Sageman has a superior data source – he did an exhaustive study of all open source information and corroborated it with classified US intelligence data
Sageman, 9 - adjunct Associate Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and former case officer for the CIA (Marc, “Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan,” Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 3 n.4,
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id=92&Itemid=54)
Our ultimate goal of homeland security will be served through a better understanding of the threat confronting it in order to “disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qaeda and its allies.” Let me describe this global threat through a comprehensive survey that I conducted of all the al-Qaeda plots in the West, all the al-Qaeda affiliate plots in the West and all the plots done “in the name of al-Qaeda” in the West since the formation of al-Qaeda in August 1988. It is necessary to expand our inquiry because al-Qaeda is now only one of the many actors in this global neo-jihadi terrorist threat against the West. I call it neo-jihadi because the terrorists have appropriated this contested concept to themselves much to the protest of respected Islamic scholars and the mainstream Muslim communities worldwide [2]. Terrorism for the purpose of this project is the use of violence by non-state collective actors against non-combatants in the West in pursuit of a self-appointed global jihad.
I conducted this survey when I spent a year at the U.S. Secret Service and an additional year at the New York Police Department as its first scholar-in-residence. Although both organizations helped me immensely, the following remarks are my own and cannot be read as their position or opinions. Because homeland security in the West essentially means population protection in the West, I have limited the inquiry to violent plots to be executed in the geographical territory of the West. By the West, I mean North America, Australia and Western Europe, with the exception of the civil war in the Balkans since terrorism is often a tactic of war, but wartime terrorism may not teach us much about terrorism during peace time. To be included in the survey, each plot had to have some loose operational or inspirational link to al-Qaeda or its affiliates; it had to reach a certain level of maturity, characterized by overt acts in furtherance; it consisted of violent acts targeting people in the West, and therefore excluded cases of purely financial or material support for terrorist acts committed elsewhere; some planning had to be done in the West; and terrorists had to initiate the plot. To accurately evaluate the threat, I of course included both successful and unsuccessful plots, which are the true measure of the extent of the threat, rather than just the successful ones. The global neo-jihadi terrorist threat includes plots under the control of al-Qaeda core; al-Qaeda affiliates like the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), Pakistani Lashkar e-Toyba (LT), the Uzbek Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), the Pakistani Tehrik e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as well as threats by autonomous groups inspired by al-Qaeda like the Dutch Hofstad network. I excluded lone wolves, who were not physically or virtually connected to anyone in the global neo-jihad, for they often carry out their atrocities on the basis of delusion and mental disorder rather than for political reasons.
My sources of information were legal documents, trial transcripts, consultations with foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies, to which my position gave me access. Although all these plots are within the open source domain, I did corroborate the validity of the data in the classified domain.
***COIN good / Winning now Winning the war
We’re going to win---Petraeus is changing mindsets---government cooperation
Nagl, 10- president of the center for a new American security, (7/21/10, John, “Hard is not hopeless in Afghanistan,” http://www.cnas.org/node/4746)
During the darkest hours of the counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus testified before Congress that "hard is not hopeless." Those words ring true again today as he begins another turnaround attempt in Afghanistan—a war not going well, but not yet lost. If Gen. Petraeus again plays the cards that led to success in Iraq, an outcome favorable to U.S. interests is still possible.
In Iraq, Gen. Petraeus's efforts to build professional host-nation security and local protection forces, as well as advise political leadership, eventually paid off. It allowed the country to stand on its own against internal and external threats with only minimal outside assistance—the definition of victory in a counterinsurgency campaign. Several years from now, Afghanistan could be in similar condition, with al Qaeda defeated and Afghan security units protecting their own country with the help of U.S. advisers and air support. It’s getting there that’s the hard part.
Gen. Petraeus was tasked with building an Iraqi army in 2004 after we had demobilized Saddam Hussein’s forces. The assignment was enormously difficult, but he had good raw material to work with. The Iraqi population is literate and the Iraqi army had been very competent by regional standards.
The Afghan population, meanwhile, is rich with combat experience but short on soldiers who have graduated from staff colleges. They know how to fight, but not how to read. NATO efforts to build up the Afghan army and police have suffered from a lack of resources until late in 2009, when Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell was ordered to bring them up to speed. Talented as LTG Caldwell is, he’s still short on trainers, and he has to teach his Afghan recruits to read for them to become effective counterinsurgents. That will take time.
Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “All my generals are good—I want generals who are lucky!” Gen. Petraeus was fortunate when he took command in Iraq that years of outreach to the Sunni tribes was beginning to bear fruit. Former insurgents decided to join the Awakening movement to fight against al Qaeda. He organized them into “Sons of Iraq” militias that served as community police and drastically reduced violence levels. Recently deposed Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal tried to follow the same script and succeeded on a small scale, but was unable to win Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s approval to expand the program nationally.
Yet within two weeks of taking charge in Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus convinced President Karzai to back what a NATO official described as a “community watch on steroids.” While it is far too soon to predict whether this local security initiative might ultimately break the back of the Taliban, counterinsurgency efforts that employed such community militias have succeeded far more often than those that have failed to do so.
Gaining Mr. Karzai’s acceptance of the community security initiative—after he had resisted it for a year—may be just as important for Gen. Petraeus as are the militias themselves. One of the hardest parts of a counterinsurgency campaign is the need to work by, with and through the political leadership of the host country. A combination of carrots, sticks and cajoling is always required, but not always fruitful.
Gen. Petraeus diligently mentored Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who was derided as weak and ineffective until he suddenly decided to send Iraqi Army units to clear insurgents from Basra, and personally took charge of the fighting there. Few signs suggest that Mr. Karzai will assume field command of the pending effort to squeeze the Taliban out of Kandahar. But Gen. Petraeus has already demonstrated the ability to get the Afghan president to do things that he would rather not. How well Gen. Petraeus is able to use that talent to improve the performance of Mr. Karzai’s government—and that of Pakistan’s—will likely prove decisive.
The other significant factor is the continuing support of the American people for the Afghan campaign, despite the increasing cost in blood and treasure of what is now America’s longest war. Gen. Petraeus was able to put more time on what he called “the Washington clock” by demonstrating clear progress in Iraq over the course of his first year in command. He will have to do so again, but the task will be made easier by the extraordinary public reputation he earned by turning Iraq around.
The country is fortunate to have David Petraeus available to call upon again to fight a counterinsurgency campaign that will be messy and slow and hard—but not hopeless.
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