NIE says Iraq is 'cause cèlébre' for jihadists
Declassified selected portions of a controversial National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism done by the U.S. intelligence community last April say the Iraq conflict has become "the 'cause cèlébre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters of the global jihadist movement."
Facing political pressure, President Bush ordered the director of national intelligence to publish the "key judgments" section of the April 2006 NIE.
The conclusion about Iraq has been offered before by U.S. officials, but its inclusion in an NIE is significant because it is a formal document that represents the consensus opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The abbreviated four-page document offers few details and sheds little light on how the intelligence agencies came to these conclusions or whether any agencies dissented on parts of the estimate.
The classified report became a political football overnight after the New York Times reported over the weekend that the NIE concluded that U.S. actions in Iraq have exacerbated the terrorist threat. Bush said he ordered the release to demonstrate that the estimate was a broader assessment of how the terrorist threat has changed since September 11. The section on Iraq, for instance, also warns that "perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere."
More broadly, the report claims some progress in degrading the leadership of the al Qaeda terrorist network while warning that the threat has become broader and more diverse.
"Activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion," the report says. "We assess that the global jihadist movement is decentralized, lacks a coherent global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse."
The NIE identifies Europe as a primary battleground for many jihadists, particularly several Sunni extremist groups that have allied themselves with al Qaeda. The findings echo what U.S. intelligence officials have been talking about for several years. For example, U.S. News explored the franchising of al Qaeda by focusing on an Algerian affiliate called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat. The report also warns that al Qaeda is trying to exploit the situation in Iraq. It was written before Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who allied himself with al Qaeda, was killed by U.S. forces.
But already, U.S. intelligence agencies were noting that Iraqis were playing an increased role in managing al Qaeda's operations in Iraq.
In some ways, perhaps the most surprising fact is that it took more than four years for the intelligence community to produce a new NIE trying to describe exactly who the enemy is in the ongoing struggle against terrorism. Democrats have also requested that the DNI produce an NIE on Iraq that could be declassified. But several Democrats have accused the Bush administration of delaying its release until after the November elections.
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