Preferred Product Network

Admin | January 21, 2012 | Comments Off

Preferred Product Network

Preferred Product Network

Marc Sageman, ex-CIA officer and Senior Fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, surveyed the origin of global neo-Jihadi terror plots in the last five years and found that in 78 per cent of cases there is no link to a command from the Afghan/Pakistani border region.

Future Concerns

Marc Sageman presented his comprehensive survey covering 60 global neo-Jihadi plots since 1988 in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October 2009. The criteria included both failed and successful plots by Al Qa’ida core, affiliated and inspired groups. Sageman's results showed only 20 per cent of the sample could be attributed to the AQ core command. Sageman also found evidence of a decline in AQ core instigated attacks since 2001 and an upsurge of AQ-inspired autonomous plots since the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Sageman said in his testimony, "Within this cluster of Al Qa'ida inspired autonomous groups is a troubling emerging pattern of lone wolves, directly linked via the Internet to foreign Al Qa'ida affiliated terrorist organizations: the 2004 Rotterdam Plot (Yehya Kadouri), the 2007 Nancy plot (Kamel Bouchentouf), the 2008 Exeter plot (Nicky Reilly) and the 2008 French Direction Centrale du Renseignement Interieur plot (Rany Arnaud). Although these young men are willing to sacrifice themselves for these affiliate terrorist groups, they have never met them face to face. This may become a trend that will increase in the future. "