A Former F.B.I. Agent on Terrorism Since the Death of Bin Laden
This content was originally published by MICHIKO KAKUTANI on 29 May 2017 | 8:55 pm.
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Soufan, who left the F.B.I. in 2005, has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s so-called E.I.T.s, arguing that torture is both morally wrong and ineffective and dangerous — generating false leads and unreliable information, and helping terrorists find new recruits.
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Ali Soufan
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Laura Cutri
In “The Black Banners,” Soufan provided a compelling insider’s account of American efforts to track down the perpetrators of Sept. 11, and recounted the story of Al Qaeda up through the death of bin Laden. His new book covers some of the same ground, but focuses on that terrorist group after bin Laden’s death, and how it and the Islamic State have evolved since — their different philosophies and divergent trajectories, and how the personalities of their leaders have shaped the organizations. Of the relationship between the soft-spoken bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the fiery militant who founded the group that would become the Islamic State, Soufan quotes an intelligence officer: It was a case of “loathing at first sight.”
Much of this has been covered in books like “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS” by Joby Warrick, “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror” by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, and “ISIS: The State of Terror” by Jessica Stern and J. M. Berger. But Soufan brings firsthand, on-the-ground experience hunting down and interrogating Qaeda members. “Anatomy of Terror” not only tells a gripping story but is filled with insights that put today’s terror attacks by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in perspective with the history and complicated geopolitics of the region.
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Soufan underscores the disastrous role that the United States invasion of Iraq and its bungled occupation played in fueling terrorism, creating chaos and a power vacuum in Iraq — the perfect incubator for insurgent violence and bloodshed. Two calamitous decisions made by the Americans (dissolving the Iraqi Army and banning members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from positions of authority) would prove fateful. Soufan writes that embittered and unemployed “former Baathists soon became the backbone of the new Islamic State of Iraq.” He adds, “With their governmental, intelligence, and military experience, these men made themselves essential both to ISI’s battlefield achievements and to the terror tactics it has deployed against ordinary citizens.”
He lucidly describes the nefarious modus operandi (borrowed, in part, from Hussein’s regime) by which ISI — which would be renamed ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) or ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), and later simply IS, the Islamic State — began aggressively conquering territory in Iraq and Syria in 2013. It would start, in each town, by opening what appeared to be a religious community center, then selecting fervent young men “to inform on their neighbors and spy on any rival rebel groups in the area.”
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While gathering intelligence and blackmail material on residents, Soufan explains: “ISIL would begin concentrating its fighters in the area — typically foreigners who would have less compunction about killing or subjugating the natives. When the local faction judged that it had amassed enough manpower and enough leverage with the local population, it would go public and seize the municipal government, violently if necessary.” Leaders of rival groups would be assassinated, and anyone who opposed ISIL’s rule would be killed — terror tactics that compelled allegiance from local tribes.
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In other chapters, Soufan gives a detailed portrait of Al Qaeda’s more bureaucratic operation, describing bin Laden’s long view of history and his penchant for micromanagement. (“Please send me the résumés of all the brothers who might be nominated for high administrative positions now or in the future.”)
Such passages give a keen sense of how these terrorist groups operate day to day. Soufan also uses some of the techniques he learned as an interrogator to get inside the heads of his subjects, mapping the factors that lead many to become jihadis, and the ways Al Qaeda and the Islamic State use publicity and propaganda to recruit members and promote their brand.
“Know your enemy,” he quotes Sun Tzu, adding that empathy is a useful tool in this war — “not in the colloquial sense of sharing another person’s perspective, but in the clinical sense of being able to see the world through another person’s eyes.” By understanding Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, he writes, we can better “combat the destructive ideology they represent.”
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