26-29 September: Affordable Housing Development Summit Middle East, Manama
27-28 September: Unconventional Gas, London
3-5 October: Middle East Investments Summit 2010, Dubai
3-6 October: SWPF - Saudi Water & Power Forum 2010 Conference & Exhibition, Saudi Arabia
3-7 October: Funds Forum Middle East, Bahrain
4-6 October: POWER-GEN Middle East 2010, Doha, Qatar
10-12 October: The 3rd annual Saudi Arabia International Oil & Gas Exhibition & Conference, Dammam
11-12 October: Unconventional Oil 2010, London
12-14 October: Offshore Middle East 2010: The 3rd Annual Offshore Middle East Conference & Exhibition, Doha
18-19 October: Maghreb/Middle East Renewable Energy Conference, Marrakech
24-27 October: MENA Mining Congress 2010, Dubai
26-28 October: Iraq Mega Projects 2010 Conference & Exhibition, Istanbul
27-28 October: Gas to Liquids 2010, London
21-23 November: Private Equity World MENA 2010, Dubai
29 November-1 December: Iraq Petroleum 2010 Conference, London
6-8 December: Smart Grids Middle East, Dubai
Untitled Page
Issue 818, 23 Nov 2007
US intelligence casts doubt on Iraq blowback risk to neighbours
Across the US intelligence community there is a recognition that the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq is decreasing – to be replaced by Iraqi jihadists. This trend suggests that following the US-led surge’s successes the Iraqi conflict will enter a new phase, where the threat of ‘blowback’ may be reduced for the Gulf states but where Iraq itself remains in civil war and Iraqi-born jihadists emerge as a global threat.
Within the US intelligence community – even those elements vehemently opposed to regime change in Iraq – there is growing acceptance that current trends point towards a slow improvement of security in Iraq. The US-led ‘surge’ can be judged a relative success.
According to GSN’s canvassing at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), there are tangible signs that the flow of foreign fighters is slowly decreasing and that the Sunni Arab insurgency’s foreign strain may even be dying out.
But as the numbers and influence of foreign fighters decline, so they seem to be replaced by Iraqi jihadists – whose ranks are more easily renewed in this war of attrition.
Such developments are difficult to interpret for Iraq’s neighbours: it is unclear what a slackening of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)’s activities might mean for the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states. The experience of the late 2001 exodus of around a 1,000 foreign fighters from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia (via Iran) looms large in the collective memory of GCC-focused analysts, who are discussing the prospects for a similar exodus from Iraq and a reduction in the number of Saudis choosing to fight abroad.Likewise, the key role of Yemeni foot soldiers in AQI ranks suggests a negative potential impact for President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime in Sanaa.
The good news for Gulf policy-makers, according to US intelligence analysts who spoke to GSN on condition of anonymity, is that the risk of blowback in the GCC is unlikely to lead to a serious rejuvenation of the terrorist campaign in Saudi Arabia or a spate of violence in Yemen.
Coinciding views expressed by GSN’s own analysts since 2004, US intelligence officials can provide strong rationales for their scepticism about the foreign fighter community in Iraq. If anything, they believe the insurgency’s Iraqi alumni present the greatest long-term threat – and their impact may not be felt within the GCC.
The future of jihad in Iraq
US analysts paint a surprisingly positive picture of how the jihad in Iraq may develop. Despite the Al-Qaeda senior leadership’s continued commitment to conflict in Iraq, the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq is believed to be steeply declining, down to around 30-40/month compared to 80-100/month earlier this year.
Attrition of AQI fighters and leadership has been high. The already small foreign element has slowly been thinning out, with local Iraqi Salafyists – sometimes with Baathist intelligence and security pedigree – stepping into mid and senior leadership positions. Although AQI’s Egyptian-born leader Abu Ayyub Al-Masri continues to build his ‘inner circle’ around Egyptians, Saudis, Yemenis and Tunisians, the Salafyist torch is increasingly being carried forward by Iraqis.
This is an intriguing thought, and a logical one. US analysts view the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime as the single most significant haemorrhage of skilled mercenary manpower and explosives and weaponry since the global Salafyist jihad began. Iraqis, they argue, may be far more significant to the future of the global jihad than the ‘foreign fighters’. The skillsets of these former regime elements and military men far outstrip those of the untrained Gulfis.
US security forecasters fear that guns, explosives, and other specialist equipment will be leaking out of Iraq for decades.
Evidence for the Salafyist jihad’s increasingly Iraqi face comes in the form of changing tactics, techniques and procedures. AQI has this year become increasingly drawn into more conventional military attacks on Coalition targets. Though Iraqi and foreign jihadists have clumsily and unsuccessfully sought to play down AQI’s Egyptian leadership, their Iraqi subordinates have simultaneously diversified into classic guerrilla operations (storming prisons, releasing Iraqi prisoners, attacking the Coalition) that have more resonance with Iraqis than mass casualty car bomb and chemical weapon attacks against Muslim civilians.
According to the slowly evolving US view, AQI’s foreign contingent is getting more isolated and could one day be comprehensively abandoned even by Iraqi Salafyists.
To host a foreign fighter is extremely dangerous; they are generally only good for one thing – suicide operations – and this type of attack is becoming increasingly difficult as extensive vehicle check points and other anti-suicide bomber defences take effect.
In time, CIA sources noted, the foreign fighters may dwindle to a hard core of terrorists living almost in isolation and operating at far lower tempo, living a lifestyle more akin to that of an underground jihadist in Saudi Arabia – hidden away in urban and semi-rural safe houses, subject to discovery, disruption and the almost invariable collapse of a cell after a single attack.
Iraqi Salafyists are different: they can blend in more freely, and are particularly likely to focus on the local defensive jihad against the United States and what they see as its ‘puppet’ government; these factions place heavy emphasis on the defence of the Sunni Arab community against the Shia Arab and Kurdish ‘menaces’.
As GSN has long maintained, Baghdad and the multi-ethnic swathe bordering the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are the natural long-term base for Al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq. This hybridisation of Al-Qaeda ideology with a true Iraqi leadership could be far more difficult to undercut than the foreign fighter element.
Implications for the GCC
If US intelligence analysts are right, the scale of terrorist blowback into Saudi Arabia and Yemen might be quite limited. It is argued that of the thousands of Saudis and Yemenis that went to Iraq (Syria alone is holding over 700 Saudis accused of trying to enter Iraq), only a small proportion are the kind of ‘global jihadist’ who has committed to fighting apostates wherever and whenever he can. High proportions of these zealots have been used in suicide operations.
Most foreign fighters are instead ‘classic jihadists’, who seek to fight in a defined theatre where a non-Muslim occupier must be driven from Islamic lands. These men need have no great sympathy for social revolutionary ideas about the overthrow of the House of Saud or Saleh’s junta, nor necessarily seek to bring fitna (unrest) to their native countries.
The apparent slow reduction of the flow of foreign fighters can be interpreted in many ways – due to counter-recruitment operations in origin countries, stronger Syrian policing of its borders and/or disillusionment with the reverses suffered by AQI since 2005.
Whatever the cause, it does not follow that fewer recruits travelling to Iraq means there are more jihadists left in Saudi Arabia or Yemen thirsting to undertake mischief at home.
Most of those dissuaded from travelling will tend to be ‘classic jihadists’, who are slowly losing faith in the claim that Iraq represents a legitimate defensive jihad against a non-Muslim occupier. This rationale will become increasingly flimsy as the Iraqi government steps up and the Coalition steps down, the trend most apparent at present (GSN 814/6).
The implication of this US view is that those wannabe-jihadists left in Saudi Arabia do not necessarily present a risk to the House of Saud or potentially even to Western civilians.
For AQI, the only real hope lies in repeating its success in recasting the conflict as a sectarian battle in defence of the Sunni Arabs, crowned by a spectacular sectarian blow that might plunge Iraq once again into anarchy. Under increasingly Iraqi leadership, AQI-type cells might be successful in this aim.
The AQI brand is likely to die away to some extent due to its negative record within the Sunni Arab community, but that does not mean Iraq will somehow become free of terrorists with a penchant for mass casualty bombings. Instead, Iraqi Salafyists will continue to mix intimidation tactics with more conventional guerrilla operations. And a reduced foreign role might make such militants better able to develop local support bases.
A key question being asked by US State Department analysts is the extent to which such radical Salafyist Iraqis fighting against the Shia-led government will be used in the future by Saudi Arabia to undertake proxy warfare against Iran and her perceived proxies in Iraq.
Although GSN is typically sceptical of Saudi resolve and initiative in such cases, it is an intriguing thought.
Security outlook
US analysts do not expect an exodus from Iraq to the GCC such as happened between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia in 2001. So-called ‘bleed out’ has been happening constantly since 2003 and has not appreciably increased the threat environments in the GCC (or at least not because of returning jihadists’ direct activities). Foreign fighters’ success in having strategic effect in Iraq – the first time they have really demonstrated such capability in the global Salafyist jihad’s history – is viewed as principally related to the unique sectarian conditions. The small numbers of global jihadists or social revolutionaries likely to return from Iraq to Saudi Arabia or Yemen are not likely to have strategic impact, or indeed to significantly raise the terrorist threat in the long-term, US analysts suggested.
Analysts canvassed by GSN felt the insurgency’s indirect effects might be more significant drivers of a raised terrorist threat worldwide, including in the Gulf. Many useful and transferable skills have been demonstrated in Iraq, and could be learned secondhand or subcontracted to paid-for elements in the Iraqi Sunni community and diaspora, or even learned to some extent through the internet.
The more general of these skills – operational security, propaganda, surveillance, networking and forgery – will be useful even in areas that do not mirror Iraq’s weak state environment and limited control on explosives and weapons.
Unlike Saudi Arabia – which is viewed as a strengthening security environment – US analysts believe Yemen will continue to be a relatively secure environment for all nationalities of jihadist to rest, network, gain new identities, but – significantly – probably not to attack local targets.
Outside the Gulf, those non-Iraqi and Iraqi jihadists who leave Iraq for whatever reason are seen as likely to congregate in the Iraqi Sunni Arab diaspora and refugee communities in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Europe.
Pakistan’s Federally Administrated Tribal Areas and Northwest Frontier Province are natural areas where non-Iraqi and Iraqi insurgents can learn terrorist skills useful in secure countries. Areas such as Sudan, Somalia and Algeria are seen as other possible dispersal waypoints.
For those living and investing in the Gulf, a more sophisticated and less alarmist picture of blowback from Iraq is slowly clarifying; if US analysts are right, the long shadow of Iraq may not be as dark or ominous as feared.
