The Microaviary

The word on the street… er unpaved, barely passable mountain trail… is that al Qaeda’s leadership is in disarray, that as a note in the Osama bin Laden lair suggests he was less than content that his senior officers were busier trying to stay alive than in implementing anti-American terrorism, the impact of American drones (both surveillance and missile-loaded) and deep intelligence work by the C.I.A. as wells as too many al Qaeda attacks on religious institutions generating negative local press have indeed taken their toll on al Qaeda operatives.

As reports surfaced that Ayman Zawahiri was succeeding bin Ladin, it was clear that he was inheriting a weakened political structure: “Al Qaeda and its offshoots have further splintered, Zawahiri lacks Bin Laden's charisma, and the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, where Zawahiri is presumed to be hiding, will make it more difficult for him to communicate, said Daniel Byman, director of research at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, a Washington think tank.

‘It's an organization prone to division. You have multiple power centers. There is a significant disagreement on priorities. And while he's been in the terrorism business for 40 years, no one ever used the word 'charisma' in talking about Zawahiri,’ Byman said.” Los Angeles Times, June 16^th. The Obama administration could use this news, combined with the elimination of bin Laden, as the basis of an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan.

With the budget deficit talks stalled, Obama needs to send a clear deficit reduction budget to his constituency, and it’s pretty clear how Americans feel about this war: “The [internal] administration debate [on withdrawal] will take place in summer, a time when the pace of fighting and the number of casualties traditionally increase. Unlike past wars, however, in which casualties were a singular source of frustration, voters seem more annoyed by the drain on U.S. resources… A new poll by the Pew Research Center found that most Americans believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are the main expense driving the federal budget deficit.” LA Times, June 13^th.

The most recent U.S. attack on senior al Qaeda operatives, coming very shortly after bin Ladin’s death, was on June 4^th: “An overnight attack by an unmanned aircraft killed Ilyas Kashmiri, an Al Qaeda-linked operative blamed for several high-profile attacks in Pakistan and India, local news reports and a statement by his banned militant organization said [June 5^th]… ‘We confirm that our emir [leader] and commander in chief, Mohammed Ilyas Kashmiri, along with other companions, was martyred in an American drone strike on June 3, 2011, at 11:15 p.m.,’ Abu Hanzla Kashir, who identified himself as a spokesman for Kashmiri's Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami group, said in a statement faxed to a Pakistani television station. ‘God willing … America will very soon see our full revenge,’ it added. "Our only target is America.’” LA Times, June 5^th. Sometimes, the dead guys come back, but this time, we are reasonably sure we got Kashmiri. Before the Navy Seal attack, bin Laden’s Pakistani compound was carefully examined by a new bat-winged stealth drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, otherwise known as the “Beast of Kandahar.”

Nevertheless, coupled with a corrupt and clearly ungrateful Hamid Karzai, the war in Afghanistan is losing what little traction it had with the American people. The balance of power in the Afghan struggle may have to be struck with more technology and fewer “boots on the ground,” which means that our drone surveillance and attacks simply need a place from which to launch; they are clearly controlled from bases in the United States. That little technology is getting well… smaller. “From blimps to bugs, an explosion in aerial drones is transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars. Predator drones, the Cessna-sized workhorses that have dominated unmanned flight since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are by now a brand name, known and feared around the world. But far less widely known are the sheer size, variety and audaciousness of a rapidly expanding drone univer se, along with the dilemmas that come with it.

“The Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago. Within the next decade the Air Force anticipates a decrease in manned aircraft but expects its number of ‘multirole’ aerial drones like the Reaper — the ones that spy as well as strike — to nearly quadruple, to 536. Already the Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year alone, than fighter and bomber pilots combined.” New York Times, June 19^th. The little stuff is being developed and tested at Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in a building they call the Microaviary. The Pentagon is spending big bucks on these programs, requesting $5 billion in the current budget. The writing is on the wall, and the Pentagon, despite outgoing-Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ protestations to the contrary (he wants bargaining leverage with the Taliban), is simply going to have to make do with less; tiny certainly fits the mood and temperament of the times.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is clear that it is time for the big compromise and the even bigger and faster withdrawal.