New Threat from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

The Middle East Media Research Institute has stated that a new post originating from Al-Falluja, a popular jihadist website, is seeking information about U.S. naval activities in the Persian Gulf region. According to MEMRI the post is asking for, “the name of the particular naval unit to be targeted, its exact location, the number of troops on board the warship and their ranks, familial status, where their families live, the type of weapons the warship carries and the number of nuclear bombs onboard.” Furthermore, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas, quoting militant sources, stated that “weapons sent to forces of the Somali government by Western countries have fallen into the hands of the mujahedeen” (most likely a reference to al-Shabaab). Al-Qabas goes on to claim that these advanced weapons have been moved to Yemen.

Threats like this are nothing new. It is not uncommon for terrorist groups or sympathetic individuals to issue threats against the U.S. under different identities using a variety of names for the same group. The purpose is to confuse intelligence services monitoring communications by overloading the analysts whose job it is to sift through the gathered information. A great example of this problem is the case of Irhaby007. Before this man was brought to justice it took the cooperation of several countries, multiple intelligence and law enforcement agencies and a few private firms to finally uncover one man’s identity. This is not to say the recently issued threat is not without merit. On the contrary, the timing of the threat and the individual believed to have posted it actually give this threat more credence. After all, terrorists are known to return to successful attacks such as the one carried out in Yemen against the USS Cole in 2000.

All told it appears as if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula does indeed desire to strike at U.S. military targets, whether they still retain the capability following the counterterrorist operations carried out by the Yemen government is another story. According to press releases from NCIS, they are taking the threat seriously. In fact, my NCIS contact just returned from the region and confirmed his agencies stance (this contact was involved in the Cole investigation). Hopefully we’ll learn more in the coming days and weeks.

For those readers who have family members in the region the threat brings to light the intelligence threat posed by terrorist groups. The post specifically requests information on the sailors aboard the ship as well as their family. Social networking sites, such as Facebook, pose a threat to your family abroad if you give up too much information about your loved one. It is prudent that you only allow people you know to see your profile information as well as your status updates. As a counterintelligence officer I frequently look up employees in my company to see what information may be available to foreign intelligence officers looking for an easy target to exploit. It doesn’t take much to steal an identity or blackmail someone with an update that may have seemed innocuous at the time. Everybody, including family members of the military, intelligence community and defense contractors, must practice good operational security or OPSEC. The Cole bombing taught the U.S. a very important lesson – loose lips still sink ships.