UK trial reveals new al Qaeda strategy to hit West
By Paul Cruickshank
The trial of three Birmingham men convicted Thursday of plotting to launch a "catastrophic" suicide bombing attack in the United Kingdom revealed that al Qaeda has developed a new strategy to target the West.
The new strategy involves a teacher-training approach in which a select few Western operatives are taught bombmaking and other aspects of terrorist tradecraft in the tribal areas of Pakistan and are then instructed to return back to the West to "spread the knowledge" to a larger body of Islamist extremists keen on launching attacks.
The new approach is a response to the growing toll of drone strikes which have made travel to the tribal areas increasingly perilous for Western recruits and significantly diminished al Qaeda's ability to orchestrate terrorist plots from the region.
The trial revealed that terrorist groups in Pakistan are actively dissuading Western militants from making the trip.
Two of those convicted Thursday - Irfan Naseer and Irfan Khalid - received 40 days of terrorist training in the tribal areas of Pakistan in the spring of 2011, mostly inside houses in the valleys of Waziristan.
In conversations bugged by British police, the plotters described being handled by al Qaeda operatives and having attended a training camp run by Harakat al Mujahideen, a Pakistani terrorist group closely affiliated with al Qaeda.
The recordings revealed that like other Western militants before them, they were provided detailed instruction in the tricky and potentially hazardous methods to make bombs out of substances readily available in the West, and practiced detonating them. Their instructors included Arabs and Pakistanis.
They also were taught how to put poisons in face creams.
And their teachers emphasized they should put nails inside their bombs, to act as razor-sharp shrapnel.
Naseer, a pharmacy major and the plot's alleged ringleader, was heard recalling how one of their trainers had said the July 7, 2005, London bombers had missed an opportunity to kill more people by failing to put nails in their devices.
Naseer commented on how they were given so much information that they had accumulated 30-40 pages of notes.
They were told the smaller the cell they recruited the better, illustrating al Qaeda's move away from spectacular attacks on the 9/11 scale toward smaller strikes that have a better chance of getting through.
In the recordings played in court, Naseer said his cell should keep the numbers launching the attack in the United Kingdom to around half a dozen. The recordings, however, indicated the cell's plans grew increasingly ambitious with talk of launching an attack bigger than the 2005 London bombings.
The need for less ambitious attacks was previously stressed by two senior American al Qaeda operatives: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Adnan Shukrijumah, an operative believed to be still at large in Pakistan.
An internal al Qaeda strategy document, authored in around 2009, and recovered in 2011 from a Berlin operative, had called for a greater emphasis on low-cost low-tech attacks by Western militants, whom it said should be quickly trained in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Teaching Westerners to teach back home
In Pakistan, Naseer and Khalid's al Qaeda handlers had a new "command" for them: go back and teach others.
Naseer is heard talking with an associate, keen on traveling to Pakistan, that he and Khalid wanted to stay in the United Kingdom to participate in the plot.
"AQ's main aim is... the knowledge that they give us, [they] want more and more people [to] have [the knowledge] in Europe. So they can start whacking [attacking] there, yeah, do you understand?
Analysts say that if al Qaeda manages to put into practice their new teacher training model, it will raise alarm bells with Western security services because it would reduce the need for Western militants to travel overseas for terrorist training.
"This seems to be a product of al Qaeda's desperation to try to get an attack through, but it's a potentially scary development," Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, who closely followed the trial, told CNN.
While Islamists militants have access to many bombmaking recipes online, analysts say they often contain potentially fatal errors and have been seen by militants as a poor substitute to hands-on training by an instructor schooled in the art of bombmaking.
Security services fear the presence of such instructors on Western soil could be a game changer.
Message from al Qaeda: Stay Put
The Birmingham case revealed that al Qaeda had begun actively dissuading recruits from going to Pakistan.
"They told me don't send anyone [more to us]," plot ringleader Naseer said in one of the recordings.
In a June 2011 video "You are Only Responsible for Yourself," released around the same time the Birmingham duo trained in Pakistan, al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan had urged Western militants to stay home to launch attacks.
Khalid, in one conversation recorded by British police, pointed out that Inspire magazine - the online English publication of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen - had the same advice: "we don't want people to be traveling cos it's getting risky." In 2011 Samir Khan, an American member of the group, urged followers to launch attacks in the West rather than travellng to Yemen.
Naseer and Khalid painted a dim picture of the tribal areas of Pakistan in their attempt to stop their associate from traveling there.
"[Waziristan] hasn't got no more camps now... the brothers used to be in the mountains [but] the drones just get them straight away, they just bomb the camps, so ... they taught us inside houses," Naseer is heard telling the associate in the recordings played in court.
He described how he had had to cower for several hours in 100-degree heat when a drone circled above. "That day was bad ... it's a nasty situation to be in, man," chipped in Khalid.
Khalid described how the drones restricted movement for fighters in the region: "They were restricted to one place most of the time: One place to eat, sleep, go to toilet and do everything."
Terror training on UK soil
Naseer and Khalid implemented the new al Qaeda strategy when they returned to the United Kingdom. Just days before their arrest on September 18, 2011, Naseer provided Ashik Ali, the third Birmingham man convicted Thursday, with hands-on instruction in how to make explosives.
According to expert witnesses consulted in the trial, Naseer had acquired the correct knowledge to teach recruits how to make viable bombs. The recordings suggested their planned attacks were still months away.
In one of the bugged conversations, Naseer is heard suggesting that the restrictions on training in Pakistan meant it was just as effective training recruits in the West.
"[In the tribal areas] you get bit of an experience in fighting - but you know the rest of the stuff that could be taught - they taught us in a room."
At one point, Naseer warned Ali that if he hit or rubbed the explosives in a certain way it could explode and potentially kill him; just one of the many lessons he passed on from his training in Waziristan.
In the days before their arrest, Naseer experimented and tinkered with potential bombmaking chemicals in a Birmingham apartment, including the chemicals inside sports injury cold packs. The recordings revealed that his instructors in Pakistan had taught him that ammonium nitrate- – a potentially high powered explosive - could be extracted from such packs, demonstrating al Qaeda's continued inventiveness.
Pantucci told CNN the Birmingham case illustrated that despite intensified drone strikes in Pakistan, Western militants were still finding ways to connect with al Qaeda in the region, providing the terrorist groups opportunities to attack the West.
He said al Qaeda's new emphasis on training Westerners to in turn provide terrorist instruction in the West reflected the group's looser control over plots than just a few years ago.
Unlike the 7/7 bombers, and other recent terrorist conspiracies like a plot to attack Manchester in 2009, the Birmingham plotters do not appear to have been in touch with their handlers in Pakistan after returning to the United Kingdom.
Pantucci says the pressures on al Qaeda have resulted in a shift toward a new model of "fire and forget."
The March 2012 Toulouse terrorist shootings provided further evidence of looser control by al Qaeda of terrorist plots in the West. The perpetrator of the attack - Mohammed Merah - was encouraged by the group to return to France to launch an attack during a short stay in the tribal areas of Pakistan in September 2011 but planned every aspect of the operation himself, including which targets to strike.
@natlsecuritycnn on Twitter
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At this point these gentlemen, their crime is walking while being Muslim.
End of story.
Government keep entrapping Muslim youngsters who dont know better.
But the inadequate stupid ones who think they are "big and bad gangsters" do stupid things and get tagled up. Unfortunately, the smart terrorists get away and the clueless government sit and let them carry out a 7/7. What a stupid world we live in.
Unbelievable! There is no point debating the obvious conclusion that Muslim surveillance needs to be beefed up, not just in the UK but all across the western world.
Sorry as usual CNN does not allow me to express my views about the subject topic which is against the freedom of expression.
I totally agree, Bangash. I too have had some of my comments blocked here for posting against these obscene wars that we're currently in. Then again, some right-wing fool trolls here for the same reason for my posts that do get in here! At any rate, everyone should have the right to express their opinion on the subject, especially without being mimicked by some right-wing, warmongering nutjob!
Where can we learn how to make and diffuse bombs? If I knew it I might think of blowing myself up when they are all gathered for, well, for God knows what reason they have for getting together!
Read Qran. It has real useful answers to the specific questions you just mentioned.
These people only know killing , rape, robbery, and destruction. Truncate them. People need to lift up humanity, not abuse it.
Thanks rds, for talking about Pres. Obama and 90% of our Congress. Our foreign policy bears that out. Before we can change anything, we need to break the power of the M.I.C. in Washington, not truncate it like you said. True rds, Washington id riddled with corruption these days!!!
CNN it is not fair to block my comments on this topic which mighy have given help in understanding the ground realities behind such inhuman operations.
I totally agree, Bangash. CNN should not be blocking any posts that do not support these useless and unnecessary wars overseas as I do not, myself!!!
Bangash/George Patton-2 - Totally agree. CNN is giving you a subtle hint to go to Al Jazeera and spew your message of peace there.
Muzzys are very ugly people.. both inside and out...
Nice hairdo's! Business on top, party on bottom.
No, you do not understand, you silly infidel. Al Qaeda did not hire them because of their hairy good looks. Al Qaeda does not even require you to attach two passport size photographs in its application form like the infidel US army does. Al Qaeda application form asks only for your underpants size - larger the better - to fit more explosives. If you fill out XXL, you are instantly hired with a promotion and many perks.
and receive 40 days of terrorist training.
Yes. It is a very good deal. Pakistan provides all inclusive resort like facility in their terrorists training camps. You are referring to their 39 nights, 40 days Deluxe Package. They have many other packages too. You just have to pay one way air fair. After the training, Pakistanis give you a free suicide vest instead of wasting money on return fair, which is so unnecessary. It is a very good deal for all Jihadis.
Is Al Qaeda as strong as portrayed in Showtime's highly acclaimed TV series; Homeland, or are they truly a shadow of their former self as the US national media and the Official US Government would have us believe?
The one thing for sure that will tell us, is if a 9/11 scale attack happens again in our lifetimes perpetrated by the Al Qaeda terrorist network. That aside, we still don't know how World Trade Center 7 actually collapsed without resistance in less than 7 seconds. The truth right now is paramount.
@Veritas Lavinga - Yes, the truth right now is paramount. The truth of this story is that these two losers failed their mission and they will spend the rest of their useless lives in a prison. Everyday, one of them will drop his soap in the shower. While he is picking it up, the other one will be tempted do something that Qran forbids. That is the truth. And it is paramount.
And they really want us all to think Bin Laden is really dead? Not this time fellas
This is what I have been saying for years (and what I said to an earlier comment):
Western nations should bar all travel from Middle East (and SE Asia, Africa) into their countries. Isolate the swine, embargo them to the point they go back to trading goats and pimping sheep. Middle East countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Kuwait) who claim to be against such acts, could easily infiltrate the vermin's lairs and eradicate the world of these sick people. Their silence and pacifistic approach only enables the terrorists. Further, in combat and imprisonment, these dregs of the world should not be afforded the kindness shown a dog. Guantanamo is a palace and should reflect more a Turkish prison (see Midnight Express) where the rats are treated like the vile beast they are. Westerners cannot continue to fight them with kindness. When Westerners are more ruthless than the terrorists, then the terrorism will stop. When Israel is attacked, they determine who is the culprit and not only address the matter with him/her, but also with the culprit's family. When Westerners and our so-called allies in the Middle East (i.e., Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, etc) do the same, and even escalate it to addressing the matter with whole villages, we can eradicate the world of these sick swine (same tack must be undertaken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Africa (Somalia, Lybia, Mali, . . .) etc).
@Quince - Of course not, Bin Laden is alive. Bin Laden has taken Malala as his youngest wife. It is a perfect wedding as prescribed in Qran. In this matrimony, Malala found security from terrorists by marrying a terrorist, and Bin Laden found gratification. They are expecting their first child now. Ameen.
Half measures just haven't worked. Perhaps we need a simpler deterrent program they understand: for every innocent Westerner killed with their terrorist bombs, the West wipes out a million from the region they hail from and that supports them. That should make a dent in their ranks.
These pictures are proof that good looks are not a prerequisite for being in Al Qaeda.
They're not al Qaeda. They're tea party patriots and they're on their way to the nascar track.
Muslims...My kind of people.
Let them kill limeys...
We're watching you.......
Poison in face cream? Isn't that what the Joker tried in the first Batman movie?