Category Archives: Libya Benghazi Muslim Brotherhood murder

Nigeria: It Was not 80 Girls, Was 250+, We Knew Their Location

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Western governments KNEW where 80 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram were – but no-one tried to rescue them

Terrorists stormed a Government Secondary School in the remote town of Chibok in Borno state, northern Nigeria in April 2014, seizing 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year exams.

DailyMail: The US and British governments knew where at least 80 of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram were but failed to launch a rescue mission, it has been revealed.

Terrorists stormed a secondary boarding school in the remote town of Chibok in Borno state, northern Nigeria in April 2014, and seized 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year exams.

Although 57 of the girls managed to escape the rest have remained missing and have not been heard from or seen since apart from in May that year, when 130 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video wearing hijabs and reciting the Koran.

Dr Andrew Pocock, the former British high commissioner to Nigeria, has now revealed that a large group of the missing girls were spotted by British and American surveillance officials shortly after their disappearance, but experts felt nothing could be done.

He told The Sunday Times that Western governments felt ‘powerless’ to help as any rescue attempt would have been too high risk – with Boko Haram terrorists using the girls as human shields.

Dr Pocock said: ‘A couple of months after the kidnapping, fly-bys and an American eye in the sky spotted a group of up to 80 girls in a particular spot in the Sambisa forest, around a very large tree, called locally the Tree of Life, along with evidence of vehicular movement and a large encampment.’

He said the girls were there for at least four weeks but authorities were ‘powerless’ to intervene – and the Nigerian government did not ask for help anyway.

He said: ‘A land-based attack would have been seen coming miles away and the girls killed, an air-based rescue, such as flying in helicopters or Hercules, would have required large numbers and meant a significant risk to the rescuers and even more so to the girls.’

He added: ‘You might have rescued a few but many would have been killed. My personal fear was always about the girls not in that encampment — 80 were there, but 250 were taken, so the bulk were not there. What would have happened to them? You were damned if you do and damned if you don’t.’

In an investigation by Christina Lamb for the Sunday Times Magazine, Dr Pocock said the information was passed to the Nigerians but they made no request for help.

The Magazine has also seen brutal rape videos which show schoolgirls are being used as sex slaves by the terrorists.

Ms Lamb reports: ‘They film schoolgirls being raped over and over again until their scream become silent Os.’

Some of the girls who managed to escape told Ms Lamb they were kept in ‘women’s prisons’ where they were taught about Islam. Boko Haram fighters would visit and pick their wives.

The girls were powerless to resist as even then the men would be heavily armed. They were shown videos of people being raped, tortured and killed as a threat of what would happen to them if they tried to run away.

Dr Stephen Davis, a former canon at Coventy Cathedral who has spent several years attempting to negotiate with the terror group said Boko Haram ‘make Isis look like playtime’ and said it is ‘beyond belief’ that the authorities both in Nigeria and the West do not know where the schoolgirls are.

He insists the locations of the camps where the girls are being kept are well known and can even be seen on Google maps. He added: ‘How many girls have to be raped and abducted before the West will do anything?’

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau previously claimed that all the girls, some of whom were Christian, had converted to Islam and been ‘married off’.

The mass abduction brought the brutality of the Islamist insurgency to worldwide attention and prompted the viral social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls which was supported by everyone from Michelle Obama to Malala Yousafzai.

Boko Haram violence has left at least 17,000 dead and forced more than 2.6 million from their homes since 2009. The Global Terrorism Index ranks the group as the word’s deadliest terror organisation.

The group, now officially allied to the Islamic State fighters who control much of Iraq and Syria, has responded with suicide bombings and hit and run attacks against civilians.

In recent months the insurgents have turned away from direct confrontation with the military in favour of suicide attacks, increasingly carried out by women and girls – raising fears that they are kidnap victims.

Just last week two female suicide bombers killed at least 24 worshippers and wounded 18 in an attack during dawn prayers Wednesday on a mosque on the outskirts of the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, officials said from the birthplace of Boko Haram.

One bomber blew up inside the mosque and the second waited outside to detonate as survivors tried to escape, said coordinator Abba Aji of the civilian self-defense Vigilante Group.

The mosque is on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the city that is the military command center of the war against Boko Haram.

Several suicide bombers have exploded recently at roadblocks leading into the city, preventing attackers from reaching crowded areas.

Benghazi: The Attackers Used the Consulate Phones

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Validates the movie #13 Hours

Bravo Alert Status, this is a reminder of Benghazi 9-11

US spy agencies heard Benghazi attackers using State Dept. cell phones to call terrorist leaders  

By James Rosen, Bret Baier  

 

The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.

 

The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for several weeks after the attacks.

 

Eric Stahl, who recently retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force, served as commander and pilot of the C-17 aircraft that was used to transport the corpses of the four casualties from the Benghazi attacks – then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – as well as the assault’s survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Ramstein, Germany.

 

In an exclusive interview on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Stahl said members of a CIA-trained Global Response Staff who raced to the scene of the attacks were “confused” by the administration’s repeated implication of the video as a trigger for the attacks, because “they knew during the attack…who was doing the attacking.” Asked how, Stahl told anchor Bret Baier: “Right after they left the consulate in Benghazi and went to the [CIA] safehouse, they were getting reports that cell phones, consulate cell phones, were being used to make calls to the attackers’ higher ups.”

 

A separate U.S. official, one with intimate details of the bloody events of that night, confirmed the major’s assertion. The second source, who requested anonymity to discuss classified data, told Fox News he had personally read the intelligence reports at the time that contained references to calls by terrorists – using State Department cell phones captured at the consulate during the battle – to their terrorist leaders. The second source also confirmed that the security teams on the ground received this intelligence in real time.

 

Major Stahl was never interviewed by the Accountability Review Board, the investigative panel convened, pursuant to statute, by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as the official body reviewing all the circumstances surrounding the attacks and their aftermath. Many lawmakers and independent experts have criticized the thoroughness of the ARB, which also never interviewed Clinton.

 

In his interview on “Special Report,” Stahl made still other disclosures that add to the vast body of literature on Benghazi – sure to grow in the months ahead, as a select House committee prepares for a comprehensive probe of the affair, complete with subpoena power. Stahl said that when he deposited the traumatized passengers at Ramstein, the first individual to question the CIA security officers was not an FBI officer but the senior State Department diplomat on the ground.

 

“They were taken away from the airplane,” Stahl said. “The U.S. ambassador to Germany [Philip D. Murphy] met us when we landed and he took them away because he wanted to debrief them that night.” Murphy stepped down as ambassador last year. A message left with Sky Blue FC, a private company in New Jersey with which Murphy is listed online as an executive officer, was not immediately returned.

 

Stahl also contended that given his crew’s alert status and location, they could have reached Benghazi in time to have played a role in rescuing the victims of the assault, and ferrying them to safety in Germany, had they been asked to do so. “We were on a 45-day deployment to Ramstein air base,” he told Fox News. “And we were there basically to pick up priority missions, last-minute missions that needed to be accomplished.”

 

“You would’ve thought that we would have had a little bit more of an alert posture on 9/11,” Stahl added. “A hurried-up timeline probably would take us [an] hour-and-a-half to get off the ground and three hours and fifteen minutes to get down there. So we could’ve gone down there and gotten them easily.”

Did Hillary Give Sid her Sign-in Credentials?

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Just askin…..there is an intelligence war with Hillary behind the curtains…..how did Sidney Blumenthal, the leader of Hillary’s personal global spy team get exact text from the NSA? Further, how come he had to give it to Hillary…she could have signed in herself…or could she?

Hundreds of questions and a brewing intersection with the whole intelligence community….

Hillary Has an NSA Problem

The FBI has been investigating Clinton for months—but an even more secretive Federal agency has its own important beef with her

Schindler: For a year now, Hillary Clinton’s misuse of email during her tenure as secretary of state has hung like a dark cloud over her presidential campaign. As I told you months ago, email-gate isn’t going away, despite the best efforts of Team Clinton to make it disappear. Instead, the scandal has gotten worse, with never-ending revelations of apparent misconduct by Ms. Clinton and her staff. At this point, email-gate may be the only thing standing between Ms. Clinton and the White House this November.

Specifically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation examination of email-gate, pursuant to provisions of the Espionage Act, poses a major threat to Ms. Clinton’s presidential aspirations. However, even if the FBI recommends prosecution of her or members of her inner circle for mishandling of classified information—which is something the politically unconnected routinely do face prosecution for—it’s by no means certain that the Department of Justice will follow the FBI’s lead.

What the DoJ decides to do with email-gate is ultimately a question of politics as much as justice. Ms. Clinton’s recent statement on her potential prosecution, “it’s not going to happen,” then refusing to address the question at all in a recent debate, led to speculation about a backroom deal with the White House to shield Ms. Clinton from prosecution as long as Mr. Obama is in the Oval Office. After mid-January, however, all bets would be off. In that case, winning the White House herself could be an urgent matter of avoiding prosecution for Ms. Clinton.

That said, if the DoJ declines to prosecute after the Bureau recommends doing so, a leak-fest of a kind not seen in Washington, D.C., since Watergate should be anticipated. The FBI would be angry that its exhaustive investigation was thwarted by dirty deals between Democrats. In that case, a great deal of Clintonian dirty laundry could wind up in the hands of the press, habitual mainstream media covering for the Clintons notwithstanding, perhaps having a major impact on the presidential race this year.

The FBI isn’t the only powerful federal agency that Hillary Clinton needs to worry about as she plots her path to the White House between scandals and leaks. For years, she has been on the bad side of the National Security Agency, America’s most important intelligence agency, as revealed by just-released State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.

‘What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it? I sure wish I’d asked about it back in 2009.’

The documents, though redacted, detail a bureaucratic showdown between Ms. Clinton and NSA at the outset of her tenure at Foggy Bottom. The new secretary of state, who had gotten “hooked” on her Blackberry during her failed 2008 presidential bid, according to a top State Department security official, wanted to use that Blackberry anywhere she went.

That, however, was impossible, since Secretary Clinton’s main office space at Foggy Bottom was actually a Secure Compartment Information Facility, called a SCIF (pronounced “skiff”) by insiders. A SCIF is required for handling any Top Secret-plus information. In most Washington, D.C., offices with a SCIF, which has to be certified as fully secure from human or technical penetration, that’s where you check Top-Secret email, read intelligence reports and conduct classified meetings that must be held inside such protected spaces.

But personal electronic devices—your cellphone, your Blackberry—can never be brought into a SCIF. They represent a serious technical threat that is actually employed by many intelligence agencies worldwide. Though few Americans realize it, taking remote control over a handheld device, then using it to record conversations, is surprisingly easy for any competent spy service. Your smartphone is a sophisticated surveillance device—on you, the user—that also happens to provide phone service and Internet access.

As a result, your phone and your Blackberry always need to be locked up before you enter any SCIF. Taking such items into one represents a serious security violation. And Ms. Clinton and her staff really hated that. Not even one month into the new administration in early 2009, Ms. Clinton and her inner circle were chafing under these rules. They were accustomed to having their personal Blackberrys with them at all times, checking and sending emails nonstop, and that was simply impossible in a SCIF like their new office.

This resulted in a February 2009 request by Secretary Clinton to the NSA, whose Information Assurance Directorate (IAD for short: see here for an explanation of Agency organization) secures the sensitive communications of many U.S. government entities, from Top-Secret computer networks, to White House communications, to the classified codes that control our nuclear weapons.

The contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clinton—to her personal, unclassified account—were based on highly sensitive NSA information.

IAD had recently created a special, custom-made secure Blackberry for Barack Obama, another technology addict. Now Ms. Clinton wanted one for herself. However, making the new president’s personal Blackberry had been a time-consuming and expensive exercise. The NSA was not inclined to provide Secretary Clinton with one of her own simply for her convenience: there had to be clearly demonstrated need.

And that seemed dubious to IAD since there was no problem with Ms. Clinton checking her personal email inside her office SCIF. Hers, like most, had open (i.e. unclassified) computer terminals connected to the Internet, and the secretary of state could log into her own email anytime she wanted to right from her desk.

But she did not want to. Ms. Clinton only checked her personal email on her Blackberry: she did not want to sit down at a computer terminal. As a result, the NSA informed Secretary Clinton in early 2009 that they could not help her. When Team Clinton kept pressing the point, “We were politely told to shut up and color” by IAD, explained the state security official.

The State Department has not released the full document trail here, so the complete story remains unknown to the public. However, one senior NSA official, now retired, recalled the kerfuffle with Team Clinton in early 2009 about Blackberrys. “It was the usual Clinton prima donna stuff,” he explained, “the whole ‘rules are for other people’ act that I remembered from the ’90s.” Why Ms. Clinton would not simply check her personal email on an office computer, like every other government employee less senior than the president, seems a germane question, given what a major scandal email-gate turned out to be. “What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it?” the former NSA official asked, adding, “I wonder now, and I sure wish I’d asked about it back in 2009.”

He’s not the only NSA affiliate with pointed questions about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were really up to—and why they went to such trouble to circumvent federal laws about the use of IT systems and the handling of classified information. This has come to a head thanks to Team Clinton’s gross mishandling of highly classified NSA intelligence.

As I explained in this column in January, one of the most controversial of Ms. Clinton’s emails released by the State Department under judicial order was one sent on June 8, 2011, to the Secretary of State by Sidney Blumenthal, Ms. Clinton’s unsavory friend and confidant who was running a private intelligence service for Ms. Clinton. This email contains an amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country. Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24 hours before.

To anybody familiar with intelligence reporting, this unmistakably signals intelligence, termed SIGINT in the trade. In other words, Mr. Blumenthal, a private citizen who had enjoyed no access to U.S. intelligence for over a decade when he sent that email, somehow got hold of SIGINT about the Sudanese leadership and managed to send it, via open, unclassified email, to his friend Ms. Clinton only one day later.

NSA officials were appalled by the State Department’s release of this email, since it bore all the hallmarks of Agency reporting. Back in early January when I reported this, I was confident that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from highly classified NSA sources, based on my years of reading and writing such reports myself, and one veteran agency official told me it was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”

Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.

Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified “Top Secret / Special Intelligence.” Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program, or SAP, several of which from the CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.

Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.

How Mr. Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and there’s no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reports—none of which he was supposed to have any access to—and pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels indicates something highly unusual, as well as illegal, was going on.

Suspicion naturally falls on Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA senior official who was Mr. Blumenthal’s intelligence fixer, his supplier of juicy spy gossip, who conveniently died last August before email-gate became front-page news. However, he, too, had left federal service years before and should not have had any access to current NSA reports.

There are many questions here about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were up to, including Sidney Blumenthal, an integral member of the Clinton organization, despite his lack of any government position. How Mr. Blumenthal got hold of this Top Secret-plus reporting is only the first question. Why he chose to email it to Ms. Clinton in open channels is another question. So is: How did nobody on Secretary Clinton’s staff notice that this highly detailed reporting looked exactly like SIGINT from the NSA? Last, why did the State Department see fit to release this email, unredacted, to the public?

These are the questions being asked by officials at the NSA and the FBI right now. All of them merit serious examination. Their answers may determine the political fate of Hillary Clinton—and who gets elected our next president in November.

Declaring Genocide: Does it Mean Anything?

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John Kerry and Barack Obama finally declared ‘genocide’ with regard to Islamic State but why stop with ISIS? What about Bashir al Assad but mostly what about Mahmoud Abbas? For the Obama White House, Iran certainly does not matter either.

Obama did finally declare genocide after the lawyers reviewed and advised him. But does it matter?

The Genocide Convention says it does matter.

 

In 2009, Barack Obama in Oslo accepting the Nobel Peace Prize award.

THE PRESIDENT:  Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.  It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations — that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate.  Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated.  (Laughter.)  In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.  Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize — Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight.  And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics.  I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.  One of these wars is winding down.  The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.  Some will kill, and some will be killed.  And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other. Full speech here.

What is worse a war, nuclear weapon or genocide? Dead is dead.

May: In the Yemeni port city of Aden earlier this month, Islamists attacked a Catholic home for the indigent elderly. The militants, believed to be soldiers of the Islamic State, shot the security guard, then entered the facility where they gunned down the old people and their care-givers, including four nuns. At least 16 people were murdered. Such atrocities are no longer seen as major news events. Most diplomats regard them – or dismiss them — as “violent extremism,” a phrase that describes without explaining. On America’s campuses, “activists” are deeply concerned about “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions.” Massacres of Christians in Muslim lands, by contrast, seem to trouble them not at all. More here.

Sure they do get it right on Islamic State, when Germany is forecasted as a future target as a matter of sampling.

GateStoneInstitute:

  • Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.
  • “Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.
  • More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.
  • Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

Going back to 2013: BBC: UN implicates Bashar al-Assad in Syria war crimes, “The UN’s human rights chief has said an inquiry has produced evidence that war crimes were authorised in Syria at the “highest level”, including by President Bashar al-Assad. It is the first time the UN’s human rights office has so directly implicated Mr Assad. Commissioner Navi Pillay said her office held a list of others implicated by the inquiry. The UN estimates more than 100,000 people have died in the conflict.”

 

 

Documents: The Long Methodical Game of AQ

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No so much contained or decimated as Barack Obama claims regarding al Qaeda. So much recent attention has been applied to Islamic State, few give any deliberation to al Qaeda and associated terror groups globally.

Osama bin Laden’s ‘Bookshelf’ Reveals al Qaeda’s Long Game Captured documents released by the U.S. reveal the extent of al Qaeda’s strategy, which may include negotiated ‘truces’ in Syria

Gartenstein-Ross: When 113 new documents recovered in 2011 during the fatal raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, became publicly available earlier this month, perhaps the most noteworthy insight they offered was the extent of the strategic patience, to borrow a phrase from the Obama administration, possessed by al Qaeda.

Along with other captured documents, what the U.S. Director of National Intelligence calls “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf” reveals the cunning long-term planning that characterized the group’s approach at the time of bin Laden’s death, and that continues to guide it today, affecting not least the actions of its affiliate the al Nusra Front in Syria.

The record shows that the United States often has overlooked the extent of al Qaeda’s patient approach, sometimes mistaking its relative quiet for inactivity or collapse, and our failure to understand the group has helped it to gain critical operating space, and even worse, has sometimes caused us to blunder into its traps.

The broad outlines of al Qaeda’s strategy of attrition against the West are, at this point, generally well understood. Al Qaeda’s strategy, as initially formulated by bin Laden, was to wear down the United States militarily, politically, and economically.

This long-term approach contrasts with that of al Qaeda’s louder jihadist spin-off and competitor, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), which already claims to have reestablished the caliphate. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, sees the United States as the “trunk of the tree,” as bin Laden put it in a letter addressed to the late al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) emir Nasir al-Wuhayshi. Al Qaeda wanted to wait to sever that tree trunk before moving on to the next stages in its campaign, including building an Islamic state, according to that captured document which was declassified in 2012.

The newly released Abbottabad documents show how strategic patience has shaped al Qaeda’s military operations and political activities. The jihadist group has proven willing to make compromises, sacrifice short-term victories, and even develop tactical alliances with adversaries in order to outlast its various foes. At the same time, the group looked for rear bases of support and safe havens where members could train, plan attacks, and prepare for future battles in the region.

Al Qaeda’s approach to the Mauritanian government illustrates this restraint and flexibility. In several newly declassified documents dating from about 2010, al Qaeda officials discussed the possibility of making a truce with Mauritania, in which al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb would refrain from military operations in the country.

What was in it for al Qaeda? The group discussed some demands that it had for Mauritania: the government would allow militants to operate freely in the country, release incarcerated al Qaeda members, and provide al Qaeda 10 to 20 million euros a year, protection money to ensure that al Qaeda didn’t kidnap tourists.

From al Qaeda’s perspective, the rationale for the deal was that it would allow militants to “focus on Algeria,” while placing its “cadres in safe rear bases available in Mauritania,” as now-deceased Ahmed Abdi Godane, emir of the Qaeda affiliated Somali al Shabaab, noted in a letter written in March 2010. It is not clear from the documents whether this offer was actually extended to Mauritania, nor what response al Qaeda received if the offer was made, but al Qaeda’s consideration of this approach attests to the group’s patience, and willingness to grant foes a temporary reprieve if there was an advantage to doing so.

The logic that influenced al Qaeda’s thinking on Mauritania could also be seen in Yemen. An al Qaeda strategy paper noted that the jihadist movement was thriving under the country’s then-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose corruption had created “fertile ground” for jihadism. The author of the paper concluded that the best immediate option for al Qaeda was to allow Saleh to remain in power, rather than working to topple him.

Why was the author so suspicious of “ousting the apostate government and keeping the country in a state of chaos”? After all, chaos typically plays to the advantage of jihadists. The author reasoned that Saleh’s replacement likely would be more aggressive in targeting jihadists. Moreover, even if chaos prevailed, he noted that “we cannot spread our Dawah while there is chaos.” Dawah refers to proselytism: In other words, the author was concerned that the preparatory work for an eventual jihadist takeover in Yemen was not complete at that point.

The author even proposed a truce with Saleh, noting that even a unilateral agreement would allow al Qaeda to focus on the United States. This sentiment was echoed in a letter from bin Laden to Wuhayshi, declassified in 2012, in which al Qaeda’s emir explained that the jihadist movement was in a preparatory stage in Yemen, meaning that “it is not in our interest to rush in bringing down the regime.” (Bin Laden eventually changed his mind on this point, as events on the ground seemed to dictate a more aggressive posture.)

Al Qaeda’s thinking about Mauritania and Yemen is characteristic of the newly released documents. Throughout, the group’s leadership urges caution and occasional tactical cooperation with enemies. In a letter to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq’s emir, a senior al Qaeda official warned against carrying out operations in Iran. Iran, he explained, had become al Qaeda’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication.” The official similarly advised al-Masri to refrain from striking Turkey and Lebanon, urging him to instead “devote your total resource to the fortification of the nation, and the fight against the crusaders and the apostates.”

These directives show that al Qaeda was preparing for the long haul. The group anticipated and prepared for setbacks, even catastrophic ones. In a letter to Ansar al-Islam, an Iraq-based militant group, a senior al Qaeda official (possibly bin Laden himself) explained that “Iraq is not the end of the road.” He stated that if al Qaeda were defeated in that theater, it would be a “catastrophe,” but nonetheless “we must always prepare ourselves for anything that might happen.”

The official noted that “jihad will continue with us or without us,” revealing an organizational belief that the struggle to reestablish the caliphate would persist long after al Qaeda’s founders had died.

This prediction has proven all too true. Al Qaeda has continued to adapt and thrive since bin Laden’s death, while adhering to its late emir’s methodical approach. The group’s strategy has survived several seismic developments that were widely viewed as the organization’s death knell.

The so-called “Arab Spring” was widely perceived as a mortal blow to al Qaeda, a repudiation of the group’s claim that only violent jihad could sweep away the Middle East’s authoritarian regimes. Instead, al Qaeda celebrated the revolutions. In a newly-released letter to one of bin Laden’s assistants, an al Qaeda official expressed his hope that the uprisings would “spread all over the Muslim homelands, which will accelerate the triumph and unity of all Muslims.”

Al Qaeda prepared itself to succeed in the post-revolution turmoil, using bin Laden’s model of preparation and strategic restraint. Al Qaeda covertly expanded its presence in countries like Libya and Tunisia, using front groups such as Ansar al-Sharia to conduct Da’wah and recruitment activities. Indeed, a previous batch of Abbottabad documents released for a criminal trial show that al Qaeda had established itself in Derna, Benghazi, and elsewhere in Libya even before bin Laden’s death.

In multiple theaters today, including Syria/Iraq and Yemen, al Qaeda has embedded itself in local communities, developing relationships.

After seizing control of the Yemeni port city of al-Mukalla, AQAP set up a group known as the “Sons of Hadramawt,” intended to appear as an indigenous force, and appointed a local council, the Hadhrami Domestic Council, to govern the city.
It has likewise sought to build coalitions in Syria, as evidenced by a secret directive issued in early 2015 by the group’s current emir Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri’s missive instructed Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, to work more closely with other rebel groups, strengthen ties with local communities, build sustainable safe havens, and cease planning for attacks against the West.

Al Qaeda’s strategic flexibility has also been on display in its response to the challenge posed by ISIS, whose emergence was another challenge that many analysts thought would cripple al Qaeda. While ISIS has challenged al Qaeda’s position within the jihadist community, it has also given al Qaeda a long-awaited opportunity to remake its image, which had been tarnished by failed governance experiments in Iraq and Mali, among other places. ISIS has become a convenient foil for al Qaeda in its efforts to gain greater operating space.

Time and again, al Qaeda has been able to mitigate setbacks, or even turn them to its advantage. The group’s vision of a multi-generational jihadist struggle has enabled it to think and act strategically, pursuing long-term objectives while passing up ephemeral or unsustainable victories.

Al Qaeda’s ability to think and plan for the long term stands in contrast with both ISIS and also the U.S. government. Election cycles, budgetary uncertainty, and inter-agency squabbles impede strategic thinking in the fight against al Qaeda. As we continue to overlook al Qaeda’s forward-looking approach, we underestimate the group and fall into its traps. At a time when al Qaeda is quietly gaining ground across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa, and benefiting from the international community’s myopic focus on the Islamic State, it is more important than ever that we fully appreciate al Qaeda’s long-term planning.