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i 

86–967 2014

[H.A.S.C. No. 113–77] 

THE STATE OF AL QAEDA, ITS 

AFFILIATES, AND ASSOCIATED GROUPS: 

VIEW FROM OUTSIDE EXPERTS 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

FEBRUARY 4, 2014 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California, Chairman 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada 

JON RUNYAN, New Jersey 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia 

COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

RON BARBER, Arizona 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire 

DANIEL B. MAFFEI, New York 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

SCOTT H. PETERS, California 

WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois 

PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

ROBERT L. SIMMONS II, Staff Director 

ALEX GALLO, Professional Staff Member 

MIKE CASEY, Professional Staff Member 

AARON FALK, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2014 

Page 

HEARING: 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014, The State of Al Qaeda, Its Affiliates, and Associated Groups: View from Outside Experts .......................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 ..................................................................................... 39 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2014 

THE STATE OF AL QAEDA, ITS AFFILIATES, AND ASSOCIATED 

GROUPS: VIEW FROM OUTSIDE EXPERTS 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck,’’ a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services .................................................................. 1 

Sanchez, Hon. Loretta, a Representative from California, Committee on 

Armed Services ..................................................................................................... 2 

WITNESSES 

Braniff, William, Executive Director, National Consortium for the Study of 

Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland .................... 5 

Gartenstein-Ross, Daveed, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University .................................................................................................... 7 

Jones, Seth G., Associate Director, International Security and Defense Policy 

Center, RAND Corporation ................................................................................. 3 

Swift, Christopher, Adjunct Professor of National Security Studies, Georgetown University .................................................................................................... 9 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Braniff, William ................................................................................................ 65 

Gartenstein-Ross, Daveed ................................................................................ 85 

Jones, Seth G. ................................................................................................... 47 

McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ .................................................................... 43 

Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking Member, 

Committee on Armed Services ..................................................................... 45 

Swift, Christopher ............................................................................................ 105 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

Map titled ‘‘State of Al Qaeda and Associated Movements—AQAM areas 

of operation and safe havens, March 2013’’ ................................................ 115 
Page

IV 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Turner ........................................................................................................ 119 
(1) 

THE STATE OF AL QAEDA, ITS AFFILIATES, AND 

ASSOCIATED GROUPS: VIEW FROM OUTSIDE EXPERTS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Tuesday, February 4, 2014. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ 

McKeon (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, 

A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Good morning, 

ladies and gentlemen. The committee meets to receive testimony on 

the state of Al Qaeda from outside experts. Our witnesses include 

Dr. Seth Jones, Mr. William Braniff, Mr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, 

and Dr. Christopher Swift. Gentlemen, thank you all for joining us 

here today. 

The committee has conducted several classified briefings on this 

topic. However, today is an opportunity to build on that knowledge 

in an open forum with these thoughtful and highly respected experts. Al Qaeda declared war on the United States and then successfully attacked us multiple times in 1998 and 2000, culminating 

with the horrific attack on 9/11. Since then Al Qaeda, its affiliates, 

and associated groups have maintained their global presence, increased their safe havens, and expanded their influence. They continue to plot attacks against our homeland and our allies and partners around the globe. In an op-ed just a few weeks ago Peter Bergen asserted that, and I quote, ‘‘From Aleppo in western Syria to 

Fallujah in central Iraq, Al Qaeda now controls territory that 

stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East. 

Indeed, Al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab 

world than it has done at any time in history.’’ 

Similarly, as several of your written statements conclude, Al 

Qaeda appears to be a growing threat. These trends are disturbing 

and lie in stark contrast to the President’s wishful narrative that 

Al Qaeda is on a path to defeat. I applauded the President’s decision to take out Osama bin Laden. However, this tactical success 

did not end what former CENTCOM [Central Command] Commander General John Abizaid called the long war against Al 

Qaeda. Nonetheless, President Obama has promised to revise and 

ultimately repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, 

which is the very authority that underpins our operations against 

these groups. What the President seems to ignore is that the 

enemy gets a vote. While the President seeks an end to war on ter-
2 

rorism and is not providing the leadership necessary for our efforts 

in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda seeks a continued war against the United 

States and the West. This is the reality, and this is what our policy 

and strategy must address. To do otherwise puts the United States 

and our interests across the globe at dire risk. 

We look forward to your thoughts on how this committee can 

best shape our Nation’s policies, strategies, and capabilities to address the long war that Al Qaeda continues to fight. Mr. Smith is 

delayed today with his plane, as you know that we have some 

weather problems somewhere, and Ms. Sanchez is the ranking 

member right now. Ms. Sanchez. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the Appendix on page 43.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. LORETTA SANCHEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CALIFORNIA, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing because I think it is an incredibly important topic, one that we 

are going to be returning to, I think, quite often in the next year 

or so. 

First of all, I would like to thank the gentlemen before us on the 

panel for appearing before us, and I think this whole issue that you 

brought up about the Authorization for the Use of Military Force 

[AUMF] and what we do with it, what it really covers, et cetera, 

is going to be a very important topic for our committee. 

You know, everybody believes that the military force that we 

agreed to right after the attacks of September 11th really have to 

do with the forces within Afghanistan and our work there, and the 

reality is that we are still seeing Al Qaeda out there after 12 years 

from those attacks. 

So although Al Qaeda no longer has the freedom to train thousands of people in Afghanistan and even though Osama bin Laden 

has been killed, and even though we believe that a lot of the leadership of Al Qaeda have been captured or killed, Al Qaeda has obviously morphed into other groups and has relationships with other 

cells and other groups in other places, so we can’t lose the sight 

of that. I think we need to be vigilant in our efforts to ensure that 

that group which really means to hurt the United States and its 

citizens, we need to make sure that we are vigilant about how we 

eliminate that threat to our people. 

And so I am going to be very interested to see what we come up 

with as we move forward because, you know, I want to read a little 

bit about the text of the AUMF here. It authorized a war against 

those who, and I quote, ‘‘planned, authorized, committed or aided 

the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons,’’ and that may not cover the future organizations that mean to threaten us. So I think it is an appropriate time 

for us to start thinking about what this means. 

I am not asking our panel today, obviously, to propose an alternative legislation. I think it is far too early for that, but I hope that 

they can help us to understand what is the threat out there now, 

what does it look like, what do we need to be concerned about, how 

do we determine whether certain persons or organizations, in fact, 

are in combat. How do we combat them? What do we look at? Is 
3 

it their devotion to an ideology? Is it their belligerent actions or 

what other factors should we consider as we take a look at this? 

How many of these groups have global foci that incite direct attacks on the United States? I think we need to be concerned about 

all these things. And when should we be using the U.S. military? 

Should we be directly involved? Should we have a situation like we 

see in Somalia where we have different capacities working on there 

to sort of tamper things down? Do we look at what we are doing 

in Iraq, where we have the Iraqi Army and others, and we are giving just some help there? What is the appropriate way for us to use 

our military and our other resources to ensure that Al Qaeda 

doesn’t spring up, doesn’t have these camps, isn’t training people, 

and isn’t perpetrating attacks against the American people? 

So I think it is an important topic. I thank you for bringing it 

up again, Mr. Chairman, and I am going to submit our side’s full 

statement for the record. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the Appendix on page 45.] 

The CHAIRMAN. You bring up a very interesting point. Just a couple of years ago, the DOD [Department of Defense] counsel came 

to me and said he needed to have it enlarged because he has to 

approve all of the special forces attacks, and he says he was having 

to be pretty creative because from the time we originally passed 

the authority, there had been a lot happen, a lot of evolvement. In 

fact, some of our main problem was Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and they weren’t even in existence at the time of 9/11. 

So this is an evolving issue, and I think whether we get tied up 

on whether we—whatever the name of the terrorist group is, most 

of them have the same, the same—I mean, just the name terror, 

that is what they, how they function, and we need to be ever vigilant worldwide, protecting our interests. I mean, when they attack 

an embassy, such as happened in Benghazi, that is American soil, 

whether it is within the continental borders of the United States 

or one of these embassies or consulates around the world, that is 

American territory. So we really look forward to your expertise and 

guidance today because this is something that we are definitely 

going to have to look at. 

Dr. Jones. 

STATEMENT OF SETH G. JONES, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY CENTER, 

RAND CORPORATION 

Dr. JONES. Thank you, Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member 

Sanchez, and members of the committee, thanks for inviting us to 

testify at this hearing on the state of Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and 

associated groups. 

I am going to divide my remarks into three components. I am 

going to first talk about the organization and at least the way I see 

the broader movement organized, then I am going to talk about key 

trends in the data, and then third is implications for the United 

States. 

I think there has been a tendency among some journalists and 

pundits to lump all Sunni Islamic groups under the title Al Qaeda, 

which I think has clouded a proper assessment of the movement, 
4 

and this gets to issues that we will talk about later, including on 

AUMF. I am going to refer and focus my remarks on a slightly 

broader set of groups that I am going to call Salafi jihadists that 

fit several criteria. These are groups that emphasize the importance of returning to a pure Islam, and then they also believe that 

violent jihad is a religious duty, their goal here is to establish an 

extreme Islamic emirate. 

Today this broader movement, which does include Al Qaeda, is 

decentralized, in my view, among four tiers. First is the core in 

Pakistan, led by Zawahiri. I was out in that region a couple of 

months ago along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border looking at the 

status of those individuals. Second is about a half dozen formal affiliates that have sworn allegiance to the core, located in Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and North Africa. It looks like we have lost the most 

recent one, or lost one recently in Iraq. 

Third, a panoply of Salafi jihadist groups that have not sworn allegiance, formally they have not sworn ‘‘bay’at,’’ or loyalty, to senior 

Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, but they are committed to establishing an Islamic emirate, and several of them have plotted attacks against the U.S., against U.S. embassies, against U.S. diplomats, against U.S. targets overseas. 

And then finally the inspired individuals and networks including 

the Boston bombers that, while they had no direct connections, 

were involved in listening to Al Qaeda propaganda and using the 

propaganda to build the bombs, including from Inspire magazine. 

I think several trends are concerning as I look across these 

groups. First, according to data I have collected, there has been an 

increase in the number of Salafi jihadist groups globally, particularly in North Africa and the Levant. Examples include groups operating in Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, Libya, Egypt, including the Sinai, 

Lebanon, and Syria. There has also been an increase in the number 

of fighters within these groups, and then finally, an increase in the 

number of attacks perpetrated in particular by Al Qaeda and its 

affiliates. 

Second, as I noted earlier, this movement has become more decentralized, I think, which does raise questions about the AUMF, 

which we will come back to, and that while there are similarities 

among some of these groups, there are also substantial differences. 

Third, I think it is worth noting that only some of these groups 

are currently targeting the United States homeland and its interests overseas, like U.S. embassies and U.S. citizens. The most concerning, at least in my view, are Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and inspired individuals, like the 2013 Boston Marathon 

bombers. I would highlight concerns about the growth in the number of foreign fighters, Americans, Europeans, and others in Syria, 

the growth in social media and the terrorist use of chat rooms, 

Facebook, Twitter to access, that are making it easier for Americans in the United States to access this information. 

But let me just point out that there are a range of groups that 

are not Al Qaeda and have never formally pledged allegiance that 

have posed a threat. Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia, for instance, has 

plotted attacks against U.S. diplomats and infrastructure in Tunis. 

Operatives from Ansar al-Sharia Libya, the Muhammad Jamal 
5 

Network and others were involved in the 2012 attack that killed 

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. 

There are threats from groups including out of the North 

Caucasus that threaten U.S. athletes and their family members 

and other travelers to the Sochi Olympics in Russia right now. 

Many of these groups are not formal affiliates of Al Qaeda, have 

never pledged allegiance, but they remain threats, and I think that 

is worth highlighting. 

Let me just conclude by saying that I think an effective U.S. 

strategy has got to include three brief components. One is focus on 

covert intelligence, law enforcement, special operations, diplomatic 

and other activity to target these groups, including their financial 

and logistical networks overseas. This should not be and I think is 

not just a military exercise but requires multiple organizations 

from within the U.S. Government outside of the Department of Defense and outside of the Intelligence Community. 

The second step I think is helping local governments establish 

basic law and order as a bulwark against these groups. I think 

there have been some helpful steps in cases like Mali where we 

don’t see groups plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland. The 

French did step in, get involved with special operations forces to 

push back Harakat Ansar al Dine Tuareg groups operating in Mali. 

That is a helpful step I think from an ally, and in some cases, may 

be better to hand this off to allies, particularly where we don’t see 

plotting against the U.S. 

My last comment is just to serve as a reminder that I would say 

much like the Cold War, this struggle that we are going to be talking about today is, in part, an ideological one. As the head of Al 

Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote recently, I quote, ‘‘The strength 

of this movement is derived from the message it spreads to the 

ummah and the downtrodden all around the globe.’’ An effective 

campaign must, must include countering the ideology. 

We can talk about more specifics later, but let me just turn this 

back and to thank you, chairman and ranking member, and members of the committee for having this hearing. I look forward to 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Jones can be found in the Appendix on page 47.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Braniff. 

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM BRANIFF, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

NATIONAL CONSORTIUM FOR THE STUDY OF TERRORISM 

AND RESPONSES TO TERRORISM, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 

Mr. BRANIFF. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Sanchez, and 

esteemed members of the committee, I would like to thank you on 

behalf of the START [Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism] Consortium for inviting us to speak with you today on the 

state of Al Qaeda. There is unfortunately much to say. 

In 2012, the most recent year for which START has provided a 

complete set of global terrorism data to the Department of State, 

more than 6,800 terrorist attacks killed more than 11,000 people. 

Even if you compare these more conservative Department of State 

statistics against the more inclusive global terrorism database, sta-
6 

tistics dating back to 1970, the previous record for number of attacks was over 5,000. This makes 2012 the most lethal or, excuse 

me, the most active year of terrorism on record. 

Strikingly, the six most lethal groups in 2012, the Taliban, Boko 

Haram, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Tehrik-e-Taliban in 

Pakistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and al-Shabaab are generally considered fellow travelers of Al Qaeda, and yet Al Qaeda itself was not 

responsible for a single attack in 2012. What should we take from 

these seemingly contradictory developments? Did Al Qaeda succeed 

by inspiring widespread jihadism, or has it lost to a variety of more 

parochial, albeit popular actors? 

Using preliminary data from a different project examining terrorist group behavior, it appears that 12 of the 20 most lethal organizations, and 10 of the 20 most active organizations had alliance 

connections to Al Qaeda in 2012, ranging from collaboration to 

mere rhetorical support, suggesting that Al Qaeda remained a central hub in a network of highly lethal and active terrorist organizations. There are four primary reasons for this development. 

One, Al Qaeda exploited relationships created during the antiSoviet jihad and inserted itself into other violent campaigns beginning in the 1990s. While Al Qaeda is rarely successful at reorienting the nature of the conflict in toto, it does frequently succeed 

in altering the targeting and tactical preferences of subsets of violent actors in these theaters. 

Two, similarly, veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad returned to locally and regionally oriented groups, infusing them with the 

globalized understanding of their respective conflicts. 

Three, many of these highly networked veterans encouraged 

their respective organizations to establish a physical presence in 

other jihadist fronts as well, capitalizing on the recruitment, fundraising, and equipment pipelines pouring resources into these conflict zones. 

Four, and finally, Al Qaeda fostered a virtual landscape that 

quickly became a place where local, regional, and global forms of 

jihadism overlapped for geographically, ideologically, and strategically diverse participants. 

Taken as a whole, the increasingly intertwined histories of local, 

regional, and global actors has at least four salient consequences. 

First, the global jihadist cause often benefits from resources mobilized for other purposes. As long as there are local and regional 

jihadist fronts, global jihadist actors will have access to resources 

that they can direct against the far enemy. 

Second, the multiplicity of narratives espoused by local, regional, 

and global jihadist actors creates numerous mobilization pathways 

into any one conflict zone. Consider Najibullah Zazi who left the 

United States to join the Taliban and defend Afghanistan, but who 

was redirected by Al Qaeda to plot suicide attacks against the New 

York City subway system. Zazi was not primed to target American 

civilians when he entered into this militant ecosystem, but the geographic collocation of local and global jihadist organizations enabled that eventuality. 

Third, the harmonization of parochial and cosmic narratives by 

Al Qaeda’s propaganda organ helps conflate actions on the ground, 

increasing the chances that western interests will be targeted in a 
7 

foreign setting. Consider the recent threat from Vilayat Dagestan, 

the sovereignty-seeking organization that committed two suicide 

attacks in Volgograd, Russia, this December. If the Winter Olympics are held, the group threatened additional attacks targeting 

tourists in retaliation for ‘‘the Muslim blood that is shed every day 

around the world, be it in Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, all around 

the world.’’ 

Fourth, the propagation of the global jihadist ideas—this propagation of global jihadist ideas has helped to inspire a new cohort 

of individuals who are prepared to take action without ever having 

joined a formal organization. Al Qaeda’s endorsement of lone actor 

jihadism following the Fort Hood attack bolstered this threat. 

While it is certainly a mistake to conflate every local and regional jihadist organization with Al Qaeda, the interplay of local, 

regional, and global jihadism over 35 years presents a reality that 

counterterrorism professionals continue to address. In contested regions far from Al Qaeda’s geographic center of gravity, violence targeting both local Muslim populations and western targets persists. 

It is no longer always useful to identify where Al Qaeda ends and 

other organizations begin. 

It would be dangerous therefore to conclude that because the Al 

Qaeda organization is not generating violent attacks itself, that the 

attrition strategy fostered by the organization for over 20 years is 

also ineffectual. This has been the most active 2 years in the history of modern terrorism, and Al Qaeda remains as the historical, 

organizational, and ideological center of the most lethal terrorist 

threats of our time. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Braniff can be found in the Appendix on page 65.] 

STATEMENT OF DAVEED GARTENSTEIN–ROSS, SENIOR FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES, AND 

ADJUNCT ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member 

Sanchez, distinguished members of the committee, it is an honor 

to be here with you today to discuss the state of Al Qaeda and its 

affiliates. 

Despite early hopes that the revolutionary events of the Arab 

Spring might be the death knell of jihadism, Al Qaeda and other 

militant groups have adapted to the new environment and have 

made gains. The U.S. needs to adjust its approach accordingly. 

Right now, in fact, militant groups have a significant opportunity. 

Western observers hoped that the Arab uprisings would weaken Al 

Qaeda by showing that nonviolent change was possible in the region and by providing a democratic alternative to long-standing dictators, but the region’s challenges are providing these groups with 

fertile new recruiting ground. 

Egypt’s coup showed that democracy is reversible, perhaps particularly so if Islamist groups are being empowered. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had been saying this since the revolutions 

began, and since the coup, Zawahiri and other leading jihadist figures have claimed vindication. Also the brutal conflict in Syria 

where a once hopeful movement has given way to blood-soaked 
8 

tragedy has been a virtual incubator for extremism. Unfortunately, 

these reverses of the Arab Spring’s initial hopes came atop already 

existing efforts by jihadist groups to exploit changes in the region. 

One change has been prisoner releases. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the September 2012 Benghazi attack notes that it was carried out by a number of individuals connected to terrorist groups, including the Muhammad Jamal Network. Jamal is one of many jihadists to have been released from 

Egyptian prison, making him part of an Arab Spring trend in 

which prisons in affected countries have been emptied. In many 

cases, it is good that prisoners have gone free, as the old dictatorships were notorious for jailing and abusing their political prisoners, but jihadists were also part of these releases. Militancy in 

both Egypt and also Libya was strengthened by prisoner releases. 

This is also true of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia whose leader Abu 

Ayadh al-Tunisi had been in prison since 2003 for involvement in 

terrorism abroad but was released in the March 2011 general amnesty. It is impossible to overstate the degree to which prisoner releases have strengthened regional militancy, and we can see the 

bloody results in such places as Egypt’s Sinai region. 

A second change is new ‘‘dawa’’ opportunities for these groups, 

which can be understood as missionary activity, except rather than 

trying to convince non-Muslims to convert to Islam, jihadist groups 

often focus on converting other Muslims to their extreme practice 

of the faith. New dawa opportunities allowed jihadism to spread in 

places like Egypt and Tunisia where Ansar al-Sharia had a particularly sophisticated strategy that exploited social media to increase its presence and visibility. 

We should also be concerned about the resurgence of charities 

that support militancy. Prior to 9/11, Al Qaeda received significant 

funding from a network of Islamist charities, and these NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] seem to be reemerging. The most significant factor in the rebound has been the Syrian conflict. A recent 

Brookings Institution report notes the role of Persian Gulf donors 

and charities who have helped to shape the ideological, and at 

times, extremist agendas of rebel brigades. The report singles out 

Kuwaiti institutions because that country has fewer financial controls than other Gulf States. 

So what can the United States do? We need to understand that 

this is a longer term campaign, not a sprint to finish off a weaker 

foe, and we need to make our counterterrorism efforts both more 

strategic and also more sustainable. I offer five brief recommendations. 

First, we need to beware of second order consequences when the 

U.S. decides to use its military might. The chaos produced by the 

Libya campaign, including ungoverned territory in the south and 

a regional flow of arms resulted in more potent jihadist factions in 

the region. While the primary rationale for the intervention was 

humanitarian, as long as Al Qaeda and jihadism remain strategic 

priorities for the United States, we need to be cognizant of the impact that major U.S. commitments can have on this phenomena. 

The risk of second order consequences gives rise to another priority, better harnessing the talents of open-source analysts. Right 

now, open-source analysis suffers from a dearth of reliable informa-
9 

tion, such as access to data in the documents recovered by the raid 

that killed Osama bin Laden. The 17 Abbottabad documents that 

the U.S. Government released in 2012 represent less than 1 percent of the total cache. Declassification of those documents should 

be hastened. 

Third, we need to recognize the limitations of the U.S.’s targeted 

killing campaign. This campaign is seemingly premised around the 

idea that a leadership attrition-based strategy can defeat Al Qaeda, 

but if Al Qaeda is resilient in the face of this kind of attrition, as 

the evidence suggests, we need to think comprehensively about the 

impact of the strikes, including consequences when innocent people 

are killed. The U.S. shouldn’t simply eschew targeted killings as a 

counterterrorism tool, but we should consider the idea that the tactic may be overused, particularly signature strikes. 

Fourth, I concur with Dr. Jones that partner nation assistance 

is important. President Obama correctly observed that not all Al 

Qaeda affiliates and not all jihadist groups pose an equal risk to 

the United States, thus the U.S. should not bear all the cost in this 

fight. Partner nation assistance can include building local police capacity and also intelligence capabilities. 

Fifth and finally, the elephant in the room is detention. Many 

pundits clearly hope that the U.S. doesn’t need a detention policy, 

but we do. Detention of enemy combatants is a traditional tool of 

warfare because of concerns that a captured fighter if released will 

return to the fight, and the criminal justice system doesn’t fully 

satisfy the rationales underlying detention. While detention is more 

complex in the case of nonstate actors than state-to-state conflict, 

as long as the threat is growing rather than receding, law-of-war 

detention remains relevant as a matter of policy. And related to 

this, we should set clearer policy about interrogation designed to 

clear actionable intelligence prior to Mirandizing jihadists who will 

be prosecuted in the criminal justice system. The U.S. has done 

this in several cases, and in some, like the case of Sulaiman Abu 

Ghaith, it is arguable that there is a need for a longer pre-Miranda 

interrogation. 

The bottom line is that Al Qaeda is not on the verge of collapse. 

Unfortunately, we need to think strategically about this as a longer 

term conflict. I look forward to your questions and exchanges. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gartenstein-Ross can be found in 

the Appendix on page 85.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Swift. 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER SWIFT, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR 

OF NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 

Dr. SWIFT. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Sanchez, honorable members of the committee, this is my first time 

testifying before the United States Congress, and I am both honored and humbled to be here with my distinguished colleagues. 

I am going to draw on some of the insights I have developed over 

the last 10 years conducting field work in regions including Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Dagestan, the central Asian republics, 

and most recently, southern Yemen. My goal is to help use these 

insights to frame some of the threats we face and some of the decisions we must make in the coming year. 
10 

Mr. Chairman, honorable members, as my colleagues have explained this morning, we currently face a constellation of complex, 

dynamic, and constantly evolving threats, threats that compel us to 

reexamine our assumptions, recalibrate our strategy, and ultimately revise the legal frameworks authorizing the use of military 

force. 

I would respectfully suggest that three questions must shape 

your inquiry. The first is how does Al Qaeda influence local insurgents; second, how do these insurgents contribute to Al Qaeda’s 

global jihad; and third and most significantly, how can we distinguish one adversary from the next? Answering these questions is 

crucial to our shared security, yet rather than engaging these complex relationships in their own right, a majority of pundits and policymakers routinely cast disparate groups as part of a common 

global conspiracy. They confuse radical ideologies with local political priorities, and in doing so, they presume that Al Qaeda will inspire, dominate, and control indigenous insurgents. 

Mr. Chairman, honorable members, we perpetuate these presumptions at our peril. Despite lessons our forces have learned in 

the field over the space of the last decade, the United States Government still has no framework for understanding the relationship 

between transnational terror syndicates and indigenous insurgents, 

and for all our emphasis on terrorist links and networks, our leaders lack consistent, objective criteria for distinguishing Al Qaeda’s 

franchises and their affiliate forces from superficially similar patterns of indigenous militancy. 

The result, ladies and gentlemen, is confusion. After a decade of 

protracted deployments and enhanced surveillance at home, we 

still don’t know exactly who our adversaries are, how they interact, 

or how precisely to defeat them. 

Mr. Chairman, honorable members, these oversights represent 

the single greatest challenge before this committee today. They 

hamper our efforts to identify and confront the emerging challenges 

my colleagues have discussed this morning. They weaken the consistency and perceived legitimacy of our operations, and most significantly they undermine our ability to think and act strategically. 

We cannot align our means and ends until we define the challenges 

we face. 

Mr. Chairman, honorable members, in his May 2013 speech at 

the National Defense University, President Obama explained that 

the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and 

their associate forces. I share that view, and I know members of 

this committee do as well. But unfortunately, the term ‘‘associated 

forces’’ has no legal or strategic meaning, nor do the terms ‘‘affiliate 

forces,’’ ‘‘co-belligerents’’ or ‘‘Al Qaeda-linked groups,’’ and when 

your Senate colleagues asked the Pentagon to define these terms 

and the specific threats they represent, they were met with silence. 

Some of that silence is understandable. Assistant Secretary of 

Defense Michael Sheehan correctly notes that terrorist threats are 

murky and shifting, and that it would be difficult for Congress to 

get directly involved in the designation of specific Al Qaeda affiliates. A list-based approach similar to that we use for economic 

sanctions would not account for sudden changes in the character or 

composition of local terrorist and insurgent groups. It would be 
11 

clear, but it would also be underinclusive. Our current approach by 

comparison is overinclusive. By emphasizing tactics and rhetorics, 

we are collapsing distinctions between transnational terrorist syndicates and superficially similar patterns of indigenous violence. 

The more we emphasize the ideologies that bring these groups together, the less we appreciate the local and sometimes very parochial interests that drive them apart. 

The lesson here is simple, Mr. Chairman, members, if we want 

to prevail on the battlefield and win in the war of ideas, we must 

first categorize our enemies and prioritize the threats they face. 

Three criteria, in my opinion, should guide this process. First, we 

must distinguish between groups with global ambitions and those 

pursuing more parochial ends. Groups with strong ties to a particular community or territory are far less likely to defer to the 

whims of foreign fighters. 

Second, we must distinguish militant Islamists on the one hand 

from Salafi jihadists on the other. While these ideologies may seem 

similar to us in principle, they are ultimately irreconcilable in practice. For militant Islamists, jihad is a means to an end. For Salafi 

jihadists, jihad is an end unto itself. 

Third, we must draw operational distinctions between groups 

that emulate Al Qaeda, groups that collaborate with Al Qaeda, and 

groups that subordinate themselves to Al Qaeda’s whims. These 

distinctions will help us qualify the operational links between local 

insurgencies and the global jihad. As I explain in my forthcoming 

book, some groups form ad hoc alliances with Al Qaeda without 

ever accepting its authority, while others will embrace Al Qaeda’s 

message and its methods even when there are no meaningful connections between them. 

Mr. Chairman, honorable members, the criteria I am presenting 

today reveal a spectrum of escalating threats. At the low end, we 

find autonomous rebels that espouse local ideologies and pursue 

local objectives. Grounded in a discrete community with a clear 

constituency, they are more likely to resist infiltration by foreign 

fighters. 

At the high end, however, we find Al Qaeda’s subordinate franchises, franchises that combine global ambitions with a globalized 

ideology that glorifies perpetual war. Each syndicate in this spectrum presents its own unique challenges. Some threaten our allies 

with limited risks to ourselves. Others destabilize vital regions 

without ever reaching American soil, and a growing number are reviving Al Qaeda’s global jihad through local insurgencies. Confronting this diversity will require a more nuanced and discriminating strategy. This war has changed, ladies and gentlemen, but 

it is not yet over. 

Mr. Chairman, honorable members, two centuries ago the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz warned that leaders must first 

establish the kind of war they are entering into, not mistaking it 

for, nor trying to turn it into something alien to its true nature. 

This is the challenge before us today. We must set priorities based 

on a clear understanding of our adversaries. We need objective criteria focused on interests, ideologies, and operations rather than 

subjective speculation that seeks to build Al Qaeda up or define the 
12 

threat down. In short, we need to see the world as it is, not as we 

might hope it would be. 

Mr. Chairman, honorable members, I believe that every President needs the discretion to identify and interdict terror threats in 

the field, but I also know that Congress plays an essential role in 

defining the legal and strategic parameters for the use of force. 

With all the challenges and controversies that face our Armed 

Forces today, this framework desperately needs your attention. 

Thank you. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Swift can be found in the Appendix on page 105.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Dr. Jones, Mr. 

Gartenstein-Ross, as expressed during my opening statement and 

as many of you on the panel noted, the threat from Al Qaeda, its 

affiliates, and its associated groups appears to be increasing or, at 

a minimum, at least, evolving. However, the President is contemplating revising the 2001 AUMF to potentially narrow its scope, 

and in his own words eventually repeal it. 

Given your understanding of the threat posed by Al Qaeda, the 

goals of Al Qaeda, and the evolution of Al Qaeda since the death 

of bin Laden, is a limitation or narrowing of tools to take the fight 

to Al Qaeda and its affiliates consistent with the realities on the 

ground currently? 

Dr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the question. It is a 

very, very important question. In my view, I would strongly suggest thinking about criteria. I would be very concerned about limiting the scope of the AUMF for the general purposes of limiting 

its scope. I have got probably three things, three quick things I 

wanted to say about it. One is as virtually everybody here has 

noted, the movement that we are talking about has decentralized. 

The AUMF is tied very specifically to the September 11th attacks. 

That was a decade and a half ago, and the reality is that we have 

multiple groups on multiple continents plotting attacks against the 

United States homeland, but in particular, against U.S. interests 

including embassies overseas, diplomats, and citizens. The current 

AUMF, as I read it, has to tie an individual organization to Al 

Qaeda or at least to groups that were involved in plotting the September 11th attacks. We are living in a different world today. We 

have groups in North Africa plotting attacks against U.S. embassies that are not Al Qaeda. We have the group in Iraq over the last 

several days formally break away from Al Qaeda. Are they not included now in the AUMF because they have disassociated themselves? I would argue that if we are going to revisit the AUMF, we 

have got to incorporate a way of defining, I would say it differently 

than Dr. Swift did. I would focus on groups that are threatening, 

plotting attacks against the United States homeland or its interests 

overseas. I do think there needs to be more transparency, I think 

it is worth considering sunset clauses to revisit this issue, but I do 

think it is also worth recognizing that we are living in a very, very 

different world from September 11th. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. For the reasons given by Dr. Jones, I 

think that an alteration of the AUMF is inevitable. I think it is 

going to happen at some point. A sound legal footing is very much 
13 

necessary for any sort of military action the U.S. undertakes, including those related to the threat of terrorism and jihadism, and 

as my colleagues have articulated, right now AUMF is premised on 

the nexus to 9/11, which in many cases has been receding, and I 

think that Dr. Jones’ example of ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and 

Syria] being booted out of Al Qaeda is a very good example of 

where that actually raises very important legal questions and 

shows some of the limitations of the AUMF framework. 

That being said, the question was about limitations on the 

AUMF, making it more narrow, and given the multiplicity of 

threats that we face and the morphing of threats, if the direction 

was only towards narrowing the AUMF, there are certainly dangers inherent to that. 

I want to find out one final thing as well, which is an issue if 

and when the AUMF does become altered, which is that right now 

our detention policy is premised upon the AUMF, so one question 

that is going to emerge is the detainees that the Obama administration says it considers too dangerous to be released even though 

they aren’t going to be tried, the question that thus arises is if the 

AUMF is altered, what then happens to the detainees? There certainly will be legal challenges after any alteration comes up, and 

I think that that is something that anybody involved in tailoring 

a new AUMF has to have in mind during that process. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Ms. Sanchez. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. President Obama has 

stated his intent to revise and maybe repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. I would like to ask Dr. Swift what 

specific considerations should be taken into account before any revision or repeal? What should we think about with respect to this 

document? 

Dr. SWIFT. Thank you, Ranking Member Sanchez. Appreciate the 

question. Putting on my lawyer hat for a moment here, I think it 

is very important to emphasize that the goal here is not to narrow 

the scope of the AUMF or to expand the scope of the AUMF, but 

to align our ways, means, and laws in such a way that we can 

achieve the ends that we are after, and what I am proposing this 

morning and what I cover more extensively in my forthcoming book 

is a tiered set of criteria that one would use to determine whether 

a group represents a clear and present danger to the United States 

based on their objective profile, whether they represent a regionalized threat that we should help allies address, or whether they address a fundamentally local threat that might be vulnerable to future infiltration and colonization. 

And the three key criteria to look at here, Representative, are 

ideology, again distinguishing militant Islamists on the one hand 

from Salafi jihadists on the other. The second is their interests; are 

their interests locally focused or parochially focused or are they 

globally focused? Do they have transnational ambitions? Or do they 

want to run the particular part of the world that they are from? 

And then third, operations, this very big difference between emulation on the one hand, mimicking Al Qaeda’s message and methods, which is something we see, for example, in the North 

Caucasus, a place where I have done a fair amount of research, 

whether they collaborate with Al Qaeda, whether they are entering 
14 

into an alliance relationship that is sustained over time, or whether it is simply an ad hoc relationship based on the fact that they 

find themselves fighting against the same adversary today but 

maybe not tomorrow. And then distinguishing those two categories 

of operational interface from the full-on subordination of groups, 

the full-on indoctrinization and melding of a local subsidiary with 

a global Al Qaeda parent, and that occurs beyond just the ideological realm, and by focusing on ideology and on tactics and on 

rhetorics and by focusing on links-based analysis rather than organizational-based analysis, by looking at these things from the top 

down rather than from the field up, where I have been doing my 

research the last 10 years, we have gotten parts of it right, but we 

have got other parts of it wrong. 

And part of what we have gotten wrong is the ability to draw distinctions and set priorities based on our interests, not based on the 

threatening things that groups may say about themselves. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay. I would like to ask all the panelists just a 

quick yes or no. So let’s take a look at the most, one of the most 

recent attacks we saw was, I believe, in a mall in Kenya, as I recall. I just want to do some hypotheticals because I want to understand whether you think the current AUMF that we have, you 

know, falls to criteria. So let’s say that the people who attacked, 

who—you know, we know what happened, gunmen went in there, 

they shot people, killed people, et cetera. If they had, if we could 

find that they were allied to Al Qaeda, would the current AUMF 

cover those people if we had American citizens who were killed? 

Dr. JONES. Yes, al-Shabaab, as an Al Qaeda affiliate, has sworn 

allegiance, so the answer in my view is yes. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay. What if it had been a group that we could 

find no tie to Al Qaeda, would our ability to go after these people 

from our end rather than the Kenyans, for example, fall under the 

current legal construct that we have? 

Dr. JONES. Ranking Member Sanchez, I am not a lawyer, so I 

don’t know the answer. It is a fuzzy area. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. That is what I am trying to figure out. I am trying 

to indicate whether, what we need to think about as we look forward to some of these attacks that may happen. 

Dr. SWIFT. Ranking Member Sanchez, I am an international lawyer—— 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay. 

Dr. Swift [continuing]. And I practice in this area. Technically 

no, but the President would still have broad authority under his 

Article 2.2 powers to protect both U.S. citizens overseas, to intervene to assist allies. If the Kenyans had asked for our assistance, 

there would be no need for the AUMF. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. What if the Kenyans didn’t ask, or what if it was 

a country, Somalia or some place like that that really didn’t want 

to deal with us? 

Dr. SWIFT. Then, Representative, the President would be falling 

back on his Article 2.2 authorities, which underscores why it is so 

important to take an objective criteria-based approach to this sort 

of analysis because the AUMF as it is currently construed is underinclusive. The problem is if we define the AUMF based on ideology, 

or based solely on links between individuals that aren’t substan-
15 

tiated, if we don’t look at the character and quality of those relationships, the AUMF could become dangerously overinclusive in a 

way that is not tailored to our interests both at home and around 

the world. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Chairman, let me ask one final question. Because, you know, we have talked a lot about how we are going to 

pivot towards Asia, we are looking at maybe a larger military presence or working with countries out in the Asian area, and I remember from a trip that I took maybe about 4 years ago going to see 

extreme jihadist type of extremist groups that operate in the Philippines, that operate in Indonesia, that operate into the southern 

portion of Thailand, for example. If these groups were not outwardly connected to Al Qaeda, do we need a different construct to 

cover if they would attack a mall where our American citizens 

would be there, or where they would attack one of our embassies, 

for example? 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative, I would respectfully argue that we do 

need a different construct, and that construct needs to take into account the ideology of the organization, the interests of the organization, and the operations of the organization. One of the difficulties 

of linking everything back to Al Qaeda and the Taliban circa September of 2001, as all of my colleagues have mentioned here this 

morning, is it really narrows our ability to respond to the threat 

as it evolves, but at the same time, we have got to be sure that 

when we are expanding the scope of the AUMF, we are expanding 

how and when and why we use force, that we don’t allow war to 

serve itself, that we allow war to serve our strategic interests, our 

national interests, and that we are thinking very critically about 

who our adversary is. If we don’t define our adversary first, our adversary will define us in the war we are fighting. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you. And I yield back, Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Thornberry. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate 

you-all all being here today. I also think it is important to point 

out and remind everybody that in this committee, in both the 

NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] for fiscal year 2012 

and 2013 updated the AUMF. It may not have been perfect language, but we took language used by both the Obama and Bush administrations, it passed the House with bipartisan support in making that adjustment, and we couldn’t convince our Senate colleagues to go around. I think this committee was concerned for several years about having the proper legal framework for our men 

and women who we send out all around the world to do the things 

we ask them to do, and I think it is too bad that not everybody was 

as up to speed maybe as this committee. 

I want to back up for just a second and focus on the threat and 

ask you-all’s comments starting with you, Dr. Jones. In his interview with The New Yorker magazine, the President was asked, Is 

Al Qaeda growing in capacity? And this was his answer: ‘‘The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate is if a 

JV [junior varsity] team puts on a Lakers uniform, that doesn’t 

make them Kobe Bryant.’’ And it says ‘‘Obama said.’’ 

I am not sure I understand that, but the implication to me is 

that we have already defeated the Lakers, and now we just have 
16 

to deal with the JV in Yemen and in North Africa, and al-Shabaab, 

and all these people in Iraq and Syria, they are not major league 

players. Now, is that the way that you-all see the current threat 

we face today from these groups? Dr. Jones. 

Dr. JONES. No, I view the threat somewhat differently. I would 

point recently to the administration’s decision to close nearly two 

dozen embassies as useful examples of the threat to U.S. structures 

and diplomats overseas. You don’t close embassies if you don’t have 

a threat. You do close them when you have active plots to target 

embassies, diplomats, and citizens overseas. 

Within the last year we have also had an active plot generated 

by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula targeting, among other 

things, U.S. aircraft in the United States. They have been looking 

at various options for concealing a bomb inside of a number of different luggage compartments and others to take down a U.S. airline. I consider, Mr. Thornberry, the threat serious. I do not consider this JV. 

Now, there are some individuals involved in plots that have been 

JV incompetent individuals, but more broadly speaking, I do think 

the threat is serious, and I think the administration’s actions overseas demonstrate that the threat is serious. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. I would just like to go down the 

line right quick in the remaining time. Mr. Braniff. 

Mr. BRANIFF. Thank you for the question. I think part of the 

issue here is that terrorism is a bit of a difficult thing to analyze 

because of the numbers associated with it. Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack 

has an oversized impact on our assessment of the organization; understandably so, it is the most lethal attack in the history of terrorism, but Al Qaeda is responsible for approximately 80 attacks 

over the last 25 years. It is not a highly prolific organization in 

terms of number of attacks. That is around three per year. 

When you look at these other organizations that we have talked 

about, the six most lethal in 2012 that I mentioned, they are killing 

thousands of people per year, year after year, and so when you add 

those numbers together, what you see is these are highly lethal organizations that are highly prolific, they are conducting vast numbers of attack that are undermining the local government, our ability to help the local government, our ability to act within that 

space. If you just think about the, what is going on in Syria right 

now, for example, our ability to act decisively is undermined by the 

presence of multiple, even fighting factions within this broader 

Salafi jihadi community. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. So you are worried about the 

Spurs and the Timberwolves and other people, not the JV for the 

Lakers? Mr. Gartenstein-Ross. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I think that there is two implications to 

the President’s statement, one of which I agree with, one of which 

I disagree with. The first is that not all threats are equal, I think 

that is correct. The second implication, though, when he says they 

are JV players putting on Lakers jerseys is that these new groups 

that are putting on the style of Al Qaeda, they are not really Al 

Qaeda, these affiliates aren’t Al Qaeda, and this gets to a fundamental question in terrorism studies right now, which is are there 

unacknowledged affiliates? 
17 

I want to turn to a quick example, which has been mentioned a 

couple of times, Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia. If you go back a year, 

2 years ago, this was considered to be a very local or regionally focused group with limited connections to Al Qaeda. More recently, 

you have had the Tunisian government after banning it put forward specific information. Not only was their leader someone who 

formed the Tunisian combatant group which committed the assassination of the Northern Alliance commander Massoud just 2 days 

prior to the 9/11 attacks, but also the Tunisian government has put 

forward information saying that Tunisi actually took an oath of 

bay’at, or an oath of allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abu Musab Abd al-Wadud. 

They also said that they are receiving funding directly from Al 

Qaeda, which if you look at the quality of these links would actually make them much more of an unacknowledged affiliate. I think 

we need to be cognizant that organizational ties may be far deeper 

than sometimes the surface level discussion the public sphere lets 

on. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all so 

much for being here. You have addressed certainly the question 

that Al Qaeda’s repudiating of ISIS raises in some ways in terms 

of the complexity I think of the issues that we are looking at, but 

I wondered whether we do tend to look at all groups across the 

spectrum through the eyes of Al Qaeda and therefore miss perhaps 

what the intent of other groups might be at this time, and could 

you address whether that threat is coming to the United States 

and the homeland or if that, their activities are really more focused 

in other ways, and if that were true of ISIS, what about other 

groups? How do we best understand and really be able to bring together our best analytical advice when the organizations are perhaps growing in areas that we are not necessarily focusing on? 

How do we prevent that? 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I think Dr. Swift’s argument that we 

look at their interests, we look at their ideology, and we look at 

what they are targeting at the moment is a good framework for understanding this. So, for example, to return to my example of Ansar 

al-Sharia in Tunisia, I think in my view the best evidence suggests 

that they have a very strong relationship to the Al Qaeda network, 

but that being said, that doesn’t mean they are targeting the 

United States, certainly not the continental U.S. They did help to 

organize the demonstration in Tunisia, in Tunis that caused the 

ransacking of the U.S. Embassy there and almost killed U.S. diplomats on September 14th of 2012. They are not of no interest, but 

it is a group where to have U.S. drones flying over Tunisia or to 

have U.S. Special Operations forces conducting raids would be very 

much out of step, in my view, with our interests given that Tunisia 

right now is cracking down, they are capable of doing so, and having the U.S. in there could inflame the situation. 

So I think that regardless of what their ideology or organizational ties are, we also have to look at how they are operating at 

that given moment. I think we should take those groups seriously 

but understand that we have a very large tool kit, and our tendency early in the war on terror was to take the burden all our-
18 

selves and to have the U.S. really bear the brunt of the costs. It 

is important to diffuse costs, especially given the state of our economy, and I think we are moving right now in that direction. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Dr. Jones, did you have something? 

Dr. JONES. Yes. I think it is an excellent question, and I think 

we, the government in general does not have a great answer at this 

point to it. I think, frankly, it is, in part, an intelligence answer. 

I think what the Intelligence Community needs probably to do better is to identify those groups that are plotting attacks today and 

tomorrow against the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests overseas. 

I think this is the third, I would interpret this is the third of Dr. 

Swift’s criteria. I think the other two, the ideology, we can fight a 

lot, and some of those terminology in my view gets fuzzy, but we, 

the question is do we have intelligence that groups are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland? There are a number that fit into 

this category. Yemen, Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia has plotted attacks against Tunis, Muhammad Jamal has as well. 

There is a second category which sort of fits into the groups of 

concern but don’t, aren’t plotting. When we have Americans fighting in Syria and Americans fighting in Somalia, we may not see 

active plots, but we need to closely monitor those groups because 

they can switch quickly, and when you have Americans going 

there. Then we have a third criteria where we have no evidence at 

all. 

So I would argue that this should be more of an intelligencedriven process on attacks that threaten the U.S., both at home and 

overseas than it is today. 

Ms. DAVIS. Dr. Swift. 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative Davis, if I might offer you some intelligence from southern Yemen, I want to use Yemen as an example 

of some of the complexity we face in this area and also to answer 

part of the question Representative Thornberry asked. We have no 

answer, not just not a good answer, because we have no objective 

criteria, we have no analytical framework that is consistent across 

theaters and threats, and because we really don’t have any boots 

on the ground in any of the places where these threats are emerging. 

I spent several weeks in southern Yemen interviewing tribal 

leaders who are fighting Al Qaeda door to door in their own villages, and I can tell you that if you ask them what is happening 

with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that they will give you an 

image of an organization that is taking the ideological dictates of 

global jihad and merging them with the practical realities of local 

insurgency. 

And I would respectfully suggest in answer to Mr. Thornberry’s 

question that that is not the JV team, that is actually a much more 

threatening team than Al Qaeda core ever was. Why? Because 

there is a geographic shift back to the Arab-speaking world rather 

than the cultural and linguistic and religious periphery of the Islamic world. Why? Because people are grounded in their own tribal 

and family structures. It is localized and globalized at the same 

time. Why? Because we have a generational shift to people in their 

late 30s and early 40s, people about the same age as the people 

testifying before you this morning, who have seen all of the mis-
19 

takes that their leaders made ahead of them, and most importantly, because we have a shift to a generation that didn’t fight 

against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, a generation that fought 

against the United States in Afghanistan. 

So if you want to know what is going on, you have got to have 

a framework, you have got to have criteria, we have got to be on 

the ground. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Chairman McKeon. Thank 

you for your leadership on this issue and thank all of you for being 

here today. I am really grateful for your presentations because I 

am very concerned that Chairman McKeon is really correct, that 

the American people need to remember that Al Qaeda declared war 

on the American people in 1996. They declared war, again, with 

the fatwa by Al Qaeda in 1998 on the American government, and 

then even specifically, we should take it personally, American taxpayers, and so we equally should not forget, we should remember 

the attacks of 9/11 and the global war on terrorism, and you being 

here today really should be really positive for the American people 

to understand the threat that is facing us. 

Sadly in June, the President, as was indicated by Chairman 

McKeon, was in a situation of wishful thinking that Al Qaeda was 

being diminished, and that it is really not a problem, as Vice 

Chairman Thornberry pointed out, too. That is just wrong, and we 

had specific examples. The mass murders at Fort Hood were dismissed as workplace violence, the murder at the recruiting station 

in Little Rock was called a drive-by shooting, the mass murders in 

Benghazi were identified as a video protest. None of that was true. 

And so the American people need to know, and I appreciate you 

being here. 

In fact, I also want to point out that we have a growing threat. 

This was first brought before the Foreign Affairs Committee last 

summer. Dr. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute had 

this chart, the American people need to know that we have a growing terrorist threat across North Africa, the Middle East, central 

Asia, and I appreciate Congresswoman Sanchez pointing out as far 

as Indonesia itself, we have a situation where we should address 

the world as it is, Dr. Swift, thank you. 

[The chart referred to can be found in the Appendix on page 

115.] 

Mr. WILSON. I believe that the demonstrators in Tehran in Iran, 

the state sponsor of terrorism, mean what they say. They carry 

signs in English, death to America, death to Israel, and we should 

take it seriously, and that is why I would like to know from each 

of you what would be your message to the American people on the 

threat, the threats of terrorism to American families and what do 

you believe is the proper response of the U.S. Government? And beginning with Dr. Jones. 

Dr. JONES. Well, I would point out much like the Cold War, 

which was a decades-long struggle, the war that we are dealing 

with today is a decades-long struggle. It is not just a military one, 

it should not be conceived only in military terms, but is one that 

is just as much ideological as it is military. That is the message 

that I would take back to the American population and to remind 
20 

them that this is not going to end tomorrow, it is not going to end 

next week, that we have to prepare for a very, very long struggle, 

and preparing people for a long struggle I think precludes the response that we have seen from some policymakers that we are on 

the verge of defeat. 

Mr. BRANIFF. Representative Wilson, thank you for the question. 

I would have the same question for American families as I would 

for the government, that is to keep in mind Al Qaeda’s strategy. 

Al Qaeda is waging an attrition strategy. They hope to attrit our 

political, economic, and military will. Political will is where that 

intersects with the American family. We need to be resilient as a 

country, but we need to understand that in the case of Al Qaeda 

and its relative decline compared to the Al Qaeda affiliates, just because it is not Al Qaeda core pulling the trigger doesn’t mean it 

still can’t attrite the United States ability to engage with the Muslim world. 

And so while we could take comfort in the fact that Al Qaeda 

core is not conducting attacks to the extent that they used to, we 

still need to mind that their attrition strategy can still be alive and 

well thanks to the associated movement that is still conducting attacks. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I think both of my colleagues have put 

forward eloquent messages to the American people, this is, in fact, 

a longer struggle. When it comes to terrorism, one thing I always 

tell the public is that we shouldn’t be in fear. One thing terrorism 

tries to do is to terrorize us. We should act not out of fear but out 

of interest because this remains a problem to American interests, 

and we should address it accordingly. 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative Wilson, I have a very short answer to 

your question. When we don’t draw distinctions between our adversaries, we fight Al Qaeda’s war on Al Qaeda’s terms. 

Mr. WILSON. Well, thank each of you, and indeed as a co-warrior, 

I remember being told that we could not win against communism, 

that it was the wave of the future, and so we did, and thanks to 

the American military we have a greater spread of democracy 

today than in the history of the world. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you 

all for coming today. We have, this country has increasingly relied 

upon—or I won’t say relied upon but used universal data collection 

in an effort to hamper the operations of these networks, these 

Salafi jihadist groups so as to prevent their attacking the United 

States or any of its foreign interests. What—do you have an opinion as to the impact of privatizing data collection on America’s ability to protect its citizens internally and its interests overseas? And, 

if so, what is that opinion? And start with Dr. Jones and work your 

way down. 

Dr. JONES. I do think there is an interest in collecting some degree of limited data. I think it was helpful in several plots, thwarting several plots including the Zazi plot which the investigation 

began with an intercept from Zazi back to his Al Qaeda handler in 

Pakistan. The question, in part, as I see it, gets to who holds the 

metadata that is collected. I think there is a strong argument for 

having the private sector hold the metadata and have the U.S. 
21 

Government have to access it. There may be other options there. 

I don’t know what that actually looks like. And there are probably 

three or four different options, but I think bringing the private sector in if they are willing to do it is certainly an option worth 

strongly considering. 

Mr. BRANIFF. Sir, thank you for the question. I don’t have a 

strong opinion in the matter. This is not my background or area 

of expertise. I would argue just simply that given Dr. Swift’s I 

think rightful contention that it is important to really understand 

at a very granular level which of the subsects of organizations are 

interested in targeting the United States and given the assertion 

of many of us that this is a really highly dynamic threat that has 

evolved quite a bit, and it is very fluid, we have to stay on top of 

it really in a real-time kind of a sense, the only way to do that is 

through data collection efforts, or at least that needs to be part of 

the intelligence picture. The mechanics of how that takes place I 

don’t have a strong opinion, but I think there is a necessary function there given the requirement for really excellent intelligence to 

be effective in this front. Thank you. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. Sir, that was an excellent question. I 

think that both ensuring the security of the Nation and also safeguarding citizens’ privacy rights are incredibly important, and part 

of the story of U.S. data collection is one of evolution of technology, 

evolution of ability to surveil, and evolution of threats in which one 

hand wasn’t aware of what the other was doing. In other words, 

our ability to collect maximum amounts of data increased at a time 

when we had a need because of threats to do so, and I think that 

there isn’t a very strong framework in place right now to balance 

these considerations. 

With respect to privatization, I think it is very worthy of consideration, but I am not convinced it actually better protects privacy 

and in many ways it may actually make privacy problems worse, 

because I am not convinced that the private sector will be a better 

guarantor than the government of making sure that data isn’t 

breached. At least in the government, people who can access the 

data have to be cleared in advance. You don’t have the same need 

to clear people and the same checks and balances that are occurring to make sure that corrupt people aren’t in there within the 

private sector, so I have concerns that we may be actually putting 

data in the hands of entities in which it is less secure rather than 

more secure. 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative Johnson, you raised some pretty important questions, both with respect to section 721 of the Foreign 

Intelligence Surveillance Act and section 1275 I believe, of the USA 

PATRIOT [Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism] Act. 

Mr. JOHNSON. 215. 

Dr. SWIFT. I would echo some of the statements made by my colleagues here. I actually don’t see nearly as much of a concern withholding the stuff inside the government. We have 3-, 4-, 5-, 600 

years of a system of people going to a magistrate with a warrant 

and getting permission to engage in a search, and I, as a lawyer, 

have a lot of faith in that system. I think temporary, recent break-
22 

downs in that system are worthy of oversight, but I don’t think it 

is worthy of an overhaul of the entire system. 

I would say that my bigger concern relates to our overemphasis 

and overreliance on signals intelligence. If you look at what actually broke the case in terms of the Tsarnaev attacks in Boston after 

the Boston Marathon bombing last year, it was good old-fashioned 

police work on the ground. If you look at where our forces get their 

leads in the field, it is good old-fashioned intelligence gathering on 

the ground. There is only so much of this that we can do by remote 

control, and there is a lot of this that needs to be done by training 

the most valuable asset that we have, and that is human beings. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. THORNBERRY [presiding]. Mr. Franks. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Braniff, I will 

direct this to you, sir. Thank you all for being here, and certainly 

I am glad you are on our side. Mr. Braniff, when describing Al 

Qaeda, the President has said many times and in many ways that 

we have Al Qaeda on the run, and when campaigning for his reelection in 2012, the President claimed that Al Qaeda was ‘‘decimated,’’ but considering the testimony here today and, of course, 

some of the many other experts in the field, it appears that ‘‘on the 

run’’ may mean dispersed recruiting and evolving on many fronts. 

So I have to ask you a difficult question. Do you think what the 

administration is saying regarding Al Qaeda’s demonstrative diminishment and being on the run is truthful? 

Mr. BRANIFF. Representative Franks, thank you for the question. 

The last Al Qaeda attack on, in our global terrorism database occurred in 2011, and so clearly it is an organization that’s operational capacity has been decimated, it has been undermined by a 

lot of pressure, so I think Al Qaeda core, the organization, as a 

trigger puller, as a bomb thrower, has been undermined, but that 

doesn’t mean that the strategy waged by Al Qaeda, an attrition 

strategy is not alive and well, and the problem with, the insidious 

thing about an attrition strategy is that it doesn’t have to be well 

run from the top as long as there are enough people on the ground 

creating fires that someone else has to go put out, and so the 

threat posed by Al Qaeda core is not diminished. The actual operational level of activity of Al Qaeda core has been diminished in my 

opinion. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, we know that sometimes we have succeeded 

in attacking terrorism on a tactical level with almost unprecedented success, but in terms of dealing with them on a strategic 

success with the ideological concerns, I am just wondering if, in the 

perhaps unlikely event that Al Qaeda would gain access to some 

type of weapon of mass destruction, is that still a major concern 

that all of us should have given that that was a primary discussion 

when this sort of first became kind of in our collective awareness? 

Yes, sir, Mr. Braniff. 

Mr. BRANIFF. Thank you again for the question. So there is a research project run by Karl Rethemeyer and Victor Asal called the 

Big Allied and Dangerous project that looks at what makes terrorist organizations more likely to pursue weapons of mass destruction, or what makes organizations more likely to be highly lethal, 

and in both cases the answer is not ideology alone, it is instead 
23 

highly central organizations, highly networked organizations, and 

Al Qaeda is the most highly networked organization around, and 

so is it more likely than others to try to pursue weapons of mass 

destruction? Based on that empirical study, the answer is yes. I 

think that it is part of the reason why we are so concerned about 

Syria. It obviously has access to chemical weapons. It still has to 

be a grave concern because we know that there are numbers of organizations who have voiced their desire to gain and use those 

weapons. It isn’t the central sort of animating thing that keeps me 

up at night, but I think it is certainly of high concern. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, sir. 

Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, I would ask you, to what extent has Al 

Qaeda in Iraq or AQI, which now calls itself the Islamic State of 

Iraq in the Levant among other names, to what extent have they 

grown in capabilities and areas of control in Iraq or Syria and 

neighboring countries over the last couple of years, and what factors have contributed to this growth such as the war in Syria and 

the sectarian political disagreements and conflict in Iraq itself? 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. Representative Franks, as was noted 

earlier, ISIS or ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] was 

just expelled from Al Qaeda recently. This is a very new development, but with respect to their capabilities and also what they 

stand for, that hasn’t really altered. One of the most significant developments over the past 2 months was January 1st of this year 

when ISIS undertook a surprise attack, capturing large parts of 

both Fallujah and Ramadi. It still controls a large portion of 

Fallujah to this day. What that indicates is both a capability that 

is massively expanded. Last year, almost 8,000 Iraqis died in violence. It was the most violent year in Iraq since 2007 at the heart 

of the civil war within that country. They also continue to control 

territory of northern Syria, but this actually is something that is 

very much worth watching, the splits between Al Qaeda and ISIS 

because if there is going to be fragmentation within Al Qaeda, and 

a reduction in the monopoly it holds over jihadism, I think this is 

what is going to cause it. However, rather than Al Qaeda fracturing, I think that there is a chance that we will see ISIS fracturing. You can already see some dissent within its ranks, and this 

very much bears watching who is more weakened by the split between the two. 

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. Ms. Duckworth. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank 

you for being here today. I want to return to the discussion on 

more recent Al Qaeda-affiliated groups. You know, we have had a 

little bit of discussion on how they have historically focused more 

on local grievances as opposed to a global jihad, but then we also 

had a discussion on how Al Qaeda in Iraq, or Jabhat al-Nusrah in 

Syria are relying on foreign fighters. 

Looking to specifically Southeast Asia, what does this, how does 

this dynamic work out with these foreign fighters going and participating in these two conflicts, and then potentially returning 

home to Jamal Islamia, Abu Sayyaf or these groups, you look at 

what is happening in Thailand with their election ongoing, yet they 
24 

have an ongoing conflict in the southern part of Thailand with 

their Islamic provinces. 

So maybe I will just start with Dr. Swift and move my way 

down. Can you sort of comment on that dynamic of the foreign 

fighters coming back to the individual groups around the country— 

around the world. 

Dr. SWIFT. Certainly, Representative Duckworth, thank you for 

the question. Foreign fighter flows, there is some alliteration for us, 

are a very complicated phenomenon. If we were to speak at the 

level of generalities, the trend over the last 5 to 7 years has been 

for ethnic Arabs to leave the cultural, geographic, linguistic periphery of the Muslim world and retrench back into Arab majority 

areas. We see that with the dynamics my colleagues have just described in Syria. I saw it very acutely when I was in southern 

Yemen, and there are good reasons for that. One, they speak the 

language; two, they know the local culture; three, they are on home 

turf, and it is possible for them to develop relationships that are 

based on mutual dependency rather than temporary exploitation. 

What we are seeing in places like southern Thailand, what we 

have seen in Mindanao with Abu Sayyaf and the MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front], what we have seen in Indonesia is a lot 

of ideological colonization and infiltration that occurred during the 

earlier phase of the war on terror, and what has happened is as 

some of those groups within those particular societies have become 

more marginalized and more radicalized over time, we have seen 

them come up the food chain, come up the tiers from being sort of 

an autonomous local rebel group to becoming an ideologically 

aligned radical group to perhaps even becoming an Al Qaeda affiliate, but we don’t see them rising to the level yet of a transnational 

syndicate or to the level of, say, a full-on Al Qaeda franchise. 

So in the ideological sphere we are seeing a lot of resonance in 

terms of the emulation of tactics, rhetoric, and message, we see a 

lot of transfer of knowledge there, but in terms of actual alliance 

formation, in terms of common long-term political interests, we actually see a divergence, and that is part of the reason why the U.S. 

Army and the Philippine Army have had so much success in places 

like Mindanao where they have been able to drive a wedge between 

Abu Sayyaf, on the one hand, which was more globalized in terms 

of its objectives, and the MILF, which was a local organization with 

parochial interests that temporarily adopted a global ideology to 

further those interests. 

So, again, this reinforces my earlier point about the need for criteria that are based on interests, ideology, and the structure of the 

operational links between the group, and if we don’t break things 

down in that way, everything, the whole map starts to look red, 

and that is not an effective way to manage a strategy, much less 

manage military appropriations for the forthcoming year or the 

forthcoming 10 years. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Is there potential there for these foreign fighters, upon returning home to, say, Malaysia or southern Thailand 

to have made connections to access resources monetarily or otherwise? And I see Dr. Jones nodding and also Mr. Gartenstein-Ross, 

I have just a few minutes left, a minute left. Very quickly. Yes? 
25 

Dr. JONES. Briefly, we have seen fighters that have moved to theaters to engage in combat in jihad in Syria, Libya, Iraq the last 

several years do make connections. It builds in capabilities if they 

want to come back and continue operation, but it also can build financial links to donors in multiple locations, including the Persian 

Gulf. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I agree with my colleagues. One final 

quick thing to add with respect to the foreign fighter flow, last year 

I was living in the Netherlands at a time when they first discovered that there were over a hundred young Dutch Muslims who 

had gone over to fight in Syria, and that problem has only increased in western Europe since then. The most recent report 

states that about 1,800 western European Muslims have gone over. 

So looking at theaters, in addition to Southeast Asia, I think that 

my two biggest concerns are western Europe and the return of foreign fighters there and also Tunisia, which has had a large amount 

for such a small country, and, look, not all foreign fighters, even 

when radicalized, come back and carry out attacks, but people who 

have been at the frontline can have trouble reintegrating even into 

a militant milieu in those areas, and this could create a problem 

for stability in I think both western Europe, but more so in Tunisia. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. Dr. Heck. 

Dr. HECK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being 

here and for your insights. Note, we have touched a little bit on 

this kind of excommunication of ISIS from core Al Qaeda. How do 

you view the implications of that? Are there really any—are there 

any real world implications globally, regionally, and then locally of 

this division between ISIS and core Al Qaeda? 

Dr. JONES. That is a very, very good question. I would, just in 

the interest of time, focus on two. One of them is within Syria 

itself. We have already seen some limited fighting between ISIS 

and Jabhat al-Nusrah and other opposition fighters. I think this 

has the potential to increase the tension between ISIS and other 

opposition groups, including the Al Qaeda affiliate. 

The second issue is we have seen in the past this organization 

called Al Qaeda in Iraq broaden its scope of targets to include Jordan, Amman, if you count the Zarqawi era. I would say this is 

worth monitoring whether the break changes the scope of targeting 

of this organization to include other countries in the region, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and others. It is not clear at this point, but 

that is definitely worth watching. The group has gone in that direction in the past. 

Dr. HECK. Anyone else with a view? 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. Yes, sir. This is an excellent question. I 

agree with Dr. Jones that there is a potential for increased jihadist 

infighting within Syria. You have already seen calls from prominent clerics that fighters should defect from ISIS to other factions 

that are more aligned with Al Qaeda like Jabhat al-Nusrah. For 

example, Abdallah al Muhaysini has made that call, which is a 

fairly significant call. I would look for also, secondly, funding networks, does funding shift? This is something that can have an effect within Syria, within Iraq, and also for the global Al Qaeda net-
26 

work. I will get to what I think rides on the second, but the third 

thing I would look to is clerical defections. 

You have had clerics who have thrown in with Jabhat al-Nusrah, 

some clerics who have thrown in with ISIS, and we can see certain 

clerics who have endorsed ISIS now starting to modify their tone 

and turn towards Jabhat al-Nusrah. Who people align with will 

make a difference in terms of the future shape of jihadism. This 

is where I think it actually makes an enormous difference, less so 

in Syria than with respect to the global network. As I said earlier, 

you might see a fragmentation within Al Qaeda if ISIS is able to 

succeed despite the fact that it was expelled from Al Qaeda because 

it could embolden other affiliates similar to what ISIS did to basically flout commands if ISIS is able to succeed. 

If, on the other hand, ISIS doesn’t succeed, if it gets fragmented 

and upended by the actions that are now being taken against it, 

it is going to serve as a stark warning to affiliates, and it will increase further the kind of control that Al Qaeda’s core leadership 

can exert because ISIS will be an example of what happens. So because of that, it is kind of hard to know what to root for, at least 

for me, but I think that it has tremendous implications, and we 

really are in uncharted territory right now. 

Dr. HECK. Mr. Braniff, do you have a comment? 

Mr. BRANIFF. Just very briefly. In social movement theory, there 

is something called the radical fringe effect, which means that if 

an organization that is more radical than you pops up to your right 

or to your left, it makes you look more mainstream. ISIS was 

kicked out of the Al Qaeda club because it was too violent with respect to violence against other Sunnis. This makes Al Qaeda look 

less extreme to potential funders, potential recruits. So resource 

mobilization, I think from the Muslim world, may increase to 

groups like Al Qaeda or within the Al Qaeda camp. I see it as a 

potential problem. 

Dr. HECK. Dr. Swift. 

Dr. SWIFT. Dr. Heck, I just want to underscore a strategic distinction that pops up as a result of ISIS’s excommunication as well. 

In Al Qaeda over the last 4, 5 or 6 years, there has been a big debate over the best way forward in terms of strategy, and the best 

way to describe that debate is to compare the Zarqawi model, the 

model that was used in Iraq of intimidation, of control, of violence 

for the sake of violence versus the al-Wahishi model being used in 

southern Yemen today, which is about a gradual building out of the 

base by forming networks of mutual dependency with the indigenous tribal structures. 

ISIS has no place in an Al Qaeda that is moving towards the 

Wahishi model, and I think it is important to note that Wahishi’s 

nomination and acceptance as the number two person in Al Qaeda 

shows that Al Qaeda is making a—has made a generational change 

in addition to making a geographical change, it has grown up a little bit more. It is interested in sustaining itself into the future and 

fighting a long war, not in jihad for its own sake, not in jihad for 

the sake of the glorification of the individual fighter, and I think 

that is part of the distinction that is being drawn here. That tension between the Zarqawi model and the Wahishi model is going 

to be the big debate inside Al Qaeda in the next 5 years. 
27 

Dr. HECK. Thank you all very much. Yield back, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. Mr. Gallego. 

Mr. GALLEGO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I—We have long talked 

about the whole government approach. Frankly, I am kind of surprised that we don’t already, you know, distinguish I guess between the different goals on that level. I would think that is fairly 

basic. But one of the things that I think is more complicated than 

that is something that happens, it seems to happen and sucks the 

U.S. in every time, and that is, you know, you go in to do one job 

and then all of a sudden you start doing 15 jobs, and there is mission creep. And so how would you suggest that we focus solely on 

the mission at hand and what do you do about the situation where 

you have all of this mission creep so that it ends up taking a toll 

and, frankly, at the end of the day you don’t really get where you 

wanted to go? All of you, I guess, or whoever. 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative, I may make a stab at that question. 

Part of the problem comes back to the broader issue of having no 

strategy and not having criteria that allow us to draw distinctions 

between our adversaries. Because we haven’t had a strategy based 

on categories and priorities of threat, we have, instead, relied on 

doctrine, whether it is counterterrorism doctrine or counterinsurgency doctrine, and doctrine is very, very important. It explains how you use your force and your resources in a given theater 

to achieve the objectives in that theater, but it doesn’t answer the 

broader questions of strategy and policy as to whether that theater 

is worth the investment and how much of an investment you are 

willing to make in the theater, so if we want to be able to understand how to limit mission creep, if we want to be able to identify 

the scope of our engagement in some of these theaters around the 

world or the way that we assist allies and friends in some of these 

theaters around the world, we have got to have a very clear and 

very precise understanding of who our adversary is, how they 

interact with other groups, and how our interests are implicated by 

the same. 

Mr. GALLEGO. Anybody else? 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I took a stab at this a bit in my opening 

statement when I talked about second order consequences with our 

U.S. military commitments. I think even if we have a very clear 

understanding of who our enemy is as, for example, we did in Somalia when committing to supporting Ethiopian military action in 

late 2006, sometimes mission creep occurs anyway. Part of the 

problem is, number one, when ahead of time it is not clear exactly 

what our goal is. Is it just to displace an enemy? Is it to try to stabilize a state? What if the enemy is then going to come back unless 

you stabilize the state? 

And as you start to ask those questions after making that initial 

commitment, that can cause a mission naturally to creep. Now one 

way we have dealt with that, I think, is by moving towards multilateral efforts. For example, in Somalia, even though I think one 

could accurately say that there has been U.S. mission creep, the 

U.S. has kept its mission rather limited. It is in a very supporting 

role as opposed to being at the forefront, while both AMISOM, the 

African Union Mission in Somalia, and also other local countries 

have taken the lead on the ground. 
28 

Likewise in Mali, I think that is another area where the U.S. 

made a commitment, but overall it was allied forces as opposed to 

the United States that was in the forefront. I think that defining 

the enemy, setting goals are good criteria, but that is not going to 

solve mission creep in and of itself, and I think that when we make 

U.S. commitments, we always have to factor in that mission creep 

is going to be likely at the very outset, and to that extent, especially when something is very marginal to our strategic interests, 

we should think very carefully about whether we should make that 

commitment in resources and potentially in lives. 

Dr. JONES. I think the danger of mission creep is an important 

one to consider. I mean, I served for almost a decade in Afghanistan and a few other theaters in U.S. special operations, so saw 

mission creep up close. I think the mentality here has got to shift, 

and I think it has begun a little bit to one where we don’t have 

to do it ourselves. We—and this is something several of us have 

said on this panel. We have got to work much better than we do 

with partnering nations in the countries we are operating with, 

and then our allies. 

So the French example—so mission creep, we could have gone 

down a mission creep avenue in Mali. We did not. The French felt 

particularly threatened, this is their colonial era. They actually 

went in, the U.S. provided limited intelligence and a few other 

things, the French provided the vast majority of combat power with 

the Malian government. That was an example, I think, of the U.S. 

interests were minimal. It was a Salafi jihadist group or a series 

of them operating. The threats weren’t that serious, and so in that 

case it was well within reason to support local Malian and local 

French allies. The problem—and this is where this is going to get 

a little challenging—is what do we do in countries where there is 

a very acute threat to American security, national security, active 

plotting against the U.S. homeland and very little government capacity on the ground? That is the problem we face in Afghanistan. 

I still think that will be a challenge in countries like that. 

Mr. GALLEGO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. HECK [presiding]. Ms. Walorski. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, gentlemen, for your insights today. Mr. Braniff, you talked about the attrition strategy, and I was wondering if you could expound on that 

a little bit, what that strategy entails. 

Mr. BRANIFF. Representative Hartzler, thank you for the question. Al Qaeda diagnosed the failures of local and regional jihadist 

groups in the 1970s, 1980s, and even into the 1990s. These local, 

more parochial movements tried to overthrow their government or 

reclaim land that they had lost that was occupied by an outside 

power, and they failed time after time, and one of the reasons that 

Al Qaeda came down or Al Qaeda’s diagnosis of this problem was 

that it was because the far enemy, the United States, was supporting the near enemy, whether it was the occupying power, Israel 

or the Mubarak regime, the Saleh regime in Yemen, with $1.3, $1.4 

billion of aid a year, and of course these local and regional movements would fail time after time given that support from the far 

enemy. 
29 

So Al Qaeda reoriented its targeting, or tried to help reorient the 

targeting and tactical preferences of local, regional groups, including its own groups to target the U.S. and the far enemy. The idea 

would be that if they could attrit our political, military, and economic will to engage in the Muslim world, we would sever ties ourselves, the American people would demand that we walk away 

from Syria, from Iraq, from Afghanistan and Pakistan, et cetera, 

and once the American people demand that we walk away and we 

don’t pour money into those regimes, then the local and regional 

regimes can be successful, and one emirate at a time, you can start 

to reclaim some of that land, ultimately wedding those emirates together to reestablish the caliphate. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Very good. What would you consider the number 

one threat that Al Qaeda poses to us today? 

Mr. BRANIFF. The threat that they will attrit our political will to 

remain engaged in the Muslim world. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Would you agree? 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I think the number one threat they pose 

is also attrition-based, but I think it is actually economic. When 

you look at the amount of resources that we have to expend, and 

I wrote a book in 2011, I should state, called ‘‘Bin Laden’s Legacy,’’ 

which looks in great detail at Al Qaeda’s economic strategy. I believe bin Laden saw the economy as the U.S.’s center of gravity, 

that if you can create significant attrition to the U.S. economy, 

then that can achieve the goals that Mr. Braniff outlined, and if 

you look at—he gave an interview actually in October 2011, just 

after the 9/11 attacks, when bombs were falling in Afghanistan to 

an Al Jazeera reporter, and during that interview, he talked about 

what he accomplished with the 9/11 attacks. The very first thing 

he pointed to was their economic impact, and he went on at length 

talking about lost productivity. He sounded very much like an 

economist. 

And if you look now at our commitments overseas, both direct 

military outlays and also assistance that we are providing, if you 

look at security measures, Al Qaeda and allied forces have very 

much been trying to drive up our costs. 

A good example of this is a plot in October of 2010 in which Al 

Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula placed parcel bombs aboard two 

planes, a UPS [United Parcel Service] plane and a FedEx [Federal 

Express] plane, and it didn’t kill anybody. The parcel bombs were 

actually deactivated, but despite that, they released a commemorative issue of the English-language magazine Inspire all about the 

plot. The reason why was because in their view, it would drive up 

our costs. Anwar al-Awlaki, the late AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] leader, not leader of the group, but he was a leader 

within the organization, had an essay in which he said it leaves 

you with two options. Either you don’t do anything and we try 

again, or else you spend billions and billions of dollars on protecting global freight, which is, you know, at the center of basically 

global commerce, so that is what they are targeting, and I think 

that is the biggest threat. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. What policy tools do you think we should be considering right now to rein in and to mitigate any threats from Al 

Qaeda? 
30 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I think the major thing we need to do 

to address that threat is ensure efficiency in our counterterrorism 

efforts. If you look at our early counterterrorism efforts, I think 

TSA [Transportation Security Administration] is emblematic of the 

kind of inefficiency we had at that time, where you stocked it with 

lots and lots of personnel. Initially there was no effort to allocate 

risks among different passengers. 

Now TSA has moved in a different direction. It is trying to even 

assess relative threats before people get to the gate, and in that 

way, provide less scrutiny to some people, more to others. I think 

moving in an efficient direction is something we need to explicitly 

do in our counterterrorism efforts. It is not always an easy process, 

it is sometimes controversial, but I believe it is extraordinarily important. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Very good. We have 30 seconds. Does anybody 

else want to add anything? Dr. Jones. 

Dr. JONES. Yeah, let me just make two comments. One is I think 

one set of policy tools we should not go down, and we did make this 

mistake over the last 10 years with large numbers of conventional 

American forces overseas to deal with this. I think there is a role 

for clandestine forces, I think large numbers of conventional forces 

has generally been problematic. 

The second issue is I think we still have not gotten our hands 

on how best to consolidate and make efficient a counterradicalization and ideological strategy overseas. We did that well in 

the Cold War. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you very much. 

Dr. HECK. And now Ms. Walorski. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen. A few of you alluded to the issue of detainee releases in your 

opening remarks. My question is have prison breaks and detainee 

releases provided additional manpower to these groups, specifically 

AQAP? Whoever, it doesn’t matter. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. Representative, that is a great question. 

The answer is absolutely. You know, AQAP actually has its origins 

in a prison break which gave rise to the new organization, and one 

of the very significant developments last year is, in July you saw 

a series of prison breaks. The most significant was in Iraq at the 

notorious Abu Ghraib prison, which is now being used to house 

high value terrorists. Over 500 people were broken out of Abu 

Ghraib, including—we don’t have a full accounting of it yet, but it 

may have included, for example, individuals who were involved in 

the chemical weapons plot that was broken up in Iraq. Likewise, 

you had a prison break in Libya and also one in Pakistan, and the 

amalgamation of these is going to have an impact on the capabilities of this movement. 

You can also, one other thing I would add, as I alluded to in my 

opening statement, not—there were prison breaks and also prisoner releases as part of the early Arab Spring, and that also we 

can see the effect in terms of reenergizing and creating new movements in places like Tunisia, in Libya, in Egypt where former prisoners play an enormous role in the militant organizations that now 

dominate that landscape. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. Dr. Jones. 
31 

Dr. JONES. Yeah, I just want to highlight one area where we 

should be somewhat concerned. There is now a growing tension between the U.S. and the Afghan governments over the release of 

prisoners in Afghanistan. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. Right. 

Dr. JONES. I think this is something to watch, not just for the 

Al Qaeda individuals, but for those that have served for insurgent 

groups, particularly the Taliban in Afghanistan. So, yes, several of 

the witnesses have been correct, we have got individuals that have 

either escaped from or been released in Egypt, in Tunisia, in 

Yemen, in Iran actually. I think we have got a potential problem 

in Afghanistan as well with the downsizing and the release of prisoners. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. Let me just ask you this, Dr. Jones, in relation 

to that: So how easy would it be for a militant who escapes or is 

released from prison in Yemen to join up with a local AQAP given 

the activity level there to begin with? 

Dr. JONES. If they retain connections relatively easily, when I 

was in Yemen recently, I would say the networks are fairly easy. 

If we go back to 2008 and 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was 

able to find Anwar al-Awlaki and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and he wasn’t even from Al Qaeda. He had been educated in 

both the Persian Gulf, and before that, in the U.K. [United Kingdom]. If he can do it, somebody with those network ties definitely 

can. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. Dr. Swift. 

Dr. SWIFT. I was just going to say that when I was in Yemen, 

I found connections to Al Qaeda within 2 days of being on the 

ground. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. Wow. 

Dr. SWIFT. And turned down those interviews because it they 

would have put the people I was with at risk. So it is very easy. 

I also want to emphasize, though, that when we look at the manpower issues and we look at, you know, the inspiration and all the 

rest, yet there is a great concern about this caldron of 

radicalization that people are in in detention and then sending 

them back, but if you want to look at what is actually driving the 

increase in manpower in places like Yemen, it is not detainees, it 

is not drones, those are our domestic political debates. It is a $60- 

a-month economy and an Al Qaeda organization that shows up and 

pays between $200 and $400 a month, that is a game changer for 

young men looking for their way in the world with no education, 

it is a game changer for people trying to feed a family, so you have 

to look at those local economic dynamics and not just our own debates here in Washington. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. And I appreciate that. And when we talk about 

solutions, and we talk about, you know, what do we do as policy 

and we talk about and we partner with all these other countries, 

what relationship, if any, and how difficult will that be given now 

the elevated status of the Muslim Brotherhood because of the Arab 

Spring, and because of the leadership in many of these nations 

around all of these hot spots? What dynamic does that throw in 

when it comes to working with these other countries now? Go 

ahead, Dr. Gartenstein. 
32 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I think it depends from one country to 

another. In Egypt it was a problem. The Muslim Brotherhood was 

not generally people who were clearly being involved in international militancy. That helped foster the growth of jihadist networks there. If you look to Tunisia, on the other hand, and Nahda, 

which is the party that has been in power, the Islamist party which 

is a part of the global Muslim Brotherhood network, has actually 

gone to war with Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia. At first they were 

very hesitant to do so, they were accused by some secularists of 

aligning with them, but now they are very much committed to 

fighting them. So I think that is going to be something that is very 

local, and I point to that in Tunisia, I think it is somewhat dependent upon the culture there. Even the Al-Nahda party, an Islamist 

party, is a very, the founder of the modern Tunisia state, Habib 

Bourguiba, was a francophone, he was very much committed to secular ideals, and their background is not really fighting for Islam to 

dominate the state, but actually fighting much more for a place for 

Islam within the state, which gives them a very different outlook 

than Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. So I think I would say it poses 

a challenge, but locally there is going to be some distinctions between different affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Mrs. WALORSKI. Okay, thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. HECK. Mr. Nugent. 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this panel 

and your insights in regards to what is going on as it relates to Al 

Qaeda and other affiliates. You know, when you look back over 

time, and we have got 3 billion people, it took us to 1960 to get 

3 billion, we doubled in 40 years, and we expect to double again, 

and so I guess that to me is how do we deal with those failed nation states because I would think Al Qaeda and others like that fill 

the void when I think it was mentioned when there are no jobs, 

when the government can’t provide services, how do we deal with 

that? I mean, through a policy decision that we seem really don’t 

have a direction in this government, you know, how do we look forward to how do we, how we are going to deal with that particular 

issue? Any one of you I would like to hear. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. I think this is an excellent question, and 

this is, to me, one of the key national security issues that we are 

going to be dealing with over the coming decades. When you talk 

about another doubling in population, there are other consequences 

to that. Water resources will be strained, food resources will be 

strained, our energy resources will be strained, you will have a lot 

of people who don’t have jobs particularly as technology develops 

and you can displace workers more easily, it is going to create a 

lot of areas where nation states that were once strong begin to fail. 

You can already see an increase in the number of failed states, failing states, and territories that are ungoverned. Violent non-state 

actors, not just Al Qaeda, but a full range of violent non-state actors, drug cartels, smuggling organizations, nationalist militant 

groups, they are going to be a larger part of the landscape. 

One thing I would suggest, something that I think we are moving 

towards actually is you will see more countries that don’t look like 

the Westphalian state, where instead you have multiple centers of 

power where basically you have a situation of cosovereignty where 
33 

violent non-state actors actually control territory in conjunction 

with the nation state controlling other parts. You can see that already in Libya where you have powerful militias that keep stability 

in certain areas, you can see this in Somalia where you have not 

only the government and the African Union forces, but you also 

have local organizations like Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, which 

provide stability elsewhere. I think one thing the U.S. is going to 

have a serious discussion about over the course of the next decade 

is how do you deal with violent non-state actors that actually can 

provide stability and work to help the government and work 

against the opposition that we want to defeat, and I think that is 

going to be one of the keys, but it is a very complex question that 

in my view is really going to shape the future of national security 

over the next couple of decades. 

Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Swift. 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative Nugent, we have been fighting on the 

wrong battlefield, sir. The United States is a strong, successful national state, nation state. The battlefield we really need to be fighting on in a lot of these places where we have states, but they are 

just sort of fragile facsimiles of a state is society, and society always has a way of governing itself in terms of relationships, in 

terms of networks, in terms of law, usually the law preexists the 

formation of the state, economics preexist the formation of a state. 

Mr. NUGENT. When you look at a country like Afghanistan, 

though, that is just the opposite as what occurred; is that correct? 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative Nugent, I have spent a fair amount of 

time sitting jirga in Afghanistan doing local dispute resolution, so 

I respectfully suggest that there was a law, it just wasn’t a national law, and so one of the things we need to be considering when 

we are moving forward is looking at where the centers of power actually are and looking at where the key economic and social relationships actually are rather than assuming that state structures 

are going to be the answer. 

In some places they are and must be, and ultimately in many 

places we would like to see something that looks like a western 

Westphalian state, but if our interest is targeted towards dealing 

with the threats as we find them in the field, then we have to deal 

with the field as we find it, even if there is no state there. 

Mr. NUGENT. I appreciate that comment. Dr. Jones. 

Dr. JONES. Yes, just briefly. If you look at some of the progress 

fighting against al-Shabaab in Somalia, they have been pushed out 

of Kismayo, their key port city, they have been pushed out of 

Mogadishu, the capital. It is a very weak state. You look at World 

Development Bank indicators, among the weakest states in the 

world, and how has that been possible? It has actually been possible for a number of reasons, and this is a case where the U.S. 

has not been engaged to anywhere near the degree it was in Afghanistan or Iraq. It was the leveraging of local tribes, subtribes, 

militia forces, the help of neighbors like Kenya and Uganda, the 

help of AMISOM forces and the help of also of the Somali government, so I would support what Dr. Swift just noted and actually 

would point to Somalia as a useful example where we have seen 

this, one of Al Qaeda’s affiliates actually weakened along these 

lines. 
34 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you very much, and I yield back. 

Dr. HECK. Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to stay on that 

same train of thought if I could. I have several questions, one of 

them getting back specifically to the President’s comments about Al 

Qaeda being defeated back in 2012. It seemed to me that maybe 

he took the death of Osama bin Laden to mean that Al Qaeda had 

been defeated, and many of us had very strong disagreements with 

that, that it meant the group would fracture and then there would 

be multiple fronts in which you would have to take this on because 

they didn’t have a leader, but we got to the question of Libya, and 

that is where I had gone, and one of the questions that has been 

talked about is what are the United States goals when we get involved in a situation and what is the framework? 

When Qadhafi was taken out of power, did that create more opportunities for Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in that 

region of the world, or did it reduce their opportunities for growth? 

Dr. JONES. I would just say, empirically, Libya today is a hotbed 

of jihadist activity, camps in multiple parts of the country from 

groups not just in Libya, that is Ansar al-Sharia Libya, but Muhammad Jamal has activity, Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia, Belmokhtar’s 

organization, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The challenge is 

the overthrow of the Qadhafi government was not followed through 

with an effort to stabilize the country, both at the national and the 

substate level, so there has been a major void when you get outside 

of cities. 

Mr. SCOTT. Let me follow up with one question, and I would like 

for each of you to answer this one when you get a chance. I see 

it the same way, by the way, Dr. Jones, and one of my key questions is what happened to the weapons that Qadhafi had? And do 

you believe that obviously the United States and our allies didn’t 

go in and secure those weapons so do we, should we believe that 

Al Qaeda and the other militants are the ones that ended up with 

the weapons that Qadhafi had after we, after the United States 

took him out. 

And, by the way, the President made that decision, it did not 

come before Congress. I do not believe that he would have gotten 

permission from Congress. That is just speaking from one person. 

Because I think the questions that we are asking today would have 

been asked before that action was taken, what happens after he is 

gone? 

Dr. JONES. I haven’t done a careful itinerary of where all the 

weapons in Libya have gone, but I do know some of the weapons 

caches were raided by jihadist groups. They ended up—for example, the French reported fighting against groups including Harakat 

Ansar al-Dine in Mali that were using weapons that they verified 

were secured from Libyan weapons caches, so we do know that 

they have gone to other theaters, and some have got into the hand 

of jihadist groups. I just can’t give you a percentage of how many 

got into the hands of these kinds of organizations. Others obviously 

got into the hands of some of the Libyan militia forces that aren’t 

necessarily jihadist groups that have more parochial views. 

Mr. BRANIFF. Representative Scott, I would just add that it 

might be slightly even more complicated than just Qadhafi’s weap-
35 

ons. When these sorts of fronts are opened up, resources often pour 

in from other places as well, and jihadist organizations have a long 

history, especially in North Africa, of glomming on to existing 

jihadist fronts. GIA [Armed Islamic Group] did it in Chechnya, 

GSPC [Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat] in Bosnia, and 

then in Iraq where they latched on to other jihadist fronts, siphoned off resources, moving into those fronts for their own purposes, and we should have every expectation that that happened as 

well in Libya, although that would have happened as long as there 

was a fight against Qadhafi, not necessarily because of U.S. action. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. Representative Scott, I agree with my 

colleagues, and I would just add that this is a good example of 

where we have to understand the world as it will be as opposed to 

what we would like. There was a lot of early optimism of what revolutions meant, and I think that we should have understood the 

danger when we didn’t fully appreciate the strategic situation in 

the region of taking action that was going to very much speed it 

up. When you look at the second order consequences of Libya, it extends not just to regional jihadism, it may extend also to other 

areas such as Syria. I believe something like that really deserves 

further investigation so that we can understand what the consequences actually were, sir. 

Dr. SWIFT. Representative, I think my colleagues have covered 

the waterfront here. I would just make two notes. The first is that 

a lot of these pathways were already open, and they opened during 

the U.S. intervention in Iraq as groups were moving across North 

Africa, including through Libya, into the theater in Iraq. So some 

of these things are preexisting and are not related directly to Qadhafi or to our intervention in Libya. 

The second thing my esteemed colleague Daveed has raised a 

very good point about revolutions generally. Most revolutions fail 

to consolidate political mobilization and social mobilization. Social 

mobilization is you get out and fight, political mobilization is you 

pull together institutions to replace the institutions you have torn 

down. To the extent that we are going to be involved in any place 

where a revolution is taking place, we have got to be very careful 

that the folks that we back have an institutional framework rather 

than an emphasis, as we see with a lot of Al Qaeda affiliates, on 

war for its own—— 

Mr. SCOTT. I am out of time. I think these are questions that all 

should have been answered prior to the President taking action. 

Thank you. 

Dr. HECK. Mr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES OF NORTH CAROLINA. Mr. Chairman, thank you very 

much, and this has been a great panel. Thank you all for being 

here today to share your knowledge with those of us in the Congress about this very, very important issue. I want to—my question 

will deal with the bilateral strategic agreement that this Nation is 

trying to sign with Afghanistan and their leader at the present 

time, Karzai. I know there is supposed to be an election forthcoming in Afghanistan. The people in my district, the 3rd District 

of North Carolina, the home of Camp Lejeune Marine base, 60,000 

retired military, do not understand the stupidity of this policy in 

Afghanistan. 
36 

On the 30th of January in The Washington Post, and I am sure 

you probably read it, after billions in U.S. investment, Afghanistan 

roads are falling apart. I have met with Douglas Wissing, who 

wrote the book ‘‘Funding the Enemy,’’ we did a press conference 

with him as a matter of fact. John Sopko has testified at the subcommittee level many times about the waste, fraud, and abuse. The 

New York Times on January the 30th, ‘‘U.S. Aid to Afghanistan 

Flows On Despite Warnings of Misuse.’’ With the knowledge that 

you have to share with us here today, the Taliban, it is my understanding that a nation like Afghanistan that has fought with foreigners for many, many years, including recently before America 

the Russians, they, right or wrong, seem to want to have the country that they have, whether we want them to have it based on their 

culture or not. 

My question to you, in behalf of the people that I represent, if 

the President does complete this agreement that we have roughly 

10 more years of America, which is financially broke, and we will 

soon be debating on the floor of the House an increase in the debt 

ceiling—the last time I voted for a debt ceiling was in 1998 or -9, 

and the debt at that time was $5.6 trillion. It is now over $17 trillion. If they raise the debt ceiling, it will either be $19 trillion or 

$20 trillion, and we will continue to borrow the money from foreign 

governments to pay Karzai. 

My point is that knowing what you know that I don’t know, how 

in the world can our Nation in such dire needs of its own try to 

reach a 10-year agreement to continue to fund their needs so they 

can blow it up? In my opinion, the Taliban do not want America’s 

presence. Now, if you get into Al Qaeda and these other jihadist 

groups, I really would like for you to speak specifically to the sanity of 10 more years of spending money that we do not have with 

almost no accountability, and as John Sopko said, the waste, fraud, 

and abuse is worse today than it was 12 years ago. 

Would you speak to the sanity of my question and the sanity of 

a policy of what we are trying to do in Afghanistan? Thank you, 

and I appreciate if each one could share your opinions. 

Dr. JONES. I think that is a very, very good question. I don’t see 

this in terms of black and white. I think the work that John Sopko 

and his organization has done, the light they have shined is useful. 

I would just bring in two points. One is I think there has been a 

fair amount of money that has been wasted, American taxpayer 

money that has been wasted for the wrong purposes in Afghanistan. But I would just argue that there continue to be threats from 

some groups to the U.S. homeland, we have had two major groups 

plotting attacks from there, Al Qaeda and the Tehrik-e-Taliban 

Pakistan, U.S. citizens in the region including the Haqqanis and 

Lashkar-e-taiba, so I don’t think what that means is we walk away. 

What I would argue is we have got to be a lot smarter in how we 

spend our money and the size of our force presence there so that 

we can continue to deal with those threats without the waste and 

corruption that we have had over the past several years. I do think 

there are ways to do it. 

Dr. HECK. The gentleman’s time has expired. Dr. Wenstrup. 

Dr. WENSTRUP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we have come 

away with a lot of good insight from each of you today, and I appre-
37 

ciate that. You know, I have come away with that if you look like 

a terrorist and act like a terrorist, you are a terrorist regardless 

of your affiliation. I don’t think there is card-carrying members 

among the terrorist groups necessarily. But I think what we always 

have to do is address, you know, what is the threat to the United 

States, to its citizens, and to our interests, and then address what 

our relationship is with the nation that is involved, and then their 

capabilities, and what they are able to do as far as prevention, as 

far as reaction to an action, and then subsequent detention, and 

those are the things I think that we need to be focusing on around 

the world and what those relationships are, and it can vary from 

country to country. But, you know, after 9/11, I sat there and 

thought, you know, this is going to take 40 years, we are not just 

going to change this overnight. 

You mentioned a decade. I think it is a generational change that 

we should be addressing, and I don’t see us doing that. I think we 

had the opportunity in Iraq, I served in Iraq at Abu Ghraib prison, 

I was there for a year, you know, we made headway with the Iraqi 

people, and we have lost that. We gained trust, we have lost that. 

We had a chance to change a generation of thought patterns. Went 

into a country where, in an area of the world where they think that 

everything that is wrong is our fault, and then they got to see a 

different side of us. I don’t see us doing anything today that 

changes the next generation in that part of the world, and I would 

like you to speak to that and maybe your thoughts on that. 

And then also I think it has become clear that we need a welldefined international justice and detention system. We have not 

done that. We have avoided it. Saying we are going to close Guantanamo doesn’t cover it. We need to do it, and we can do it, and 

it is a different tier. This is not Timothy McVeigh and this is not 

World War II. We need to address that as a nation, and we haven’t 

done it, and I think we should. Turn it over to whoever wants to 

speak on those two issues. 

Mr. GARTENSTEIN-ROSS. Sure, Representative Wenstrup, I think 

that the detention point I would like to speak to briefly. I think 

that is a very important point. What we are dealing with is a class 

of actors that don’t fit within the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva 

Conventions explicitly anticipate state-to-state warfare, and in the 

case of violent non-state actors, you have two specific problems. 

One is that when you anticipate detention until the cessation of 

hostilities, which is what the Geneva Conventions anticipate, you 

don’t know when a war is going to end, but when it is state-tostate, you are pretty sure it is not going to be 10 years, 15 years, 

40 years, while in the case of violent non-state actors it may well 

be. 

The second thing is that in state-to-state conflict, the enemy 

wears a uniform. In this case the enemy does not. The U.S. has 

made some progress working with the International Committee on 

the Red Cross to try to refine its own detention policies, but I 

strongly agree with you, strongly that the need for detention policy 

is not going to go away because in many cases, members of the opposing force have committed no crime, but they are still members 

of the opposing force. Therefore, the criminal justice system does 

not properly deal with them. If we are going to be in wars, we or 
38 

our allies need a detention policy, and I think this is, as you said, 

best worked out at an international level in order to reduce the 

kind of criticism that what you are doing is unlawful, but the point 

is that a policy is 100 percent needed, sir. 

Dr. WENSTRUP. Thank you. Any comments on changing the next 

generation? 

Dr. JONES. Yeah, I have got a few. One is when we have committed American money and forces to areas that are still dealing 

with challenges, the challenges we are talking about here, I think 

it is very important that we not abandon those places. I think that 

is a message that if we do abandon, we send a very dangerous message. I would also say when we make a commitment as a nation, 

when the U.S. Government makes a commitment along these lines, 

we must adhere to it. I have concerns about the redrawing of red 

lines that have repeatedly been moved and what that has done to 

U.S. standing in various parts of the world, and I would just finally 

argue that the groups we are talking about here aren’t just Al 

Qaeda, but the groups that pose a threat to the United States are 

extremist in nature, and I think we have got to continue to work 

both at home and abroad to demonstrate and to argue that those 

organizations, those networks, and those individuals are an extreme version of Islam, they are an abomination of the religion, 

and they are generally not supported in those populations. Until 

that happens, I think we won’t see an end to this. 

Mr. BRANIFF. Just very briefly that Al Qaeda’s affiliated organizations are giving us a lot of ammunition to use against them in 

the body counts that they are generating year after year, and we 

should be using that. 

Dr. HECK. The gentleman’s time has expired. I would like to take 

this opportunity to thank all of the esteemed members of our panel 

for your testimony this afternoon. I think certainly the takeaway 

is that global jihadism, regardless of the name of the actor or the 

group, will remain both a short-term and a long-term threat both 

to our Nation and our national interests, and that this administration and this Congress should be mindful of the growing decentralization and proliferation as we evaluate our policies. Again, 

thank you very much for being here this morning. The meeting is 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

FEBRUARY 4, 2014 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. TURNER 

Mr. TURNER. Since the inception of Al Qaeda in 1988, when do you believe they 

posed the most significant threat to the United States; was the September 11, 2001, 

attack the peak of Al Qaeda’s ability to impose terror on Americans or was this, 

simply, vulnerability in the U.S. defense posture? 

Dr. SWIFT. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. TURNER. Do you believe Al Qaeda has the ability today to conduct a largescale attack against the continental U.S. or any of its forward locations on foreign 

soil? 

Dr. SWIFT. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. TURNER. What do you see the strength of Al Qaeda being in 5 years and how 

can we prevent them from emerging as a dominant force among terror networks? 

Dr. SWIFT. [The information was not available at the time of printing.] 

Æ