Memo to Rumsfeld

By Andrew Apostolou

In his now very public private memorandum, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his closest associates: “Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?” Perhaps the best way to answer that question is from al Qaeda's perspective.

On September 10, 2001, al Qaeda had operatives all over the world. Their largest ever attack was about to happen and had been planned in Afghanistan and Germany, in Malaysia and the U.S. Al Qaeda's network, fed with Gulf money, was run from a seemingly impregnable base in Afghanistan, a base which although theoretically isolated could be easily accessed from neighboring Pakistan. The regime in charge of Afghanistan, the Taliban, was in al Qaeda's pocket. The regime in charge in Pakistan was not unsympathetic.

Today, some of al Qaeda's top operatives are in prison or dead, others are on the run and finding it hard to control, influence, or even contact their colleagues. Their Taliban allies are now an insurgent force, hiding with bin Laden in Pakistan or along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It would be better if Osama bin Laden were now dead or in U.S. custody. The fact that he is in Waziristan or Baluchistan is, however, preferable to him holding court in Kandahar.

Some al Qaeda operatives have regrouped and they are daily planning more attacks, but their operations since September 11 have, of necessity, been on a smaller scale and against targets not on American soil. At the same time, they have to devote ever more of their time and resources to defending themselves and staying one step ahead of the police, whether in the U.S. or Belgium, Pakistan or Italy.

Importantly, it appears that bin Laden remains a poor strategist. The al Qaeda attacks in Riyadh in May were a political blunder. They forced the Saudi government to start taking its head out of the sand and start tackling the terrorism that lurks within its own borders. These efforts are still not enough and for more than 3,000 Americans they are too late.

Al Qaeda now has a new front: Iraq. That al Qaeda is willing to fight the U.S. in Iraq could prove to be another bin Laden mistake, on condition that the U.S. does not cut and run. The whole point of terrorism is to avoid engaging conventional forces, which for terrorists is too risky and often costly. With that in mind, bin Laden should be conserving his reduced resources for attacks on soft diplomatic and civilian targets in Europe and the U.S. Instead, he is wasting them in targeting U.S. troops.

Allow me to address a few of Mr. Rumsfeld's other questions directly:

Mr. Secretary, I'm sure you realize that flushing al Qaeda and the Taliban out of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area will take years. This needs to be explained to the public and to the media, which will attempt to encourage public impatience.

Strategically, the problem is simpler: American forces must deny al Qaeda an inviolate rear area in which they can rest and recuperate. Britain did that successfully to insurgents in Malaya and Borneo, in the latter case by covertly infiltrating Indonesia. It took years, much patience, and the use of small covert units that make for bad television. Sooner or later either the U.S. or Pakistan needs to exert control over the Pakistani border provinces.

You are right to be concerned and to push the Pentagon for maximum creativity and effort, but you are winning this war. To keep winning you need to stay on the offensive and keep the terrorists on the run. Of course you must tighten up security, but too much focus on American vulnerabilities can be counter productive. Every American is a target — that means 292 million targets. You don't want to end up building a new Maginot Line. You would do well to learn from the experience of how other democracies cope with terrorism, whether in Britain or in Israel.

What is as important is a real understanding of your enemies, their mentality, how they recruit, plan and operate — above all, a grasp of their intentions and capabilities. At the moment you do not have that because, frankly, your intelligence is so poor. You need to keep sharing intelligence with others, but as you know, you must also start making changes in how your agencies function and make them work together. Human intelligence is what, in particular, has been missing for years. There are plenty of powerful constituencies for buying new satellites. There have been virtually no constituencies for paying off slimy characters who are willing to infiltrate and inform on terrorist cells. You need to become that constituency.

We should understand that creating terrorists is not just about incitement. If it were, then all we would need is nice imams who discourage hatred. That has been tried and it has failed. Any country where there is a strictly controlled official Islam that does as the state wishes tends to spawn an underground, parallel Islam. The trick that al Qaeda and its allies use is to hijack that disenfranchised fringe and radicalize it. They have done the same in Kashmir and Chechnya, taking over movements struggling for political rights and turning them into theaters of terrorism. They would have done the same in Bosnia had the U.S. not intervened. Ansar al-Islam has been designed by al Qaeda to provide the same vehicle in Iraq. You need to think ahead and ask where al Qaeda can play this trick next.

Finally, it is a victory that there has not been a single successful terrorists attack on American soil since 9/11. The terrorists have not paused as a gesture of good will. To be sure, it's frustrating to score victories in terms of what has not happened. But the truth is you are winning so long as you stay one step ahead of the terrorists, not one atrocity behind them.

— Andrew Apostolou is Director of Research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute created after 9/11 and focusing on terrorism.