Mark Mazzetti, New York Times – 2006-09-25 00:24:35
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/24/MNGNSLBRUI1.DTL
Iraq War Fuels Radicalism
Mark Mazzetti/ New York Times
WASHINGTON (September 24, 2006) — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by US intelligence agencies has found that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington who were involved in preparing the assessment or have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by US intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and it represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of radical Islamic ideology.
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one US intelligence official.
More than a dozen US government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document.
The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified. Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would strike on US soil again.
Ongoing Debate
The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and they are approved by John Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.
The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report said the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.
White House Assessment
Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of al Qaeda.
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”
That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global radical Islamic movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.
The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing radical Islamic movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”
The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.
The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of al Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.
It also examines how the Internet has helped spread radical Islamist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.
In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global radical Islamic leadership.
But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.
In recent months, some senior US intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.
“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” Gen. Michael Hayden said during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed.
“If this trend continues, threats to the US at home and abroad will become more diverse, and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the
The CIA.
For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and US spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than has been justified by intelligence reports from the field.
Other experts agree.
The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by US allies and independent terrorism experts.
The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”
More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D-plus” to US efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”
