As protesters overwhelmed former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's security forces in Tunis, the regional office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the George W. Bush administration's signature democracy promotion organization, watched as its mandate was fulfilled in the most unlikely of places.

It is, to say the least, an awkward bit of symbolism. MEPI defines its mission as "develop[ing] more pluralistic, participatory, and prosperous societies." And in the country where it is based, the Tunisian people proved themselves to be uniquely and spectacularly unhappy with their regime.

But according to current and former democracy promotion advocates in the U.S. government, the decision to base MEPI's offices in Tunisia was made because the embassy had enough free space to accommodate its staff, and the country was thought to be stable enough to not interfere with the organization's sometimes controversial work.

Scott Carpenter, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration who oversaw the creation of MEPI, said that the Ben Ali regime was "constantly paranoid" about the organization's presence in the country, and never allowed it to undertake significant democracy promotion programs. As a result, "we were doing a lot of stuff very, very quietly - not to say covert, but very quietly," Carpenter said.

The Ben Ali regime's hostility to any efforts to open up the political system was attested to by other Western diplomats who served in Tunis. Alan Goulty, who served as the British ambassador in the country from 2004 to 2008, said that the government would constantly raise the specter of terrorism to discourage any contact with Tunisian opposition figures.

"There was one explosion in 1987 of a bomb, where a British lady was wounded and lost her leg," Goulty said. "I lost count of the times that Tunisian officials, 15 years later, reminded me of that incident to justify their claims that the Tunisian opposition, whatever form it took, was terrorist."

In theory, the European Union should have had considerable economic and political leverage to convince the Ben Ali regime to liberalize. Trade between EU member states and Tunisia in 2009 was in excess of $20 billion - by comparison, total U.S. imports and exports to the country were valued at around $800 million. The EU association agreement with Tunisia also provided a ready-made avenue for discussion human rights and political liberalization. In practice, however, EU efforts in the country were anemic at best.

"Frankly, the EU always pulled its punches [on democracy promotion], because of the need to operate unanimously," said Goulty. "And a different approach was taken by [our] Mediterranean partners, principally France and Italy, who believed that the best way forward was to get close to the regime and further one's economic interests."

In fact, the primary contribution that the United States made to Tunisia's recent unrest was neglect. As U.S. relations with the other North African states improved over the past two decades, the relative importance of Tunisia as a U.S. ally in the region declined. U.S. diplomats may not have had much success promoting liberalization in the country, but the national security implications of the fall of Ben Ali's regime raised steadily fewer concerns in Washington.

David Mack, currently a scholar at the Middle East Institute, served as the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Tunisia from 1979 to 1982. "If you go back to the time when I was there, our relations were disappearing with Libya, we had poor relations with Algeria, and strained relationships in many parts of the Muslim world," he noted. "But the reality is that today Tunisia plays a smaller role overall in U.S. strategic political calculation."

However, diplomats insisted that Tunisia's apparent stability under Ben Ali did not cause them to underestimate the population's grievances with his regime. A prescient June 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks criticizes the "sclerotic" regime, which it says has "lost touch with the Tunisian people." The same memo complains that "make it exceptionally difficult for the US Mission to conduct business" and meet with regime opponents.

Those who spent time in the country seconded that assessment. "The place was so sterile -- you just feel people's fear, and the complete lack of dynamism in the society," said Carpenter. "Within the State Department we used to refer to it as ‘Syria with a smile.'"  

To prove that none of those arrested or questioned surrounding a bomb attack on the Nigerian capital of Abuja earlier this month were in fact involved, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has just released a note to journalists vowing to strike again. Letter from the spokesman, Jomo Gbomo, is pasted below:

"In an obvious attempt to intimidate anyone opposed to the presidential ambition of Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian government hiding under the cloak of terrorist hunters have been witch-hunting, falsely accusing and harassing its perceived opponents.

A perfect opportunity emerged on October 1, 2010 after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) detonated car bombs in a symbolic attack in Abuja for which we reaffirm responsibility but with regrets to the avoidable loss of lives.

The government of President Goodluck Jonathan responded by arresting innocent persons on trumped-up charges, linking them with the attack. From Chief Raymond Dokpesi which indirectly was pointing at former military head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida to Henry Okah in South Africa, the government has also named and arrested persons not connected with our actions as suspects and masterminds. 

The South African government is playing an obviously partial role over the Independence Day Bombing in its handling of the Henry Okah angle because the Nigerian government has threatened to nationalize the South Africa communication giant, MTN if the country does not follow a devious script.

Since the court in South Africa has turned into a Kangaroo one that is scandalously biased, and both governments are bent on blaming innocent persons on ridiculous insinuations and unrelated evidence, we have decided to carry out another attack in Abuja without altering our mode of operation to proof the suspects' innocence.

As usual we will give a thirty minutes advance warning to avoid civilian casualties then sit back and watch how the blame game will be played out on all those already falsely accused.

Jomo Gbomo

Jon Stewart hosted Tony Blair on The Daily Show Tuesday night, and he barely let the former British prime minister get a word in edgewise. Stewart evidently had some things to get off his chest, because he harangued Blair at length in one of his occasional moments of earnest seriousness. And in so doing, he just may have eviscerated the logic of the war on terrorism:

Stewart: As a pragmatist, is our strategy to rid the world of extremists practical? In a long-term... You talk about this as a generational conflict. Are we being practical in that pursuit?

Blair: Well, I think we're being realistic that it exists, that it exists as a more or less a global movement, with a narrative that's quite deep. And I think you know it's not just about hard power but about soft power as well. It's about how we can bring people of different faiths together, and resolve the Middle East peace process, as well as the hard business of fighting. But I think we don't have an option but to confront this extremism and defeat it. Because when the extremism came here, to New York, on 9/11, it wasn't a provocation.

Stewart: No. But I think the point I'm trying to make is: A very small group of people can do a great deal of damage now. And the amount of resources that we're putting into changing regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan...

I live in New York. We have cockroaches. I'm rich. I hire people to come in; they fumigate... I will never, as long as I live in New York City, be totally rid of cockroaches. Now, I could seal my apartment; I could use bug bombs so that it was nearly unlivable and reduce the amount of cockroaches. But what kind of life is that for me? [Applause.] Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see where I'm going here? Our strategy seems idealistic and naïve to some extent.

Blair responded that he didn't "see what the alternative is" but to stand and fight. Then, after some back and forth about the wisdom of taking out Saddam Hussein, Stewart launched this monologue, with Blair trying vainly to interrupt:

"This is what I mean by naive: Omigod, we have cockroaches. We have to get rats to eat them. Omigod, now we have rats! Oh no, we better getter cats! Oh no, we're overrun by cats; let's get dogs! Omigod, we need to get polar bears!

Do you understand what I'm saying? We are chasing our tails around...

Our resources are not limitless. We cannot continue to go into countries, topple whatever regime we find distasteful, occupy that country to the extent that we can rebuild its infrastructure, re-win the hearts and minds because here's my point: Ultimately within that, there could still be a pocket of extremism in that country... So all that effort still would not gain us the advantage and the safety that we need, as evidenced by the attacks in England by homegrown extremists. So don't we need to rethink and be much smarter about the way we're handling this?"

The interview that aired was edited, but I recommend the entire dialogue, in which Blair and Stewart also tangle about the threat of Iran.

Answer: no. It is terrible. But perhaps there are some idiots out there who will find it appealing.

According to the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove, the U.S. government is apparently "deeply concerned" that the magazine, called Inspire, will spread al Qaeda's message to susceptible audiences in the West. Grove quotes an anonymous counterterrorism official saying, "The packaging of this magazine may be slick, but the contents are as vile as the authors."

Actually, no -- the packaging is not slick at all. It's very "I played around with Microsoft Publisher for a few hours."

Marc Ambinder gots his paws on a copy of the first issue, and it's as ridiculous as you might imagine. One article, by someone named "the AQ chef," is called "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom." There's an essay by Yahya Ibrahim, a radical Canadian-born  preacher, entitled "The West Should Ban the Niqab Covering Its Real Face." There's a "message to the people of Yemen" from al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, a column by Yemeni-American sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, an interview with the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Basir al Wahishi, and various practical lessons on such topics as sending encrypted messages and what you can expect when you join the jihad. It also has a page for "contact us," which is intriguing -- how does that work?

Granted, I'm not the target audience for this rag, and Brookings analyst Bruce Riedel makes a good point here: "From the standpoint of al Qaeda, it’s not intended to be a bestseller. They’re just looking for one guy who will be inspired by this to bomb Times Square, and this time maybe he will put together the bomb correctly.”

Still, I'd wager that the folks who are producing Inspire are going to get killed or captured before they inspire any such attacks. I also don't think we'll be seeing an al Qaeda iPad app anytime soon.

UPDATE:  You can download the full pdf file here at your own risk (it's about 5 MB).

This post has been updated. Thanks to readers for pointing out my mistakes.

When I flipped open Evan Kohlmann's 2006 report on Insani Yardim Vakhi (IHH), the Turkish organization that helped organize the Gaza-bound flotilla raided by Israel on Monday, I was half-expecting a series of thinly-sourced allegations that attempted to tie the group to Islamic extremist movements. After all, Kohlmann's credentials have been raked over the coals in recent days, in an attempt to discredit the report. Surely, the source document would be equally thin on facts?

It isn't. Kohlmann's report is a relic from a time when one could express concern over an obscure Turkish NGO's connection to terrorists without the issue becoming hopelessly entangled with one's loyalties in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. And Kohlmann convincingly describes the group's extensive ties to jihadist groups in Europe, Turkey, and North Africa.

Drawing on a French intelligence report, Kohlmann describes how the group fell under the scrutiny of Turkish security forces in the late 1990s, who "uncovered an array of disturbing items, including firearms, explosives, [and] bomb-making instructions" in the organization's Istanbul offices. The Turks determined that the IHH's members were planning to join the mujahideen in Bosnia and Chechnya, and that the president of the organization had worked to send men to Muslim countries for "jihad," and trasferred weapons to those countries. An analysis of the group's telephone records also revealed phone calls to an al Qaeda guesthouse in Milan, and Algerian terrorist networks in Europe.

Overall, Kohlmann paints a picture of an organization that maintains close working relationships with extremist organizations, and which has often run afoul of Turkish authorities. In 1999, following the disastrous earthquakes that struck northwestern Turkey, the Turkish government eventually banned the IHH from distributing aid, naming it as one of several "fundamentalist organizations" that refused to provide information on its activities. It is not Israeli PR flacks that provide the damning facts about IHH, but French and Turkish authorities. In today's New York Times, Henri Barkey, no hard-line Kemalist himself, also refers to the IHH as a "quite fundamentalist" organization that has dabbled in inflammatory rhetoric against Jews.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Israel's actions aboard the flotilla on Saturday constituted a tragedy, and a disaster for international peace. The Israel Defense Forces are tasked every day with confronting people who despise them, and Israel can only be truly protected by not killing them. Still, the IHH's history does shed light on the challenges that the IDF likely faced aboard the Mavi Marmara, and why it failed so spectacularly in its mission.

The timing of Iraq's announcement that an al Qaeda prisoner in its custory was plotting to attack the World Cup struck me as suspicious yesterday, but it looks like Abdullah Azam Saleh al-Qahtani did at least intend to attack the event. The AP reports: 

"We discussed the possibility of taking revenge for the insults of the prophet by attacking Denmark and Holland," al-Qahtani told The AP. "The goal was to attack the Danish and the Dutch teams and their fans," he added.

"If we were not able to reach the teams, then we'd target the fans," he said, adding that they hoped to use guns and car bombs.

It was unclear whether the militants had the ability to carry out what would have been quite a sophisticated operation - a complicated attack far from their home base. The Iraqi security official said no steps had yet been taken to put the plan into motion, such as obtaining bomb-making materials.

If this weekend's bungled car bombing in Times Square has got you thinking about other "might have been's," check out Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann's rundown of the most serious attempted terrorist attacks since 2004 from their "Almanac of al Qaeda" feature in the most recent print issue of FP.   

Not that terrorism is ever defensible as a political tactic, but it's at least possible to determine the political motivation behind a terrorist attack.  That's not really true of the Real IRA's latest bombing, carried out just hours before London relinquished control of Northern Ireland's criminal justice system:

The Real IRA splinter group admitted responsibility for forcing a Belfast cabbie to drive the bomb to the gates of Palace Barracks, the high-security home of the anti-terrorist agency MI5 in Northern Ireland.

Senior police officers said the bomb could easily have killed or maimed civilians living beside the base in Holywood, a prosperous Belfast suburb, but for the bravery of the taxi driver. He had been ordered by three dissident gunmen to deliver the bomb to the base and not raise any alarm - or else he or his family members would be executed. But police said the man, who was not publicly identified, shouted "It's a bomb!" as soon as he parked outside a perimeter entrance.

Twenty minutes later, officers were still evacuating elderly couples and families from nearby houses when the bomb detonated, showering the roofs and front yards with shrapnel and debris but hitting nobody.

It's become a political cliche to describe terrorist attacks as "cowardly," but it's hard to think of another word for kidnapping a taxi driver's family and forcing him to drive your bomb into a residential neighborhood. The incompetence and rarity of the Real IRA's attacks make them unlikely to inspire widespread terror in the population, but their callousness and political tone-deafness make them unlikely to win any sympathy.

Plus, mainstream Republican politicians like onetime IRA commander turned Deputy Prime Minister Martin McGuiness don''t seem to have any reluctance to criticize the group's actions, calling them "a waste of time, totally futile, because the political landscape has changed forever."

Probably time to pack it in. 

The BBC's Richard Galpin editorializes on this week's subway bombing in Moscow: 

Given the size of the Moscow Metro, the number of people who use it and the history of previous militants' attacks on this iconic transport system, the authorities must have known it was a potential target. So what has happened is an embarrassing lapse of security by the police and intelligence services.

One senior security analyst told the BBC the authorities had simply not expected to deal with this kind of threat by individual suicide bombers. It is also damaging for the country's top politicians including Mr Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Galpin goes on to say that Caucasian militants have now "proved they are capable of striking in the heart of the capital."

I don't generally think too highly of the current Russian government or security services, but this seems like an unfair attack -- particularly since it's not really clear from Galpin's article what Russian authorities should have done to prevent the attack. Sure, you can criticize the Kremlin's handling of the Caucasian insurgency. But assuming that a certain level of insurgent activity does exist and will continue to, should the government have restricted the movements of people from Dagestan to keep them out of the "heart of the capital"? Individually screened passengers in one of the world's busiest Metro system? I've been subjected to random ID check on the Moscow Metro system and I don't think it's a practice that really needs to be increased.

As always happens in the wake of these tragedies, transit systems around the world are looking into their own vulnerabilities. (See above photo from D.C. Metro.) Needed as these upgrades may be, they're also a classic example of symptom of the syndrome that leads policymakers to believe that the next terrorist attack is sure to resemble the last one and the reason why we all have to take off our shoes at the airport.

The Christian Science Monitor offers up a few technological fixes for mass transit systems looking for a safety upgrade, but ultimately it doesn't seem possible to protect subways systems from the most determined attackers without seriously disrupting service. Jena McNeil of the Heritage Foundation -- not the most dovish of institutions on homeland security issues -- addressed this question in a blog post on Tuesday

Subways and other forms of public transportation will always be vulnerable—putting in place new security measures for every threat is a waste of money, and doesn’t do much to stop attacks.

The formula for combating terrorism effectively remains the same. Stopping terrorism in the earliest stages, through smart investments and effective intelligence gathering/information sharing has been and will continue to be the most successful way to stop these types of attacks.

Those are all areas where there's plenty of room to criticize Moscow's counterterrorism tactics, but thanks to the volume of passengers and proximity to urban centers, subways are always going to be a tempting target. As someone who's commuted by subway in New York, Moscow, and Washington, I can say that compounding the damage by making the system less efficient doesn't seem like the answer. 

We thought we had covered it all when we published "The World's Most Bizarre Terrorist Threats" in January. Little did we know that World of Warcraft and smoke detectors would soon be one-upped:

Female homicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.

The shocking new Al Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women's breasts during plastic surgery - making them "virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines."

It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.

MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male bombers.

"Women suicide bombers recruited by Al Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery," Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims.

Now let's just hope the TSA doesn't add new screening measures to protect against ... such threats.

The Indian government is preparing to deploy thousands of soldiers to defeat the country's growing Naxalite Maoist insurgency. Home minister P Chidambaram's description of the threat posed by the Naxalites was striking:

The Home Minister told a media conclave in Delhi that the Maoists and Islamic militants represented the two biggest threats to India’s national security, but the former was the more serious.

“Jihadi terrorism can be countered, usually successfully, if you are able to share information and act in real time,” he said. “But Maoism is an even graver threat.”

The numbers back up Chidambaram's claim: 

India has suffered only one attack by suspected Islamist militants - a bombing in the western city of Poona which killed 12 people last month - since the devastating one on Mumbai in November 2008.

By comparison, Maoist violence claimed 908 lives in India in 2009, the highest since 1971, according to the Home Ministry.

Chidambaram pledged that the Maoist threat would be eliminated in two to three years, which seems ambitious given that they're operating in 200 of India’s 626 districts. As a internal rather than transnational threat, the Naxalites don't get much attention in the West. But it stikes me that their potential to damage the credibility of India's democratic government or provoke it into overreaction is probably a serious cause for concern. 

A brand new round of "El Qaeda" warnings from Antonio Maria Costa of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime still requires a pretty big intuitive leap:

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says "there is more than just spotty evidence" indicating a link between drug traffickers and terror groups.

"And before this becomes a very serious problem, it has to be dealt with and nipped in the bud," Costa said in an interview with The Associated Press, on the sidelines of a seven-nation drug summit in the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

Cocaine from South America has been moving through the West African coast for several years, and experts believe drugs are then parceled out to smugglers who move the cocaine north by boats and by road. One suspected smuggling route crosses portions of the Sahara desert controlled by insurgents. The cocaine-for-arms trade is especially worrying given the recent expansion of an al-Quaida-linked terror group, which was once based exclusively in Algeria but now has tentacles in Mauritania, Mali and Niger.

"There is plenty of evidence of a double flow. (Of) drugs moving, arriving into West Africa from across the Atlantic ... and the trading — exchange — of cocaine for arms," Costa said.

Costa did not say how extensive the cocaine-for-arms exchange was thought to be, or which countries were involved.

There seems to be an awful lot of hand-waving happening here. What we know is that drug smugglers are moving cocaine through West Africa, including regions where Al Qaeda linked militants also operate. This, in itself, may be cause for concern. But many, including prominent politicans, seem to be assuming that an established link exists when the only reported case of a suspected al Qaeda affiliate making a coke deal --again trotted out as evidence in this article -- was with someone who turned out to be a DEA agent. Until there's some more evidence, a little more cautious reporting might be in order.

In any event, if al Qaeda is getting into the cocaine business, it would seem to suggest that the organization is moving outside its core competency in order to raise money, and perhaps setting up more opportunities for authorities to infiltrate their networks.

Sayyid Imam "Dr. Fadl" al-Sharif, the al Qaeda co-founder and one-time mentor of Ayman al-Zawahri who has, in recent years, become the organization's most trenchant critic, lambasting its use of violence in his writings from an Egyptian prison cell, is rolling out his latest opus. As usual, online Jihad expert Jarret Brachman breaks the news: 

Al-Sharq al-Awsat has secured exclusive publishing rights and, like his other works, is being trickled it out in serialized format, episode-by-episode.

The book is called, The Future of the Conflict in Afghanistan, and is another hit-piece on UBL and Al-Zawahiri.

Definitely stay tuned to Brachman's blog as more chapters are released. As an interesting aside, Brachman says the Al-Sharq al-Awsat introduction to the book references Brachman's profile of Sayyid Imam from FP's Top 100 Global Thinkers issue. Here's an excerpt from the piece: 

An important metric for how vulnerable al Qaeda feels about a given topic is how much its leaders publicly discuss it. Not only has Zawahiri responded to Sharif in multiple video statements and interviews, but in early 2008 he published an entire book on the Internet, titled Exoneration, in which he states that Sharif is blatantly lying and manipulating facts to suit the agenda of his captors. Other al Qaeda leaders, supporters, and surrogates have released their own attacks on Sharif.

Sharif's recent writings have re-energized a community of former Egyptian terrorists who now stand against the use of violence. Coming from within the movement, he has been able to subvert it in a way no one else ever has.

Also check out Brachman's recent online piece on the next generation of jihadi pundits.