Boston bombings and the threats ahead

MARIA RESSA: What did you think when the Boston bombings happened?

 

ROHAN GUNARATNA: It was a very significant terrorist attack, because after 9/11, America did not suffer from a significant terrorist attack. We identify the Boston attack as an act of terrorism for three reasons: one is it was indiscriminate.  They used explosives, killed even a child. Second is that the target – they were civilians. And third is it was on a very symbolic day. It was on the first day of America’s revolutionary war, on Patriot’s Day, and the terrorists identified the most prestigious marathon in the world.  In fact, it’s the world’s oldest marathon. So considering these 3 factors, it is a very clear indication of a terrorist attack – although the group has not yet been identified.

 

RESSA: Why did it take so long to determine the difference between whether or not it was a criminal act or a terrorist attack?  Why did it take President Obama almost 24 hrs to say it’s a terrorist attack?

 

GUNARATNA: It is because the United States did not have intelligence before the attack so it was a total surprise. And I can share with you too that any successful terrorist attack is an intelligence failure. Because governments spend millions of dollars, billions of dollars, to prevent a terrorist attack after 9/11. It’s a huge investment, especially by the Western nations, and yet they were not able… and there was no indication, whatsoever of a terrorist attack.

 

RESSA:  From what’s been released right now, the FBI says that it looked like at least one of the IEDs was a pressure cooker. It was full of ball-bearings, metal shrapnel that was designed… Based on this, tell us what is the significance of these elements and then who could be behind this?

 

GUNARATNA: The origins of the pressure cooker bomb is from Pakistan. That is where al-Qaeda and the associate groups have operated. But I also want to tell you that there are other right wing groups that have used similar techniques, so it’s too early to conclude as to who did this attack. But I personally believe that the United States is very close now towards discovering who the perpetuators are because they were able to positively identify the two people who planted the devices, and they have just released the pictures. In the next 24 hrs, I believe that the US will be able to conclusively say the group and the individuals responsible for this attack.

 

RESSA: How does an investigation like this go? So you said now that they released the photos, they’d be able to identify, that they’re close to the end, but how do you know this? What’s the normal process for something like this?

 

GUNARATNA: They will use two principal methods: one is they will use forensics – that is investigation. Second is they will generate intelligence.  Because the US has a huge capacity to check, for example, Visual Intelligence, visint, CCTV. They were able to identify who carried the devices. So they will use both these methods now to generate intelligence, and they will use investigation – the tools they have to identify who did this attack? Who’s responsible? Who’s behind it? Who communicated to them? Who supported them?

 

RESSA: When you said that every terrorist attack is an intelligence failure, you know it’s been roughly [72] hours and they’re already identified two men, in fact they released the video and the photos of these men asking Americans to send, to identify them. Why did it fail?

 

GUNARATNA: It is because the United States has been largely oriented towards detecting the threat to the US from overseas, not the threat to the United States from within. And we have seen that 9/11 in many ways is an exception.  Almost all the plots that have been discovered in the United States were by cells that were radicalized by extremist ideologies. 

 

RESSA: When you said radicalized – extremist ideologies. Islamist terrorism or right wing ideology like the Waco, Texas for example?

 

GUNARATNA: Right now we are seeing four categories of groups operating in the United States. One is the politico-religious groups – so the Islamist groups will fall into that category. Second, is the ethno-political groups. Third is the left-wing groups, and fourth is the right-wing groups. There’s a very small category of single-issue groups. These are the environmental groups that use violence, but in this instance, two principal ideologies and the two principal groups that have been identified as likely perpetuators, are the right wing groups and politico-religious groups.

 

RESSA: It’s been a very eventful 48 hours after the Boston bombing. We had two letters filled with ricin, with traces of ricin, one to a US legislator, the other to President Barack Obama. And then after that you had the fertilizer explosion in West Texas that killed people and was a massive fireball just a day before the 20th anniversary of the Waco incident. And then today we have shootings at MIT and explosions at MIT. How do you look at all of this? 

 

GUNARATNA: It is possible that at least two of these incidents are related. It is also very likely that the ricin attack is by a terrorist group because terrorist groups have used ricin before, very successfully. And also these groups have expressed their interest to use ricin since 9/11 more frequently, and several attempts have been disrupted. And with regard to the most recent developments in MIT and Boston, the operations are still continuing, in fact right now the police are very active. So, I believe that this is the single biggest crisis faced for the United States after 9/11 in terms of detecting, disrupting, containing threats. 

 

RESSA: What does this mean for countries outside of the United States? For the Philippines, for example? A US ally.

 

GUNARATNA: Threat of terrorism is the most significant threat. It is the Tier 1 national security threat, even for the Philippines. But Philippines is very secure compared to what it was 10 years ago because the MILF has entered the peace process. Of course there are three factions, Kato, Bravo and the area that was controlled by late Mimbantas that is trying to break away or broken away and Abu Sayaf itself is reduced very significantly and strength and size. Rajah Solaiman has been totally disrupted. Of course the communist insurgents is still quite active, so there are threats. But I believe that the government’s ability to enter into peace negotiations with Hajji Murad is the single biggest breakthrough because southern Philippines was used by so many foreign terrorists, foreign terrorists and a few groups that were active in this region, a number of terrorists arrived here from the Pakistan, the Middle East. So the peace talks, structured peace negotiations with the MILF has yielded tremendous success and this needs to be sustained so that south of the Philippines will be hostile area for these foreign elements. This is a major breakthrough. I think the president and also Hajji Murad needs to be congratulated unlike Hashim Salamat who flirted with various terrorist groups. Hajji Murad has been very committed towards saying no to Jemaah Islamiyah, saying no to Abu Sayyaf and saying no to other foreign financers, trainers, tacticians that came to give life, another lease of life for these dying terrorist groups in the south of the Philppines.

 

RESSA: Those groups that came from the outside were all groups linked to Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda itself, correct?

 

GUNARATNA: Certainly. And there was Al Qaeda funded, Hashim Salamat admitted to that. With regard to JI, there are very significant operators of JI that came here. Someone in custody, others have been killed like and some have ran away like Dulmatin and he was subsequently killed, and of course Umar Patek who went from the Philippines to Indonesia, returned to Indonesia and then travelled to Pakistan through Bangkok. He was captured in the same city where Bin Laden was living — Abbottabad.

 

RESSA:  It’s been more than a decade since 9/11, since the peak of Al Qaeda’s strength. How would you define, how do you look at Al Qaeda today?

 

GUNARATNA:  Al-Qaeda was a group of about 3,000 fighters at 9/11. Bin Laden was its leader. But today the leader has been killed and numerical strength of Al-Qaeda is less than 200 fighters. But again on the Afghan-Pakistan border, there are about 15,000 terrorists mostly Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union, Eastern Turkestan Islamic movement. Numbers of those groups that are operating, once the Americans leave Afghanistan these groups will go back to Afghanistan, they will reconstitute the sanctuary in Afghanistan. That will pose a threat to Southeast Asia because there are about 400 terrorists from Southeast Asia including the Philippines that went to Afghanistan and received training. So we hope that, Afghanistan will not become a sanctuary again because if it does that, there will be Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Thai, Malays in the south of Thailand going to Afghanistan and when they return, they will want to really be experienced, meaning they will do terrorist attacks.

 

RESSA: Hasn’t the world learned from Afghanistan the first time around in 1989, the post-Afghanistan and now the American troups, US led-coalition supposed to pull out by 2014, correct me. We’ve known for about a year, are countries around the world preparing for this possibility?

 

GUNARATNA:  There should be extraordinary leadership on the part of Asian countries now to come together to stabilize Afghanistan. They should not allow terrorism to return back to Afghanistan. If that happens, certainly the neighboring countries will suffer but not only the neighborhood but Afghanistan will use that as staging base to attack China, to attack India, to attack Pakistan, to attack Iran, and also to mount attacks against the West, against Southeast Asia. So I think the leader should wake up to this challenge and ensure that the US-led Western coalition is replaced in Afghanistan. The Americans have been defeated in Afghanistan. In Iraq also they were defeated. If an army cannot win, If the army is checkmated, it’s very clear that those armies have been defeated. Right now the US position is that they are going to leave a training team, advisory team, special operator’s team and drone team. These are insufficient to fight the militants who are on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border. You need boots on the ground. Meaning there has to be another configuration that has to be worked out, not only by the American but also by the other countries to stabilize Afghanistan.

 

RESSA: The Americans are as aware of this possibility as you are, right? And they’ve seen threats and plots against the United States continue. Why is this still going to happen? Why do you think they’ve continued? Of course there’s continuous political pressure for the soldiers to pull out of Afghanistan.

 

GUNARATNA: It is the public pressure that is driving the US withdrawal. It is also poor strategy because the Americans should have invested more in Pakistan than in Afghanistan – because almost all the terrorists including the leaders were on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border. And I believe that for the United States to pull out of Afghanistan without stabilizing that country, without creating a force that is able to manage the security of Afghanistan, it is reckless. And I think that it’s so important in the next one year for there to be a greater dialogue on the part of the Asian countries on how to stabilize Afghanistan.

 

RESSA:  So Afghanistan to you is the biggest threat to look at in the next…the biggest potential threat in the coming year?

 

GUNARATNA:  Because it is the epicenter of international terrorism, it is from Afghanistan that 9/11 was staged; it is from Afghanistan that plots were discussed. Plans and preparations from here to hit Bali, to hit JW Marriott in 2003. In fact the money for the Bali attack came on the instructions of Bin Laden on the Pakistan side of that border, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed sent the money from Karachi to Thailand, Thailand to Malaysia, Malaysia to Indonesia. So the reconstitution of the terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan will pose a global terrorist threat once again.

 

RESSA: Let’s look at the plots against the United States and the connection to both the Middle East North Africa and the Philippines… Social media has been where terrorists around the world have congregated, have put together. A man was arrested in the Philippines in March of 2012, and he said he was going to join AQAP in Yemen. AQAP actually led the plots in 2009, the underwear bombing plot and in 2010 the printer plot and in 2012 last year when the bomb maker tried to put the bomb inside the body cavity of a human being. The CIA foiled that plot. But you’re seeing different elements from all around the world coming together with this very virulent ideology – with the United States still the potential target. How is the United States dealing with that? Second, how do you prevent them from continuing to recruit on the new medium, social media? 

 

GUNARATNA: US has invested a lot and is working with several partners in the Arabian Peninsula, both with the Saudi Intelligence services and with the Yemenis services to detect and disrupt the threat of the Al Qaeda and Arabian Peninsula AQAP– mounting attacks against the west. AQAP is different from the Al Qaeda associate groups because it’s a direct extension of Central Al Qaida. In many ways the center of gravity of terrorist operations have shifted from al-Qaeda Central, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And this group is today posing the most significant threat to the US, to the Europeans, and even to Africa because AQAP is also doing some operations in Somalia.

 

RESSA: If the Filipino intelligence is to be believed, they are also recruiting Filipinos to join AQAP in Yemen.

 

GUNARATNA: Yes, because we have seen that number of foreign nationals who are in Saudi Arabia– Yemen has been approached. Traditionally, they are have been even Australians who have been working for AQAP in Yemen. And AQAP key leaders have been killed but there are still number of operatives. AQAP is largely a Saudi and a Yemeni organization. But they have moved from Saudi to Yemen because of sustained counter-terrorism operations by the Saudis. I would say that today looking at the tier of organizations around Al Qaeda center, AQAP and AQIM, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb the group that is operating North Africa. These two groups pose a very significant threat but there are other groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq, like Al Nusra Front in Syria which is the extension of al-Qaeda in Iraq. These groups are also very significant groups. So the threats from these groups have not died. The threats from these groups will persist in the long term.

 

RESSA: How do you deal with this evolving threat? It looks like it’s mutated and actually expanded, right? Maybe perhaps not as strong as the centralized Al Qaeda more than a decade ago that carried out 9/11, but how do you deal with this mutating threat today?

 

GUNARATNA: Central al-Qaeda was very highly capable because they had the best minds. They drew the cream from the Anti Soviet multinational Afghan mujahideen campaign. But if you look at these other groups they are not as capable as AQ Center but still able to inflict very significant  damage. They can blow up a plane. They can conduct a coordinated simultaneous attack against a transportation target, they can kill a president or a prime minister of a country. So still they are capable. And that is why it is so important for international community to work together to stabilize conflict zones like Yemen, like the Afghanistan, like Somalia, like Mali, because it is from these conflict zones that these new ideologies have been produced. New experienced fighters have been produced and also the justification emerges for terrorists to attack the US, their allies and their friends.

 

RESSA: It sounds like a much more complex threat matrix than it was more than a decade ago. With what just happen in the United States in the last few days, how would you gauge the US ability to deal with this mutating threat?

 

GUNARATNA: Western countries face many difficulties because of the financial crisis. And you can see the center of economic power is now shifting to Asia. Asian countries also must take the responsibility; they should not allow just the West to act. Western nations are not going to invest money and invest their life blood, fighting terrorism in far-away theatres. The American army is downsizing its strength. Of course American Special Operation forces are expanding in strength– intelligence services are expanding. So I believe as a result of their failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western nations in the future will not send large armies to fight. They will send their drones; they will spend special operators. Special operators are trained to fight and also specialized to train others. Sometimes they fight and train, they do the same. They conduct influence operations; they conduct civil affairs engaging people. So they are much more capable than large armies. But again there are some theaters you need large formations on the ground and if you don’t have those formations, you cannot sustain the areas that have been cleared in the initial phase of counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism operations. But I believe that Americans should work with the Indians, with the Russians, with the Chinese of course with the Europeans as well, to stabilize these conflict zones. They themselves, the American themselves and the Europeans themselves can’t fight the conflict, can’t stabilize the conflict zones that are in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. There needs to be greater partnerships with those countries that are now emerging as economic powers.

 

RESSA: That mind shift hasn’t happen though. We’re not seeing that from the leaders of the countries?

 

GUNARATNA: No, because the United States is now occupied with China, with rising China.  I personally don’t think China will pose a big threat to the US or to the rest of the world. Certainly, they should engage China at this point to look at the other threats that present more day to day threats. China may be a strategic threat in the long term but right now because global threats to nations are facing come from two things: one is from terrorism, second is from missile proliferation, with the developments in North Korea and Iran. But I think if these big countries, major powers are not going to work together, they will have more terrorist and they will have more proliferators.

 

RESSA: Incredible. What about the threat of the Internet? I mean we’ve both been in conferences where people talk about the new battlefield for both criminals and terrorists is the internet. What’s happening there?

 

GUNARATNA: Internet is very important tool because it has empowered a lot of poor people. It enables us to fight illiteracy. It’s a magic weapon.  It also has been used by those who are weak to attack those who are powerful. The Internet is today the principal medium of communication by terrorism extremist groups. It’s also one of the key media for terrorist groups to raise funds. It’s also a very important medium for recruitment, for radicalizing, politicizing, mobilizing their supporters. Internet needs to be policed. You cannot allow people to post what they want on the Internet because we have seen a number of extremist groups that’s using the net to reach out to their supporters. To radicalize, to recruit people, to indoctrinate them and get them to launch terrorist attacks. So the service providers and stakeholders need to be more responsible.

 

RESSA: But it seems that the Democratic countries like the United States, the Philippines has a Cybercrime law on hold– that there’s a difficult balance. People seemed to think that the Internet should be free. How do you deal with finding the balance between creating a democratic space and then trying to put the limits on it so that criminals and terrorists don’t use it?

 

GUNARATNA: 90% of terrorism, extremist websites, more than 10,000 terrorist and extremist websites are hosted in the US. It’s because of the laws, laws are very weak. I believe there must be a greater discussion; there must be a global cyber regime. We do not allow criminals or terrorists to misuse the Internet. There’s more crime today in cyberspace by criminal organizations than in real space. It’s so crucial for governments to build partnerships with service providers, with the financial and bank industry, with the lawmakers. And with others to have better control on the Internet.

 

RESSA: To close let me bring you back to what’s happening in the United States. So given these attacks, they succeeded again. It’s kind of like second  Bali bombings in 2005. It’s much smaller but the success itself mutates the threats you had again the fact that they were able to get through. What do you think will happen in a short term and the medium term coming up. 

 

GUNARATNA: The US must increase its surveillance on these groups that are operating in the US. US also must also control their weapons and the material that can be used to build bombs. US also should work with other partners to fight global terrorisms, the international terrorism. Most of the American I know they believe that they can do everything by themselves. This is strength of America but also its weakness. I think that today, it’s crucial to move from that cooperation to collaboration- to have common databases, to have exchange of personnel, to have joint training, to have joint operations, to share expertise, experience and resources. So there should be a new way of thinking. Terrorist groups are networking, they are working together, they are forming coalitions. Governments must do this beyond the Western world. Western world, what we call the international community, they are working together. But I think the partnership should be much more working with the major powers. At least a US building partnerships with the Russians, with the Chinese, with the Indians and other countries.

 

RESSA: Follow up on that as a last question. Will they get over the power struggles that actually prevent true cooperation. You’ve been talking about cooperation and collaboration for more than a decade now. Things have improved. What you’re talking about is on the scale that will push each nation to put away what they’re afraid of. What they consider as a threat to themselves in order to cooperate against terrorism. Is this realistic?

 

GUNARATNA: Governments, including the United States advance geo-political geo-strategic aspects, they put that ahead of security threats. And many countries do that not just the United States. I think that today, we have to manage both. Governments need to look at the geopolitical and geostrategic interests, but also they need to work together with other countries, even if they may be competitors to reduce a common threat. Terrorism is a common threat. And if you don’t hold hands and work together then those threats will erode and affect your society. What happened in the United States is an example of that. Terrorism is a common problem. It’s like a pandemic, it’s like a disease, it’s like a virus. So if you don’t work together, it will spread and also the terrorism will go into other weapon systems. You can see they’ve moved to ricin. They may consider other chemical and biological weapons. I think that it is so important to focus on these groups and to do everything possible to reduce the capabilities of these groups. – Rappler.com