The underlying link between Chechens, Boston Bombers, al-Qaeda and Taliban is Islam.
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Intelligence Lessons From the Boston Attacks - Learning to Share
Scott Helfstein
April 23, 2013
Since the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were identified as ethnic
Chechens, the national conversation about the incident has focused on the
connection between the violence and terrorism in Chechnya. Here's why that
is the wrong model.
Last week’s attack at the Boston Marathon, like the attempted car bombing of
Times Square almost three years ago, shows that the line between local
conflicts and global ones has become thinner. Faisal Shahzad, the would-be
terrorist in 2010, had legally lived in the United States for seven years
and had earned citizenship the year before hatching his plot. He would later
say that he was inspired to carry out the attack by the radical Yemeni
cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but the United States discovered that the plot had,
in fact, been organized and possibly financed by an extremist group called
the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which usually targets the Pakistani
state and military. The organization’s attempt to strike in the United
States showed that its own distinction between the near and far enemy had
become increasingly blurred.
Like Shahzad, the Boston suspects were in the United States legally. In some
accounts, the older of the two brothers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, developed
radical ideas in the United States before traveling to Dagestan to visit
family. In other accounts, he got his training abroad. None of the stories
has a definitive answer for whether his underlying complaint was religious,
political, or ethnic. It might, in fact, have been a combination of all
three. There is no shortage of grievances that a young Chechen might have,
nor of groups willing to exploit them. Organizations of Chechen separatists,
which are largely Muslim, have fought against the Russian Federation since
the end of the Cold War. The Caucasus Emirate, the largest group, denied any
involvement in the bombing. Meanwhile, al Qaeda has often referenced Central
Asia as an important theater for jihad. By most accounts, moreover, there
were Chechens training in al Qaeda camps during the 1990s.
The United States has mostly focused on the terrorism challenge as it
relates to al Qaeda, but that group is only one in a world marked by
increasing sectarianism and in which diaspora communities can develop much
closer connections to their home countries than they did in the past.
Sympathetic populations abroad can easily get real-time information on
conflicts in the remotest corners of the world. And that only increases the
possibility that a small threat somewhere else can quickly become a global
one with little warning.
What does this mean for U.S. policymakers and the military? Intelligence
collection abroad remains critical, but another challenge may prove equally
crucial: intelligence sharing. Foreign partners still usually have the best
information on their own citizens -- possibly even those who live in the
United States.
If current reports are correct, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was made
aware of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, based on a tip from an unidentified
foreign intelligence service. He was investigated prior to his travel
abroad, but no further action was deemed appropriate. This begs the question
of whether the foreign agency had other information -- or perhaps tracked
his activities while he was abroad -- and why the United States didn’t know
about it.
In situations like this, it is hard to overstate the importance of improving
international intelligence cooperation. It is nearly impossible for the
United States, acting alone, to track the behavior of a two-person cell
across continents and into remote territories. It needs partners. The
political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa has compounded the
problem. Some counterterrorism intelligence relationships are now so
strained as to be almost nonexistent. Officials in post–Arab Spring
countries fear that the United States would potentially manipulate young
governments by co-opting security services or politicians should they be
granted access to the intelligence community. A second concern is that the
public, if it found out about the cooperation, would be furious. Despite
statements to the contrary, U.S. counterterrorism relationships in that
region are not what they once were. And the trend may continue as the United
States focuses on other priorities around the world.
The United States overhauled domestic information sharing after the
September 11 attacks, and it should strive to make comparable improvements
in international information sharing now. Of course, there are differences:
in domestic intelligence sharing, disputes over legal authorities and
jurisdictions stovepiped intelligence gathering and complicated dealings
between departments. International intelligence sharing, by contrast, is
constrained because foreign countries -- even allies -- often find
themselves in competition, mistrusting one another. Still, taking some basic
steps would be a useful start. Establishing technological platforms to issue
warnings without having cloak-and-dagger meetings or diplomatic démarches is
now feasible, thanks to anonymizing software and cloud computing. The
development of information-sharing tools along those lines might help build
confidence among foreign intelligence partners; the process of doing so
would help foster a common operational picture as well as create standards
for sharing. In the world’s most tumultuous places, however, the most
significant step to encouraging intelligence cooperation might be as simple
as sending meaningful signals of continued U.S. engagement.
Even improved international intelligence sharing will be no panacea for
terrorism. For starters, as the old intelligence adage goes, there is no
such thing as a friendly intelligence service. Intelligence agencies are
tasked with gathering secrets on national security threats, which pits the
agencies of even friendly countries against one another. Shared terrorist
threats have helped alleviate some of this pressure and opened up channels
for sharing, but it remains a difficult exercise as agencies try to protect
their sources and methods.
That doesn’t mean that cooperation isn’t a goal worth shooting for. It is
true that many new terrorist outfits, including small al Qaeda cells being
formed worldwide, will never present a direct threat to the United States.
But it is also true that small threats may develop in unexpected places and
become big ones. Meanwhile, ideological and historical ties to global
jihadist movements only increase the likelihood that local conflicts will
become global or homeland security threats. A policy aimed at keeping remote
conflicts at arm’s length may have worked in the past -- but it is quickly
becoming obsolete.
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