Al-Qaeda's 22 tips for dodging drones
Al-Qaeda's list of 22 tips for dodging drone attacks - including
at least one believed to originate with Osama bin Laden - has
been found hidden inside a manila envelope in a building
abandoned by Islamists in Mali.
A
Reaper drone flying over Afghanistan Photo: Neil Dunridge
The document includes advice such as "hide under thick trees"
(believed to be bin Laden's contribution), and instructions for
setting up a "fake gathering" using dolls to "mislead the
enemy".
Found by the Associated Press in a building in Timbuktu, the
ancient city occupied by Islamists last year, the document is
believed to have been abandoned as extremists fled a French
military intervention last month. It is a Xeroxed copy of a
tipsheet authored by a Yemeni extremist that has been published
on some jihadi forums, but that has made little appearance in
English.
The list reflects how al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghbreb
anticipated a military intervention that would make use of
drones, as the war on terror shifts from the ground to the air.
The document also shows the coordination between al-Qaeda
chapters, which security experts have called a source of
increasing concern.
"This new document... shows we are no longer dealing with an
isolated local problem, but with an enemy which is reaching across
continents to share advice," said Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran
of the CIA, now the director of the Intelligence Project at the
Brookings Institute.
While some of the tips are outdated or far-fetched, taken
together, they suggest the Islamists in Mali are responding to the
threat of drones with sound, common-sense advice that may help
them to melt into the desert in between attacks, leaving barely a
trace.
"These are not dumb techniques. It shows that they are acting
pretty astutely," said Col Cedric Leighton, a 26-year-veteran of
the United States Air Force, who helped set up the Predator drone
program, which later tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
"What it does is, it buys them a little bit more time - and in
this conflict, time is key. And they will use it to move away from
an area, from a bombing raid, and do it very quickly," he said.
The success of some of the tips will depend on the circumstances
and the model of drones used, Col Leighton said. For example, from
the air, where perceptions of depth become obfuscated, an imagery
sensor would interpret a mat stretched over the top of a car as
one lying on the ground, concealing the vehicle.
New models of drones, such as the Harfung used by the French or
the MQ-9 "Reaper," sometimes have infrared sensors that can pick
up the heat signature of a car whose engine has just been shut
off. However, even an infrared sensor would have trouble detecting
a car left under a mat tent overnight, so that its temperature is
the same as on the surrounding ground, Col Leighton said.
Unarmed drones are already being used by the French in Mali to
collect intelligence on al-Qaeda groups, and US officials have
said plans are underway to establish a new drone base in
northwestern Africa.
The US recently signed a "status of forces agreement" with Niger,
one of the nations bordering Mali, suggesting the drone base may
be situated there and would be primarily used to gather
intelligence to help the French.
The author of the tipsheet found in Timbuktu is Abdallah bin
Muhammad, the nom de guerre for a senior commander of al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based branch of the terror
network.
The document was first published in Arabic on an extremist website
on June 2, 2011, a month after bin Laden's death, according to
Mathieu Guidere, a professor at the University of Toulouse.
Prof Guidere runs a database of statements by extremist groups,
including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and he reviewed and
authenticated the document found by the AP.
The tipsheet is still little known, if at all, in English, though
it has been republished at least three times in Arabic on other
jihadist forums after drone strikes took out US-born cleric Anwar
al-Awlaki in Yemen in September 2011 and al-Qaeda
second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi in Pakistan in June 2012.
It was most recently issued two weeks ago on another extremist
website after plans for the possible US drone base in Niger began
surfacing, Prof Guidere said.
"This document supports the fact that they knew there are secret
US bases for drones, and were preparing themselves," he said.
"They were thinking about this issue for a long time."
The idea of hiding under trees to avoid drones, which is tip No
10, appears to be coming from the highest levels of the terror
network. In a letter written by bin Laden and first published by
the US Center for Combating Terrorism, the terror mastermind
instructs his followers to deliver a message to Abdelmalek
Droukdel, the head of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, whose
fighters have been active in Mali for at least a decade.
"I want the brothers in the Islamic Maghreb to know that planting
trees helps the mujahedeen and gives them cover," bin Laden writes
in the missive. "Trees will give the mujahedeen the freedom to
move around especially if the enemy sends spying aircrafts to the
area."
Hiding under trees is exactly what the al-Qaeda fighters did in
Mali, according to residents in Diabaly, the last town they took
before the French stemmed their advance last month. Just after
French warplanes incinerated rebel cars that had been left
outside, the fighters began to commandeer houses with large mango
trees and park their four-by-fours in the shade of their rubbery
leaves.
Hamidou Sissouma, a schoolteacher, said the Islamists chose his
house because of its generous trees, and rammed their trucks
through his earthen wall to drive right into his courtyard.
Another resident showed the gash the occupiers had made in his
mango tree by parking their pickup too close to the trunk.
In Timbuktu also, fighters hid their cars under trees, and
disembarked from them in a hurry when they were being chased, in
accordance with tip No 13.
Moustapha al-Housseini, an appliance repairman, was outside his
shop fixing a client's broken radio on the day the aerial
bombardments began. He said he heard the sound of the planes and
saw the Islamists at almost the same moment. Abou Zeid, the senior
al-Qaeda emir in the region, rushed to jam his car under a pair of
tamarind trees outside the store.
"He and his men got out of the car and dove under the awning,"
said Mr al-Housseini. "As for what I did? Me and my employees? We
also ran. As fast as we could."
Along with the grass mats, the al-Qaeda men in Mali made creative
use of another natural resource to hide their cars: Mud.
Asse Ag Imahalit, a gardener at a building in Timbuktu, said he
was at first puzzled to see that the fighters sleeping inside the
compound sent for large bags of sugar every day. Then, he said, he
observed them mixing the sugar with dirt, adding water and using
the sticky mixture to "paint" their cars. Residents said the cars
of the al-Qaeda fighters are permanently covered in mud.
The drone tipsheet, discovered in the regional tax department
occupied by Abou Zeid, shows how familiar al-Qaeda has become with
drone attacks, which have allowed the US to take out senior
leaders in the terrorist group without a messy ground battle. The
preface and epilogue of the tipsheet make it clear that al-Qaeda
well realizes the advantages of drones: They are relatively cheap
in terms of money and lives, alleviating "the pressure of American
public opinion."
Ironically, the first drone attack on an al-Qaeda figure in 2002
took out the head of the branch in Yemen - the same branch that
authoured the document found in Mali, according to Riedel. Drones
began to be used in Iraq in 2006 and in Pakistan in 2007, but it
wasn't until 2009 that they became a hallmark of the war on
terror, he said.
"Since we do not want to put boots on the ground in places like
Mali, they are certain to be the way of the future," he said.
"They are already the future."
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