Arab Countries Co-Operate To Fight Islamic State.

On 20 January, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Federica Mogherini, held talks in New York with Nabil El Arabi, the secretary-general of the League of Arab States, to discuss co-operation on counter-terrorism.

Arab Countries Co-Operate To Fight Islamic State.

The talks followed the terrorist attacks in Paris on 7-9 January and highlighted the renewed sense of urgency in European capitals with regard to tackling the threat posed by the Islamic State and other extremist Islamist groups.

Following the talks, Mogherini stated that the two organisations were intending to "launch specific projects in the coming weeks with certain countries to increase the level of co-operation on counter-terrorism" and named Algeria, Egypt, the Gulf countries, Turkey, and Yemen. As the focus of Mogherini's discussions show, a key component of this aim is strengthening co-operation with and between the intelligence services in the region around Iraq and Syria.

Key among these agencies are the Egyptian General Intelligence Service (GIS), the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate (GID), the Moroccan General Directorate of Research and Documentation (DGED), the Qatari State Security Bureau (SSB), and the intelligence service of the United Arab Emirates. The Palestinian Authority and parts of Lebanese internal security are also affected.

The threat posed by the Islamic State differs from that of Al-Qaeda or its affiliates such as Jabhat Al-Nusra or Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the group that claimed the attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo . Unlike Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State has succeeded in taking and holding ground - currently an area of territory larger than Jordan - and has proven resilient in the face of the campaign of airstrikes undertaken by the US-led coalition since August 2014.

Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian intelligence officials speaking in late 2014 and January 2015 broadly agreed that collecting intelligence against the Islamic State requires human intelligence (HUMINT) and infiltration capabilities that Western intelligence agencies are not able to provide. Instead, they will need to rely on the intelligence agencies of Iraq's and Syria's neighbours. However, strategic differences and a lack of co-operation between these agencies will continue to constrain the efficacy of intelligence-gathering operations, limiting the ability of state security forces to anticipate the Islamic State's next moves.

Changing relations;

Intelligence sharing between the intelligence services of Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa underwent a transition following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. The intelligence agencies of these states worked closely with Western agencies, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in particular, to provide intelligence on the backgrounds and networks of their citizens who had travelled to Afghanistan.

In part, this co-operation was driven by the desire to appear supportive of the US-led 'war on terrorism'. However, the threat posed by fighters returning from the conflict in Afghanistan and later Iraq also served to encourage Arab governments to co-operate in identifying such individuals.

The next milestone was the outbreak of the 'Arab Spring' in late 2010. Reliably pro-US governments in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen were toppled, with the Muslim Brotherhood or affiliated movements eventually taking power in Cairo and Tunis. The discrediting of internal state security forces during the revolutions, coupled with prolonged political instability, disrupted co-operation between Western intelligence agencies and these countries.

Against this background, the emergence of the Islamic State as a threat - dating to the occupation of Mosul in northern Iraq on 9 June 2014 and the group's subsequent announcement of its 'caliphate' - marked a third transition in the relationship between Western and Arab intelligence agencies. In part, this is because the Islamic State represents a different threat from that posed by previous Islamist terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda.

Mustafa Alani, a senior intelligence and counter-terrorism researcher at the independent Gulf Research Center think-tank, in January 2015 that the difference is that the Islamic State is primarily a regional organisation, meaning that the intelligence services of Arab states play a more significant role than they did against Al-Qaeda, with its global aspirations.

Another difference between the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda is its composition. According to a former senior Egyptian GIS officer, speaking in January, the participation of European fighters and other Westerners in the Islamic State is significant. Not only do some of these individuals have advanced technological expertise that enhances the group's effectiveness, the source also claimed that Europeans and other Westerners play a more important role in the Islamic State's command structure than in Al-Qaeda.

The Egyptian GIS source stated, "The main concern for the Arab intelligence services now is the hundreds of Europeans and Westerners - Canadians, Americans, and Australians - who joined Islamic State… [as these individuals] enjoy [relative] freedom of movement using their passports, and easy entry to the Arab countries in the future, which increases the security threat." The source described the participation of North American and European individuals in the Islamic State as "a ticking bomb… imagine the damage they could cause if a hundred of them entered the Gulf countries".

Target selection;

For the intelligence agencies of the Arab states, the response to the Islamic State is twofold: first, to protect their home states from infiltration by Islamic State operatives and by their own citizens returning from fighting in Iraq and Syria, and second, to support the campaign against the Islamic State, including by providing intelligence to the US and its coalition partners.

Alani described the intelligence provided by the Arab states to the US and other Western militaries engaged in the airstrike campaign against the Islamic State as extremely important. "No effective military attacks against Islamic State could take place without accurate updated intelligence regarding target selection, Islamic State's shifting position, their speed of movement… Intelligence collection and analysis forms the basic role in this war against Islamic State," he said.

However, despite the centrality of the air campaign to the West's response to the Islamic State, the group has proved surprisingly resilient. "Islamic State enjoys unprecedented experience in dealing with the different air strikes, either by UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], helicopters, or fixed-wing aircraft," said Alani. The group has had to respond to, and limit the impact of, airstrikes since its inception in Iraq in 2003. In contrast, Al-Qaeda enjoyed a comparatively secure operational environment in Afghanistan until the start of the US campaign in October 2001.

Alani added that the Islamic State's strategy was "not mainly to fight the alliance air forces, but to limit its impact on their freedom of operability as much as possible, and somehow it has managed [to neutralise the impact] of the alliance air forces strikes". He concluded that "there is no other organisation [that] enjoys such capability".

In January 2015, Brigadier General Aref Al Zaben, CEO of the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre (KASOTC), stated, "Airstrikes are not enough, and there is a need for ground force operability."

The fight against the Islamic State has come as a number of intelligence agencies are strengthening their paramilitary counter-terrorism capabilities. For example, Jordan's GID has been increasing its rapid response capacity. Brig Gen Al Zaben stated that his command was increasing the training and capabilities of the security forces. "The formulation of rapid intervention forces by the Arab intelligence services came as a necessity for rapid operation and reaction," he said.

The primary role of these units is to kill or capture targets while operating outside the borders of their own countries, with operatives drawn from the elite units of the country's armed forces. These groups carry out intelligence-led operations for their respective services, operating with a direct connection to intelligence operations rooms and using on-the-ground interrogators to allow them to respond to intelligence in real time.

This trend, along with the broader increase in intelligence collection requirements for regional intelligence agencies, has put pressure on the budgets of these organisations. In September 2014, sources within the Jordanian GID told that the country would not be able to fully respond to the threat posed by the Islamic State without financial support from the US, Europe, and other Gulf States. "I am sure security budgets should be increased to those fighting terror and of course it will enhance [the] role of counter-terrorism units," Ilan Mizrahi, former deputy chief of the Israeli Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Missions (Mossad) told in January 2015. A senior Palestinian intelligence source agreed with Mizrahi's assessment, and justified the significant increase in intelligence budgets across the region in 2015 as due to the unprecedented demands put on the service by the Islamic State threat. Although there are undoubtedly budgetary pressures on regional intelligence services, assesses that such services are highly likely to make use of heightened Western concern over the threat posed by the Islamic State to bid for additional financial support.

Spy versus spy;

"Right now, the Arab intelligence response to the Islamic State [has been] limited to [the] reaction level, and not control of the event. I think they are too late in defeating Islamic State, as they have missed an opportunity to weaken the organisation, [as they would have had if they had] started earlier," a Palestinian intelligence source told in January.

According to the source, there are problems with co-operation between regional intelligence agencies at the operational level, as "every intelligence service wants to monopolise its intelligence and sources for itself and does not like to share with others."

Before the occupation of Mosul, most regional intelligence services were focused on fighting Al-Qaeda and other similar groups. Indeed, Alani argues that Saudi intelligence remains primarily concerned with fighting AQAP and the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, both of which are seen as posing a greater threat to the Kingdom's security than the Islamic State.

There is also a lack of agreement between the regional states on the best way to respond to the Islamic State threat. In particular, Saudi Arabia's provision of weapons to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is seen as problematic by some of the countries in the region, who are concerned about the risk of leakage to the Islamic State. Similarly, some intelligence agencies have sought to combat the Islamic State by transferring arms and funds to Jabhat al-Nusra - a tactic that backfired when the Islamic State took control of these contributions.

Some Arab countries initially tolerated their citizens travelling to join the Islamic State in Syria, as this was seen as removing potential threats from their country, according to the source with a background in Egyptian intelligence. This assessment has shifted as the scale of the threat posed by the Islamic State has become clear, and people are now being prevented from travelling to join the group, with returnees facing the prospect of questioning by their domestic intelligence services and potential criminal charges. For example, according to a Palestinian intelligence source, the Saudi GIP operates a large team of intelligence officers based in Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, and across North Africa, to follow the flow of fighters to the Islamic State.

Arab Countries Co-Operate To Fight Islamic State.

Perhaps the biggest issue for intelligence co-operation is that the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (Millî Istihbarat Teskilati: MIT) does not share information about fighters passing through its territory with its Arab counterparts, or participate in the broader campaign against the Islamic State. For example, Tunisians can enter Turkey and stay in the country for three months without a visa - something that could potentially facilitate movement into Iraq and Syria. Tunisian minister of the interior Lutfi Bin Jeddo told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite channel in September 2014 that the Tunisian security services had prevented 9,000 Tunisians (both men and women) from travelling to join the Islamic State from mid-2014 onwards.

Basel Torjeman, a former Palestinian diplomat and security researcher based in Tunisia, concurs that the Turkish intelligence agencies do not inform Tunisian intelligence agencies or other countries involved in the fight against the Islamic State about the movements of their citizens in Turkey. This claim was supported by sources in Palestinian intelligence speaking  in January.

Infiltration success;

Although these problems have weighed on the success of the intelligence operation against the Islamic State, there have also been achievements. Regional intelligence agencies have worked hard to infiltrate the Islamic State and recruit agents within its ranks. The Jordanian GID, among other services, has made some progress towards this goal.

Alani pointed to the execution of a number of Islamic State members in Iraq and Syria in late 2014 as evidence of these infiltration efforts, saying the victims had been identified as spies, although a Palestinian intelligence source suggested that most of the people executed were not members of the Islamic State. The lack of verifiable information emerging from areas under Islamic State control makes such claims difficult to assess.

Infiltration efforts are aimed at both sending in or recruiting human sources at Islamic State bases, in particular within the mid- and upper levels of its command structure. However, the Islamic State remains sceptical of newcomers. Candidates for membership generally receive two to three months of instruction in the tenets of Islam, and then another two months of military training.

During this period, the candidates are isolated from other fighters and are required to use assumed names. At the end of this period, the recruits are given dummy explosive vests and told to carry them in case of emergency - a tactic designed to put them under psychological pressure and to test their commitment to the cause. However, a senior Arab intelligence source speaking claimed, "If the infiltrator is smart, then he could pass the Islamic State's anti-infiltration tests."

A former Islamic State fighter told that Jordanian intelligence was well informed about the activities of his group. The source, from Jordan, fought with the Islamic State for 10 months in Syria before returning home in November 2014, at which point he was questioned by the GID. He told that the GID was informed about 70-75% of what was taking place within the group. While, it is likely that this figure exaggerates the GID's level of awareness with regards to the Islamic State's activities, it nevertheless suggests that its infiltration activities have achieved at least a degree of success.