by: Jennifer Cafarella and Katherine Zimmerman
Al
Qaeda may be planning attacks
in the United States for Monday, November 7, according to a senior FBI
official. The FBI continues to assess the intelligence and whether the threat
is credible. If true, the plot could signal al Qaeda’s refocus on targeting the
US homeland after building significant safe havens in Syria, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere. Al Qaeda never stopped planning attacks against the US even when it
was prioritizing the local fights and working within local dynamics. The group
seeks to lead a global insurgency, rooted in these local fights, that it will
take to the West. Al Qaeda’s increasing involvement in local conflicts,
especially the Syrian Civil War, accelerates rather than contains the threat of
the group globally.
Al
Qaeda has active attack planning cells based in its safe havens in Syria and
Afghanistan. Safe
havens provide al Qaeda bases from which to launch attacks against the US. US officials have been warning of al Qaeda’s re-emergence in Afghanistan and also its sanctuary
in Syria. Two recent American strikes
targeted high-level al Qaeda operatives involved in external operations in both
countries.
- A US airstrike killed a senior al Qaeda operative, Haydar Kirkan, on October 17 near Idlib City in northern Syria. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook confirmed the strike on November 2, describing Kirkan as connected to al Qaeda senior leadership, as facilitating al Qaeda’s efforts in Turkey and Europe, and as al Qaeda’s “senior external terror attack planner in Syria.”
- The US also targeted two high-level operatives in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province on October 23: a senior planner for attacks against the US and al Qaeda’s commander in northeastern Afghanistan, Faruq al Qatani, confirmed killed, and Bilal al Utabi, who was re-establishing al Qaeda’s Afghanistan safe haven “to threaten the West.”
The US strikes in Syria and Afghanistan last month
demonstrate that al Qaeda remains a threat in both theaters.
Al
Qaeda has had planning cells developing external attacks from Syria since at
least 2014. The US initially launched airstrikes in September 2014 against the
“Khorasan
group,” an al Qaeda cell in Syria that had entered the “execution
phase” of an attack against US interests in Europe. In response to these
targeted strikes, Al Qaeda altered its operational methods in Syria but never
abandoned its efforts to develop an external attack capability and deploy it.
- Jabhat Fatah al Sham has forward deployed recruiters abroad who funnel foreign fighters to Syria and likely cultivate al Qaeda attack cells abroad. The U.S. State Department designated one recruiter, French national Omar Diaby, in September 2016. Diaby is now leading a French foreign fighter group in Syria allied to al Qaeda after recruiting numerous French nationals to join the fight there.
- Jabhat Fatah al Sham has cultivated numerous subunits of French, Libyan, Crimean, Uzbek, Chechen, and other foreign fighters.
- Jabhat Fatah al Sham and allied groups publish foreign fighter recruitment propaganda via a media outlet titled “al Muhajirun,” which publishes videos subtitled in multiple languages including English, Russian, German, Dutch, and Turkish.
- Individuals who fought with Jabhat al Nusra in Syria have been arrested in numerous countries including the US and Germany, indicating that al Qaeda-linked foreign fighters are returning to Europe from Syria, like their counterparts fighting with ISIS, in a way that can set conditions for future attacks in the west.
The
timing of the recent strikes against senior al Qaeda operators in Syria and
Afghanistan could simply indicate that the US acquired actionable intelligence
on these operatives’ locations. It could also be a response to the external
attacks cells crossing an assessed threshold toward taking imminent action on a
planned attack. If the latter, there is the possibility that al Qaeda may have
decided to surge external attacks globally.
There are other possible indicators of a resumption of al
Qaeda attempts to execute attacks abroad.
- The US embassy in Kyrgyzstan issued a terrorist attack warning on October 8 after an SVBIED detonated outside Chinese Embassy in Bishkek on August 30. Kyrgyz intelligence stated that the attack was “ordered by Uighur terrorist groups active in Syria.” A Uighur foreign fighter group that has a branch in Syria and operates closely with al Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, most likely executed the attack. The subsequent US attack warning could indicate that the Turkistan Islamic Party intended to target US personnel in Kyrgyzstan next.
For further reading,
please see:
- Jennifer Cafarella, Nicolas A. Heras, and Genevieve Casagrande, “Al Qaeda is Gaining Strength in Syria,” Foreign Policy, September 1, 2016
- Jennifer Cafarella, “The Myth of a Locally-Focused Former al Qaeda Affiliate,” the Cipher Brief, August 1, 2016
- Jennifer Cafarella and Katherine Zimmerman, “Avoiding al Qaeda’s Syria Trap: Jabhat al Nusra’s Rebranding,” Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project, July 29, 2016
- Jennifer Cafarella, “How Turkey Could Become the Next Pakistan,” Institute for the Study of War, July 19, 2016
- Jennifer Cafarella, “Why Most Dangerous Group in Syria Isn’t ISIS,” CNN, February 26, 2016.
- Jennifer Cafarella, Harleen Gambhir, and Katherine Zimmerman, “Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS: Sources of Strength,” Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project, February 2016
- Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, Katherine Zimmerman, and Harleen Gambhir, “San Bernardino Shooting a Terrorist Attack with al Qaeda and ISIS Footprints,” AEI’s Critical Threats Project, December 4, 2015
- Jennifer Cafarella, “Jabhat al Nusra in Syria: An Islamic Emirate for Al Qaeda,” Institute for the Study of War, December 2014
- Katherine Zimmerman, “The Khorasan Group: Syria’s al Qaeda Threat,” AEI’s Critical Threats Project, September 23, 2014
- Katherine Zimmerman, “Competing Jihad: The Islamic State and al Qaeda,” AEI’s Critical Threats Project, September 2, 2014