I hope your knowledge of jihad exceeds your knowledge of health care deliveery. Blue skies! — Dan Ford

In particular, in our effort to boggle ourselves senseless over the incompetence of Nigerian suicide bombers with PETN in their undies we might be missing the more salient danger suggested by Salafi groups previously fairly independent are talking to each other more and sharing operational aid.

Here’s something I posted elsewhere. It’s not particularly original, but rather sort of the consensus of a group of us — IDF and US and British officers, some ambassadors retired and at work, an Africanist or two and even a curiously competent expert I met the other day who studies, of all places, Yemen:

The type of device isn’t exactly new because a suspected al-Shabaab jahosh with the same sort of diaper bomb had been caught earlier. And the rectal bomb used to lightly scuff the mitts of Prince Muhammed in KSA was configured of PETN, too, only that time inserted, uhhhh, a bit north of the diaper.

The reaction is easy to understand because we know that AQAP will get more publicity even with a failed attack in the US (I’m calling it Propaganda without a Deed) than they would with a successful attack against a US target overseas, such as outside our embassy.

Some thoughts I’ve been considering:

1. What the failed attack might show is greater sharing of information, recruitment and weaponry than we previously saw between the various franchises. If it’s true what Yemen says, that Mutallab got the PETN in Lagos, not Yemen, then we’re probably looking at AQIM or a splinter from Boko Haram or a sleeper cell in Nigeria, which isn’t exactly a country or culture conducive to that sort of suicide bombing. Did AQ in NW Pakistan greenlight the operation? As you know, formal and far-enemy AQ has long cultural and familial ties to Yemen, so their links to AQAP are expected. But AQIM?

2. It seems obvious now that Yemen is right and that Mutallab was radicalized while in Togo but recruited in London by agents of AQAP, following an interest he expressed online. This shows far greater reach in the UK than everyone previously assumed.

3. We need to learn more about how Mutallab might resonate within the disaffected populations of Northern Nigeria. Will he be a hero? Or did his suicide bombing violate social norms that disgust the normally tolerant Sunnis? He likely will get out in about 20 years, too, making him young enough to still matter there. How will they receive him?

4. How much did Mutallab’s mother, the second wife of a polygamous father, play in his decision to go to Yemen to learn Arabic? SHe’s of Yemeni descent.

5. Far-enemy AQ in Pakistan long has been pretty racist. Did obtaining the Nigerian change their views of sub-Saharan Africa? Does this suggest something about the ongoing dance they’re doing with al-Shabaab?

6. It’s the unsexy stuff of bureaucracies, but if AQIM is tied to this, are we doing enough to aid the 10 allied nations in OEF-TQ? We give them about $80 million or so annually, and that goes a long way in N Africa, but should we not start looking harder about how we can do more to understand the nature of the threats and better reconcile ourselves to the vast lands of Islam — military aid when necessary, but also a need to better understand these many different complex cultures, empathetically listen to what they’re telling us, and seek to address the causative forces that create the rage in the first place.

Just my two rials.

SNLII

Not to nitpick on a throw-away line in a blog post, but as an American physician – and as one who has worked with physicians that have practiced in multiple Western countries (UK-Australia-US seems to be a common axis, but Germany-US is not so uncommon) – I have to speak up. Most? I can accept some – that likely seems correct – but most? Beware the heated rhetoric of both right and left on US healthcare and the way it filters abroad. Both sides (and, as a conservative person who is somewhat active in politics, I shamefacedly admit I do this too) overstate the issues routinely.

Sorry for the OT, and to the main points of the post: very nice.

great piece indeed.

Patrick

I presume you are aware that this is extremely distorted use of the terms talib/taliban there.

Back in the 1980s you often had people fighting, say, in service of a khan who was just looking to protect his own land, just as this can be the case even nowadays, say, around poppy fields. The taliban, however, were the madrasa students who were anything but petty. It is from their ranks that the big T Taliban emerged eventually. So saying that small t taliban are the opportunists is really hijacking the meaning of the word to such a degree where it could become fundamental grievance itself, impeding the very global/local disaggregation that seems to the thing to aim for.

To reference the point above, here is a book that can offer insight for anyone interested: http://tiny.cc/QqPP2

Al-Balawi was competent though, wasn’t he? What does that video tell us, if anything much, about the relationship between the global and the local jihad in that part of the world?