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Al Zawahiri Economic War Against the West, by Laura Quadarella Sanfelice di Monteforte “
Al Zawahiri economic war against the West1
by Laura Quadarella Sanfelice di Monteforte
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Among the economic wars, the struggle waged by al Qaeda (AQ) against the West, and - to be more precise – the one waged by Al Zawahiri against the United States should certainly be considered. It is a war which, according to the words used by the qaedist leader, is principally waged on the economic layer, having an economic aim, even if this is an aspect which escapes to many people.
Both experts and the public opinion are, in fact, concentrated on the direct effects of each attack and on the efforts to prevent others, and they don’t look at the final aim pursued by the jihadist groups, which does not always coincide with those declared on the media. Jihadist terrorism is a subject of enormous attention and interest, causing fears in the West, but which is not always fully understood. One among the factors which are seldom considered is that both States and citizens are sustaining, since years, growing expenditures to defend them from terrorist attacks and to defeat the jihadist groups.
Since the September 11 attacks, terrorism has caused the heightening of the security level which states must ensure for their citizens and has changed our life habits. Precisely these economic expenditures are among the principal reasons prompting AQ to promote this steady stream of small bombings in the West. We have all been upsets by the frontal attack carried on by bin Laden men in 2001, and then we have feared other even more bloody attacks, possibly through the dreaded weapons of mass destruction.
AQ, instead, has not carried out, any more, attacks having the relevance of those of September 11, and probably has not even attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction2. This has been due, in part, to the difficulties
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1 The opinions expressed in this article belong to the Author and are not necessarily corresponding to those of the Ministry where She works. 2 See Laura Quadarella Sanfelice di Monteforte, «Le nuove minacce del terrorismo interna-
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that, after the invasion of Afghanistan, the organization might have experienced in preparing this sort of attacks, but also, at least in part, to a well clear ‘political and strategic’ choice.
It is a choice that has brought al Qaeda, especially after the death of bin Laden in May 2011, to concentrate more on the events in the Islamic countries, than on attacks against the West. A political decision which has brought Al Qaeda, and more generally jihadism, to exploit those which we have rashly, or too optimistically, dubbed as «Arab Springs». A choice, though, which has not prevented the group led by Al Zawahiri, and later the Islamic State (IS), his rival in the struggle for the supremacy on the «jihadist galaxy», to continue keeping high the tension in the West, by promoting the so-called ‘do-it-yourself’ terrorism. It is a form of terrorism which materializes in attacks carried out in our towns by young Muslims who, more often, are born and grown up in the West: homegrown terrorists, who have never left our societies and (today) returnees foreign fighters, coming back from areas of crisis, as the Syrian-Iraqi theater. This terrorism is characterized by an almost endless variety of operational modalities and by the difficulty to prevent attacks and to pinpoint terrorists acting with an autonomy more or less significant from any terrorist group.
The ‘do-it-yourself’ terrorism was in fact invented by an Imam having a double Yemeni and American passport, Al Awlaki, leader of «Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula» (AQAP), and having been the founder, in 2010, of Inspire, the first among the now numerous jihadist magazines in English (or in other languages), which are directly addressed to the youngsters living in the West and who do not know Arabic, in order to radicalize, train and prompt them to carry out autonomous attacks.
This approach was publicly endorsed by AQ in September 2013, when Al Zawahiri, in his speech for the twelfth anniversary of the 2001 attacks, highlighted their advantages and explained their aims. As the Egyptian physician said, this form of terrorism presents several advantages. First of all, under a practical standpoint, it uses youngsters who can be recruited and trained directly in the West, through INTERNET. Also, even when these youngsters fail, thus being unable to reach the final phase, in performing
zionale: Al Qaeda tra lo sviluppo di armi non convenzionali e l’utilizzo dei terroristi homegrown», osservatorio Strategico, Anno XII, N. 11, nov. 2010, CeMiSS, pp. 79-84.
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the attacks, or in any case, not achieving the objectives of the bombing, this terrorism succeeds in keeping high the tension in the West. Finally, as Al Zawahiri said, with time, these bombings will end up economically exhausting the West and destroying the economy of the United States, compelled to bleed to death, while continuing to massively invest in security.
In his message, focusing on the United States, considered to be the historical enemy of AQ, the Egyptian physician concentrated himself on what he defined as their «weak spot»: U.S. economy. According to Al Zawahiri, US economy was tottering, due to military and security expenditures, and would have been kept under constant pressure by attacks hitting ‘here and there’. These attacks, as he repeated several times in the last few years, bleed US economy, through modalities ‘at zero cost’ for AQ. This is an excerpt of what he said: «We should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure»3
In this speech, Al Zawahiri, with a clear reference to the Boston marathon attack of the previous April4, continued by explaining that, due to this sort of attacks, the United States would have continued to massively spend on security, thus approaching their financial ruin, while asking themselves when and where the next attack would take place, a sort of war of nerves which, starting from that moment, would have been waged, according to Al Zawahiri, directly on the American territory. For the first time, therefore, in this speech, the leader of AQ sang the praises of the attacks carried on in the West, by youngsters defined by him as lone mujahid, and invited all young Muslims residing in the United States to carry out these attacks, considered by him tiles of the economic war waged against the United States, and more generally against the West and its values.
3 https://news.siteintelgroup.com/Jihadist-News/zawahiri-speaks-on-12th-anniversary-of911-calls-for-attack-on-us.html 4 According to Al Zawahiri «The Boston incident confirms to the Americans ... that they are not facing individuals, organizations or groups, but they are facing an uprising Ummah (Muslim community), that rose in jihad to defend its soul, dignity and capabilities».
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«Air terrorism» of the XXI century as economic war
One among the domains where the aims and the economic repercussions of terrorism, and especially its ‘do-it-yourself’ variant, are most evident, is the security sector of air transport, subject to several attacks in the last few years5. Starting from the September 11, 2001 attacks, a large number of bombings, often at a small scale and fortunately often failed, have taken place. Their consequence has been a heightening of the security levels, which, to use the words of Al Zawahiri, are really ‘bleeding’ Western economies, besides modifying our habits and our lifestyles.
Let us recall them briefly:
• The September 11, 2001, attacks, which have caused a steep rise of controls in the airports and forced all air companies to lock the pilots’ cabin, through security systems allowing its opening only from the interior; • The failed bombing of the so-called «shoe bomber», in December 2001, which led to more accurate controls of the passengers’ shoes, before their boarding, through ad-hoc scanners placed in all airports in the world, and causing increasing barefoot walks by passengers; • The plan of the foiled attack of Summer 2006, which should have caused the crash of several intercontinental planes, which would have exploded through a liquid explosive; this led to restrictions on the quantity of transportable liquids by passengers in the cabin; • The failed bombing of Christmas Day, 2009, by the so-called “underpants bomber”, who had accurately hidden in two pockets, sawn in his underwear, a type of explosive which could not be spotted through the normal X-Ray controls, together with the material used to activate the explosion; this led to inevitable new responses by the Authorities of Western Countries who, in order to guarantee air security, have modified for the umpteenth time our habits, and led to the abatement of a new frontier, our privacy; • The plan which, in Autumn 2010, led to carry, on board of cargo and passengers’ aircraft, printers laden with plastic explosive; this implied the umpteenth upgrade of cargo control systems, for parcels transported by air;
The demonstration that these reasoning are not mere conjectures is provided by AQ itself, as especially the Autumn 2010 attack was extolled in a
5 Laura Quadarella Sanfelice di Monteforte, «Il terrorismo aereo», Rivista Aeronautica, n. 4, sett. 2010, pp. 116ss.; Ead., «Il terrorismo aereo. Il nuovo terrorismo internazionale e la risposta della comunità», Quaderni della Rivista Aeronautica, Approfondimenti, dic. 2011, pp. 23-45.
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special issue of the Inspire magazine by AQAP, in November 20106. It is No. 3 of the Yemeni magazine of that year, which is convenient to briefly analyze. This issue of the magazine was disseminated with the precise aim to lay claim on what was called Operation Hemorrhage, which was nothing else than the shipping of parcels rigged with explosive in the autumn of that year. According to the magazine, the two parcels rigged with explosives, which were discovered in London and Dubai on two cargo planes, were part of an operation, planned by AQAP in the previous months.
Not only these parcels, both of them shipped from the Yemeni capital, were part of the operation, but there was apparently a third, on board of the flight crashed in Dubai in early September, just after its take-off, a crash which, as AQ claims, was due to this type of bombing, but which, as it is well known, had instead been attributed to an incident.
Therefore, the declared aim of the magazine was, first of all, to claim responsibility of the attacks, and then to explain how the operation went, in its every minimum detail, both to confer credibility to the claim, and to enable the attack to be autonomously replicated also by terrorist cells existing in the West, cells being the target audience of the magazine, thus launching, through them, a second phase of the operation.
The costs for AQAP of the first phase, between September and October, did apparently imply only three months of preparation and $ 2.400, including both the cost to acquire HP printers, whose toners had been replaced with plastic explosive (tetra nitrate of pentrite, already used in other AQAP attacks), and the expenditure to buy Nokia cellphones, used as detonators and carefully hidden in place of the electrical circuits of the printers.
In the magazine there was no lack of photos and captions, explaining the main steps to be followed, including those on how to transform the printers in bombs which could not be spotted as such by any control. The parcel bomb so prepared, according to the authors of the article, would not raise suspicions neither when going through the airport scanners, nor in case of a manual control. In fact, it was highlighted that no metal had been used for the detonator, which could not therefore be spotted by a metal detector, the explosive would be confused with the ink of the toner,
6 Laura Quadarella Sanfelice di Monteforte, Il terrorismo “fai da te”. Inspire e la propaganda online di AQAP per i giovani musulmani in Occidente, Aracne, Roma, 2013.
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and would not be found neither by the smell of dogs, nor by explosive detectors, while the X-Rays would display organic, non-organic and metal materials, as in any printer, and, finally, a possible inspection of the parcel would not reveal any anomaly.
If we look, though, at some elements related to the shipping of the parcels in 2010, we can see that the aim was not merely to cause an explosion of the aircraft, but to prompt a new further heightening of the security levels of air transport, and to provoke the umpteenth economic damage to this sector. The parcels, discovered during their long travel to the United States (thanks, apparently, also to the disclosure by a former terrorist) had gone through several intermediate flights, both on cargo and passenger planes, had been shipped by Yemen and were destined to a Synagogue of a US town: they were intended to be spotted! The plan, in fact, was not to bomb the synagogue or the plane, but to cause a serious economic damage to the multi-million industry of air commerce and to force the West to aggravate a control system which had been noted to be too vulnerable. The truth is that these articles of the magazine were crucial to reveal the aim of the whole operation7: its scope was to exert pressure on the Americans and their allies, as since time, according to the magazine, Americans «show to be stubborn» and they do not understand that, even when someone is strong, there is always an ‘Achilles tendon’, and central is the equation repeated many times by Osama bin Laden, according to which «our security is your insecurity», while «our insecurity is your security»8 . Today’s ‘do-it-yourself’ terrorism for Al Qaeda
It could be thought that many things have changed for AQ, after the advent, on the jihadist scene, of IS, and, at least in part, this is true. A real competition, between these two networks, for the leadership of the «Isla-
7 Inspire, Issue 3, Fall 2010, p. 9ss. 8 «But now you can see that we revealed to you a bigger security lapse than the last one and yet you are still being stubborn.», Inspire, 3, p. 14. «We want to say to those of reason and wisdom among you: There is no solution for you with us except if you abide by this simple equation which has been repeated to you by our Shaykh Usama bin Ladin, may Allah protect him: Our security = Your security And likewise: Our insecurity = Your insecurity.
If you refuse then we will continue our war against you. In the name of Allah we are preparing for you since years and we will continue on this path», Ibidem. «Every frame has its Achilles heel, No matter how strong one feels», Inspire, 3, p. 16.
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mic galaxy» has initiated, and this has repercussions also on the use AQ and IS make of the «do-it-yourself» terrorism9. But, while IS promotes and claims the bombing these youngsters carry out in our towns, with the aim of gaining publicity and achieving a media return, AQ promotes and lays claim attacks only thinking at the West and to how to damage it. As far as IS is concerned, instead, the «do-it-yourself» terrorism is promoted since September 2014, when the former speaker Adnani (passed away at the end of August 2016) hinged on this form of terrorism an audio speech, few months after the proclamation of the Caliphate. In this speech Adnani, who was also responsible for IS external operations, invited every young author of such a type of bombings to publicly swear his own allegiance to the Caliphate, before acting.
As it was demonstrated also by the claims of the latest attacks, IS attention is therefore not focused on the economic consequences for the American enemy, but mostly to the media return that attacks, carried on in Europe and in the United States, would have for the Caliphate10. With these aims IS urges youngsters to act, using any ‘weapon’ available to them, in order to hit the infidels in their own countries, «without asking permission to anybody before passing to action», but «by publicly swearing allegiance to the Caliphate»11 .
AQ, instead, has also recently stated – see the special guidance of Inspi-
9 It should be highlighted that both jihadist networks, besides the aims pursued by them, i promoting the «do-it-yourself» terrorism, take inspiration from the doctrine of the Imam al Awalaki, often quoted by both propaganda machines, probably also due to the fact that his death, in 2011, happened in the period before the birth of IS, and therefore before the clash between Al Zawahiri e al Baghdadi. 10 See Laura Quadarella Sanfelice di Monteforte, Perché ci attaccano. Al Qaeda, l’Islamic
State e il terrorismo “fai da te”, Aracne Editrice, Roma, 2016. 11 In line with this approach we find several urgings to act in the magazines Dabiq e Dal al-Islam. See e. g. Dabiq No. 12, November 2015, devoted to the attacks carried out in
Paris few days before: «record his will, renew his bay’ah [oath of allegiance], carry the
Khilafah banner, and strike the crusaders and their pagan and apostate allies wherever he can find them, even if he is alone». Among the numerous subsequent interventions by IS, it is worth mentioning one, broadcasted on May 21, 2016 («And Those Who Lived [In Faith]
Would Live Upon Evidence»), which, thinking in a particular way to the then imminent
Ramadan period, has been the ultimate motivation prompting to action tens of youngsters and which brought IS, in its claims, to say that the youngsters has responded «to the call to hit Western countries».
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Dopo la «Trappola Afghana» di Carter e Brzezinski, il sostegno della CIA ai mujahideen (passato alla storia come «Charlie Wilson’s War»), fu parte della guerra economica offensiva di Reagan contro l’Unione Sovietica.
re, broadcasted on the net after the Orlando and Nice attacks of June-July 201612 - that it is irrelevant if the “lone wolf” acts on behalf of a group or for another one. In these «guidance» AQAP has praised whoever might decide to attack, calling him “a hero”, overlooking the allegiance oaths to one or the other organization. The Yemeni branch of AQ, when it prompts to carry on more attacks of this kind, has stated, to the contrary of what IS does, «to be close to whoever attacks the United States or other Western countries».
12 See the two documents: «Inspire Guide – Orlando Operation», 17/06/2016. «Inspire Guide – Nice Operation, France», 17/07/2016.
