The apparent suicide bombing in Stockholm this past weekend has again raised the specter of jihadi terrorism in the West, but key details about the attack-especially whether or not the bomber, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, was working independently, with a cell in Sweden (or Britain), or on the orders of a formal al-Qaeda-linked group-remain ambiguous. Such questions have real world importance, not just because a support network might commit follow-on attacks, but because the United States and the West are struggling to determine what elements of the jihadi movement-formal organizations or loosely distributed jihadi supporters-pose the largest threat and how those elements motivate and organize violence.

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On September 15, al Qaeda's as-Sahab Media released a speech by Ayman al-Zawahiri to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the "start of the crusader campaign." Although the ninth anniversary of 9/11 clearly influenced as-Sahab's timing, al-Zawahiri's speech never mentioned the attacks on New York and Washington. For the moment at least, al Qaeda aims not to remind viewers of the destruction it caused nine years ago, but to remind potential supporters of the grievances it hopes will motivate them today.

If as-Sahab does not release material explicitly referencing 9/11, it would be an important departure for al Qaeda's media operations, which have in the past sought to remind viewers of the 9/11 attacks with dedicated propaganda around the anniversary. Previous examples include the release of 9/11 hijacker "wills," and statements from Osama bin Laden and American al Qaeda member Adam Gadahn. Last year as-Sahab released a statement from bin Laden addressed to the "American People" that specifically referenced the 9/11 attacks.

Instead of a victory lap or appeal to the West, al-Zawahiri's statement seems intended to frame al Qaeda's fight over the past nine years for supporters and would-be supporters not as a series of bold strikes but as a response to various "crusader" offenses during that period: invasion, religious and cultural insults, and, primarily, support for local regimes that al Qaeda considers unacceptable. The content of al-Zawahiri's speech is rote by al Qaeda standards and is notable primarily because the timing of its release suggests that other themes might have been chosen.

Al-Zawahiri singles out Pakistan in particular for criticism, which is not surprising considering al Qaeda's rhetorical focus on the south Asian state since the 2007 Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) incident that catalyzed anger among anti-Pakistani militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Pointing to a variety of standard failures by the Pakistani government, al-Zawahiri also mentions its poor response to the floods ravaging the country and accuses the Pakistani "ruling class" of preventing jihadis from waging war in Kashmir.

There is little doubt that 9/11 is still al Qaeda's most important calling card, but videos such as al-Zawahiri's suggest that, nine years on, al Qaeda believes its supporters expect more from the group than the memory of that Tuesday morning.

Brian Fishman is a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation.

David Sanger and Mark Mazzetti report in the New York Times this morning that al-Qaeda has "fewer than 500 members" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is almost certainly true, but the numbers alone do not demonstrate that al-Qaeda is in decline. Al-Qaeda has never had more than "several hundred" formal members according to a 2005 Century Foundation report authored by Richard Clarke and others in position to assess the organization prior to 9/11. (Clarke's numbers certainly exclude al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was much larger.)

Formal membership is not a particularly useful measure of al-Qaeda's strength because the group operates largely via other organizations or by opportunistically utilizing individuals that arrive in the border region and are willing to attack abroad. We need to get more creative about how to understand al-Qaeda's power.

Both the Century Foundation Report and Sanger and Mazzetti do some good work on that front. The Century Foundation asserts that al-Qaeda never supported a cadre of more than a couple thousand affiliated jihadis and the Times explains that al-Qaeda has developed deep "synergies" with a variety of other militant groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

Are we really to measure al-Qaeda's strength based on some assessment of its "synergies" with other groups? What is the baseline? How do you compare the late 1990s, when al-Qaeda collaborated with a relatively strong, but very independent, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to the situation today where a faction of LIFG has joined al-Qaeda but has vastly diminished resources? Does "synergy" mean they collaborate on attacks in Afghanistan together or that they agree on attacking western targets abroad? How do you measure the relative effectiveness of al-Qaeda's training programs from the late 1990s to today? Camps are smaller, but do you need a jungle gym to learn how to hijack a plane?

The point here (for the time being) is not to make an argument one way or the other about U.S. policy in South Asia, but rather that analysis of the al-Qaeda movement has to get better, and numbers do not come close to telling the whole story -- especially when they have not really changed.

Brian Fishman is a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation.

The LA Times reported this morning that Pakistan has been "trying to seed a rapprochement" between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Haqqani insurgent network -- obstructed by the Haqqanis' ties to al-Qaeda. Anand Gopal, Mansur Khan Mahsud, and Brian Fishman describe what connections, both historical and current,  the Haqqani network has with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder of the Haqqani group, established contact with Arab fighters very early in the anti-Soviet war. In 1981, American journalist Jere Van Dyk traveled with Haqqani in Afghanistan and was confronted by a fundamentalist Egyptian named Rashid Rochman.^[i] Although Rochman was generally disliked by Jalaluddin's men, who were turned off by his extremism, the mujahideen leader favored the man. Rochman gleefully questioned Van Dyk about the recent assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, an attack that landed future al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri in an Egyptian prison. It seems likely that Jalaluddin understood that relationships with Arabs such as Rochman could be a fundraising boon for his movement. Jalaluddin still maintains ties through marriage to the Persian Gulf, and much of the Haqqani Network's funding comes through such relationships.^[ii] In addition, the movement maintains ties to al-Qaeda and the Uzbek Islamic Jihad Union, and has used its leverage with other militants to protect foreign fighters.^[iii]

Osama bin Laden built a relationship with the Haqqanis in the mid-1980s when he spent months along the front lines with Jalaluddin.^[iv] The relationship has paid dividends for both parties. In the 1980s, bin Laden's wealthy family and royal connections in Saudi Arabia would have been indispensable for a mujahideen leader like Jalaluddin, and the elder Haqqani's military success offered bin Laden the opportunity to exaggerate his own role in those operations. Indeed, bin Laden's ties to Haqqani were much deeper than those he had with Mullah Omar's Taliban government, which ultimately operated from Kandahar and Kabul. Jalaluddin and bin Laden had much more in common than bin Laden and the illiterate leader of the Taliban. They had shared history from the anti-Soviet jihad. Jalaluddin spoke Arabic and had an Arab wife. Bin Laden may even emulate some of Jalaluddin's leadership affectations. The Afghan commander toted a relatively rare AK-74 assault rifle in the early 1980s as a symbol of his leadership; bin Laden was given the same model by a top lieutenant, Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri, after the Lion's Den battle in 1987 and subsequently carried it everywhere, including in Sudan.^[v]

Al-Qaeda and aligned groups have two main roles in the Haqqani Network: facilitating attacks and providing suicide bombers.

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When President Obama relieved General Stanley McChrystal over comments published in Rolling Stone last week it was big news, but it was not the first time a political leader fired his most important commander in Afghanistan. In late 2007, Quetta Shura Taliban leader Mullah Omar fired his commander for southern Afghanistan, Mullah Mansoor Dadullah because "he disobeyed the orders of the Islamic Emirate." The command failure was serious. Mullah Omar had never trusted Mansoor Dadullah and worried that he would be as independently minded, and brutal, as his older brother who he replaced. Mullah Omar's fears were born out when Mansoor Dadullah struck out on his own (described variously as negotiating with the Afghan government and refusing to negotiate with the Afghan government), even threatening attacks outside Afghanistan. Such an approach would have been a major policy shift and directly undermined Mullah Omar's carefully crafted political position. In a war without a stark division between killing and negotiation, Mullah Omar would leave no doubt he was in charge.

Obama's dismissal of McChrystal was warranted for similar reasons. The war in Afghanistan can be lost just as easily in diplomatic conference rooms in Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad as in Marjah's poppy fields. Indeed, success on the battlefield in Afghanistan, achieved via counterinsurgency (COIN) or some other approach, can only create the conditions for the political deals that will ultimately determine the war's outcome. Achieving and sustaining those deals will require Pakistani support, and the president is the only American capable of cutting the deals with allies and enemies alike. There can be no doubt among any of them that he is the ultimate authority.

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As a native Californian, I am willing to accept that Adam Gadahn, the American-born al-Qaeda propagandist who was raised in California, will often be labeled as such by the media. But my Golden State often gets a bad rap when it comes to other high profile characters who have spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the record, the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh spent his first ten years in Maryland before the family moved to California. And Gary Brooks Faulkner, who carried a sword while hunting for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan's tribal areas, has not been a Californian since he moved to Colorado in 1968. But that factoid did not prevent the Post, al Jazeera, or a slew of other media outlets and blogs from referring to him as a Californian.

Place of birth aside, the most important news about Gadahn's recent screed, Legitimate Demands, Barack's Dilemma, is that very few Americans seem to care about it. Intelligence analysts are no doubt scouring the document for indications of Gadahn's role within al-Qaeda and whether or not his message suggests anything about the group's actual intentions, but as with most al-Qaeda propaganda these days, the public writ large and the Washington policy community have barely noticed.

A rough comparison to be sure, but a one week Google news search for ‘Adam Gadahn' brought up 297 results on June 21, 2010, which is 977 fewer than a search for fellow Californian ‘Adam Lambert' of American Idol fame. Gadahn may or may not speak for Osama bin Laden, but he does not have much in the way of Google juice.

Legitimate Demands, Barack's Dilemma is typically self-aggrandizing by Gadahn standards and reflects al-Qaeda's constant effort to be relevant in western political discussions. Gadahn offers the usual bromides urging President Obama to eliminate U.S. influence from "Afghanistan and Zanzibar" (leaving out North Africa and Muslim populations from Pakistan to the Philippines that are often included in such statements) and threatens "a future of misery, insecurity and -- ultimately -- defeat, should you continue to ravage our countries."

Gadahn reiterates al-Qaeda's commonly-expressed grievances, a reminder that despite the ideological glue holding al-Qaeda together, it aspires to resolve real world policy questions and in the meantime will use those grievances to recruit. Echoing al-Qaeda complaints since the 1990s, Gadahn demands the U.S:

1. Withdraw all troops and personnel from "Afghanistan to Zanzibar;"
2. End "moral and material" support for Israel, including trade of all kinds and tourism;
3. Discontinue aid of all kinds to "hated regimes" in the Arab and Muslim world;
4. Stop interfering in the Muslim world, including providing Peace Corps volunteers;
5. Stop broadcasting into the Muslim world, especially content "designed to destroy faith, minds, morals, and values;"
6. And, release all prisoners in places like Guantanamo, whether or not they have received a trial.

Gadahn's recitation of oft-stated grievances and tired threats are less interesting than his attempt to insert al-Qaeda's core issues into the American political narrative. According to Gadahn, it was not the economy, the health care bill, Martha Coakley's incompetence, or the Tea Partiers that put Scott Brown's Senate campaign over the top in Massachusetts, but President Obama's unwillingness to withdraw troops from the Middle East. Gadahn's flailing effort to connect al-Qaeda's demands with American political developments is a cry for attention more than a real demand.

Indeed, the patronizing tone of Gadahn's entire statement indicates that no matter how sincere his political grievances actually are, he has no expectation that the U.S. will actually adopt his "recommendations." By framing those grievances as part of a conversation on American domestic politics, Gadahn is likely trying to revitalize al-Qaeda itself as a noxious issue in the American political discussion. A variety of jihadi thinkers have argued that the American body politic is inherently fragile and that al-Qaeda's violence and propaganda should be designed to exploit economic and social vulnerabilities to produce internal turmoil in the United States.  Gadahn's defiant rhetorical posturing is about inspiring western supporters and using the specter of al-Qaeda to make already difficult political discussions about the future of U.S. involvement in the Mideast even harder.

It is impossible to know how much Gadahn actually cares about the grievances he describes (nor does it matter if he is able to exploit them for recruiting purposes), but it is relatively clear from the tone of this latest statement that he does not want American policymakers discussing these issues calmly or without referring directly to al-Qaeda when they do so. This is why it is a small blessing that in the Battle of the Adams, Lambert, not Gadahn, is obviously winning.

Brian Fishman is a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation.

The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan means more in Washington, Islamabad, and Kabul than in Miram Shah, Khost, or the Tirah Valley. Tribes straddle the border seamlessly, and trading relationships that have existed for millennia shape local cultural and political sensibilities more so than the vagaries of internationally accepted maps. This is one main reason why distinguishing between "Afghan Taliban" and "Pakistani Taliban" is misleading, even if it is useful shorthand. The leaders of the former Taliban government of Afghanistan are now called the Quetta Shura after the Pakistani city where they are based, and Mullah Omar's deputy, Mullah Baradar, was captured in the Pakistani city of Karachi, 350 miles from the Afghan border.^[i] Likewise, the Haqqani Network, often considered "Afghan Taliban" because of its tribal roots and operational capacity in Afghanistan, has deep roots in Pakistani territory. The network's current operational leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was raised outside of Miram Shah in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal agency and studied at a madrassa, or religious school, outside Peshawar. His father, Jalaluddin, had decided to fight the Soviet-backed communist government in Afghanistan at a meeting in Miram Shah in 1978.^[ii] More recently, Sirajuddin has intervened in Pakistani tribal squabbles to prevent militants from being distracted from the fight in Afghanistan.^[iii]

The third group often called "Afghan Taliban" is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami (HIG).^[iv] The HIG remains an important player in stoking cross-border violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but lumping it into the same category as the Quetta Shura and Haqqani Network is misleading. Hekmatyar was exiled from Afghanistan during the Taliban's reign in Kabul, and despite long ties to al-Qaeda and reconciliation with Mullah Omar since 9/11, he now seems more focused on political reconciliation than violence.^[v] The HIG does not have a major presence in the FATA, though it has extensive bases in Afghan refugee camps in the NWFP outside of Peshawar.^[vi]

In an environment where all of the major Taliban groups are headquartered in Pakistan and virtually all of them cooperate to support operations in Afghanistan, the distinction between "Afghan Taliban" and "Pakistani Taliban" is unhelpful. Moreover, the terminology reinforces the counterproductive fiction perpetrated by some in Pakistan that the Pakistani state is responsible for countering only certain elements of the Taliban -- those with the "Pakistani" designation. In practice, the term "Pakistani Taliban" is often used interchangeably with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the pan-FATA militant coalition that engages in brutal violence against the Pakistani state. The terminology usefully distinguishes such anti-Pakistan fighters from the Quetta Shura and Haqqani Network -- "Afghan Taliban" -- that avoid confrontation with Pakistan. But delineating this strategic difference in geographic terms enables those in the Pakistani establishment who support using militants against Pakistan's enemies to excuse their behavior by arguing that they are fighting against the "Pakistani Taliban" and that the "Afghan Taliban" are someone else's problem. When critical policy decisions are being made in Washington and Islamabad, the terminology favors those who do not want to take comprehensive action against militants in the FATA.

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By Brian Fishman

Using a counterinsurgency strategy to achieve success in Afghanistan will be more difficult than it was in Iraq because the forces that threaten core American interests in Afghanistan are more durable and more dangerous. Comparing al Qaeda in AfPak to al Qaeda in Iraq illuminates some of those differences and illustrates both the pros and cons of building U.S. strategy in South Asia around a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. Readers should remember that focusing on al Qaeda offers an incomplete picture of both wars because it obscures the primary roles played by other groups in both military contests.  I do so because al Qaeda and its ideological allies play a critical role in our casus belli in Afghanistan, and because the comparison illustrates some of the key strategic and political differences between Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, the United States' main focus was establishing a reasonably stable and cooperative government that could productively engage the international community. In Afghanistan, building a stable and cooperative government is really a means to two ends: preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a terrorist safe haven and mitigating risks to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Defeating insurgents via population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) is an interim step to policy success, not success itself, and this critical point has been missing from much of the debate about a troop increase in Afghanistan. In Iraq, the surge was very successful destroying and co-opting insurgents that threatened the central government -- and creating space for the development of a viable government -- but terrorism remains a real problem. A COIN campaign in Afghanistan may very well be necessary to protect U.S. interests in South Asia, but it is certainly not sufficient on its own.

Insurgents and terrorists: not interchangeable

In theoretical terms, a key difference between ‘insurgents' and ‘terrorists' is the focus for each group: for insurgents it's the population, but for terrorists it's self-preservation, namely the ability to train effective operatives while maintaining operational security. Terrorists generally do not have nearly as much influence over a population as do insurgents, nor do they need as much support from it. Unlike an insurgent group that recruits among the population, al Qaeda in AfPak has rarely recruited among Afghans.

U.S. strategic and operational concepts in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) should reflect the differences between insurgents and terrorists. Gen. McChrystal's leaked memo about the war in Afghanistan describes "defeating the insurgency" there as "a condition where the insurgency no longer threatens the viability of the state." This definition (or something close to it) has been suitable thus far in Iraq, and it largely makes sense in regard to the three primary threats to the Afghan government Gen. McChrystal notes in his memo: Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, and Hizb-e Islami Gulbuddin.

But the full scope of enemies in South Asia extends beyond these relatively well-established insurgent groups. Indeed, it is the smaller terrorist organizations that are most likely to strike outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Proponents of COIN in Afghanistan rightly point out that counterterrorism missions sometimes require counterinsurgency tools. That's true. But policymakers should not make the mistake of assuming that the results of a counterinsurgency necessarily meet the needs of a counterterrorism mission. Terrorist groups are often structured to operate within societies that have functional security and legal systems; insurgents operate in parallel to those systems. States capable of defeating insurgents are often still vulnerable to terrorism and certainly can be used by an innovative terrorist group as a safe haven.

The term "viability" in the definition of success above is critical. If "viability" in Afghanistan means something like "stable" and "enduring" governance, this may not describe a government authoritative enough to effectively crack down on al Qaeda and its allies -- even if it is strong enough to reliably defend Kabul from Mullah Omar. Al Qaeda does not need to control Kabul to utilize mountainous hideouts to train and plot against the West. Nor do Pakistani militants need bases in Kandahar to project power in the FATA. This is important because it suggests that to undermine U.S. interests -- by threatening terrorism abroad and putting Pakistani nuclear weapons at risk -- these groups need to achieve less than traditional insurgents, and thus the Afghan government must be more effective to defeat them. This is a very different situation than in Iraq, where AQI had aspirations and excesses -- and the vulnerabilities that go along with them -- that far exceed AQ in AfPak.

Al Qaeda in Iraq vs. al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Despite their shared brand, AQ in AfPak operates very differently from AQI (even in its heyday) and it has very different strategic aims. AQI aimed to control territory in order to discredit the Iraqi government and establish the first blotch in a jihadi oil-spot strategy aimed at redeveloping the caliphate. To achieve this end, AQI built a broad infrastructure that it tried to scale up dramatically, attacked U.S. forces daily, demanded that local insurgents and tribes swear allegiance to a formal State that it declared, provided a detailed -- though ridiculous -- description of the State's responsibilities, named a cabinet (that included positions like a Fisheries Minister), and directly imposed judicial punishments. AQI's aspirations of governance (and, critically, delusions of grandeur) put control over the Iraqi Sunnis at the heart of its strategy, which meant that the group was very vulnerable to a COIN approach designed to separate the group from the population writ large. AQI's strategy was fundamentally dysfunctional because it adopted the goals of an insurgent group without an entrenched social base and despite the fact that non-Iraqis composed its leadership and provided general direction. This mismatch is what Petraeus, McChrystal, McMaster and others so skillfully exploited in Iraq.