By Paul Cruickshank

The announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of the 9/11 attacks will soon be moved to New York to face trial in a federal court will be welcomed by some Americans as finally starting the process of bringing the perpetrators of these attacks to justice.

To date, not one person has been convicted for the attacks. But it also will be a reminder that their boss, the man most responsible for killing 3,000 civilians -- the majority of them Americans but many from all around the world -- is still at large.

President Obama has stated that it is vitally important for the country to put some of the controversial policies of the last eight years behind it. While the forthcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several figures allegedly involved in plotting the 9/11 attacks in New York will be helpful, nothing would help more than if Osama bin Laden were captured, afforded full due process and put on trial.

It would be nothing short of a watershed moment, doing much to restore the public's confidence in American institutions and the rule of law after years of being told that they were too quaint for the challenges of a new era. And it would go a long way, too, in restoring the moral high ground for the United States in the court of global opinion.

An indictment dating back to 1998 awaits al Qaeda's leader in the Southern District Federal Court of New York, which can be easily updated by a grand jury to include his crimes since. This is where Mohammed and four others accused of the 9/11 attacks are also expected to be tried.

Less than a mile from ground zero, there could be no more appropriate place to try bin Laden. There is virtually no chance that bin Laden would walk free from a U.S. courtroom as there are at least three separate video recordings of him acknowledging responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

To read the rest, visit CNN.com, where this was originally published.

Paul Cruickshank is a Fellow at the NYU Center on Law & Security.

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By Paul Cruickshank

With a surge in the number of American residents joining al Qaeda, its menace to homeland security is now more acute than at any time since September 11.

In the eight years since September 11, and especially during the Bush administration's first term, Americans became all too accustomed to a diet of orange alerts, sensational terror arrests, and breathless press conferences announcing the thwarting of yet another serious plot. But months and years down the line, it often emerged that such plots may not have represented such grave threats after all: terrorism suspects were charged with less serious offenses or released altogether; plotters turned out to have little or no capacity to launch attacks; and, often, when juries did convict, it emerged that entire conspiracies were reliant on the helping hands of undercover law-enforcement agents.

But 11 days ago federal agents in Denver foiled an alleged plot on U.S. soil  that, for the first time, appears to have posed a true and severe threat to the U.S. homeland. Najibullah Zazi, a permanent resident of Afghan nationality pled not guilty yesterday in his arraignment in Brooklyn to charges including for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. He is believed to have trained to make bombs with al Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan and to have initiated plans -- apparently without assistance from undercover agents -- with others in the United States to perpetrate a terrorist attack in New York City. The FBI, in other words, has just thwarted the most serious plot, by far, on U.S. soil in the last eight years.

And this is just the beginning. The threat from al Qaeda to the U.S. homeland is arguably more acute now than at any time since September 11. This is not because al Qaeda has become a stronger foe. (On the contrary, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has actually been weakened in the last two years by intensified U.S. missile strikes against its leadership in FATA and a sharp backlash among Muslims worldwide against its violent excesses.) It is because a growing number of Americans have gone to FATA, the global hub of al Qaeda's terrorist operations, to join the jihad in Afghanistan -- something which was very rare until recently -- and al Qaeda, opportunistically, has recruited them for attacks on their country.

The number of American residents who had joined or trained with Al Qaeda between its founding in 1988 and the September 11 terrorist attacks numbered only in the single figures. They included Wadih El-Hage (bin Laden's private secretary), Ali Mohammed (an American Special Forces instructor of Egyptian origin), Christopher Paul (a man from Columbus, Ohio, who joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the early 1990s), Iyman Faris (another Columbus man of Kashmiri descent who trained in a Qaeda facility and, rather fancifully, planned to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with gas cutters and a blowtorch in 2003), Adam Gadahn (a Californian Christian convert to Islam who has become one of Al Qaeda's spokespeople), and John Walker Lindh (the so-called American Taliban).

To read the rest of my piece about al Qaeda's recruitment of Americans, visit Newsweek, where this was originally published.

Paul Cruickshank is a Fellow at the NYU Center on Law & Security.

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By Paul Cruickshank

The most spectacular acts of terrorism in the last decade have not been committed by Afghans. The September 11 attacks were perpetrated mostly by Saudis, the Madrid train bombings by North African immigrants, the London Underground bombings mostly by British citizens of Kashmiri descent, and even the Bali bombings by homegrown Indonesian Islamists. The Taliban's ethnic Pashtuns were not generally like the group they chose to shelter, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. They were mostly partisan locals, not international terrorists. But that may all be about to change.

Last weekend, agents in Denver and New York arrested three men of Afghan descent -- including Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan national suspected of involvement in a Qaeda plot to blow up targets like Grand Central Terminal -- raising the question: is the Afghan war now coming to American shores? Zazi is beginning to look like part of a trend.

For most of its 20 years, al Qaeda's commanders recruited very few Afghan militants into their ranks because their parochial world views, their lack of international travel experience, and their poor education made them useless as global operatives. But when the Taliban was forced from power across the border in Pakistan -- where it became a target in what the Bush administration called "the global war on terrorism" -- its members became much more worldly. As they came to see the United States, rather than rival Afghan tribes, as their enemy, Pashtuns were radicalized in the border region, where they had easy access to al Qaeda's training facilities. The war in Iraq, the mushrooming of Internet cafés in the region, and al Qaeda's relentless propaganda efforts have widened the horizons of Pashtun militants who, a decade ago, had little concept of the outside world, let alone global jihad.

To read the rest of my piece about Afghan involvement in jihad, visit Newsweek, where this was originally published.

Paul Cruickshank is a Fellow at the NYU Center on Law & Security.

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By Richard Greenberg, Paul Cruickshank, and Chris Hansen

In one of the most significant terrorism cases since 9/11, a British court Monday sentenced three British citizens to life in prison for conspiring to blow up transatlantic airliners in a plot that was thwarted in August 2006. The terrorist plot, which disrupted international air travel at the time, led authorities in 2006 to impose restrictions on liquids and gels on airplanes. Those restrictions remain in place today.

The three men, who were convicted by a British jury one week ago, were considered ringleaders of the conspiracy, according to prosecutors. They were among twelve charged in the case. To date, nine have stood trial.

In addition to the three convicted, the jury last Monday found four other defendants not guilty of the airliner conspiracy. One defendant was acquitted. The verdicts came at the end of a six-month retrial ordered by British authorities after a jury delivered mixed verdicts in an initial trial held in 2008.

In spite of the four acquittals in the retrial, British authorities expressed relief and satisfaction that those they described as ringleaders were found guilty. "I cannot thank enough those involved for their professionalism and dedication in thwarting this attack and saving thousands of lives," said U.K. Home Secretary Alan Johnson in statement. Johnson described it as the largest counterterrorism operation ever in the U.K.; the U.K. Press Association estimated the cost of the investigation and two trials at around $200 million.

The case highlighted the continuing threat posed by British-born radicals and the potential for Britain to serve as a staging ground for attacks against the United States.

Authorities said the men, arrested in August 2006, planned to smuggle liquid explosives disguised as sports drinks aboard a half-dozen or more flights headed from London's Heathrow Airport to cities in the United States and Canada. Counterterrorism investigators say that such an attack could have killed well over 1,500 on board the planes, and many more if detonated over densely populated urban areas.

In an interview last year, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told Dateline NBC that, if successful, the alleged plot "would have rivaled 9/11 in terms of the number of deaths and interms of the impact on the international economy."

A review of the nearly 5,000 pages of trial transcripts and interviews with key British, American and Pakistani officials involved in the investigation offer insights into the current state of al Qaeda and the evolution of its operations, adding to the body of evidence that recruits from the West are being trained and directed by al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.

To read the rest of this in-depth investigation of the plot that "rivaled 9/11," visit Dateline NBC, where this was originally published.

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By Paul Cruickshank

In an article posted on his Foreign Policy blog Tuesday Stephen Walt challenged one of the key realist foreign policy rationales for maintaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan, describing President Obama's contention that "left unchecked the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans" as emblematic of a "safe haven myth" swallowed uncritically by much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Walt questions whether the actual risk of a terrorist attack being launched from Afghan soil in the future, justifies the huge cost of the U.S. deployment in Afghanistan.

While Walt is correct that critical thinking is sometimes absent from the policy debate in Washington, DC, and it should not be taken as axiomatic that increased Taliban control over Afghan territory would lead to new attacks in the United States, his critique of the "the safe haven argument" far from adequately accounts for the potential threat that increased Taliban domination over Afghanistan would pose.

Below is a response to five correctives offered by Walt to the so-called "safe haven myth."

• The Taliban -- or at least important elements of it -- do not share al Qaeda's determination to attack the United States homeland.

This is true to some extent. The Taliban and al Qaeda are after all distinct groupings with autonomous, though sometimes overlapping, agendas. The Taliban is much more interested in creating an autonomous Pashtun state than in creating a Global Caliphate. And Mullah Omar, who never authorized the 9/11 attacks, has distanced himself from al Qaeda of late.

But what Walt neglects to mention is that fact that Taliban commanders have increasingly bought into al Qaeda's vision of 'Global Jihad' in recent years. While they may not themselves be interested in orchestrating attacks in the West, the Taliban movement as a whole is arguably more sympathetic to Bin Laden's vision of a global Jihad now than in the 1990s. This is especially the case for a younger generation of "Pakistani Taliban" commanders who have emerged as powerful players in the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they have offered al Qaeda safe-haven and resources.

• It would not be in the Taliban's interests to offer al Qaeda a safe-haven.

From a realist perspective this is also undoubtedly true. The Taliban lost power as a direct result of the 9/11 attacks so why would they make the same mistake twice? The problem with this is that the Taliban can hardly be accused of being poster children for "rational state actors;" otherwise presumably they would still be in power in Kabul. This is not to say that the Taliban are incapable of weighing their interests -- Mullah Omar is a much shrewder political operator than most give him credit for -- but religion, specifically the belief that al Qaeda is engaged in a legitimate Jihad,  has historically played as important a role in Taliban calculations as realpolitik.

While the Taliban would be unlikely to be rash enough to provide direct support to al Qaeda if they were returned to a position of political power inside Afghanistan, it is unclear whether they would be willing to take active steps to remove al Qaeda operatives who entered their territory.

• Afghanistan would be of limited use as a safe haven because it is remote and isolated.

This does not square with the facts.  To support this assertion Walt incorrectly states that "the 9/11 plot was organized out of Hamburg, not Kabul or Kandahar," when the 9/11 Commission Report and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's interrogation reports make it clear that the key planning for the attacks took place on Afghan soil. It was in an al Qaeda camp in the Kandahar area in late 1999 that Mohammed Atta and his gang were groomed to become suicide bombers and directed to launch the 9/11 attacks.

Walt also asserts that the "training camps [al Qaeda] could organize in Pakistan or Afghanistan ... would not be particularly valuable if you were trying to do a replay of 9/11."  But this ignores the fact that several of the U.K. terrorist cell members allegedly plotting to blow up at least seven transatlantic airliners in the summer of 2006 received crucial bomb-making training in al Qaeda facilities in the tribal areas of Pakistan not many miles from the Afghan border.

When they were arrested three years ago this month the "airline plotters" had obtained all the components necessary to build liquid explosives capable of bringing down aircraft. Given the interdependence of the world economy such an attack could have been economically devastating, something worth bearing in mind when assessing the dollar costs of U.S. deployment in Afghanistan.  Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff stated that, if successful, the alleged plot "would have rivaled 9/11 in terms of the number of deaths and in terms of the impact on the international economy."

Recent evidence suggests that al Qaeda has been able to sustain its training operations in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, despite intensified Predator strikes. The interrogation reports of a number of Western al Qaeda recruits, including Bryant Neal Vinas, an American who spent time in the tribal areas during 2008, indicate that it is still possible for Westerners to join up with the terrorist organization there, however remote these areas may be. The testimonies also revealed that al Qaeda is still able to offer recruits a large variety of training courses in this safe-haven, including advanced bomb-making.

• The U.S. would be able to successfully identify and strike any al Qaeda camps that did emerge in Afghanistan.

While al Qaeda's large mountainside camps that it ran in Afghanistan in the 1990s were relatively easy to target with Cruise missiles, its new training facilities in tribal areas of Pakistan, are much smaller -- sometimes just mountain shacks -- and consequently  much more difficult to target, even with Predator drones. If the Taliban gained tighter control over territory in southern and eastern Afghanistan and al Qaeda were to transfer some of these camps across the border from Pakistan, it would not be a straightforward task for the United States to identify them.

And even if they could be identified the loss a few small facilities would not be a great blow to the terrorist organization. It is worth also recalling that the cruise missile strikes ordered by the Clinton administration in 1998, even though they hit their targets, had very little impact on al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan.

• The presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan helps al Qaeda win allies for its global Jihad.

Walt has a point here. The presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has certainly been exploited by al Qaeda to gain recruits and allies in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. This has been compounded by the accidental killing of a significant number of Afghan civilians in air strikes. But the United States had little choice but to intervene militarily after the 9/11 attacks and recent polls suggest that a majority of Afghans still support the U.S. military presence in the country. Moreover a precipitous withdrawal of troops might produce a situation where one had the worst of both worlds: high levels of hostility to the United States in the region and a considerably safer and larger haven for al Qaeda.

President Obama will face difficult decisions in the next months about whether to maintain, increase, or reduce American troop levels in Afghanistan. In making these decisions the danger of al Qaeda again setting up operations in Afghanistan should be neither exaggerated nor discounted.

Paul Cruickshank is a Fellow at the NYU Center on Law & Security.

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