I found the title of these news items regarding “22 AQ-tips” for avoiding drones amusing. The easiest way to avoid a drone strike? Quit al-Qaeda or associating with them.
Amidst the captured Mali AQ documents, the AP reports on the following advice written in June of 2011 by QAP senior commander Abdullah bin Mohammed:
the American retaliation against the Mujahideen military movements in Ibyan province will be restricted to the war of the drone. My expectations have been assured after the recent New York Times leakage that the CIA will handle the situation, and for this, it set up a secret military base for the drones in a neighboring country.* It is important now that we understand this American army strategy and discuss ways to disable this strategy.
To start with, we have to know that the Americans did not resort to this approach _ The War of the Drone _ because they have shortages in the combat jets like the F16 and other types or they don’t possess enough troops, but because it is the most suitable approach for them now. The Americans fully realize that they are in the 10th year of war and that they were economically exhausted and suffered human losses and they were confronted with public pressure backed by the Congress in a way that it made the honorable and responsible withdrawal from the war as a prime goal of the White House. But this does not mean that abandoning the war, rather, they pushed them to seek alternative military strategies that enable them to continue the war without being economically depleted or suffer human losses and avoid the American public opinion pressure. Here the war of the drone appeared as a perfect solution. The drone is unmanned and cost nothing compared to the manned jets and it does not create public exasperation when it crashes because the increase of human losses in the past pushed the American people to go to the streets shouting “bring back our sons” and if a drone crashes, no one will shout “bring back our planes.”
The tip sheet goes on to say:
The drone-dodger’s how-to shows that, at the time of its writing, Al Qaeda thought it understood the reason behind the United States’ increasing reliance on drone strikes: Americans’ preference for a “comfortable war.” Having that in mind, the document proposes a tactic designed to force the United States to change tack. In particular, Bin Mohammed proposes kidnapping westerners, and, in exchange for their release, demanding that the United States cease its attacks on Yemeni “civilians.” This approach, bin Mohammed argues, would galvanize global opposition and beat back American support for the drone program. And of course, the next logical step—in the view of the tip sheet’s author—is the United States’ outright collapse.
The Telegraph:
While some of the tips are outdated or far-fetched, taken together, they suggest the Islamists in Mali are responding to the threat of drones with sound, common-sense advice that may help them to melt into the desert in between attacks, leaving barely a trace.
“These are not dumb techniques. It shows that they are acting pretty astutely,” said Col Cedric Leighton, a 26-year-veteran of the United States Air Force, who helped set up the Predator drone program, which later tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
“What it does is, it buys them a little bit more time – and in this conflict, time is key. And they will use it to move away from an area, from a bombing raid, and do it very quickly,” he said.
~~~Unarmed drones are already being used by the French in Mali to collect intelligence on al-Qaeda groups, and US officials have said plans are underway to establish a new drone base in northwestern Africa.
The US recently signed a “status of forces agreement” with Niger, one of the nations bordering Mali, suggesting the drone base may be situated there and would be primarily used to gather intelligence to help the French.
The author of the tipsheet found in Timbuktu is Abdallah bin Muhammad, the nom de guerre for a senior commander of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based branch of the terror network.
The document was first published in Arabic on an extremist website on June 2, 2011, a month after bin Laden’s death, according to Mathieu Guidere, a professor at the University of Toulouse.
Prof Guidere runs a database of statements by extremist groups, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and he reviewed and authenticated the document found by the AP.
The tipsheet is still little known, if at all, in English, though it has been republished at least three times in Arabic on other jihadist forums after drone strikes took out US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in September 2011 and al-Qaeda second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi in Pakistan in June 2012.
It was most recently issued two weeks ago on another extremist website after plans for the possible US drone base in Niger began surfacing, Prof Guidere said.
“This document supports the fact that they knew there are secret US bases for drones, and were preparing themselves,” he said. “They were thinking about this issue for a long time.”
The idea of hiding under trees to avoid drones, which is tip No 10, appears to be coming from the highest levels of the terror network. In a letter written by bin Laden and first published by the US Center for Combating Terrorism, the terror mastermind instructs his followers to deliver a message to Abdelmalek Droukdel, the head of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, whose fighters have been active in Mali for at least a decade.
“I want the brothers in the Islamic Maghreb to know that planting trees helps the mujahedeen and gives them cover,” bin Laden writes in the missive. “Trees will give the mujahedeen the freedom to move around especially if the enemy sends spying aircrafts to the area.”
Hiding under trees is exactly what the al-Qaeda fighters did in Mali, according to residents in Diabaly, the last town they took before the French stemmed their advance last month. Just after French warplanes incinerated rebel cars that had been left outside, the fighters began to commandeer houses with large mango trees and park their four-by-fours in the shade of their rubbery leaves.
Hamidou Sissouma, a schoolteacher, said the Islamists chose his house because of its generous trees, and rammed their trucks through his earthen wall to drive right into his courtyard. Another resident showed the gash the occupiers had made in his mango tree by parking their pickup too close to the trunk.
In Timbuktu also, fighters hid their cars under trees, and disembarked from them in a hurry when they were being chased, in accordance with tip No 13.
Moustapha al-Housseini, an appliance repairman, was outside his shop fixing a client’s broken radio on the day the aerial bombardments began. He said he heard the sound of the planes and saw the Islamists at almost the same moment. Abou Zeid, the senior al-Qaeda emir in the region, rushed to jam his car under a pair of tamarind trees outside the store.
“He and his men got out of the car and dove under the awning,” said Mr al-Housseini. “As for what I did? Me and my employees? We also ran. As fast as we could.”
Along with the grass mats, the al-Qaeda men in Mali made creative use of another natural resource to hide their cars: Mud.
Asse Ag Imahalit, a gardener at a building in Timbuktu, said he was at first puzzled to see that the fighters sleeping inside the compound sent for large bags of sugar every day. Then, he said, he observed them mixing the sugar with dirt, adding water and using the sticky mixture to “paint” their cars. Residents said the cars of the al-Qaeda fighters are permanently covered in mud.
The drone tipsheet, discovered in the regional tax department occupied by Abou Zeid, shows how familiar al-Qaeda has become with drone attacks, which have allowed the US to take out senior leaders in the terrorist group without a messy ground battle. The preface and epilogue of the tipsheet make it clear that al-Qaeda well realizes the advantages of drones: They are relatively cheap in terms of money and lives, alleviating “the pressure of American public opinion.”
Ironically, the first drone attack on an al-Qaeda figure in 2002 took out the head of the branch in Yemen – the same branch that authoured the document found in Mali, according to Riedel. Drones began to be used in Iraq in 2006 and in Pakistan in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2009 that they became a hallmark of the war on terror, he said.
“Since we do not want to put boots on the ground in places like Mali, they are certain to be the way of the future,” he said. “They are already the future.”
After laying out the 22 tips for avoidance of being the target of a drone strike, Abdullah bin Mohammed concludes with the following request:
In case there are any other tactics or deterring means, please add them here so that the benefit will be wider and I pray to God to save us from the American intrigues and turn these intrigues against them.
FA readers have any more suggestions to add to the list for AQ?
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.