The Redhunter

2) The second lesson is that the Caribbean and South America have indeed became staging grounds for jihadi groups (al Qaeda, other Salafists and Iranian-led groups) to organize, recruit and act. Which necessitates a specific focus by Washington and other Latin American and Caribbean allies on jihadi activities in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere. The fact that members of the JFK International Airport plot were from and used Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana as areas of activities signals, along with the known activities in the region, Venezuela, the tri-border zone and other spots, the surge of a continental threat.

While at first glance it would seem too risky for Hugo Chavez to provide aid to al Qaeda or any terrorist who might strike at the U.S. he does seem quite the megalomanic, and as such may miscalculate. He might see Bush's current political weakness as a sign that he can get away with a lot more than is prudent. One would think that the Caribbean and South America would be one area where we could use our "soft power".

3) More specifically, attention must be placed on understanding the jihadi roots across the three states known as the Guyanas. Back in the 1980s, the Gadhafi regime of Libya has invested in networks in the area, particularly in Suriname with influences across the borders. In addition, the Wahhabi powers from Arabia have been funding institutions and groups also since the end of the 1980s. The growth of Salafism and linked radical groups is the direct result of oil-producing regimes' ideological thrust in these areas.

The root causes of potential terror acts in New York or Toronto in this decade have been triggered by a war of ideological indoctrination waged decades ago through this hemisphere....

At the risk of sounding condescending, it is just this ideological battle that most Americans are completely unaware of. During the Cold War everyone had at least a basic understanding of Soviet Communism. During World War II everyone knew about Nazism. Salafism, however, is a term that I daresay very few Americans are familiar with. The fault for this must lie squarely with the Bush Administration. While it is distressing that many Democrats have no understanding of who we are up against, the least the President could have done is to try and educate the public.

As Phares said in Future Jihad, the 9-11 Commission got it wrong. It was not a failure of imagination that allowed the terrorists to catch us by surprise, it was a failure of education.

If you're not familiar with these terms yourself, I summarized them in a review of Phares book.

4) A fourth lesson is to realize that while this operation was thankfully thwarted by U.S. authorities, the projection is that other similar operations are theoretically either contemplated or underway by the jihadists. For a jihadi war against democracies (the United States in this case) should not be perceived as one separate act after the other, but dispersed acts connected by one ideology, hence the war-like dimension of the conflict.

Knowledge of history is paramount in understanding our enemy. To make a long story very short, some time after Muhammed died in 632 AD the new Muslim world consolidated itself politically. An absolute ruler emerged called the Caliph, essentially a combination king and pope. Family dynasties emerged, each of which ruled from a particular city for a few hundred years before being supplanted by the next. The Umayyads, for example, ruled out of Damascus from 661 - 750 AD. The Abbasids ruled from Baghdad from 750 until 1258. The whole thing ended with the Ottomans ruling from Istanbul from 1299 - 1923. The last Caliph was overthrown by Musafa Kemal in that year and a secular Turkey emerged.

Once the Ottoman caliphate fell, and the ability to call for a jihad went private, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood were inevitable. Jihadists see the present as the continuation of this narrative. What we in the West consider ancient history may as well happened last Thursday to them.

The goal of those who believe in a "fundamentalist" version of Islam is that the faith must be spread thoughout the world, by violence and forced conversion if necessary. The Sunni Salafists want a worldwide Caliphate, and the Shiite Khumeinists a regional Imamate.

5) A fifth lesson has to do with the layers of penetration of the systems in the United States and overseas. The various types of jihadi cells, individuals and other self declared groups on all levels of civil society and government is an indicator of the thrust. It also tells us that the counter-terrorism strategies, while spending time and energy on protecting the area under attack (buildings, trains, airports) must dedicate significant time and efforts on tracking the roots of indoctrination. We should not follow the terrorist threat but actually precede it.

Protecting "things" is fine. But we would be remiss if we didn't also attack the indoctrination process as well.

6) The so-called link to al Qaeda should not be the measurement of counter-terrorism strategies. Al Qaeda is in the center of the jihadi war against the Free World but doesn't encompass the entire jihadi web. Hence, linked or not to Osama bin laden, the Salafi networks are on the offensive before and most likely after the transformation of al Qaeda. We have seen enough evidence of the growth and development of what some call "homegrown" terror entities. Their travel into the grapevine to reach al Qaeda or not isn't the essence of the campaign; it is the travel by the jihadi ideologues and monies to these elements that needs countering.

Whether or not the JFK or the Fort Dix plotters had ties to al Qaeda is irrelevant. A May 2006 Washington Post story describes the career of one Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, who in January of 2005 posted a treatise called "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance" under the pen name Abu Musab al-Suri on the Internet (I can't find an exact link for the work). In the treatise, Nasar essentially calls for Muslims to take matters into their own hands, either as individuals or in small cells, without waiting to be contacted by organizations such as al Qaeda.

7) In this age of cyberspeed and globalization, the dominant assumption in tracking the link, is that efforts to communicate have already been spent between the "homegrown" and the "mothership." For if jihadists from all over the world meet in chat rooms and travel to each other's battlefields, the standing presumption is that an effort was made to establish the link, either from the top toward the bottom, or otherwise. But even if the link was not formalized, the action flows in the same direction. The JFK airport plot at least shows that direction.

8) The Trinidad member of parliament, Abdel Kadir, who is also involved in this operation, is an example of infiltration by the jihadists of governments abroad, and ultimately of governmental institutions at home. It shows the fact that terrorists aren't exclusively outsiders but could also be insiders to governments and their agencies. It further shows one of the jihadists' main goals that is to "place" their cadres inside the layers of government, legislative, executive and potentially judicial.

More about Islamist infiltration tactics here.

While fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan is certainly part of what should be called the War on Jihadism, it is not all of it. Surveilance (yes, of the domestic as well as foreign) and covert operations must play a large part also. We need to do a lot better at "soft power" of the sort mentioned above (follow the link for details).

The bottom line though is that it would be a mistake to dismiss the JFK Airport plot because the jihadists were still in the planning stages. Even the 9-11 terrorists had a planning stage. I tend to think that we would have dismissed their plans as fanciful had we caught them early on. Let's not make that mistake here.