MILNET: The War On Terror - Where To Next

"What We Need is a Decision Matrix"

A friend of mine was lamenting about the continued media bias and remarked also how "scatter brained" the media as a whole had become.  I said, "Hold on.  I'm sort of the media.  Who you callin' scatter brained."  My friend looked a little embarrassed but replied, "Well maybe not MILNET. Your stuff is organized -- all those tables and such.  What we need is ..."
 

The Everyday Man's Guide:  Where Next - The War On Terrorism

My friend went on to say how no one in the media, yours truly included, had laid out the "where next scenarios" with any particular attention to detail nor logic.  You have to understand my friend, he is in high tech management.  They are always laying out all these complex things to help them reduce them into concise little graphics.  Later they re-order based upon some set of criteria and the results begin to stand out at you.  Or so that is the theory.  So my friend and I sat down and discussed what a decision matrix would look like for the War On Terrorism's "Where Next" scenario.

Terrorist Nations

In looking at the terrorist issue, we first turned to countries that might appear on our "where next list".  One criteria for figuring out if we would place a country high on the list would be based upon urgency.  Urgency might be defined by subcategorizes like "the country has nuclear, biological, chemical or dirty radiation weapons".  Or perhaps "is currently attacking or sponsors groups attacking its neighbors."  Maybe just the fact that a nation is home to a large number or the worst terrorist group(s) would help us determine the urgency.

Early on we developed criteria for strategic reasons for "going in", but realized that these all tended to apply to urgency so lumped them there.

Terrorist Groups

Priorities in terms of terrorist danger might also have categories more appropriate for the terrorist groups a nation is home to -- things like "increasingly active" or "is thought to be preparing for imminent attack". Capabilities for taking the battle to the U.S. might be another higher level category.  This might include subcategorizes like funding, further broken down like "large funds in hand", "well oiled external funding sources", or "allied or supported by a nation".

Another set of category might be "acknowledged by numerous nations as being dangerous", or "claims responsibility".  These might be countries on the U.S. embargo list or listed as a terrorist nation in various official documents -- for instance, the U.S. Patterns of Global Terrorism  produced annually by the State Department.

Capabilities might also include "number of followers", or "international following" or "cells in numerous nations", or worse yet, "cells clearly hidden in the U.S."  Just as in the high tech world, sometimes your categories just wind up without enough data to be useable.  That was the case for most of the capabilities section, we simply had no numbers, and our guesses just didn't feel right.  We consulted various sources and they all disagreed on most of the groups numbers -- they ranged from "a handful" of followers to "thousands funding, few participating".

Next we thought about how criteria that would apply to both terrorist groups and the countries where the terrorists go for support or hide.  Or where they train.  Or where they run when being pursued.

The Rationale

Some notes on why some countries wound up in our list and why others are not.  First, we wanted the "Dirty Dozen".  So we eliminated the 13th and below countries we believe are supporters of terrorism.

We added India and Israel to our list because they demonstrate special circumstances.  Like the U.K. and its fight against the IRA and many splinter groups,  India and Israel seem to be the unhappy recipients of rampant terrorist attacks from terrorist groups living both inside and outside their country.  Their response has been to use their military forces (again like the U.K.) in an attempt to restore and hold order.  Neither country has been successful.  India's problems occur in the Kashmir province with terrorist acts spilling over into the rest of the country, and Israel, of course, has been waging a never ending battle in the Occupied Territories.

While in no way tolerating the menace, India and Israel are also unable to effectively eliminate the terrorist threat, therefore threaten the region and their neighbors with spill-over.  Note that in both cases, there appears to be a division between Islamic Extremists and another religious order and the dispute is as old as the religions themselves.

As of September 11, 2001, the U.S. might also fit in this special category since it too now has a demonstrated terrorist threat within its borders despite the efforts to capture, detain, and eliminate that threat both domestically and internationally.  China and Russia are currently in this special category as well, with most Western European countries having already "passed through" this category by taking extreme measures such as suspending constitutional rights, martial law, and other activities until the majority of the leaders and violent operators were captured, detained, and executed.  The nations of former Yugoslavia are also "passing through" this special category, with the threat already spilling over into every neighboring country.  Again, the Islamic Extremist and intolerance of other ethnic/religious backgrounds is at the root of the problem.  Where this pattern exists, there is always conflict -- thus Philippines and Indonesia are listed in our "Dirty Dozen".

The Matrix

After a few beers and an hour or more of arguing, we hit the Internet, the local MILNET library (online and on the shelf), and came up with this little gem.  Hope you appreciate it.
 

Urgency/Strategic Rationales
	NBC Weapons			Resident Terrorist Factors
Country	Has or  Developing	Has Used	Likely To  Share	Support or Funds	Harbors	Training	Tolerates Groups	Attacks Neighbors/ Border Disputes	Activity Level	Funding
Lebanon	-	-	Y	Y	3	Y	Y	Y	weekly	Well
Iraq	Y	Y	Y	Y	Any	Y	Y	Y	2-3 months	Well
Iran	Y	?	Y	Y	2	Y	Y	Y	2-3 months	Some
Pakistan	Y	-	?	Y	2	Y	Y	Y	2-3 months	Well
Syria	Y	-	Y	Y	3	Y	Y	Y	1 month	Some
Libya	Y	-	Y	Y	1	Y	Y	-	years	Some
Sudan	-	-	-	Y	1	Y	Y	Y	2-3 mos	Some
North Korea	Y	-	Y	Y	1	Y	Y	Y	2-3 mos	Well
India	Y	-	-	-	2	-	-	Y	?	-
Israel	Y	-	-	-	2	-	-	Y	3-4 weeks	-
Somalia	-	-	-	?	1	?	Y	-	?	Low
Indonesia	-	-	-	?	2	Y	?	-	2-3 months	Some
Philippines	-	-	-	-	2	-	-	-	weekly	-
Malaysia	-	-	-	-	2	?	?	-	weekly	-
Algeria	-	-	-	-	3	?	?	-	monthly	-

 

Recognized/Documented Threats
Country	Patterns	Threat and Response					Embargo List
		Nuclear	Biological	Chemical	RWDW	Delivery
Iraq	Y	dev	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Iran	Y	dev	Y	Y	dev?	Y *	Y
Pakistan	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	Y
India	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	-	Y
North Korea	Y	dev	Y	Y	dev?	Y	Y
Israel	Y	Y	?	?	?	Y	-
Lebanon	Y	-	-	-	-	-	Y
Syria	Y	dev?	-	-	dev?	Y	Y
Sudan	Y	-	-	-	-	-	Y
Libya	Y	dev?	dev?	dev?	dev?	Y	Y
Somalia	Y	-	-	-	-	-	Y
Indonesia	Y	-	-	-	-	-	Y
Philippines	Y	-	-	-	-	-	-
Malaysia	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Algeria	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Notes:  Patterns = U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2000
         Threat and Response = U.S. Department of Defense, Non-Proliferation:  Threats and Response
         Embargo List = U.S. Commerce Department Embargo List (22 CFR Section 126.1:31 CFR Part 500; 15 CFR Part 746)
         RWDW = Radioactive Waste Dispersal Weapon
         dev = under development
         ? = sources disagree but the majority see indications that implicate
         - = No or None
         * = Our sources indicate that Iran may have delivery systems, however, it is not clear the hardliners in the government
                could make use of their weapons -- Iran is going through what we believe are positive changes and these changes
                within the country may seriously effect their command and control unless directly threatened by an outside force.

The Conclusion

Well, our bias is clear.  Its a toss up between Lebanon and Iraq. Lebanon is extremely urgent, primarily because the country is the home for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and between these three terrorist groups, they represent the most vicious in the world and at a minimum attack and kill Israelis on a weekly basis, sometimes every other day.

Iraq, on the other hand, presents the gravest strategic threat in the world.  This is especially true considering that it is only a short matter of time before Suddam Hussein hands over NBC weapons to his terrorist buddies.  For more on this see the MILNET report, Iraq:  The WMD Threat in 2001.

Third on our list is Iran, who despite nice political moves recently, still is not a friend of the West. Recently a top General in the Iranian military lashed out at the U.S. making it clear that Iran considers themselves the next target in the War on Terror. And clearly Iran is a strategic threat to the world as well as a huge threat to the region. Much of the same interpretation of Islam that the extremists behind the Taliban and Al Qaida is taught in Iranian schools, and much of Iranian Fundamentalist government believes in the fiction as well. This makes the current government of Iran nearly as bad as the Taliban.

And then there is the fact Iran has been beefing up their radar to perhaps, better detect intruders, including Stealh aircraft.

So our best guess is that, if the U.S.'s real intentions would be to go after Lebanon or Iraq.  Any other nations leaked as possibilities could look at themselves as being threatened...for instance, on December 21, Somalia began rounding up Al Qaida and other terrorist suspects -- this after weeks of media attention as Somalia as a possible next target for the U.S. War On Terrorism.  If this is the intent of the attention the U.S.'s well fostered propoganda, then well and good.

But nations just now deciding to clean up their act, may relax their stance in the near future if they don't feel threatened, and come right back onto the anti-terror radar, offering up a new threat that must offer a target to the Anti-Terrorist Coalition. Especially if that nation just happens to be where the Al Qaida leadership has escaped to.

Another possibility, one favored by many analysts is Somalia. Noting how low it rates in our decision matrix, it seems a stretch. However a recent article from AFI's Richard Bennett points out that some Somalian warlords have invited the U.S. to come in and take out the Al Qaida cells in that country. They promise to be good guys like the Northern Alliance in Somalia. The thought is intriguing and with the U.S. perhaps still angry over the Al Qaida downing of a helicopter there years ago, it might be another possibility to watch for.

Sources used in this briefing were:

The Federation Of American Scientists
MSNBC Online
The L.A. Times
The San Jose Mercury News
The Washington Post
The New York Times
Rush Limbaugh
Michael Savage
The U.S. Naval Post Graduate School Terrorist Group Profiles
The U.S. State Department
The U.S. Department of Defense

© Copyright 2001, Michael Crawford - MILNET
 

milnet@milnet.com