The tightly woven web of Jarret Brachman
[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted with minor alteration from SmartMobs ]
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Jarret Brachman is one of our brightest analysts of jihadist behavior on the internet. He was the first Director of Research with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and is the author of Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice.
His blog today featured an extraordinary post titled My One Fan in Abottabad.
First he writes:
Out of sheer curiosity, I ran a google analytics search to see if I’ve ever had any hits from Abbottabad, Pakistan to the blog.
Then he shows us the map his research produced :
and then he comments:
Sure enough, I’ve got one fan there who has been checking the blog randomly over the past couple years.
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As my Watchmen-hip son might say, … Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
May 4th, 2011 at 2:56 am
On second thoughts, I think I should call Jarret’s post "tantalizing" rather than "extraordinary"…
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After all, there’s the Pakistani army college in Abbotabad, there’s at least one twitterer who was alert at 1 am a couple of nights ago and has friends who live nearby within FaceBook reach — and as my savvy son also pointed out, OBL’s household is reported to have had "no Internet or phone service"…
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Except that a Department of Defense illustration of his compound shows what sure looks like a satellite dish…
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So, anyway, enfin, as Jarret also said — Who knows!
May 4th, 2011 at 3:30 am
That’s funny. I had five visits from Abbottabad over the course of my blog’s history. Although I think with all of the retired military, or current military folks there, I think those readers were more interested in security contracting. Which actually, Pakistani security contractors have been working in Bahrain for awhile I guess.