Al Qaeda claims to have hit on a new strategy in its war on the United States and its allies: bargain basement terrorism.
The terror group's Yemen-based branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is promising a cloud of small-scale attacks like its attempts to bomb two U.S.-bound cargo planes with packages loaded with explosives.
In a special edition of the organization's English online magazine, Inspire, the group boasts that what it's calling Operation Hemorrhage was cheap, low-risk and easy, using common items and parcel shipping.
The group said the attacks, which were thwarted by Saudi, U.S. and European security authorities, cost only $4,200 to carry out.
Alerted to the late October bomb plot by Saudi intelligence, security officials chased the packages across five countries, trying frantically over the next two days to prevent an explosion.
Although the parcel bombs never went off, the editors of Inspire hail the operation as a success, likening it to bleeding its enemy to death by a thousand cuts.
"To bring down America we do not need to strike big," the editors wrote, adding that with the "security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch."
In another article, the editors bragged of how cheap the operation was, listing the cost of the items used to make the bombs, including two Nokia mobiles at $150 each, two HP printers at $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses, adding up to a total bill of $4,200.
The group says its new strategy is to replace large-scale, spectacular attacks in favour of smaller operations aimed at the U.S. economy, according to the special edition of the online magazine, made available by both Ben Venzke's IntelCenter, and the Site Intelligence Group.
In the magazine, an author identified as the group's head of foreign operations says the package bombs were intended to cause economic harm, not casualties.
"We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot," the author wrote, "so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy," by striking at the multi-billion dollar U.S. freight industry.
The editors' boast that they chose printer cartridges in which to hide the explosive because toner has a molecular composition "close to that of PETN," so it would not be detected.
"We emptied the toner cartridge from its contents and filled it with 340 grams of PETN," the writers said.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, says he takes the threat seriously and believes the Yemen wing of al Qaeda has grown and should become a focus of counterterrorism efforts.
Those who monitor Jihadist sites say the publication, posted Saturday, is a radical departure from al Qaeda's usual shadowy claims of responsibility.
"We have never seen a jihadist group in the al Qaeda orbit ever release, let alone only a few weeks after, such a detailed accounting of the philosophy, operational details, intent and next steps following a major attack," says the IntelCenter's Venzke.
The al Qaeda offshoot insists it also brought down a UPS cargo plane in Dubai in September, in addition to the Oct. 29 attempts to bring down a FedEx plane, and a UPS plane bound for the U.S.
U.S. officials insist the Dubai crash was an accident caused by a battery fire.
