Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has already claimed responsibility for the failed attempts to send two parcel bombs to Chicago by courier planes of the FedExpress and the UPS on October 29,2010, has come out with a detailed account of its operation code named Operation Haemorrhage in its online magazine titled “Inspire”. The article giving the detailed account was noticed on November 20, 2010, by some US organisations, which closely monitor the propaganda of Al Qaeda and its affiliates. The “New York Times” has carried details of the “Inspire” account in its issue of November 20.
According to the “Inspire” article as quoted by the NY Times, “the operation cost only $4,200 to mount, was intended to disrupt global air cargo systems and reflected a new strategy of low-cost attacks designed to inflict broad economic damage. ” The AQAP’s online magazine said that it had adopted a “strategy of a thousand cuts.” It explained this strategy in the following words: “To bring down America we do not need to strike big. In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect.”
“¦by the NY Times, “the operation cost only $4,200 to mount, was intended to disrupt global air cargo systems and reflected a new strategy of low-cost attacks designed to inflict broad economic damage. ” The AQAPs online magazine said that it had adopted a “strategy of a thousand cuts.”
The magazine repeated an earlier claim of the AQAP that it was also responsible for the September 3 crash of a UPS plane in Dubai that killed the two pilots. While this claim has not so far been proved due to lack of evidence that the September 3 crash was due to an explosive device, its claims of having hoodwinked the security authorities at the point of dispatch in Yemen of the two parcel bombs by successfully booking them without the explosive devices concealed in printer cartridges being detected stand proved by the details given in the “Inspire” article.
The strategy of a thousand cuts adopted by the AQAP against the US is reminiscent of a similar strategy used by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) against India. The objectives of the ISI’s strategy are to discredit the Indian security agencies in the eyes of the Indian public, cause demoralisation, damage the Indian economy and drive a wedge between the Muslims and non-Muslims in India.
The objectives of the AQAP are to create a fear psychosis in the US, make it over-react and spend an enormous amount on physical security thereby damaging the US economy. This is, in fact, not a new strategy of the AQ. Osama bin Laden had outlined this strategy in an audio message disseminated through Al Jazeera on November 2,2004. After saying that Al Qaeda’s goal was to force the US into bankruptcy, bin Laden added: “We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. al Qaeda found it “easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.” As part of the “bleed-until-bankruptcy strategy,” bin Laden cited a British estimate that it cost al Qaeda about $500,000 to carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, an amount that he said paled in comparison with the costs incurred by the US. “Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. “
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