The Jihadi Network's Fatal Flaw

And other interesting articles:

Separate cells would recruit, plan, and operate on their own, receiving only instructions, guidance, and technical information from overseas.

This kind of structure is known as a “distributed network” among fourth-generation warfare (4GW) enthusiasts. (4GW is a strategic school of thought holding that the type of warfare practiced by the Jihadis is a totally new form developed to combat the 3GW – fast air-armor maneuver warfare – perfected by the West. In truth, 4GW appears to be little more than terrorism and guerilla warfare fitted out with an elaborate new vocabulary.)

What’s really new – and a minor justification for 4GW rhetoric – is the use of the Internet as a contact tool. The contact system is always an Achille’s Heel of any underground organization. By identifying one member, following him until he meets up with another, then following the second member, you can soon break open an entire network. This is exactly how Zarqawi himself was at last tracked down, with his spiritual advisor Sheik Abdel Rahman unwittingly leading a Coalition drone straight to his door. Such things as dead drops and the cell system were introduced to overcome this weakness.

Read where the fatal flaw comes in.

The Jihadi Network's Fatal Flaw

A look at the insurgency - A Many Headed Insurgency

Taliban Continuing Losses

The only problem I have with estimations of attrition is that you should never count on body counts where not all of the bodies are retrieved. If I sound like a lefty, I certainly mean nothing more than estimates are often widely and wildly inaccurate. Body counts and estimations of numbers attacking are difficult to assimilate in an insurgency. Further, body counts do not make for a win in an insurgency.

Yet, I also don't forget that the some of the main supply for "taliban" comes from Pakistan and, as this report indicates, that front is getting hotter. The race for the next front of the war (whether a proxy war or direct) is between two areas. Not withstanding N. Korea's most recent saber rattling, it's Pakistan (already underway, but wondering how much we are assisting Pakistan or can) or the Palestinian territories where Islamic Jihad (Al Zawahiri's group and part of the AQ compact for Global Jihad) continues to wage war against Israel even against the wishes of Hamas.

Islamic Jihad and the rest of the "Global Front", as I mention in two other posts, have two problems with Hamas. First, they consider them apostates for having joined the Democratic process. The Democratic process being "man's law" supplanting Allah's law (Shariah). Second, they vie for money from Saudis and other Muslims (in Europe and the United States) that AQ and it's fellow travellers would like to have in their pockets.

To top it off, Hamas gets some financial and moral support from Iran, Shi'ite Islamist government. Shi'ite being either accepted or rejected depending on what branch of AQ (the afghani or the Iraqi) holds sway over the rhetoric of the moment. In Palestine and Iraq (ie, the Western front), the AQ affiliates have very much bought into the idea that Shia in general are not only apostates, but traitors. Hamas and Hezbollah playing into it by participating in voting and democratic government.

It's very probable that all of these splits in ideology and strategy will, in fact, be the actual "fatal flaw" that kills the AQ Islamist organization as any sort of gathering threat. Unfortunately, it may leave the Shia version as the "next".