Paris: Made in Libya, Not Syria

To my many foreign policy friends, including terrorism experts, tonight is the night to mourn & #standwithfrance. Tomorrow we analyze.--Anne-Marie Slaughter on Twitter, November 13, 2015

I recently characterized the tsunami of analysis about the Paris attacks as a case of Orientalism.  What isn't important is what may have happened.  What's important is that we control the alien entity: we define the problem, we dictate the proper response and, natch, we get to declare victory—or at least what victory would look like if we stopped listening to the handwringers and had our spooks and soldiers build us an impregnable fortress of pure gold.

I’m a cui bono guy to a fault; I’ll admit that.  I don’t give enough weight and legitimacy to emotions and irrationality as drivers for actions.

And I have to say I detected a distinct shortage of “bono” to IS in the Paris attacks, unless the thinking of the leadership runs to “It would be an excellent idea to focus the fury of the West upon us here in Iraq instead of laying low and letting the West go along with the GCC/Turkish plan of quagmiring Russia in Syria.”

Doesn’t make too much sense.  Which is why, in my opinion, is why you see a lot of metaphysical handwaving that the real motive for the attacks was to erase the Muslim “grey zone”, provoke a fatal over-reaction from the West, contribute to the agonies of the Syrian refugees in Europe, rend the time-space continuum and thereby bring the Crusaders to their knees, etc. 

Let me introduce some interesting factiness on the matter of the alleged mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.  

Abaaoud was well known as a violent radical miscreant linked to an Islamic cell in Verviers, Belgium, that did all sorts of mean, murderous crap. 

In an article with the, in retrospect, bitterly ironic title “Second Paris averted by hours”, the Daily Mail reported on a January 2015 raid in Verviers, Belgium, the one Abaaoud famously evaded.

The Belgian terror cell linked to the Islamic State (Isis) group, which was raided by police overnight, was plotting to either take a passenger bus hostage or behead a member of Belgian authority such as a policeman or a magistrate, according to local media reports.

So, he was going to behead a policeman, or maybe hijack a passenger bus.

After Abaaoud was linked to the Paris outrage, the Verviers activities were retroactively upgraded to “major terrorist attack":

Abaaoud was the main target of a major police raid on a terrorist cell in Verviers, Belgium, in January in which two jihadists were killed. It was carried out within days of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, though police said the two events were not linked. 

In July he was sentenced to 20 years in absentia along with 32 other jihadists. The Belgian cell was said to have been planning a major terrorist attack, including abducting and beheading a prominent law enforcement official and posting a video of it online. 

Police believe Abaaoud helped arrange a terrorist attack on an Amsterdam to Paris train on August 21, which was thwarted by four passengers including British businessman Chris Norman. The French newspaper Liberation claimed he was in contact with Ayoub El-Khazzani, the man who opened fire in a carriage of the train before he was overwhelmed by passengers. 

The Verviers cell apparently hung out with the JAN cell at Vilvoorde, Belgium, an indication perhaps that we are talking about local radicalized Muslims more than the feared and dreaded sleeper cell staffed by professional jihadis of unknown provenance, maybe even…masquerading as refugees!   

For some perspective on whether or not attacks of the November outrage in Paris could be ginned up locally, as opposed to orchestrated out of Raqqa, the January Daily Mail article reminds us of how the Charlie Hedbo attackers acquired their gear:

Police said earlier this week that automatic weapons and a rocket launcher used in the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher supermarket attacks in Paris were purchased from Belgian gangs.

The Scorpion machine gun and the Tokarev handgun used by Amedy Coulibaly during his attack on the kosher supermarket which resulted in the deaths of four Jewish Parisians came from Brussels and Charleroi.

And the Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers used by the Kouachi brothers to attack the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, killing 12, were purchased by Coulibay near the Gare du Midi in Brussels for less than 4000 English pounds.

Yes, apparently you can go down to the train station in Brussels and purchase a rocket launcher.
So, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, radicalized Euro-thug of Moroccan descent, or ISIS’s chosen instrument for the destruction of Western civilization?

The indispensable first stop is the blog of a Belgian researcher, Pieter van Ostaeyen.  He writes about radicalized Belgian Muslims.  Back in January, he had a post that mentioned Abdelhamid Abaaoud:

It seems fair to state that there is a rather strong connection between an important part of the Belgian ISIS fighters and the supposedly Libyan brigade of ISIS.

After the foiled attacks in Verviers in Belgium on January 8, 2015, it became clear that the main suspect Abdelhamid Abaaoud can be linked directly to this group. His little brother Younes (aged 14 and hence probably the youngest foreign fighter in Syria) has been portrayed multiple times in the ranks of Libyan fighters in Syria.

Van Ostaeyen has a lot of interesting pictures from social media about the “supposedly Libyan brigade of ISIS”, which goes by the name “Katibat al-Battar al-Libi.”  The pictures make fighting in Syria look like Spring Break for radicalized Islamic bros, with the advantage that you get to blow things up and kill people, and the disadvantage that people can kill you.

Van Ostaeyen’s most remarkable get is a photograph of a list of martyrs from the brigade including the names of eight fighters surnamed “el-Belgiki”, presumably because they were ex-Belgium.  That’s about 20% of the fatalities listed.

Van Ostaeyen’s also quoted in a post-Paris NYT backgrounder.  It provides an interesting insight on why Abaaoud might fall in with a Libyan outfit:

Abdelhamid Abaaoud is suspected of being a leader of a branch of the Islamic State in Syria called Katibat al-Battar al Libi, which has its origins in Libya. This particular branch has attracted many Belgian fighters because of language and cultural ties, said Pieter van Ostaeyen, who tracks Belgian militants.

Many Belgian Muslims are of Moroccan origin, he said, and speak a dialect found in eastern Morocco that is similar to a Libyan dialect. Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, who studies jihadi groups at the Middle East Forum, a research center in Washington, said there was no evidence yet that the Paris attacks had been ordered by Adnani or the Islamic State’s overall leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

But he added that the soldiers at Libyan branch that includes Abaaoud has played a prominent role in exporting violence. One of their tasks he said, has been to organize plots that “involved foreign fighters, sleeper cells in Europe that were connected with an operative inside of Syria and Iraq, usually in a lower to midlevel position.”

At the end of his January blogpost, van Ostaeyen links to a piece by Aymenn al-Tamimi (who's also quoted in the Times piece above) on Joshua Landis’ website.  You go there and you find a brief 2014 piece about Katibat al-Battar al-Libi.  Not much there:

This group, which has existed at least since the summer of last year, is the Libyan division of the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS), despite false rumours that the battalion had defected to Jabhat al-Nusra. Libya itself has been a big source of muhajireen in both Iraq and Syria over the past decade, so the fact that there is a battalion devoted to recruiting Libyan fighters should come as no surprise. The existence of Katiba al-Bittar al-Libi as a front group for ISIS perhaps reflects a wider pro-ISIS trend across central North Africa with the Ansar ash-Shari’a movements in Tunisia and Libya.

Wandering off into English-language Google, you don’t get a lot of hits.  But you get this from some murky Israeli intel outfit called “The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center” (points are abridged; go to link for full text):

Within the Arab foreign fighters there is a hard core of Salafist-jihadi, Al-Qaeda and global jihad operatives, some of them veterans of the fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other Islamic combat zones

10. Estimates for the number of Libyan fighters in Syria vary between hundreds and almost a thousand .

11. Some of the fighters who joined the ranks of the rebels in Syria are Libyan nationals and some are foreign operatives who fought in Libya and transferred their activities to Syria after the fall of the Gaddafi regime..

12. Some of the Libyan fighters went to Syria and use their combat experience to train and organize the rebels . They gave them logistic support, teach them how to operate heavy weapons and manage communications. According to reports, the Libyan fighters operated training bases and taught the rebels military tactics (Trust.org, August 12, 2012). They also provided humanitarian support and were involved in transporting weapons into Syria throughout 2013.

13. The fighters come from both eastern Libya (Benghazi) and western Libya (Tripoli). A significant number come from the city of Derna, located east of Benghazi, which Muammar Gaddafi called "an Islamic emirate" because it was a center for Islamic terrorism during his regime.

14. The Libyans arrive in Syria in much the same way as the other fighters, usually by air to Turkey (Libyans do not need visas for Turkey). From Istanbul they fly to Antakya in southern Turkey and from there they go overland to towns and villages near the Turkish-Syrian border. They usually receive support from Islamic networks and sometimes the trip to Syria is paid for by them (Der Spiegel, April 30, 2012).

15. In December 2012 a battalion was formed of Libyan foreign fighter which exists to this day. It is called the Katibat al-Battar (The Battalion of the Slicing Sword). It is affiliated with the ISIS and fights mainly in the regions of Latakia, Deir ez-Zor and Idlib. 

Aaron Zelin has some info in an April 2015 on Libya over at the Hudson Institute.  A footnote about IS fighters in Libya states:

These are under the command of what once was called MSSI and is comprised of those Libyans returned from Syria under the banner of Katibat al-Battar.

Interesting, right?  A military formation that pre-existed its deployment in Syria.  And guess what?  It even preceded ISIS.

Carnegie Endowment for Peace, in a March 2015 report:

Libyans had already begun traveling to fight in Syria in 2011, joining existing jihadi factions or starting their own. In 2012, one group of Libyans in Syria declared the establishment of the Battar Brigade in a statement laden with anti-Shia sectarianism. The Battar Brigade founders also thanked “the citizens of Derna,” a city in northeastern Libya long known as a hotbed of radical Islamism, for their support for the struggle in Syria.

Later, the Battar Brigade fighters in Syria would pledge loyalty to the Islamic State, and fight for it in both Syria and Iraq, including against its al-Qaeda rivals. In April 2014, the Battar Brigade announced the “martyrdom” of 25 of its fighters in a Nusra Front suicide attack on an Islamic State location.

In the spring of 2014, many Battar Brigade fighters returned to Libya. In Derna, they reorganized themselves as the Islamic Youth Shura Council (IYSC). In September, an Islamic State delegation, including the Yemeni Abu al-Bara al-Azdi and the Saudi Abu Habib al-Jazrawi, arrived in Libya. After being received by the IYSC, they collected pledges of allegiance to the Islamic State’s self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, from IYSC-aligned fighters in Derna. They then declared eastern Libya to be a province of the Islamic State, calling it Wilayat Barqa, or the Cyrenaica Province.

Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, in other words, was formed as a rather bloody piece of outreach by the local Islamists to share Libya experience in insurrection and revolution with Syria.  After IS arose and became a dominant military and financial force, the "KBL" threw in their lot with ISIS, and members of the brigade subsequently returned to Libya to establish an IS beachhead.

A July 2015 study by Small Arms Survey which I cannot recommend highly enough makes the point that foreign fighters, in addition to accumulating general jihadi merit, were also interested in acquiring skills they could apply in their own struggles.  Moroccans--not just Europeans of Moroccan descent, like Abaaoud, but also, for lack of a better word, Moroccan Moroccans--are a big presence in the jihadi movement.  So, in passing, I would recommend thinking twice about the advantages of a Moroccan vacation timeshare. 

The SAR report also confirms the autonomous character of Katibat al-Battar al-Libi.

While the uncertain relationship between JAN and IS was being clarified, Libyans stayed ‘outside’ the fray, remaining in their own units and not integrating into other IS hierarchies or command structures. In Latakia for instance, Libyans kept their own separate battalion (The Daily Star, 2013). As the split between JAN and IS deepened, Libyans chose IS but remained apart, forming the Katibat al-Battar al-Libiya (KBL) (The Libyan al-Battar Brigade), under the auspices of IS. Since its formation, the KBL has been active in eastern Syria, notably in Al Hasakah and Deir az-Zor. The battalion maintained links with Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, an early and prominent supporter of IS. Ansar al-Sharia proved to be an excellent recruiting tool and played a role in the arrival of many Libyans in Syria prior to 2014.

And who is Ansar al-Sharia in Libya?  Via The Telegraph:

Washington believes the group is responsible for the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans. 

In November, the United Nations blacklisted Ansar al-Sharia Benghazi and its sister group, Ansar al-Sharia Derna, over links to Al-Qaeda and for running camps for the Islamist State group. 

So there you have it.  The Paris outrage made in Libya.  Not Syria.  Brought to us by the people who killed Christopher Stevens in Benghazi.

I am sure that Hillary Clinton is grateful to the French police for botching the raid to capture Abaaoud and pumping 5000 rounds into his apartment instead of capturing him; otherwise, he might have become a lively topic of interest and curiosity and the right wing could have cooked off the Benghazi! munitions through election day.

To sum up: the alleged and now reportedly deceased architect of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, did not fight “for IS”.  He fought "with" Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, an outfit whose presence in Syria predates that of ISIS.  Even after Katibat al-Battar al-Libi decided to pledge allegiance to ISIS, it retained its independent identity.  It is possible that Abaaoud was acting under orders from al-Baghdadi to commit the Paris outrage.  But he might have been an angry guy with the skills, resources, and inclination to commit mass murder on his own kick.  And the police were already after him big time after the Verviers raid in January (we are now told that Abaaoud was “on” or a “candidate for” a spot on the drone assassination assignment list, but I wonder if this is post-hoc ass-covering).  So maybe he and his friends decided to pull the pin, and go out in a big way.   

I doubt we'll ever get the full story.  But "Paris: Made in Libya" is an honest hook.

It’s “Third Force” Time in Syria

[Subsequent to e-mailing this piece to China Matters subscribers, I went back and added a paragraph about the "28 pages" and the legal jeopardy they might pose to Saudi Arabia in US courts, and some thoughts about the "anti-IS campaign" as a harbinger of a new US approach to pursuing limited goals in the region. CH, 9/16/2014]

Ever since President Obama gave his crISis ™ speech, I’ve pushed back against what I considered to be simplistic predictions of the effort’s doom, along the lines of “air power cannot occupy” and “arming anti-Assad ostensibly moderate Syrian rebels is always an exercise in futility”. 

 

On September 12, I wrote:

The depressing part of the US strategy is that, as far as I can tell, it views the anti-IS campaign as a Trojan Horse, a chance to favor, strengthen, and advance anti-Assad forces.  So instead of cooperating with literally the only Middle Eastern state willing to field an army against IS—Syria—the US is refusing to work with Syria and instead will train and equip an anti-Assad and anti-IS force, reportedly in Saudi Arabia, that is less of a US-backed militia of venal “insurgents” and more of a controlled and disciplined military strike force created, controlled, and deployed by the CIA and, unlike our most famous previous experiment in this vein, the Bay of Pigs invasion, this force will have lots and lots of airpower. 

The idea, presumably, is that as IS is pummeled by drones and air strikes (and its fleet of tanker trucks ferrying crude oil to Turkey is destroyed) and retreats, the US-backed force will advance and occupy the vacated territories before Assad can.  And hopefully, the force will attract the fairweather allies of IS who prefer a US paycheck and immunity from air strikes to getting plastered.  And then the US can orchestrate demands from a finally viable Syrian opposition for Assad to step down in the name of national unity, full US support, and an all-out war against IS.  Victory!

My admittedly imperfect knowledge of US government decision making implies to me that somebody had to bring President Obama a proposal like this for an American win in Syria—or at least a borderline plausible case for a chance for an American win in Syria--before he made the politically unpalatable decision to re-enter the Middle East quagmire.   

A clear harbinger of this approach was the statement by the Free Syrian Army that it would not join the anti-IS coalition.  You got that right.  Not join.  Even the FSA is totally getting its ass handed to it by IS and could certainly use some US help.

The group’s founder, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, stressed that toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is their priority, and that they will not join forces with US-led efforts without a guarantee that the US is committed to his overthrow.

Most likely, Colonel al-Asaad was justifiably suspicious of the new US initiative since it was clear that the CIA was already dealing and negotiating directly with his most viable and capable commanders to poach them from the FSA.

Patrick Cockburn had the story on September 9, with some help from McClatchy:

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), once lauded in Western capitals as the likely military victors over Mr Assad, largely collapsed at the end of 2013. The FSA military leader, General Abdul-Ilah al Bashir, who defected from the Syrian government side in 2012, said in an interview with the McClatchy news agency last week that the CIA had taken over direction of this new moderate force. He said that “the leadership of the FSA is American”, adding that since last December US supplies of equipment have bypassed the FSA leadership in Turkey and been sent directly to up to 14 commanders in northern Syria and 60 smaller groups in the south of the country. Gen Bashir said that all these FSA groups reported directly to the CIA.

Well, excuse me for a brief victory jig.  The fat lady has bawled her lungs out on this tune, fer sure.

From the Guardian on Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Dempsey’s testimony before Congress:

In Syria, the US is seeking to train “vetted” Syrian rebels to capture Syrian territory from Isis. Hagel and Dempsey acknowledged that an initial cohort of 5,000 Syrian opposition forces would not be ready until eight months at the earliest.

…

“Five thousand is not going to be able to turn the tide, we recognize that,” Hagel said. Neither he nor Dempsey ruled out requesting additional authorities and funding for building a Syrian proxy army in the future.

As for Assad, I think it’s pretty clear that if the strategy is “Isil-first”, it’s “Assad-second”:

[Dempsey] and Hagel demurred when asked by Senator John McCain…if the US’s new allies would receive American air cover if attacked by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. 

“We’re not there yet, but our focus is on Isil,” another name for Isis, Hagel said. 

Dempsey – whose resignation McCain has called for, owing to the general’s reluctance to use the US military against Assad –conceded that “if we were to take [fighting] Assad off the table, we’d have a much more difficult time” persuading Syrians to join the coalition, but said the administration nevertheless has an “Isil-first strategy”.

The Guardian, as I did, had a certain amount of difficulty coming up with the suitable nomenclature for this force.  I don’t think “proxy army” cuts it, because I expect this army, though composed of Syrians and not a US military unit, will be under the day to day command of the CIA and it will not be allowed to slip the leash and pursue its own political, strategic, and tactical agendas as happened with the feckless Free Syrian Army.

“Third Force” is perhaps the mot juste here.

I don’t necessarily think this strategy will work, and certainly has less chance of working than enabling an alliance with the three actors actually putting the famous “boots on the ground” and committing effective forces to battle IS in major engagements: the Syrian and Iranian governments and the Syrian Kurds.  We’re basically hoping that money, airstrikes, CIA direction, and fairy dust will push back IS enough for the US to turn its baleful attention to the Assad regime and demand regime change—cloaked in calls for a “government of national unity” as in Iraq—as the price for additional US anti-IS effort.

The U.S. has tried its luck with “Third Force” strategies before, but US backing, while ensuring short-term success, has often turned out to be the kiss of death for the local force’s legitimacy and ultimate viability.  Assad, ISIS, Iran, and Russia are all busily preparing counter-measures to make sure that the slowly-evolving US strategy doesn’t bury them.

But I think it’s an important reminder of how President Obama and government bureaucracies, indeed all bureaucracies, work.

Failed policies like the blunder of outsourcing the overthrow of Assad to jihadi-dominated rebels aren’t simply repackaged.  Not just because President Obama is a cerebral, failure-averse guy.  Also because there is a whole support network of government, military, and think tank planners whose job is to come up with a plausible plan that has some chance of success—even if the only reason it has a chance is because its infeasibility has not already been clearly demonstrated by prior failure.

It might also mean that the United States has decided to wean itself of its reliance on proxies and release of uncontrollable regional forces to remake the Middle East when the Powell Doctrine of massive, decisive US power could not be brought to bear, and use a limited force largely under its control to pursue, and maybe even achieve, limited goals. That will have certain implications for countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, which have relied on their willingness to do--or fund--America's ambitious dirty work in order to inflate their own regional stature.

So criticize President Obama’s plan all you want.  But if the critique is “this has failed before”, nobody will listen.  Because the whole point of this iteration is, if the United States does fail, it will fail in new and novel ways.  And the fact that the grinding process is scheduled for at least three years—and failure, if it does occur, will be delivered in a bloody package on the doorstep of presumptive next President Hillary Clinton—has perhaps not escaped President Obama.

As a P.S., since the China Matters crystal ball appears to be in reasonably good working order, I am beginning to think that the alliance between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may have reached its sell-by date.  A key indicator will be whether President Obama follows through on Candidate Obama's promise to release the 28 pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission Report.

The general outline of the redacted material is quite well-known and addresses the culpability of individuals and apparently officialdom in the KSA in the 9/11 attacks.  Since this material was considered to be embarrassing to the Bush administration, because of its close ties to Saudi Arabia and its willingness to let key Saudi figures escape the US via an emergency airlift to avoid FBI questioning, the unwillingness of the current administration to proceed with the release and, for one thing, stick it to Dick Cheney and his cynical and irresponsible criticisms of the Obama anti-terror policies, has been considered something of a mystery.

However, I suspect the key to the mystery is that Saudi Arabia formed a protective alliance with Israel, whose ability to get things done in Washington vastly exceeds that of "the Kingdom".  As I see it, the cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia is founded on a joint desire to keep Iran safely in pariah status, and away from a normal relationship with the United States, one that would push Israel and Saudi Arabia toward the periphery of US Middle East policies.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, determinedly stokes the crisis in Syria, since Iran's need to support Assad puts it at odds with the United States.  Israel beats the drum concerning Iran's nuclear threat and, I suspect, makes the case to the Obama administration that attention to the Wahabbist and anti-American excesses of the Saudi government--like the redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission report--would destabilize Saudi Arabia and give aid and comfort to Iran.

When one considers that throwing the 28 pages into the US anti-terrorist, criminal, and civil law mix might expose the Saudi government--and extremely wealthy and powerful members of the nation's elite--to imprisonment and literally hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties, it seems plausible that the Saudi government would want to keep a lid on the redactions despite Prince Bandar's public protestations to the contrary--and perceive further incentive for shaping its regional diplomatic and military strategy around an otherwise reckless anti-Iran/pro-Israel play.

Now, however, IS has slipped the leash in another bloody embarrassment for Saudi Arabia's brutal and inept campaign of regional subversion; the US fracking boom has convinced the United States that its energy security is no longer hostage to KSA and ostentatious groveling to an odious regime that beheads people for "sorcery" is no longer a US imperative; President Obama would like to see rapprochement with Iran as his legacy; and it is possible that Obama is also repelled by the base opportunism he was compelled to exhibit in the matter of the Israeli push into Gaza.  And of course, Barry and Bibi detest each other.

Maybe President Obama decides it's in America's interest to keep that Sword of Damocles hanging over Saudi Arabia, continuing to use the threat of releasing those pages to wring value from the Saudis.

But maybe, if President Obama thinks he can thread the needle, conclude the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and maybe even convince Iran to throw Assad under the bus at the cost of the deal!, he might decide it's time to pull the plug on a colossally toxic relationship with Saudi Arabia--a deadly folly punctuated by the 9/11 attacks and has encompassing 15 years, over two trillion dollars, and millions of shattered lives--and let those 28 pages find their way into the world.