up to
their virtual selves.
Through the process of ``doing'' on-line extremism, one gains a
sense for the available cast of roles to perform. In the act of
performing, individuals further entrench those roles within their
social context, making the roles all the more real. It is this
acceptance of the stylized, faux reality that allows AQAP to flourish.
Virtually everything about their propaganda, most notably the Inspire
magazine itself, is comic-book-like, cartoonish, or caricatured in
nature. But that disdain for authenticity in its traditional
understanding is what has allowed AQAP to snatch the proverbial
megaphone away from Al-Qaeda's Senior Leadership.
IMPLICATIONS
Since at least 2005, al-Qaeda's global movement has tried to
transform itself from an elitist, exclusive, hierarchical organization
into an increasingly inclusive global movement. More populist figures
like Abu Yahya al-Libi helped engage much of al-Qaeda's Arab audience,
but the Western, English-speaking part of the movement fell behind. Al-
Qaeda's English-language world needed a role model that it could call
its own: Someone who instinctively understood the challenges of being
Muslim in the West.
Anwar al-Awlaki, with his charismatic demeanor and simplified
approach to the issues he discusses, has strategically and
systematically made painted the notion of joining al-Qaeda a natural
progression next step from becoming more religious. In other words, he
has lowered the expectations of what it means to be a member of al-
Qaeda. Today, anyone can be an al-Qaeda propagandist, and al-Awlaki's
job is to narrow the distance between non-violent propagandist and
violent al-Qaeda activist. More people than ever are being called to
al-Qaeda, not through the clenched fists of Ayman al-Zawahiri, but
through the open arms of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Al-Awlaki has been so successful in winning the hearts and minds of
Westerners because he made his path to al-Qaeda a step-by-step program
that anyone could emulate. Western Muslims have listened to his audio
recordings over and over. Many have heard him preach in person and some
have even taken him out to lunch. His books have been read, his videos
watched. When al-Awlaki joined al-Qaeda, he took the next step. Now his
droves of supporters scramble to download the latest issue of Inspire
to see how they can be al-Awlaki better.
The biggest challenge for governments given this new situation is
that it means law enforcement will have a harder time distinguishing
between legitimate security threats and those who may be doing legal
activities in the name of al-Qaeda, such as making graphics or
websites. If they over-police those individuals who may not be
operationally supporting al-Qaeda, governments may actually be creating
a self-fulfilling prophecy, where their search for terrorists is
actually the catalyst for the emergence of operational terrorists, not
just virtual fantasy ones.
Unfortunately, there remains no consensus about how far is too far
when talking about using the internet to advocate on behalf of al-
Qaeda. Is uploading a photo of AQAP's Anwar al-Awlaki as one's Facebook
avatar a cause for concern? Or is this just a way to blow off steam?
Could it actually be cathartic--and therefore good for us--in that it
helps individuals release the frustration and anger they hold in the
real world? Or is it a slippery slope: One day uploading al-Awlaki
images, the next taking up arms against the United States?
That said, the al-Qaeda organization will face its own challenges
in steering and guiding this movement of wannabes. By appealing to the
lowest common denominator in making al-Qaeda so open and accessible,
individuals operating in the name of al-Qaeda will invariably do things
that are actually counterproductive to their strategic objectives.
Al-Qaeda has taken a gamble by flattening their movement. In the
short term, thanks to charismatic personalities like al-Awlaki, it has
created an influx of individuals who can now see themselves jumping
across a lower fence over to al-Qaeda's side. But in the long term it
may actually be a dilution of that which made al-Qaeda so exclusive,
and therefore alluring in the first place.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The U.S. Government is missing the boat on AQAP's use of the media
because it continues to view the problem through typically bureaucratic
lenses and relying on outmoded ideas for how to combat this threat.
What has the now decade-long Government conversation about empowering
``alternative voices'' and developing ``positive counter-narratives''
actually achieved? More Americans today have more opportunities to
support al-Qaeda in more ways than ever before.
A breath of fresh air has long been needed in this field, one that
approaches al-Qaeda's pioneering efforts to recruit, radicalize,
mobilize, and operationalize Americans via internet propaganda through
their eyes, not ours.
The U.S. Government ought to do two things immediately on the
topic. First, the appropriate Government agency ought to sponsor a
series of out-of-Government academic studies that examines the
underlying mechanism of AQAP's English-language propaganda. To be
effective, and depart from the conventional analysis being delivered on
this topic, this series must reach into bodies of literature and
subject matter experts who are have not been previously engaged, most
notably ``gamification,'' social community development, on-line viral
marketing, film, and literary theory on superheroes.
Second, once developed, the insights from these studies--which must
interweave its theoretical concepts and frameworks with real-world
examples of AQAP's recruitment, radicalization, mobilization, and
operationalization in order to be effective--must be fed back into the
Government. An effective vehicle for doing that would be to develop a
series of training modules for State intelligence fusion centers to
empower those professionals on the front-lines with an updated
strategic level understanding of AQAP's efforts and familiarity with
the kinds of tactics they are using and marketing.
Appendix 1.--Why ``Inspire'' Actually Matters
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The innovative ways that al-Qaeda now uses the internet allows
supporters to mobilize on-line far faster and easier than they could in
the real world. Some of these ways include ``gamifying'' the on-line
experience and offering more accessible role models to emulate. At some
point, these al-Qaeda on-line supporters begin to understand that their
physical world self is a far cry from the hero-like status of their on-
line avatar. It is this cognitive dissonance that AQAP has sought to
foment because it is in this feeling of instability that individuals
are most susceptible to external influence.
Products like Inspire offer tangible, incremental, and accessible
ways for American supporters to resolve that dissonance. It gives them
sure-fire, do-it-yourself advice. It offers them cultural insights and
road maps. Inspire helps make the process of living up to your virtual
self that are less scary than it might seem at the outset.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you so much, Dr. Brachman, for your
testimony.
Now we turn to our third expert. I would like to introduce
Mr. Barfi.
I will recognize you for your testimony.
But first let me give again the background of Mr. Barfi.
Mr. Barfi's a research fellow in the New American Foundation,
where he specializes in Arab and Islamic affairs. Prior to
joining New American, Mr. Barfi was a visiting fellow with the
Brookings Institution. Before that, he worked as a producer
with ABC News affiliates in the Middle East and in Europe.
He has lived in several Middle Eastern countries, which
gives him a real actual sense of the world on the ground,
including Egypt and Yemen. He recently returned from the Middle
East, where he witnessed the Egyptian revolution first-hand and
recently reported on the unrest in Bahrain.
Mr. Barfi, thank you for coming here today. You are
recognized to summarize your testimony.
STATEMENT OF BARAK BARFI, RESEARCH FELLOW, NEW AMERICA
FOUNDATION
Mr. Barfi. I want to begin by thanking Chairman Meehan and
Ranking Member Thompson for inviting me to speak today.
As the Chairman said, I recently returned from a month-long
journey in the Middle East, where I witnessed the events in the
Egyptian revolution and the political unrest in Bahrain. The
events in the region are challenging long-held views about the
area, and Washington must be ready to respond.
Nor is this truer than in Yemen. In the wake of the 2009
Christmas day bombing, I wrote a policy paper on Yemen in which
I argued against the prevailing wisdom that the country was a
failed state on the verge of collapse. I maintained that the
threats facing Yemen--a secession movement, a sectarian
rebellion, a strong al-Qaeda presence and economic unrest--were
not enough to topple a country, which has historically been
marked by turmoil sometimes bordering on chaos.
Since then two Arab states have succumbed to a
revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East. A third is on
its knees, and a fourth called out the military to quell the
protests. Yet while regimes were falling between December and
February, Yemen hobbled along.
Today, however, the viability of President Ali Abdullah
Saleh and his regime are in question. For the first time in
Yemeni history, most of the tribes of the two large
confederations publicly oppose the regime. The ruling party has
suffered numerous defections, strikes are damaging the economy,
and military units are mutinying against their superiors.
Among the challenges that the Saleh regime faces is a
resilient al-Qaeda. The organization has a long presence in
Yemen. The family of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden hails
from the eastern province of Hadramaut, and Yemen has always
held a special place in his heart.
After he moved to Afghanistan in 1996, bin Laden recruited
Yemenis to staff key positions in his inner circle. He also
used Yemen as a clearinghouse, running phone calls through the
country and sending people to safe houses there. But by the end
of the decade, he decided to transform Yemen from a logistical
hub into an operational theater. To this end, al-Qaeda targeted
the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000.
After the 9/11 attacks, the Yemeni government allied itself
with Washington and began cracking down on al-Qaeda. It
arrested key operatives and allowed the United States to stage
a missile strike against the organization's leader. By 2004 it
appeared that al-Qaeda had been decimated.
A January 2000 prison break by mid-level cadres
reinvigorated the organization, and by the end of the year, it
was once again operational. Since then al-Qaeda has carried out
dozens of attacks against regime targets, Western diplomats,
tourists, and oil installations. In December 2009 it embarked
on a new strategy when it dispatched a suicide bomber to attack
the American homeland.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is shrewd, compact, and
has shown remarkable resolve in implementing its strategy
without getting distracted by superfluous conflict. The group
is a formidable adversary, the likes of which Washington has
not faced since bin Laden's organization was decimated in 2001.
AQAP has taken advantage of restless tribal regions to
establish strongholds in areas far beyond the purview of the
central government. Historically, Yemeni governments have been
too weak to extend their authority to outlying provinces,
giving the tribes there a substantial degree of independence.
At the same time, though, these clans have been frustrated
by the modern state's inability to provide them with basic
services. As a result they have often sold their loyalty to the
highest bidder.
Today AQAP has exploited the tensions between the central
regime and the tribal areas to carve out a sphere of influence.
The organization is able to operate in these regions often
without fear of government retribution. It recruits mid-level
cadres and foot soldiers among the tribes that host it.
AQAP is firmly entrenched in Yemen. American air strikes
against the group in December 2009 and January 2010 failed to
neutralize the group. On the contrary, and emboldened AQAP was
able to ratchet up its violence in 2010, carrying out more
attacks last year than in any previous year.
The Yemeni military is ill-equipped to subdue AQAP. It is
unable to operate efficiently in tribal areas that the
organization calls home. Units dispatched to arrest AQAP-
operated cells are often captured. American training has gone a
long way to shore up the Yemeni military. Nevertheless, there
still is much that needs to be done to bring up these forces to
the combat levels necessary to confront AQAP.
The current unrest gripping the country is bound to benefit
the organization in the short term. With the regime
increasingly focused on survival, it is likely to shift
military resources away from targeting AQAP, freeing the
organization to plot attacks. In short, 2011 holds great
promise for a group that historically thrived on political
instability.
With that, I will turn it back over to you, Chairman.
[The statement of Mr. Barfi follows:]
Prepared Statement of Barak Barfi
March 2, 2011
I want to begin by thanking Chairman Meahan and the committee
Members for inviting me to speak today. I would also like to thank my
advisor Professor Richard Bulliet of Columbia University for teaching
me the skills necessary to understand the Middle East. My prayers are
with him and his family right now as they face a difficult time. I just
returned from a month-long journey in the Middle East, where I
witnessed the Egyptian revolution and political unrest in Bahrain.
Events in the region are challenging long-held views about the region,
and Washington must be ready to respond.
Nowhere is this truer than in Yemen. In the wake of the 2009
Christmas day bombing, I wrote a policy paper on Yemen in which I
argued against the prevailing wisdom that the country was a failed
state on the verge of collapse. I maintained that the threats facing
Yemen--a secession movement, a sectarian rebellion, a strong al-Qaeda
presence and economic turmoil--were not enough to topple a country
historically marked by turmoil sometimes bordering on chaos. Since
then, two Arab states have succumbed to the revolutionary fervor
sweeping the Middle East, a third is on its knees, and a fourth has
called out the military to quell protests.
Yet, while regimes were falling between December and February,
Yemen hobbled along. Today, however, the viability of President Ali
Abdallah Salih and his regime are in question. For the first time in
Yemeni history, most of the tribes in the two largest confederations
publicly oppose the regime. The ruling party has suffered numerous
defections, strikes are damaging the economy, and military units are
mutinying against their superiors. A wily survivor, President Salih
will have to reach deep into his bag of tricks to survive the latest
and most serious threat to his 32-year rule.
THE HISTORY OF AL-QAEDA IN YEMEN
Among the challenges the Salih regime faces is a resilient al-
Qaeda. The organization has a long history in Yemen. The family of al-
Qaeda founder Usama Bin Ladin heralds from the eastern province of
Hadhramawt and Yemen has always occupied a special place in his heart.
In the early 1990's he was active in Yemeni politics, working to combat
the atheist Socialist party.
After he moved to Afghanistan in 1996, Bin Ladin recruited Yemenis
to staff key positions in his inner circle. He also used Yemen as a
clearinghouse, routing phone calls through the country and sending
people to safe houses there. But by the end of the decade, he decided
to transform Yemen from a logistical hub to an operational theater. To
this end, al-Qaeda targeted the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, leading to
the death of 17 American sailors.
After the 9/11 attacks, the Yemeni government allied itself with
Washington and began cracking down on al-Qaeda. It arrested key
operatives and allowed the United States to stage a missile strike
against the organization's leader. By 2004, al-Qaeda appeared
decimated.
A January 2006 prison break by mid-level cadres reinvigorated the
organization and by the end of the year, it was once again operational.
Since then, al-Qaeda has carried out dozens of attacks against regime
targets, Western diplomats, tourists, and oil installations. In
December 2009, it embarked on a new strategy when it dispatched a
suicide bomber to attack the American homeland. Though the attack
failed, it sharply illuminated the threat al-Qaeda's Arabian affiliate
poses to the United States.
In January 2009, the Saudi Arabian and Yemeni branches merged to
create al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The Saudi faction was
compelled to seek the union after substantial losses brought the group
to the brink of extinction. Though the Saudi regime was caught off
guard when al-Qaeda began launching attacks in the kingdom in 2003, in
subsequent years it was able to virtually eradicate the organization.
The Saudi campaign led the remaining members to seek shelter in Yemen,
where the regime has been less successful in stomping out the al-Qaeda
branch there.
AQAP is shrewd, compact, and has shown a remarkable resolve in
implementing its strategy without getting distracted by superfluous
conflicts. The group is a formidable adversary, the likes of which
Washington has not faced since Bin Ladin's organization was decimated
in 2001.
AQAP IN ITS YEMENI HABITAT
AQAP has taken advantage of restless tribal regions to establish
strongholds in areas far beyond the purview of the central government.
Historically, Yemeni governments have been too weak to extend their
authority to outlying provinces, giving the tribes there a substantial
degree of independence. At the same time though, these clans have been
frustrated by the modern regime's inability to provide basic services.
As a result, they have often sold their loyalty to the highest bidder.
In the past, they relied on largesse from the Marxist regime in South
Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Today AQAP has exploited the tensions between the central regime
and the tribal areas to carve out a sphere of influence. The
organization is able to operate in these regions, often without fear of
government retribution. It recruits mid-level cadres and foot soldiers
among the tribes that host it.
The clans that shelter AQAP do not share the group's extremist
views and puritan religious outlook. Rather, they support the
organization for political reasons. They use AQAP as a tool to leverage
their position vis-a-vis the central regime. Nevertheless, AQAP's
attacks and vehement denunciation of the government has drawn the ire
of some tribes, creating problems for the organization.
Despite its concentration on Yemen's tribal areas, AQAP has
demonstrated its ability to operate far from its strongholds and it
often drafts recruits outside these areas. To do so, it has developed a
powerful propaganda machine that produces a bimonthly journal called
Sada al-Malahim or Echo of Battles. It also reaches its audience
through videos and internet statements. Recently, supporters of the
organization began publishing an English magazine called Inspire that
has proved to be widely popular among alienated Western Muslims who
cannot understand the sometimes archaic Arabic used in Echo of Battles.
YEMEN'S EXTREMIST ENVIRONMENT
AQAP's extremism is not a new phenomenon in Yemen. It is simply the
latest in a long line of radical groups that have exploited the
country's fertile extremist environment. Whereas Arab states such as
Algeria and Egypt jailed and persecuted veterans returning from the
Afghan campaign against the Soviets, Yemen not only welcomed back its
fighters, it also embraced Arab combatants from other countries.
With the regime too weak to combat its adversaries, it has relied
on jihadists to fight its battles. When a union between North and South
Yemen broke down in 1994, leading to civil war, President Salih
dispatched Arab Afghans to subdue the secessionists. After a sectarian
rebellion erupted in northern Yemen in 2004, the regime invited
Salafists to quell it. The regime's historical tolerance of extremism,
coupled with its alliances with jihadists, produced a society ripe for
the radicalism preached by AQAP.
LOOKING AHEAD
AQAP is firmly entrenched in Yemen. American airstrikes against the
group in December 2009 and January 2010 failed to neutralize the group.
On the contrary, an emboldened AQAP was able to ratchet up its violence
in 2010, carrying out more attacks last year than in any previous year.
Its strikes were more daring and sophisticated. It began to confront
military units and ambush checkpoints. And it once again sought to
target the American homeland when it sent parcel bombs in November
aboard freight planes.
The Yemeni military is ill-equipped to subdue AQAP. It is unable to
operate efficiently in the tribal areas the organization calls home.
Units dispatched to arrest AQAP cells are often captured. American
training has gone a long way to shore up the Yemeni military, Coast
Guard, and Navy. Nevertheless, there is still much that needs to be
done to bring up these forces to the combat levels necessary to
confront AQAP.
The Salih regime has never viewed AQAP as the dire threat
Washington has. Instead, it has focused on quelling a 6-year sectarian
rebellion in the country's northern provinces and suppressing a
secession movement in the South. Salih has told American diplomats that
these two conflicts pose a more serious danger to his rule than AQAP
does. In shifting military resources to address these two conflicts,
the regime has at times neglected the AQAP file.
The current unrest gripping the country is bound to benefit AQAP in
the short term. With the regime increasingly focused on its survival,
it is likely to shift military resources away from targeting AQAP,
freeing the organization to plot attacks. In short, 2011 holds great
promise for a group that has historically thrived on political
instability.
WHAT CAN THE UNITED STATES DO TO HELP YEMEN?
Embrace a Regional Approach.--The United States must understand
that there is no made-in-Washington solution to Yemen's problems. It
must work with regional powers, such as Saudi Arabia, to solve the
challenges faced by Yemen. The Saudis provide hundreds of millions of
dollars in aid annually, dwarfing Washington's contribution. But unlike
Washington's aid, which seeks to strengthen Yemen, Riyadh's money is
funneled to the tribes to weaken the central regime and keep it in
line. Washington needs to encourage Riyadh to take a more constructive
approach towards Yemen.
Seek to Integrate Yemen into the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).--
Yemen has long sought to join this exclusive club. Member states have a
more intimate understanding of the challenges Sana'a faces and can
better pool their resources to effectively address development and
security concerns. The GCC can also offer Yemen a seat on key economic
committees that would allow the country to benefit from the
organization's deep coffers.
Conventional Aid Approaches Will Not Work.--The United States has
often believed that providing economic and technical aid can play a key
role in solving their problems. But in Yemen, this approach will not
work. The country simply does not have the technical capacity to absorb
large amounts of aid. Examining past aid pledges to Yemen illustrates
this dilemma. In 2006, international donors pledged $5.7 billion to
Yemen. But 3 years later, only about $325 million of that had been
disbursed.
Focus on Making Government More Responsive to Citizens' Needs.--
Washington needs to concentrate on better governance programs that will
restore Yemenis' faith in their government. To this end, Washington
should invest in initiatives that improve financial transparency and
alleviate bureaucratic inertia. Today, a number of the protests in
Yemen are focused on accountability and corruption. Washington can
address these issues by working with government ministries and non-
governmental organizations.
Support Apolitical Forms of Islam.--Islam is not a monolithic
religion whose primary goal is the destruction of the West. A number of
Islamic currents are politically indifferent to America. In Yemen,
Sufism has strong roots and its institutions are battling the same type
of religious extremism that threatens the West. Washington needs to
find a way to support Yemeni Sufism. Doing so will not only strengthen
this moderate form of Islam, but also create a powerful counterweight
to the radicalism Washington seeks to eradicate.
Support Academic and Cultural Exchanges.--American expertise on
Yemen is lacking. There are only a dozen scholars who have an intimate
knowledge of the country. The best Yemen researchers come from France
which provides ample funding for students and academics to sharpen
their skills in the country. The American Institute for Yemeni Studies
is tasked to do the same for Americans. But since 2008, the State
Department has prevented scholars who have received Federal funding
from using it in Yemen for security reasons. As a result, between 15-19
scholars have been deprived of the opportunity to do research in Yemen.
Academics who received grants in 2008 to do in-country research will
see their funding expire later this year. In Pakistan where the
security situation is precarious, the State Department has found a way
to accommodate scholars. It needs to do the same for researchers in
Yemen. At the same time, Washington should foster cultural exchanges by
granting more visas to Yemenis who seek to study in America. Doing so
will allow Yemenis to view the United States beyond the military-
security prism.
Mr. Meehan. Well, thank you, Mr. Barfi.
Thanks to each of our panelists for your testimony, which I
know has had to be narrowed in terms of what you have been able
to state during your opening statements. But I encourage you to
draw on the full spectrum of your experiences in response to
what I know will be a broad variety of questions from our
panel.
I am going to recognize myself for 5 minutes to begin my
questioning, and I am also going to also say that I am going to
have two parts. I want to just explore an opening question for
you, Dr. Boucek, that will help us to frame this in a more
general way in terms of the nature of this threat coming from
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Then I have a very specific
line of questioning regarding the issue of the thousand cuts,
which I will explain for each of the panelists.
So let me begin by stating that we began this hearing in
the context of previous testimony, as I stated, that came from
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who has said
the threat to the U.S. homeland was at its most heightened
state since 9/11. Then Director Leiter said it was al-Qaeda
from the Arabian Peninsula who was deemed to be the most
significant threat to the homeland.
I know that as we look back and we see some events that
have actually taken place in the homeland most recently--Fort
Hood with Nidal Hasan, the Christmas day attempted bombing in
Detroit with Abdulmutallab, and most recently, the UPS cargo
bomb, which landed in the airport in my district in
Philadelphia.
So let me ask you, Dr. Boucek, just for a moment, do you
agree with those assessments by those learned folks in our
intelligence community? Is it a factor of al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula which creates that threat uniquely, or is it
a function of the fact that they come out of a very
destabilized area now in Yemen, which makes them a threat? Or
is it both?
Mr. Boucek. Thank you. I would absolutely agree, and I
would say that in an address to the Carnegie Endowment last
December, John Brennan called AQAP the most operationally
active node of the AQ franchise.
I think what we see is this--you know, in AQAP there is the
space and the ability to plot and plan and mount operations
that the organization takes advantage of. All of the systemic
challenges that I mentioned in my opening statement has the
Yemeni government incredibly preoccupied.
I think what we see is the capacity and the presence of the
Yemeni government is eroding, and the spaces in between are
getting bigger and bigger, the spaces, the under-governed
spaces in Yemen, where AQAP or other organizations we have not
yet identified will take root and thrive in those environments.
I think if you look at the organization, it has said what
it wants to do and then tries to do it. If it fails, it tries
again. It is, I think, very instructive to look at, you know,
the case of Saudi Arabia. So during the height of the violence
in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda never struck outside the kingdom.
That is not the case now. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has
the entire world as a stage.
I think there are Yemenis, who are active in the
organization, focused on Yemen, and they are Saudis who are
interested in Saudi Arabia, but there is a third group that is
focused on international targets. This is what is so scary to
me.
I think the problem in Yemen looks much smaller than it
actually is, because there is such a small number of targets,
relatively speaking, inside Yemen. There is not a large
American community. There isn't an American school, nor any
American corporations, or their targets, I think, this looks
very small. If this was taking place in another country, it
would look, I think, much larger. I think that oftentimes
confuses kind of the scale of the problem that we are facing.
Mr. Meehan. Well, thank you. You framed that well now,
because you have talked about the nature of the threat that is
coming out of that there, but its ability to sort of reach into
our homeland. One of those that reached in most recently was
the attempt with the parcel with United Parcel Service.
I know also, Dr. Brachman, you talked about this aspect of
the, you know, sort of the wannabes watching, you know, playing
games, so to speak. But the fact of the matter is you can't get
into the pro leagues unless you make it through competition.
Here anybody can become a player. The question is the extent to
which this is, you know, just actual play.
Let me refer to something very specifically. It is the most
recent issue of ``Inspire'' magazine. I think many of you have
seen this, and I take two pieces out of it. This was the cover,
$4,200 and a UPS plane. I read specifically from some language
that was contained within. This was Awlaki's piece.
It said, ``$4,200--that is what the Operation Hemorrhage
cost us. This supposedly foiled plot, as some of our enemies
would like to call it, without a doubt cost America and other
Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures.
That is what we call leverage. The success of the operation was
to be based on two factors. The first was to pass the package
through the latest security equipment. The second was to spread
fear that would cause the West to invest in billions of dollars
in new security procedures. We have succeeded in the former. We
are now witnessing the exception of the latter.''
Let me say that after Christmas day, we have spent billions
of dollars on airport screening technology to deter future
underwear bombers. Now in response to our defenses to the UPS
plot, the air cargo is changing the nature of what they do. Can
you talk about this strategy of death by a thousand cuts, each
of you, and what steps can the Government take to combat this
kind of strategy? Thank you.
Mr. Brachman. Thank you, sir. That is a good question. But
you are exactly right in the sense that AQAP has re-
conceptualized what success and failure means for al-Qaeda,
right? So even in a tactical failure in the sense that the bomb
didn't go off, it was still a success in that it caused
basically all the same reactions, except the deaths. I think
this is something that AQAP has really revolutionized.
But the strategy of death by a thousand cuts has been
pervasive since the beginning. Bin Laden has discussed it ad
nauseum. Other al-Qaeda strategists have referred to this as
vexation and exhaustion operations. How do you keep us so
blinded and so exhausted that we lurch from place to place, and
we spend money against everything until the point where we pull
back and just guard our key resources, which opens up the
periphery to them, security vacuums that they can exploit?
I think they have really pioneered the way to use the media
to advance their death by a thousand cuts strategy. One is that
they have realized we are their best ally in terms of our
overreactions, right? So even in this setting, the articles
that come out of it will probably get fed back right into the
next issue of ``Inspire'' to show that ``Inspire'' actually
matters.
So any time we say anything, right, that is a talking point
that they can use to affirm their own legitimacy within their
constituency, but also demonstrate to us just how scared we are
of them. So I think that is the one side.
The other side is that they have understood this concept
that is pretty popular in terms of on-line social media called
crowd sourcing, which is you have got thousands of kids who are
out there doing random things on-line. They spend hours playing
games, looking up articles. AQAP has figured out how do you put
all these kids on the same path? How do you harness all of
their collective energy to do something greater than the sum of
just their energies?
I think this is a really important development. This is
what Awlaki's been able to do is herd a bunch of these, you
know, these on-line cats to do anything at any level. Just as
long as you are doing something down this path, you are
inflicting pain, even if it is just talking about them talking
about them.
I think that is the challenge for us, because eventually
Awlaki--the whole point of ``Inspire'' is to put downward
pressure on that barrier from being an on-line legend to being
a real-world legend, right? They make it easier to jump across
and then try to do something in the real world. That is the
brilliance of AQAP in terms of this propaganda. Thank you.
Mr. Barfi. Yes, just to build on what Jarret said,
basically, what we are looking at from al-Qaeda's perspective
is a war of attrition. They are trying to wear America down,
the American homeland down. But the problem is if they continue
with unsuccessful plots, that could help them in the short
term. But once you move from unsuccessful plots to successful
plots, as what happened in 9/11, it angers the American
population, and they are willing to give up more and work with
the security system to combat the threat.
So when al-Qaeda is unsuccessful, it gains more on this
path than when it is successful. Unfortunately for al-Qaeda, it
has success but failure in these failed plots. It is able to
build up its media profile. It is able to gain respect and
admiration from disillusioned Muslims in the short run, but in
the long run, the problem is its plots have failed--great.
These people say, ``Great. You tried to attack the American
homeland, but you failed. You didn't inflict any damage on the
United States.''
So basically, there is a double-edged sword with these
attacks here. You have the war of attrition on one hand, but
you have success but failure on another.
Mr. Boucek. I would just add very briefly that I think this
also builds on many of the arguments that get made about
economic jihad, about the resources that are spent fighting
terrorism. Our resources aren't spent on other issues.
Ultimately, wearing down the Yemeni government and exposing the
vulnerability of the Yemeni government is in AQAP's interests.
Getting the Americans to overreact into Yemen is in AQAP's
interests.
I think that the notion of this, you know, the low-cost,
high-impact, demonstrates how opportunistic this organization
is and how they are willing to experiment with all kinds of
different things to see what happens. This gets filtered back
into the learning process.
So while the core al-Qaeda still has the ambition to mount
spectacular attacks, that is much less likely to happen than
the immediate attacks that AQAP represent.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you.
I will now recognize other Members for questions that they
may wish to ask the witnesses. In accordance with our committee
rules and practice, I plan to recognize Members who were
present at the start of the hearing by seniority on the
subcommittee. Those coming in later will be recognized in the
order of arrival.
Let me ask Mr. Thompson, turn it to Mr. Thompson for his
questions. Thank you.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Barfi, with respect to unrest and terrorism in North
Africa, are those protests in North Africa and the Middle East
a good thing for al-Qaeda?
Mr. Barfi. When you have regime change in the Arab world,
in the short term it is going to benefit al-Qaeda, because
there is going to be political instability. There is going to
be the creation of vacuums.
You look at a country like Yemen. If the regime falls, and
there is a chance that that could happen today, the military
will no longer be putting pressure on al-Qaeda. They are going
to reinvent. It will allow al-Qaeda to spread, build its
infrastructure, and create cells in other regions.
Al-Qaeda has been on the ball on this one to release a lot
of statements. Everyone is talking about Ayman al-Zawahiri's
statement. One statement that hasn't gotten a lot of publicity
is one by Atiyeh Fal al-Libi, who is a senior al-Qaeda leader.
He basically praised the revolutions in the Arab world, and he
said that he encourages jihadists to build military presence in
the Sinai Peninsula.
The Sinai Peninsula is a place where there have been
clashes between the Bedouins and the military. There have been
some attacks, suicide bombings in the past, and it is on
Israel's border. So this is one of those prime places where if
there is political instability, that al-Qaeda might be able to
exploit it. So in the short term, this political instability is
good for al-Qaeda.
When we move to the longer term, if we can transition these
Arab autocracies into democracies which respond to the people's
needs, that will really dent al-Qaeda's popularity and appeal
in the Arab world.
But there is one thing I would like to say about the
protests and what the people want. If you look at the squares
in the Arab world, in Yemen or in Egypt, the people who are
leading the protests and the people who are coming to the
squares, they say they want democracy, and this is the most
important thing to them. But they are the core group.
But if you move outside in the peripheral support that
really helps to overthrow the regime, these people are focused
on two things--jobs and an end to corruption. When I was in
Egypt during the revolution, what I heard from this people was
we want an accounting with the old regime. We want an end to
corruption.
If America focuses too much on trying to build democracy in
these areas without focusing on what the people want--to really
have an accounting and really to end corruption and address the
real problems in society--al-Qaeda will be able to thrive on
that in the long term and try to increase its appeal and win.
Mr. Thompson. So you are saying we ought to put more
emphasis on where the people are philosophically and work with
them, rather than trying to promote a firmer democratization on
them?
Mr. Barfi. Right.
Mr. Thompson. Explain a little bit.
Mr. Barfi. Well, democracy is very important. We are
transitioning from authoritarian regimes to democratic regimes,
and we are going to have to help these countries in this
transitional process. That is very important.
But a lot of the people, their grievances aren't with lack
of freedom. It is with lack of jobs and the corruption. This is
their grievances that I heard a lot in Egypt. We need to
address that. We need to work with NGOs to address corruption,
to reform the ministries.
If you look at what is going on in Yemen right now, the
regime is suffering defections by workers and students, because
they want this director to resign because he is corrupt or this
authority to be reformed because it is doling out ghost jobs.
So those are the issues that the people on the ground are
really concerned about.
Democracy is very important, but we can't take our eyes off
the ball on that either, sir.
Mr. Thompson. Absolutely.
Dr. Boucek, one of the things kind of impacting us in this
country is the price of oil. Do you see any connection where
AQAP poses a threat to this whole energy sector going forward?
Mr. Boucek. Well, I think when you look at the targets that
AQAP has gone after, they have been very consistent. They have
been foreigners, the government, security services, ex-pats,
foreign embassy, and the energy sector. There is a history of
attacks against energy infrastructure not only in Yemen, but
throughout the Arab world.
I think what you see is that these are great targets,
because it generates instant attention. It has an immediate
effect on global crisis. It grabs. You prove your relevance and
your power and your recruiting stature as you are doing this.
I think in order to keep this in perspective, you need to
think that, you know, Yemen produces probably 180,000 barrels a
day. So it is a very small amount of oil that we are talking
about, compared to Saudi Arabia, which produces about 10
million barrels per day.
So the impact, you know, when we see attacks against the
energy infrastructure, usually the price goes up several
dollars, but it usually moderates within the week. This is in
part because we have never had a successful attack against a
major energy installation.
Mr. Thompson. But if in fact AQAP looked at Saudi Arabia as
a target, then what you have just said is we have a real
problem.
Mr. Barfi. Absolutely. There is a history of attacks and
attempted attacks against energy infrastructure inside the
kingdom. AQAP has tried to mount attacks inside the kingdom,
continues to do so, and this will continue to be a risk.
I think the Saudis recognize this. I think the Americans
recognize this. This is a target that is not only well-
protected, but I think people understand that, you know, were
there to be a successful attack, the consequences could be very
catastrophic for the economy and for the environment and all
kinds of other after-effects.
Mr. Thompson. Okay.
I yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Thompson.
I now turn to the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Cravaack.
Mr. Cravaack. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for our distinguished panel here.
I want to hear what you have to say. My job as a
Congressman is to protect Americans at home and abroad. I
understand the asymmetric threat that we have in, again, some
of these terrorist groups.
I have now promoted you to be the Cabinet of the President.
You are in front of the President right now. I have to make a
decision in 4 minutes and 36 seconds. How would you brief the
President in telling him how to combat this threat? Thank you.
Mr. Boucek. Well, I think the important thing is to start
out that we need to keep this in perspective, that terrorism is
our biggest problem from Yemen. It is not Yemen's biggest
problem. Terrorism is not going to destroy the Yemeni
government. Al-Qaeda is not going to bring down the Saleh
government.
Focusing exclusively on terrorism will exacerbate the
problems, I fear. So how do you help the Yemeni government
build a better government? How do we get them to have the
capacity to deliver more services? How do we improve the
relationship between the Yemeni government and the people?
The people need to feel that they have something invested
in this, so it has to be, you know, addressing issues like
governance, corruption, the economy, jobs, all of these
systemic issues that, you know, are long-term issues.
That has to be coupled with an immediate counterterrorism
response, because there are cells and individuals, actors in
Yemen that are plotting and planning operations right now.
But this needs to be something that is not a large American
footprint. It needs to be something that we do in cooperation
with the Yemenis. This has to be a Yemeni-led program, because
the Yemenis need to be out in front of this. Otherwise, we
would de-legitimize the Yemeni government, which will
ultimately increase the terrorism problem.
So I think if we only focus on terrorism, we run the risk
of making it worse. There is a need for robust
counterterrorism, but it has to be much more quiet.
Mr. Barfi. I think the first thing we need to focus on,
building on what Dr. Boucek said, we need better government
programs. We need to restore citizens' faith in their
government. They don't have much faith in the government. So
the government needs to be more responsive.
We have to understand that there is no ``made in
Washington'' solution to Yemen. We need to work with our
regional allies. Chief among them is Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
Cooperation Council. These countries have a much better
understanding of the problems that Yemen faces than we do.
We need to have better knowledge about Yemen. We just don't
know that much about the country. You know, in the wake of the
parcel plot bombing, intelligence agencies started scouring the
country, looking for people who spoke special regional dialects
in Yemen. There is just not that--they just don't have that
here. So these are the things that we really need to work on in
the short term.
Mr. Brachman. I think in terms of AQAP's attempt to reach
back here in the United States through propaganda and media, we
don't have interagency consensus about what it is we are
looking for or how do we know who is going to go operational.
We don't have metrics. We don't have behavioral profiles,
templates, frameworks for understanding the kinds of behavior
that we are seeing on-line more and more.
So I think we need to invest a lot of intellectual
horsepower into looking at new trends in social media. There is
a number of bodies of literature that just haven't been brought
to bear to this issue that are appearing, you know, throughout
al-Qaeda on-line media.
So we need to understand that terrain before I think we can
develop strategies, but we are pretty behind the curve in terms
of that.
Mr. Cravaack. I appreciate those comments, and I understand
the problem. Now we have to deal with a solution. Just as you
said, I just was briefed just a couple of seconds ago regarding
a soldier that was killed in Germany using, again, on a bus
somebody pulled out a weapon and killed him, along with two
others that were injured.
So this is the type of asymmetric warfare that I fear most
coming to the United States. My worst fear is not necessarily
someone with a special weapon. It is someone that uses some
type of buyer weapon in the United States small as an aerosol
can. This is what I fear. This is what I want to defend
against. I understand our assets need to be in Yemen, but at
the same time how do we defend the homeland? I have got 36
seconds, and I hope I have some indulgence on the answer.
Mr. Boucek. I think I would just say very briefly I think
the best way that we can look at Yemen is in terms of risk
management. We are not going to solve Yemen's problems, but we
can limit our exposure. We can do that by the programs that my
colleague just talked about. I think having a robust
counterterrorism effort, trying to build governance and address
the issues.
Addressing water would go a long way. Eighty percent of
violence in Yemen is about people fighting over water. That is
not kind of the impression we have in the media, but I think if
we want to reduce the overall level of violence in society, if
we want to, you know, help Yemeni get along, we can do some
things that, you know, are high-impact that are low-cost.
Mr. Barfi. Security is our last line of defense in the
homeland. I mean, whether it is security at the airport or at
the entrance to the Cannon building, this is the last line of
defense. We need to get the problem at the source, and that
means better intelligence.
We can't think that we can focus on a place like Yemen by
just intercepting phone calls, which is a lot of what is going
on. We need to get better intelligence on the ground. We need
to develop tribal assets.
As early as the mid-1990s, when we tried to take out Osama
bin Laden, we had tribal assets in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was
not a high priority for the United States. Yemen is. I mean,
that is the thing that we need to do. We need better
intelligence on the ground, sir.
Mr. Brachman. I would say that al-Qaeda's personalities are
not, they're not plug-and-play. It takes years to develop these
kinds of cults of personality that come around, say, like
Awlaki. So when they are taken out, they have a serious impact
on the organization's ability to, you know, project itself in
the media to inspire people.
So I think from my perspective, it is not the users of,
say, ``Inspire,'' those who are downloading Awlaki's videos. It
is Awlaki himself. It is Samir Khan. It is the producers,
because these people, they are disproportionately impactful in
terms of al-Qaeda's propaganda, so I would go to the source on
that.
Mr. Cravaack. Thank you, gentlemen.
I will yield back the negative balance of my time, sir.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Cravaack.
Now I would like to turn to the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms.
Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I thank Mr. Thompson for his very able handling of this
intelligence subcommittee. We do miss Jane Harman and wish her
well.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation today.
I am glad to what the end of the statement that you made,
Mr. Barfi, you mentioned the issue of human intelligence. Let
me first of all acknowledge the need for securing the homeland.
I guess that is why I have been on this committee since its
origins, since it was considered a select committee on homeland
security post hours after 9/11.
As well, I think one can balance the civil liberties and
Constitutional privileges that we have in this country along
with very astute handling of security issues. So forgive me if
I have, pose questions that seem to be somewhat provocative,
but let me just pose a rapid series of questions.
I will start with you, Mr. Barfi, and then I would change
my tone. Do we need military action to address this question?
Mr. Barfi. At this point in time, I think that it is best
to work with our Yemeni allies to take out al-Qaeda, to take
out the threat that it poses. Increased American military
action in Yemen only causes blowback and increases the
recruiting appeal of AQAP.
What we have seen with the missile strikes in December and
January, in December 2009 and January 2010, were not all that
efficient. There was talk that we killed senior leaders, and we
had only killed about, I think, one senior leader and one mid-
level leader, so we just doesn't have the good intel on that as
well. So I would caution--I would advise against that and try
to work with the Yemeni military and try to build up their
capacity, ma'am.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Dr. Brachman.
Mr. Brachman. Ma'am, al-Qaeda strategist and thinker Abu
Yahya al-Libi wrote a whole statement on this exact question,
saying that he knows we are smart enough not to bring military
forces directly into Yemen, but it is our need to still justify
to the American people that we are doing something that will
cause us to de-legitimize the Yemeni regime by bragging about
the military-to-military relationship that we have. So the more
that we talk about it, the more that their Government will look
like upon of us.
So there is the bigger point here is that al-Qaeda has--
they telegraph everything. They lay down strategies, and I
don't think that piece made any traction with the U.S.
Government, so they are always telling us how they are thinking
about us, and they are usually a step ahead in terms of
thinking about what we are thinking about in terms of military
strength.
Ms. Jackson Lee. So your answer is----
Mr. Brachman. I agree.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Not to use--all right.
Mr. Brachman. I agree--and to be quiet about the kinds of
relationships----
Ms. Jackson Lee. Any kind of interaction that we have.
Dr. Boucek.
Thank you.
Mr. Boucek. I think, you know, the place for American
military action needs to be very quiet and very clandestine, or
else we will make the situation much, much worse, I think, as
my colleague said.
I think instead of thinking of Yemen in terms of trying to
do Pakistan, we should try to think about it in terms of how to
do Colombia. How do you build the capacity for the Yemenis to
do this?
Ms. Jackson Lee. Let me throw this out, so I can get my
questions then before the actual bell rings. I think it was
quite well framed, and I think all of you framed it to indicate
how distracted the Yemeni leadership is--civil war, protests,
secessionist movement, particularly a population that has,
what, 40, 40 percent plus unemployment, mostly young men, and
as I understand it in my visit, a 4 o'clock break with some
kind of khat that distracts a lot of them.
So my question, if you can answer these two questions, give
me the real, real threat of Yemen's ability to promote future
attacks on the United States either by the cleric that is
there, and then secondly, the impact of Saudi Arabia's closing
of the border, no opportunity for jobs, and the importance of
human intelligence.
Mr. Boucek. I think I would say very quickly, Ms. Lee, the
ability to mount attacks comes when the Yemeni government's
authority and capacity is eroded. This is what we see. This was
played out last places throughout the world, and we know what
will happen in Yemen if we don't do something to stop this. It
will affect American domestic security.
In terms of the role for Saudi Arabia, Yemen's future lies
with the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. If we give $300 million in aid
to Yemen, the military and security systems and development, in
their turn the Saudis would probably give $1.5 billion to $2
billion worth of assistance. They have the longest, deepest
relationship, and it is their problem first and foremost.
We all need to be on the same page, and we need to work
with Saudi Arabia to address this issue.
Mr. Barfi. The problem that we have in Yemen is that there
are two-fold here. The regime does not view AQAP as its primary
threat. Saleh has said this to American diplomats in the past.
The Houthi rebellion in the north, the sectarian rebellion in
the north, is his chief priority.
The AQAP does not pose an existential threat to the regime.
It cannot bring the regime down, so it is just a minor thorn in
its side. In contrast, to the United States it is a very big
issue, and this is what we harp on when we speak to President
Saleh, when we send our diplomats and senior officials. So that
is the problem in one way.
As for Saudi Arabia, the problem with Saudi Arabia is that
it plays a double-edged game in Yemen. It supports the regime
on one hand, and it supports the tribes on the other, which
weaken the central regime. So we need to encourage the Saudis
that stability is in their interest and convince them to
support the regime and not elements that destabilize the
government.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Dr. Brachman.
Mr. Brachman. Just very quickly, I think it is a two-step
process in terms of al-Qaeda targeting into the United States
to radicalize our citizens. The first step is they are the
proverbial satellite, right? They project the bad signal up
into the sky, and then they convince as many Americans as
possible that they can be Batman, right? So that is a call to
action.
I think that is the most dangerous thing, from my
perspective, is that they have focused on doing that more than
any other al-Qaeda franchise that we have seen, and they are
better at it than any other al-Qaeda----
Ms. Jackson Lee. They are calling to action.
Mr. Brachman. That is right.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, thank you for indulgence. I
yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Ms. Lee.
At this point in time, I would like to turn now to the
gentleman from New York, Mr. Higgins.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. As has
been said, the unemployment rate is very high, 35 to 40
percent. Like most countries in North Africa and the Middle
East, it is also very young.
My question is: You know, when you look at civil unrest, is
it the civil unrest that we want that will result in your
political reform, or is it the civil unrest that will be
exploited for bad purposes? Some have said, particularly
administration officials, that a lot of this civil unrest in
the Middle East and in Yemen is a rejection of violent jihad.
Just your thoughts on that, each of you?
Mr. Barfi. Having spent a month in the region, I can tell
you that these protests are very secular in origin. Inside the
squares they are shouting secular slogans. They are not talking
about jihad. They don't talk about Allah. They don't talk about
religion.
That said, there is a bridging between the moderate
Islamist, which is the Muslim Brotherhood, and the secular
activists in places like Liberation Square in Egypt. They were
very active. The Muslim Brotherhood really helped.
But the Muslim Brotherhood is much different than the
radical jihadists such as al-Qaeda. So if we hear a regime
like--excuse me, if we see a regime like Yemen fall, and we ask
what will happen next, it will be somewhere between Tunisia and
Libya. It will not be as pleasant as what we saw in Egypt on
that account, sir.
Mr. Brachman. Sir, I would just respond from al-Qaeda's
perspective. Zawahiri has put out thirds of statements on this.
Other al-Qaeda figures have. I have never seen their interest
in being so quiet. They realized that they need to make
concessions, compromises, coalitions.
So right now al-Qaeda's line is wait and see, keep your
head down. This is the most reflective, I guess, that I have
seen al-Qaeda senior leadership. They realize that things are
afoot right now, and they aren't the dominant party, but they
think that they can work within this kind of space, that this
might afford them to slowly consolidate and coalesce some
strength.
Mr. Boucek. I think when we are talking about Yemen and the
potential for unrest, there should be very significant concern
for the United States, especially because there is no
government to replace the current regime. President Saleh has
made himself the one indispensable political actor in Yemen,
and no one else can fill that vacuum when he leaves.
Yemen has never been a fully functioning, cohesive, unified
state, and likely never will be in the short term.
Mr. Higgins. Correct.
Mr. Boucek. We need to prepare for that. I think when we
think about what happened in North Africa and other places in
the region, no one wants to see, I think, from a government
point of view, no one wants to see President Saleh go, because
we need this government in the fight with AQAP, which is our
biggest concern.
I think this comes to a point that we do not understand who
makes decisions in Yemen and why. Until we understand why they
make the decisions they to, we won't be able to re-incentivize
them to do things differently.
Mr. Higgins. Right. The United States has a considerable
investment in development and military aid to Yemen. You know,
how reliable is this president? You know, we deal with this
stuff in Pakistan, Afghanistan, where by day they are our
friends, and at night they are not. It is very duplicitous.
Does President Saleh see that al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula is the existential threat? Or was it the rebels in
the north and the south that he is preoccupied with? You know,
I am just----
Mr. Boucek. I mean, I think you can look at what is going
on at the country in terms of the civil war or the south or the
protest movement or AQAP. These are all symptomatic of the
breakdown of the Yemeni state. I think I would argue that if we
do not reverse the problem to match our rhetoric, if we talk
about Yemen being a National priority, if we talk about AQAP
being the most significant threat, we don't put anywhere near
the amount of resources we should to deal with this problem.
Pakistan gets billions of dollars in assistant every year,
and Yemen gets $300 million. The Yemenis look at us and think,
you know, how big is your checkbook and what have you done for
me lately? This is how they look at international partners.
Does it match their commitment?
Mr. Higgins. Okay.
Mr. Barfi. Well, the problem on that, in the difference in
Pakistan and Yemen, is Yemen just doesn't have the technical
capacity to absorb massive amounts of aid. I think in 2006
there was a donor conference. I think $5.7 billion was pledged.
Three years later, I don't think more than 5 percent or 6
percent of that aid was disbursed, because they just don't have
the technical act. They don't have the experts to absorb that
aid. The ministries aren't ready. The bureaucracy is
inefficient. So we can't look at those types of situations and
say, oh, we can just model upon Yemen--to model that, put that
on Yemen.
To answer your question, sir, Saleh is firmly entrenched in
the U.S. camp to battle al-Qaeda. In the past the Yemeni regime
has forged alliances with jihadists, especially those returning
from Afghanistan, the Afghan Arabs.
But after the Christmas day bombing, Saleh came out with
really a big diatribe against al-Qaeda. He used very, very
negative language, the first time I ever saw him speak so, too,
personally against al-Qaeda in this fashion. He has really come
on board to fight al-Qaeda.
That said, the problem is that the military just don't have
the capacity and the resources to fight al-Qaeda. When they
send military units into these al-Qaeda strongholds, instead of
capturing al-Qaeda members, the soldiers are captured. This has
happened on a few occasions. Military training takes a lot of
time, and we have to be patient.
Mr. Higgins. Got it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Higgins.
I am going to give an opportunity for those who would like
to just ask one more round of questions to follow up on any of
the information that came before us to this point in time. So I
will first recognize myself to ask a question in response to
what you have been talking about, each of you, in your
analysis.
I am struck by the fact that much of this seems to be
focused in a way which is precarious. A lot of what we are
doing is we are playing a waiting game as well, in which we
watch events unfold in Yemen, as we are watching in other
places.
Your testimony appeared to suggest that we want to be very,
very careful about any kind of military involvement, which
would that include as well if we are able to identify Awlaki
and, you know, sending a drone in there to take out Awlaki? I
mean, in a very unstable environment, do we still continue to
act proactively to try to protect the homeland?
A lot of what you are discussing focuses on our ability to
both watch and perhaps encourage more stabilization in Yemen to
tamp down the threat, but how does that reflect the threat we
have to actual acts of terrorism being carried out in the
United States that would harm United States citizens?
I think we seem to have two--not necessarily conflicting,
but two different interests here that we are talking about.
Certainly, we want to protect first and foremost the homeland
here. Can we do that and still watch events unfold in a way in
which we are sort of waiting to see?
Mr. Boucek. I think I would respond by saying I think there
is a need to be proactive, to be sure. But I think we
oftentimes want to look at organizations like AQAP and think of
it as a organization with a clearly identified leadership,
where is eliminating the top 10 or 15 people will eliminate the
organization.
I think that that thinking, unfortunately, probably does
not mesh with much reality on the ground, where there is a
movement that this comes out of. I think we can degrade the
capacity for this organization to strike at American targets,
to be sure, but in the end we need a long-term view.
I think this is the big dilemma facing, you know, American
foreign policy is that it is not just Yemen. It is anyplace
where state authority is eroded, like Tajikistan or Mauritania
or fill in the blank. Places where central government authority
does not exist, bad stuff will come out of.
This is a long process to build that, so we need to look at
this, you know, in the short term and the near term, but also
how do we square, you know, our immediate security concerns by
supporting a government like the Yemeni government and also
have the dialogue with the Yemeni people saying that we are
supporting reform, democracy, and improvement of your lives,
because it looks like these two are at odds.
By first supporting the Yemeni government that is keeping
the Yemeni people down, we will exacerbate the problem. So we
need to have a dialogue and a policy that will embrace all of
this.
Mr. Barfi. I agree wholeheartedly with Chris. If you take
out the AQAP leadership, there is no guarantee that something
new might not--might pop up in the future. I mean, look at al-
Qaeda's history.
We took out the top leadership. The No. 2 guy was arrested
in 2004. The No. 1 guy we got with a drone missile in 2002,
2003. I think it was 2002. The organization came back. You will
always find somebody to take over this role.
That said, if we have information of a strike against the
American homeland, there is no doubt that we need to take
preemptive measures against that, too, to snuff it out before
it occurs.
The administration has put a great premium on Anwar Awlaki,
that she is a very key player in AQAP. I am not convinced of
that. I think that he plays a role in the organization, but he
is not as important as people like Nasir al-Wahishi and Qasim
al-Rimi, who are the political leader and the military leader.
Awlaki does work on the western side, and that is our big
threat, and the problem is that we see these things, these
issues, through a security, a military security prism. That is
not what the people on the ground in Yemen see. They want
improvement in their lives. They want a better tomorrow. We
need to work with them to get that. If we don't, there will be
more people to take these peoples' place in al-Qaeda, sir.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you.
Let me turn it to my colleague, Mr. Thompson, for his
question.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much. This has been an
excellent panel, and the information presented has been very
good--troubling, but good.
Mr. Barfi, let me thank you for making that extra effort to
get here. I kind of pushed in the Chairman's ear what it took,
but we do appreciate your getting here--the other witnesses
also.
One of the issues that is surfacing now is we have looked
at aviation security as a vulnerability, and we have
historically chased the threat after it occurs. From a planning
standpoint is it still aviation, or you think that some other
threats out here that we ought to be cognizant of in a similar
light as we are aviation? I will just start with Dr. Boucek and
go down.
Mr. Boucek. Thank you. I would say briefly, I think, that
when we look at AQAP, they often go after the same targets.
When they succeed, they try again. I think if you looked at--
you know, there have been several attacks against the American
embassy. That should be a concern when you think about
aviation. Twice they have targeted American aviation. That has
not yet succeeded, so I would anticipate that that would
continue.
When I look at the organization and the material they have
produced and the things they have failed, one of the things I
am most concerned about are points that my colleagues have
made, which is how this movement has opened up the potential
for others to participate.
I think when you look at the people who have been accused
and charged with crimes in participation with terrorism in this
country, the fact that some of them have never been to Yemen,
but are influenced--by Yemen, that is what is concerning to me.
If it is a random shooting or bombing, I think they don't
look like major plots, but I think we would see that more and
more.
Mr. Thompson. So are you talking, like, over the internet
or just through other means of communication, or----
Mr. Boucek. I mean, I think when we look at the past, you
know, cases in this country, people that have communicated with
individuals in Yemen, people have tried to go to Yemen, people
have been influenced by material produced from Yemen, from
individuals in Yemen, I think that is a concern.
As we see the Yemeni government's capacity erode, it is
jeopardizing American security.
Mr. Brachman. I think there are two competing trends here.
Several years ago a self-styled al-Qaeda pundit released an
essay called ``Cold Terrorism.'' He said that we are so bent on
the big explosions and getting a lot of media visibility, we
actually do ourselves a disservice, because that forces the
overreaction, then, of law enforcement and intelligence against
it.
So why don't we just do kind of what happened during the
Cold War--fight by proxy, do things quieter? I mean, he said,
rather than hijacking and blowing up a plane, why don't we just
drive two Greyhound buses off a bridge? We kill the same number
of people. There is no security. It will be a lot easier.
It made a lot of sense, but nobody read it. The article got
no traction. Nobody talked about it. It just was really boring,
because there is still this mythology around things that blow
up within al-Qaeda. This is a machismo organization that it is
media first for them.
So I think while you see this interest within the
``Inspire'' magazines about, you know, going to a restaurant in
the District of Columbia or weld on a blade under your Ford F-
150 and drive through crowd of people, you know, it is gimmicky
and novel, but at the end of the day you still want to blow up
a plane or fly a plane into something. I think that is still
kind of where it is. But I don't know which trend will win out.
Mr. Barfi. There is always the desire for spectacular
attacks, because they gain you more publicity. But this is a
war of attrition. It is long-term. It is a 100-year war. It is
a 1,000-year war. Any attack that you have against the American
homeland is considered a great success.
Nidal Hasan's attack in Fort Hood was an amazing success,
because you had it in the most secure part of the American
homeland, on a military base. We will probably see the
likelihood of AQAP reaching out to more Muslims in the Western
world to plot small-scale attacks, which they can then raise as
the banner of success. So I think that is what we will be
looking for in the short to medium term, sir.
Mr. Thompson. Sort of like lone wolves or those kinds of
individuals are what you are talking about?
Mr. Barfi. Exactly. You make contact with these people on
the internet. This is what Dr. Brachman, his expertise and what
he told us all about. They are reaching out to these people on
the internet. You are going to get these loners, and they are
going to be brought in by the recruiting and the propaganda,
make connections with them. It doesn't take a lot of planning
and expertise. You know, they are armchair fans, the fantasy
league.
The problem with this is from a security standpoint, we
just can't stop something like that. There is just not a lot of
security. The last line of security to get into, you know, a
place like the Cannon building is not going to help when you
walk into a restaurant, because we don't have that. So this is
probably what we are going to see in the short to medium term.
Mr. Thompson. One other comment, one other thing, Mr.
Chairman. We have tried to layer some of this--is to get the
public more involved and, you know, if you see something, you
ought to say something rather than just go about your business,
so to speak, because this notion that Government can provide
all the defenses necessary to protect us from any of these
threats, I think, at best is a novel, if not something that
learned individuals know we can't fully accomplish.
So not saying that we won't do our best to prevent it, but
one of the other challenges we have is how vigilant we are as a
Nation when something like this happens and is successful. Part
of the modeling has been after some other countries that have
been involved in terrorism a good bit. So it is a challenge.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I think you have put together a good
panel of witnesses, and the information has been very
informative. I yield back.
Mr. Meehan. Well, thank you, Mr. Thompson. I appreciate
your comment. I just want to take 1 second to add to that very,
very important observation.
I note that that was both--an observation was made by a
vendor that prevented the actual harm in New York Times Square.
Most recently, evidence seems to suggest it was the observation
made by a vendor of one of our chemicals that alerted
authorities to the unfolding of a potential event in Texas.
Both of those cases were when an involved citizen stepped up
and alerted authorities to suspicious activities. So thank you
for making that observation, Mr. Thompson.
I note the attendance of my colleague from it is either
Missouri or Missoura, depending on which part you are from, Mr.
Long. But I know that he will be reviewing the record and
doesn't have questions for us today.
So I want to thank you for being a very, very good panel
for us that brought a full perspective, or a more full
perspective, into this unique challenge of al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, particularly into the context of unfolding
events in Yemen.
We will be guided by your observations in our continuing
quest to both not just understand the nature of the threat as
it grows and emerges, but what our responsibilities are to work
with the resources in our Nation to protect our homeland from
actual events of terrorism that result from this and other
activities around the world.
So I am very, very grateful for your presence here, your
testimony and your questions from the other Members.
The Members of the committee may have additional questions
for the witnesses, and we will ask you to respond to those in
writing at some point in time, if in fact they do, and the
hearing record will be open for 10 days to do so.
I remind the subcommittee that 15 minutes after the end of
this, we will move to HVC-302 to receive a classified briefing
on this same issue from the FBI, the National Counterterrorism
Center, and the Department of Homeland Security for their
observations posed by al-Qaeda and the homeland.
Let me just make my parting comment reflect on. As we have
been sitting here, unfolding events around the world still--my
colleague, Mr. Cravaack, referenced it. It appears that there
have been two United States soldiers who have been killed in
what looks like a terrorist attack in Frankfurt, Germany, in an
airport.
So first and foremost, of course, our thoughts and prayers
are with them and their families at this very sad time. But it
drives home the very real nature of the matter that is before
us today.
So I want to express again my appreciation to each of you.
Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:26 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Questions Submitted by Honorable Billy Long for Christopher Boucek
Question 1. Where do AQ's resources come from? How well-funded are
they?
Answer. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's resources appears to
come from several sources. These include funds derived from criminal
activity, such as bank robberies and armored car robberies. Fundraising
is also a source of financial support for the organization, and there
have been several cases in other Gulf States of alleged fundraising for
AQAP. It should be remembered, however, that terrorism is a relatively
inexpensive endeavor, and large sums of money are not needed to mount
successful operations. According to AQAP, the October 2010 package bomb
operation cost only $4,200.
Question 2a. AQAP like other terrorist organizations such as Hamas
in the Territories or Hezbollah in Lebanon, has used the corruption in
government and poor economic conditions to broaden their base of
followers.
How do you address the leadership vacuum within the Yemeni or other
governments?
Question 2b. How can persuasive leadership inspire the people to
actively participate in moving their country forward toward
development, or join in the debate over how best to do so?
Question 2c. How can you teach leadership in a place where it has
been suppressed?
Answer. AQAP's manifestation in Yemen is the result of many
factors--chief among them is declining capacity of the Yemeni central
government. The under-governed spaces in Yemen have been increasing in
recent years, and this has been exploited by AQAP. Washington has very
little leverage with which to influence events (or the leadership) in
Yemen. The U.S. Government must be realistic about what the United
States--or the international community--can accomplish. Ultimately,
many of Yemen's problems cannot be solved. Resource depletion, economic
failure, and explosive population growth represent an almost
insurmountable set of challenges, and these conditions cannot be
completely reversed.
The primary policy challenge with regard to Yemen is how to build
the relationship between the Yemeni people and their government. This
will require building the capacity of the Yemeni government to be
responsive to the needs of its people and to expand the capability of
the central government to deliver basic services throughout the
country. It will also require the building of confidence in the Yemeni
people that their government is working in their interests.
Question 3. How can you make the argument to the Yemeni government
that their goals of maintaining stability and fighting AQ are not
exclusive and can be done concurrently inasmuch as resources are
concerned?
Answer. While the Yemeni government often views AQAP and Islamist
terrorism as a threat, it has not been a primary challenge or even a
major threat to the regime. There are many more serious challenges that
pose a direct threat to the stability of the state and the survival of
the regime. Since the start of the current protest movement, the Yemeni
government has redeployed its counter-terrorism assets from going after
AQAP and moved them to bolster internal security. In recent months
Islamist fighters--possibly including some al-Qaeda elements--have been
increasingly active in the south of the country. As the central
government's authority continues to recede, the operational space for
AQAP is increasing. While the Saleh government has sought to reassert
control in some areas, their ability to fully establish control is not
known.
Question 4a. You mentioned that our overreaction from the media and
changing nature of AQ have shifted the definition of ``success'' from
successfully carrying out an attack toward instilling fear and forcing
the government to deplete its resources, leveraging a $4,200 operation
into a multi-billion dollar effort to counter such an operation. The
planning and funding of a 9/11-style attack are no longer necessary to
achieve these goals. You say that hijacking two Greyhound buses and
driving them off a bridge would not have such an impact as an explosion
or bomb, but the attacks we have seen (or attempts) have been much
smaller in scale.
If the goal is to instill fear in people, do you think that there
will be a time in the near future when AQ begins using Israeli-style
attacks in restaurants or nightclubs, effectively creating an
environment of fear? Or small subway attacks?
Question 4b. How would the United States handle this sort of
campaign?
Answer. This question is not directed to me.
Question 5. How can governments learn from the tactics of AQ and
use social media and community networks to counter the message AQ is
getting out to their followers?
Answer. I would suggest that our challenge is not getting out a
different message to compete with that of AQAP, but in demonstrating
that the United States is working to address the systemic challenges in
Yemen that gives rise to al-Qaeda and other violent opposition.
A collapsing economy, rampant corruption, widespread unemployment,
rapid resource depletion, and a series of political and socio-economic
challenges have manifested as security challenges to the current ruling
government. A policy centered on counter-terrorism to the near
exclusion of other issues will ultimately prove counterproductive.
While initial gains may be seen, they may be short-lived. Improving
American security will come when conditions in Yemen improve for all
Yemenis. Working to make small improvements across the spectrum of
these challenges, we can reduce the severity of their impact, lessen
the humanitarian suffering, and strengthen the Yemeni government. This
will hopefully improve U.S. security and bolster Yemeni stability.
Questions Submitted by Honorable Billy Long for Jarret Brachman
Question 1. Where do AQ's resources come from? How well-funded are
they?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2a. AQAP like other terrorist organizations such as Hamas
in the Territories or Hezbollah in Lebanon, has used the corruption in
government and poor economic conditions to broaden their base of
followers.
How do you address the leadership vacuum within the Yemeni or other
governments?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2b. How can persuasive leadership inspire the people to
actively participate in moving their country forward toward
development, or join in the debate over how best to do so?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2c. How do you teach leadership in a place where it has
been suppressed?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 3. How can you make the argument to the Yemeni government
that their goals of maintaining stability and fighting AQ are not
exclusive and can be done concurrently inasmuch as resources are
concerned?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 4a. You mentioned that our overreaction from the media and
changing nature of AQ have shifted the definition of ``success'' from
successfully carrying out an attack toward instilling fear and forcing
the government to deplete its resources, leveraging a $4,200 operation
into a multi-billion dollar effort to counter such an operation. The
planning and funding of a 9/11-style attack are no longer necessary to
achieve these goals. You say that hijacking two Greyhound buses and
driving them off a bridge would not have such an impact as an explosion
or bomb, but the attacks we have seen (or attempts) have been much
smaller in scale.
If the goal is to instill fear in the people, do you think that
there will be a time in the near future when AQ begins using Israeli-
style attacks in restaurants or nightclubs, effectively creating an
environment of fear? Or small subway attacks?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 4b. How would the United States handle this sort of
campaign?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 5. How can governments learn from the tactics of AQ and
use social media and community networks to counter the message AQ is
getting out to their followers?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Questions Submitted by Honorable Billy Long for Barak Barfi
Question 1. Where do AQ's resources come from? How well-funded are
they?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2a. AQAP like other terrorist organizations such as Hamas
in the Territories or Hezbollah in Lebanon, has used the corruption in
government and poor economic conditions to broaden their base of
followers.
How do you address the leadership vacuum within the Yemeni or other
governments?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2b. How can persuasive leadership inspire the people to
actively participate in moving their country forward toward
development, or join in the debate over how best to do so?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2c. How do you teach leadership in a place where it has
been suppressed?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 3. How can you make the argument to the Yemeni government
that their goals of maintaining stability and fighting AQ are not
exclusive and can be done concurrently inasmuch as resources are
concerned?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 4a. You mentioned that our overreaction from the media and
changing nature of AQ have shifted the definition of ``success'' from
successfully carrying out an attack toward instilling fear and forcing
the government to deplete its resources, leveraging a $4,200 operation
into a multi-billion dollar effort to counter such an operation. The
planning and funding of a 9/11-style attack are no longer necessary to
achieve these goals. You say that hijacking two Greyhound buses and
driving them off a bridge would not have such an impact as an explosion
or bomb, but the attacks we have seen (or attempts) have been much
smaller in scale.
If the goal is to instill fear in the people, do you think that
there will be a time in the near future when AQ begins using Israeli-
style attacks in restaurants or nightclubs, effectively creating an
environment of fear? Or small subway attacks?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 4b. How would the United States handle this sort of
campaign?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 5. How can governments learn from the tactics of AQ and
use social media and community networks to counter the message AQ is
getting out to their followers?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
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