JARRET BRACHMAN

One of my best jihadist interlocutors, Abu Talhah al-Amrikee, got bagged this week for alleged desire to go join al-Shabab.  As followers of my blog will know, he and I had vigorous backs and forths on the blog but what you may or may not know is that he and I had been holding a series of private discussions as well.  I won’t make those public (yet) given that this is rapidly unfolding.

I will, however, copy/paste an excerpt from the article that Abu Talhah recently penned where he takes aim at several CT analysts, including me. Here’s what he wrote in “Counter Counter Terrorism: Fomenting Disunity In the Counterterrorism Movement.”

After having experimented briefly with creating division among the individual personalities in the counter terrorism movement, I have come to the conclusion that this is not a practical avenue to explore. However, I have noticed that there are many polarizing figures and ideas in the movement that can be exploited to create divisions.

Jarret Brachman

Jarret Brachman is viewed in very high regard by others in his field. However, from what I have seen he can be exploited in three different areas:

Jihobbyism:

Often other CT officials express concern over the term “Jihobbyist” which was coined by Brachman. It refers to people who post things on the internet, but who have not done anything concrete as far as action is concerned. For example, I would certainly have this phrase directed at me by Brachman and his associates.

Many people in the CT field are worried that this term causes people to underestimate the threat of domestic attacks. References to this word in postings when a domestic attack does occur could cause people to blame Jarret Brachman for any shortfalls in attention being payed to domestic threats. It does not matter if Brachman has clarified his stance toward “Jihobbyism,” because the damage has been done already and it is clear who popularized this term.

We should use this term in our public postings for two reasons:

1. It draws a clear distinction between real mujahideen and people like me, which creates a feeling of inadequacy, and feelings of inadequacy drive people to eliminate that feeling through actions.
2. It turns any blogger who does anything remotely close to action into a failure by Brachman, and even if people are reading this post right now, then they will not be able to stop their feelings of Brachman’s failure in this matter from coming to light. Even if Brachman’s opinions have a positive result for the CT movement, it will be destroyed by the emphasis on this word by members of the jihadi community.

The LIFG

Brachman is currently working on a bunch of stuff about the LIFG, which is not related to the greater jihadi movement. This is sort of how CNN tried to promote the fatwa of Tahir ul-Qadri when he has no influence on the jihadi movement.

We will have to wait until he publishes some things before we see exactly how to attack it, but by pretending that there is a group of CT officials who are obsessed with the LIFG we could likely convince someone to produce a paper refuting this LIFG-CT group after a couple of years. This would help divide the movement into camps.

Abu Yahya Al-Libi

Brachman has an unusual obsession with Abu Yahya Al-Libi, hafidhuhullah, and this can be exploited as a fringe opinion which could eventually divide the CT field into two camps. One camp thinking he is the next Shaykh Usama, and the other thinking he is insignificant. If this was to occur, then Al-Qa’ida would likely begin releasing videos which clearly played him up to be a major leader, and then keep him out of the spotlight for a while. This would divide CT officials, because there would be two sets of evidence which contradict each other. Naturally the movement would fall into two camps overtime.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Brachman's Take, ENGLISH-LANGUAGE, Media, Terror Plots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.