Thaindian News

Washington, Jan 22 (IANS) Citing the case of Pakistani origin terror suspect David Headley, who changed his given name of Daood Gilani to fool Indian security services, a strategic think tank says any attempt at profiling jihadists is doomed to fail.
The new rules instituted by the US after the Christmas Day bomber attack to increase the screening of citizens or travellers from Pakistan and 13 other countries, “will be very popular in certain quarters,” said Stratfor, which calls itself a global intelligence agency.

Conventional wisdom holds that such programmes will be effective in protecting the flying public from terrorist attacks because profiling is easy to do, it said. But “sketching the face of jihadism is simply not as easy as it might seem.”

In support of its contention, Stratfor cited the case of ten persons, including Headley, “among many others, (who) were involved in jihadist activity but did not fit what most people would consider the typical jihadist profile.”

Pakistan-based militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami sought to fool the Danish and Indian security services when they dispatched an American citizen named David Headley from Chicago to conduct pre-operational surveillance in Mumbai and Denmark, Stratfor noted.

“Headley, who was named Daood Gilani at his birth, legally changed his name to David Coleman Headley, anglicising his first name and taking his mother’s maiden name.”

“The name change and his American accent were apparently enough to throw intelligence agencies off his trail - in spite of his very aggressive surveillance activity.”

“One of the big reasons we’ve witnessed men with names like Richard and Jose used in jihadist plots is because jihadist planners are adaptive and innovative. They will adjust the operatives they select for a mission in order to circumvent new security measures,” Stratfor said.

Jihadist planners have now heard about the list of 14 countries and, demonstrating their adaptability, will undoubtedly try to use operatives who are not from one of those countries and choose flights that originate from other places as well, it said.

Noting that jihadists have frequently used this tactic to hide operatives’ travel to training camps in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, Stratfor said, “The difficulty of creating a reliable and accurate physical profile of a jihadist, and the adaptability and ingenuity of the jihadist planners, means that any attempt at profiling is doomed to fail.”