The impact of Alqaieda

CIA STRUGGLES AND RISE OF AL-QAEDA Name Course Date CIA Struggles and Rise of Al-Qaeda Introduction US intelligence is believed to be the most powerful, robust and up to date in the world. Going by the expenditure on intelligence alone, it is correct to assume it should be able to foresee and foretell potential attacks from whatever part of the world. However in the build up to the 9/11, the intelligence system failed and was not able to predict the attack. Additionally, the central intelligence agency (CIA) is blamed to have missed the point when al-Qaida was forming and recruiting members. This paper argues that the CIA struggles were solely the reasons for blossoming of al-Qaida, the 9/11 attack and other intelligence mishaps in the post-cold war. The paper starts by analyzing the how a struggling CIA fuelled al-Qaeda success then argues that poor information sharing between CIA and other agencies failed to stop al-Qaeda from strengthening its ranks. Finally, the paper looks at CIA priorities in the post-cold war and its relation to al-Qaeda and then stakes a claim that the 9/11 attack was purely a result of Intelligence failure. CIA struggles and how it fuelled al-Qaida success As the threat of terrorism and al-Qaeda grew, the central intelligence agency which is charged within diligence gathering continued to struggle and made blunders that led to collateral damages and loss of lives in the 9/11 attack. After the Soviet war and the advent of the information age, al-Qaida began as a small network of dispersed units that synchronized the information age with doctrine, strategy, and technology. According to Coll (278) al-Qaida had a web of informal connection that was made mostly of Sunni Islamic terrorists, and Osama bin Laden had managed to organize an unknown number of sleeper cells that were on standby awaiting instruction to attack. During this time, the central intelligence agency (CIA), a body that was charged with gathering information and neutralizing the threat of terrorism was in deep struggles. The CIA was at its all-time low. The agency was faced with constant budgetary cuts, an issue that hindered its restructuring thus rendering it only capable of concentrating on a monolithic enemy. Much of the CIA's work was focused on tracking bin Laden as an individual and not collecting intelligence on the activities of al-Qaida. However the CIA managed to trap Bin Laden’s phone, the efforts were insignificant because Bin Laden changed his communication methods constantly.[Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Penguin, 2004.] The CIA had no station in Afghanistan in which it could collect information about al-Qaida movements. At this time al-Qaida was gathering intelligence and building its stable while the Langley-based agency was unable to collect valuable intelligence from sources within al-Qaida (234). Moreover, the entire intelligence community failed to understand al-Qaida. It is believed that CIA faced structural problems that hindered analysis. The lack of quality intelligence collected from the al-Qaida meant that the United States operated on a blind spot. CIA's ineptitude was also seen in the fact that intelligence gathering focused on bin Laden and not on al-Qaida thus epitomizes the belief that there was a Bin Laden station and not an al-Qaida station. Thus CIA did not give attention to any intelligence information coming from informers from within the expansive al-Qaida jungle. According to Zegart(28-29) the international community failed to act on intelligence even though there was information that Bin Laden was recruiting terrorists to travel to the United States and engage in terrorism activities. Failure to act on such intelligence and misunderstanding of al-Qaida structure epitomized CIA ineffectiveness and struggle.[Diamond, John M. The CIA and the Culture of Failure: US Intelligence from the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq. Stanford University Press, 2008.] [Zegart, Amy B. ""CNN with Secrets:" 9/11, the CIA, and the Organizational Roots of Failure." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 20, no. 1 (2007): 18-49.] Furthermore, CIA was tasked with the capture of Bin Laden and thus focused on Bin Laden as the figurehead of a criminal organization around the world blind spotted the CIA from analyzing intelligence that was coming from deep inside the al-Qaida cells. Both Clinton’s regime and bush's regime produced uninformed counter-terror policy because the CIA sent too much-unfiltered intelligence to the administration’s (418). Tenet (112) Argues that the CIA failed to provide enough information to help capture Bin, Laden. Tactically, the CIA was a vertically oriented stale agency that found it rough to understand a horizontal enemy thus making it hard to adopt and execute counter-terror policy.[Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Penguin, 2004.] [Tenet, George, and Bill Harlow. At the Center of the Storm. Books on Tape, 2007.] In addition to the fact that the CIA was ill-equipped, less funded, tactically stale and blinded by Bin Laden pursuit, its action in counter-terrorism also helped create the anti-American sentiments that helped in terrorism. The CIA carried out targeted killings on what it perceived terror hotbeds. CIA targeted killing program included drone strikes that were outside war zones with no judicial settings to determine the objectives. The nature of these attacks augmented anti-American sentiments which Agree contributes to increasing in terrorism on American soil. Being aware of the effects of the activities, the CIA created a term "blowback" (17) To mean the likelihood that the CIA’s covert operation in other countries would result in retaliations against Americans both civilians and military abroad and at home. Whereas the targeted drone program prevented violent retaliation at the time of the attack, the hunger and psychological effect damage caused lingers for long in the victims mind. It is also believed that since 9/11, there has been an increased in a drone attack to counter increased terrorism cases.[Perry Jr, Henry C. Soviet-Afghan War (December 1979 to September 1989): Success Leads to Failure. MARINE CORPS COMMAND AND STAFF COLL QUANTICO VA, 2008.] [Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The costs and consequences of American empire. Macmillan, 2004.] How al-Qaida succeeded Various factors led to the development of al-Qaida. Scholars like (17) believe that al-Qaida and Bin are laden were the creation of CIA, in that they trained them, funded them and armed them. The American involvement in Afghanistan in an attempt to rid of the Soviet Union became the genesis of the al-Qaida operations. During the Afghan war, American enlisted the support of mujahideen in an attempt by CIA to weaken the soviet. They did it by circulating thousands of Wahhabi- glossed Korans thus planting the earliest seeds of discord. The CIA in conjunction with the Saudi intelligence supplied weaponry and recruited radical Islamism to join mujahideen. The initial aim of this strategy was to neutralize the Soviet influence, but later it boomeranged when the trained CIA operatives in the region like Osama bin Laden turned and formed al-Qaeda. Perry(5) contends that the scale of IS-CIA support for the mujahideen was so big that between 1983 and 1987 around eighty thousand were recruited and trained within the Pakistani territory. The triangular alignment of the ISI, the CIA and the Saudi intelligence established a foreign branch of jihadi Muslims by the name ArabAfghans. During this time, the CIA was at the center of international jihadi recruitment and one of the al-Qaeda founder sheiks Azzam. Initially, Azzam was tasked by the CIA to create a network of offices for recruiting freedom fighters and soliciting for funds to support mujahideen.[ibid] [Perry Jr, Henry C. Soviet-Afghan War (December 1979 to September 1989): Success Leads to Failure. MARINE CORPS COMMAND AND STAFF COLL QUANTICO VA, 2008.] As Azzam’s recruitment strategies became satisfied, he handed over the exercise to Osama bin Laden, one of his students. Scott (140) Claim that both Bin Laded and Azzam differed in vision for the future of jihadi. Azzam was murdered and later on al-Qaida was created to wage war beyond the Afghan borders.[Scott, Peter Dale. The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the future of America. Univ of California Press, 2007] Al-Qaeda success was aided by the nature of brotherhood the members had developed within the trenches of the Pakistani during military training. Bin Laden used terror tactics, and religion as a political ideology to transform new recruits who needed hyphenated identities (136).[Mamdani, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. Unisa Press, 2004.] The success of al-Qaeda can be attributed to various factors both geopolitical, CIA oriented and globalization. The CIA at the time al-Qaeda was regrouping was struggling. The agency had little funding and was not able to overhaul its operation to set base in important places like Afghanistan where information aboutal-Qaeda came. The fact that CIA failed to set up base in this crucial region to tap this information gave the insurgent the leeway to regroup, organize themselves and collect intelligence without interferences. Another CIA struggle was in the failure to prioritize their operations. Initially, CIA concentrated on catching Bin Laden and was not concerned with what was happening in the jungle where al-Qaidawas being constituted. In some cases, the agency received quality and reliable information about al-Qaeda and impending attacks but did not act on because of either lack of resources to analyze the information, or poorly crafted policy that prioritized Bin Laden capture over neutralizing al-Qaida. Another factor that allowed al-Qaida to blossom is the fact that the international intelligence community turns a blind eye on it. This brought them the much needed time to conduct their business and engage in massive recruitment. Moreover, the CIA activities had acted as a precursor to the whole group’s formation with the funding, arming and training that were given to jihadist recruits. All the CIA’s undoing and struggles contributed to al-Qaida’s success. Both Clinton and bush’s administration embarked on an inferior counter-terror policy. The CIA fed both administrations with unfiltered intelligence that could not be analyzed horizontally. The unreliable intelligence made the two regimes to come up with uninformed counter-terror policy which had loopholes that benefited al-Qaida at the expense of CIA. Poor information sharing between the CIA and other agencies As al-Qaida was busy strengthening its ranks, various intelligence agencies had information, but there was no sharing between them. The CIA either deliberately ignored the al-Qaida threat or was ill-equipped to engage other intelligence agencies with the view to sharing information. All the government agencies in the United States are supposed to collect information about terrorism. However, there are three very specific agencies whose immediate roles are to consolidate and develop programs for counterterrorism. These agencies are the central intelligence agency, (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The primary task for CIA was to collect and furnish the nation security council with information that was sensitive to the national safety of the nation. Today the CIA plays a larger role in not only advising the National Security Council but also in prevention of international terrorism and acts towards counter international terrorism. The FBI, the department of homeland security and the national security agency are the closest to counterterrorism center. A major challenge to security apparatus and a fact that allowed al-Qaida group to blossom was the lack of communication and corporation between agencies involved in counterterrorism. There was also fear of consequences of turf wars. While various organizations had information about the impending attack and the increasing polarization of the al-Qaida group, no agency came out to share with the other. CIA, for example, is guilty of not sharing information from the jungle from which al-Qaeda operated. In the year 2000, al-Qaeda sponsored a meeting in Malaysia in which two of the 9/11 masterminds were present. The CIA and the NSA were aware of the meeting but failed to share the information with FBI thus failed to put them on the watch list as wanted terrorists. The lack of information sharing leads the CIA to miss a crucial lead on two of the most wanted terrorist that it was tracking. The CIA gathered information about the two terrorists, and because they were not allowed to act on the information gathered, they refused to share the information with the FBI thus allowing the suspects to slide into the society and get assimilated. With that, the CIA lost track of them (86). The inability to share information combined with the lack information due to outdated technology, underfunding of the agencies and understaffing problems played a significant role in the rise of al-Qaida.[Bamford,...