As to the Stratfor Weekly I think its prognosis is wildly wrong. Whoever is writing it is high on something!
My answer is No. I think 9/11 was probably at the limit of Al Qaeda's organisational and technical limit. I think that the authorities in Germany, France, England, US have either caught, or frightened, most of the important Al Qaeda cells -- such as they were. This isn't to say that they're not capable of a lot of damage on their home ground -- Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East -- but I've been amazed why Al Qaeda haven't been able to follow up 9/11 by other substantial attacks in western countries. Just think what could be done if they really had anything about them -- bombs in the Metro, poisoning water supplies, a few bombs in the elevator shafts and stairways of tall buildings! It hardly bears thinking about -- but they haven't achieved this! -- except a pathetic, exceedingly unintelligent chap, who couldn't even set light to his shoe bomb! It would have been a disaster, yes, but that seems to be the total follow-up that they tried to achieve after 9/11.
No, I think that the recent attacks in Baghdad were nothing to do with Ramadan -- that was pure coincidence. More troubling to the Americans must be that they were timed for Wolfowitz's visit which means that Al Qaeda/Sunnis/Saddam's henchmen/whomever had insider knowledge sufficiently long beforehand to organise. It probably means that the Americans will be unlikely to send anybody important again to Iraq. It also means that no country except for a few Ukrainian and Polish troops (whose governments need US$s) are going to set foot in Iraq in the coming months. Even Blair refuses to send more (though he doesn't say so publicly.)
I don't think there's any possibility at all of concerted attacks in Los Angeles, Sydney, Rio de Janiero, Madrid, etc. What a lot of nonsense! (There might well be further attacks such as the Bali incident but they will be locally organised affairs -- not Osama-planned.)
They'll keep on at it in Iraq, though! I see that they blew up an Abram tank yesterday. Now that *is* something for the Americans to worry about! I think that a refusal by American troops to go out on patrol is not far off now.
Bush is now a very, very worried man. His (Cheney/Rumsfeld/Perle/Wolfowitz) Iraq strategy is now in tatters with no prospect of any advancement at all now that the big American-UK oil corporations refuse to make a contract with the Coalition Authority. The Russians are now being mischievous by saying that, as far as they're concerned, Lukoil's original contract with Saddam for the development of the vast West Qurna oil field is stilllegal and still stands!! (Which, of course, it is under international law.) Not only this, but that they could proceed with it *even now* because they would employ Iraqi labour and not the Pakistanis and Philippinos that Bechtel and Halliburton are employing because their executives are frightened of being assassinated!!
Bush must realise now that he is unlikely to be re-elected -- he'll probably lose another 20 points in the polls in the next couple of months -- unless he does something dramatic very shortly. He could, I suppose, blame America's woes on the Chinese renminbi exchange rate and pick a row with them over Taiwan or something like that so that if the economy doesn't pick up well in the spring he already has a scapegoat.
Or he could change his team in a major way, blaming them for his Iraq policy. I wouldn't be surprised if he cleans most of them out in the next month or two, and then withdraws from Iraq in the spring leaving them with an outline constitution and hoping that the bloodbath between Saddam+Sunnis against the Shias doesn't follow on too quickly to spoil the November election.
No, on reflection, It think he'll (a) change his team pretty soon, (b) push a new constitution, (c) carry out a pseudo sort of general election in Iraq which will hopefully produce a rickety sort of Iraqi government that will hold the peace with American forces, (d) then hope that he'll win his own election in November -- and (e) then pull out. (Or, probably, the next president will.) And then there'll be the bloodbath -- and then the Russian Lukoil and the French and the Chinese oil companies that had contracts with Saddam previously will go back in and start pumping oil.
You know ....... the one thing that Bush so far has never admitted to ........ the humiliation of not catching Saddam so far. I've hitherto thought this was inevitable, but now I'm thinking that Saddam might even remain uncaught and then re-emerge as president of Iraq again -- even as Bush takes to the bottle on his Texan ranch!
We'll see! It's a fascinating tale of human folly -- if it wasn't so tragic. (The BBC TV team visited a big Baghdad hospital a couple of days ago -- one of the main hospitals. There was only one baby incubator there. If the American army can't even organise this then it's even more incompetent than I'd realised previously.)
Keith
At 05:28 30/10/2003 -0800, you wrote:
Stratfor Weekly (free intel) 10.27.03: Ramadan attacks raise fears of global violence
Key selected excerpts:
The string of attacks in Iraq raises an alarming question for U.S. and other Western countries fighting al Qaeda: Were these attacks a symbolic trigger -- a message from al Qaeda to its allies around the globe -- to kickstart a campaign of attacks against Western allies, assets and infrastructure across the globe? Although the answer currently is unclear, the bombings will cause Western governments and businesses to respond as though Ramadan will be a month of bloodletting.
&The ability of militant Islamist organizations to act in concert on a global scale is a critical concern for the United States and its allies. Washington's war against al Qaeda is in part psychological, and both sides need to demonstrate that the other cannot operate globally without substantial risk. Al Qaeda hopes to raise the costs of U.S. involvement in the Gulf region high enough that Washington will pull out. The United States needs to break al Qaeda's global network so that it eventually can back the group's leadership into a geographic corner, lock it down and finally quash its operational capability.
& Who carried out the attacks remains unclear, and the suspect list is long. The multiple attacks, coordinated within a 45-minute window and targeting sites in the central, north, south and western parts of the city, indicate that the group responsible is sophisticated, has a solid knowledge of the areas and experience in planning and logistics necessary for carrying out such operations.
&Decision-makers in Washington, London, Canberra, Madrid and elsewhere will be desperate to know the answers to these questions: Were these attacks dictated solely by local issues? Were they conducted by the Sunni guerrillas or foreign fighters? Are they tied only to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, or are they meant to signal to groups -- such as the Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria and the Aden-Abyan Army in Yemen or sleeper cells in the United States -- to launch their own attacks against Westerners and their allies?
Al Qaeda is a global network but also an operational unit formerly based in Afghanistan that might still be directing attacks against the United States and its allies in the Gulf. Al Qaeda Prime, the senior leadership's operating unit based in Afghanistan -- which conducted the Sept. 11 attacks and other major operations -- has never used symbolic dates for operational activities.
& Al Qaeda Prime still needs to show that it continues to survive if it hopes to take the war against the Americans beyond the Gulf. Using the start of Ramadan as an agreed launch date for a global terrorism campaign would resonate with radicals throughout the world.
.. Western governments are worried about Ramadan attacks. Australia, Britain and the United States all warned their citizens within the last few days of specific plots in Saudi Arabia&&..A spate of bombings in Los Angeles, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Sydney would serve as a remarkable victory for al Qaeda and a mortal blow to the U.S. war against terrorism. (end of excerpts. Attached in full)
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
