Costs of war: The balance sheet on al-Qaida

The effectiveness of the Bush administration's war on terror is a key point of debate in this election year in the US, writes Shaun Waterman for ISN Security Watch.

Last week CIA Director Michael Hayden found himself in the uncomfortable position of being publicly reprimanded by the chairman of the powerful US Senate Intelligence Committee, the mild-mannered Democratic senator from the state of West Virginia, John Rockefeller.

In an interview with the Washington Post - the first morning read of the governing classes here in DC - Hayden gave what the paper called "a strikingly upbeat assessment" of the progress the US was making in its conflict with al-Qaida.

Osama bin Laden's group had suffered "near strategic defeat" in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and "significant setbacks [...] globally" which were keeping it "off balance - even in their best safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border," the paper quoted Hayden as saying.

Within hours, Rockefeller sent the Agency and released to the press a sharply worded letter, writing that he was "surprised and troubled" by the director's comments, which "are not consistent with assessments that have been provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee over the past year."

The spat illustrates how much of a political hot potato the question of the US balance sheet on al-Qaida has become in this election year, when each side in the closely contested race will be seeking to build its own narrative about how well the Bush administration's war on terror is going; and which elements of it have been the most - and least - successful.

The politicized atmosphere makes it essential, a Rockefeller aide told ISN Security Watch, for officials to "tread very carefully" and "avoid inserting themselves into the political process" by making comments that could become fodder for election demagoguery.

Hayden's comments, the aide added, "or at least the way they were reported, left a dangerous misimpression that needed to be publicly corrected."

CIA spokesman George Little defended Hayden's comments, saying that he had simply stated "progress has been made against al-Qaida, which remains a very dangerous foe. That judgment should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the intelligence."

So what are the facts?

Hayden's most controversial statement was that al-Qaida was "off balance - even in their best safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

"I have seen nothing, including classified intelligence reporting, that would lead me to this conclusion," wrote Rockefeller, citing congressional testimony by Hayden and others to the effect that al-Qaida had reconstituted its central leadership in that mountainous and lawless region.

"The director's comments, if accurately reported, dramatically overstate the degree to which al-Qaida is on the defensive, especially [on the Afghan-Pakistan border]" the Rockefeller aide said.

Although neither the Washington Post nor the CIA have released a transcript, the comments appear to come in the context of a cagey discussion on the apparently more aggressive use of lethal US assets such as the Predator drone in the border area - a subject US officials invariably skirt in an effort to avoid embarrassing their Pakistani allies.

"Those are the kinds of things that delay and disrupt al-Qaida's planning," Hayden said, in what the Post described as "an apparent reference" to two Predator strikes earlier this year that killed Abu Laith al-Libi and Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi, both senior al-Qaida leaders, in Pakistan's tribal border region.

He dismissed concerns that the new government in Pakistan might attempt to restrict such actions. "We are comfortable with the authorities we have," he told the Post.

The newspaper did not address the issue of the peace deal that the new government has signed with al-Qaida's allies in the border region - an important caveat to any assessment.

Much less controversial were Hayden's comments about Saudi Arabia, where there is little doubt that, over the past five years, al-Qaida has suffered significant operational reverses.

Thousands of its members and supporters have been killed or jailed since a series of bomb attacks against the kingdom's police and security services in 2003 provoked the government to crack down. US and Saudi officials say the group's capacity in the country is severely degraded.

More importantly for the long term, the Saudi royal government has instituted a program of re-education for young militants on the fringes of the group, allowing those they believe have been rehabilitated to be released from jail into the custody of their families, who have to guarantee their continued good behavior.

It is less clear to what extent the Saudis have broken up al-Qaida's overseas support network, and their critics say they continue to foster religious extremism in schools and mosques - creating ideologically fertile ground for the groups' recruiters.

The situation in Iraq is less clear cut. Hayden points out, accurately, that al-Qaida's repeated use of mass civilian casualty attacks has isolated them, even from those Sunni factions which have not been bought off through their participation in US-funded awakening councils.

The numbers of attacks staged by the group in Iraq has fallen, and the military campaign against them has enjoyed some important successes.

But Hayden himself noted in another of a series of interviews he gave to mark his second anniversary in the job last week that "Nothing is guaranteed and everything's reversible in this world."

And some believe that the current drop in the group's operational tempo in Iraq might simply be a strategic pause.

"The concern is that they are just biding their time" until the expected US drawdown later this year, or perhaps until a new president withdraws altogether, a congressional aide who recently visited Iraq and received intelligence briefings there told ISN Security Watch.

Hayden also noted that ideologically al-Qaida is increasingly isolated, even within the radical jihadist community. There have been "significant setbacks for al-Qaida globally - and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' - as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam," he told the Post.

He cited recent statements by unrepentant extremist leaders, breaking with al-Qaida and bin Laden.

This phenomenon was recently analyzed in detail by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in a study for New York University. They enumerate "a large [...] group of religious scholars, former fighters and militants who had once had great influence over al-Qaida's leaders," but who are now "alarmed by the targeting of civilians in the West, the senseless killings in Muslim countries, and al-Qaida's barbaric tactics in Iraq [and] have turned against the organization, many just in the past year."

The problem for Hayden, and for those who might seek to use his assessment to defend the Bush administration's record in the war on terror is that, as Bergen has noted elsewhere, the "great unraveling" that he and Cruikshank describe would likely have happened years ago were it not for the invasion of Iraq.

"Obviously, bin Laden doesn't celebrate Christmas," Bergen has said, "but if he did, the US decision to invade Iraq would have been the best Christmas present ever."


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