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S. Navy is now very careful to guard against small craft pulling up alongside its warships. Let’s now take a look at the paradigm shift marked by the Prince Mohammed assassination attempt. AQAP’s Tactical Innovations First, using a repentant militant was a brilliant move, especially when combined with the timing of Ramadan. For Muslims, Ramadan is a time for introspection, sacrifice, reconciliation and repentance — it is a time to exercise self-restraint and practice good deeds. Additionally, as previously mentioned, Ramadan is a time 34 Principles and Challenges when the Saudi royal family customarily makes itself more accessible to the people than at other times of the year.

It is fairly common practice around the world for people to smuggle contraband such as drugs inside their body cavities. This is done not only to get items across international borders but also to get contraband into prisons. It is not unusual for people to smuggle narcotics and even cell phones into prisons inside their body cavities (the prison slang for this practice is “keistering”). ” Such keistered items can be very difficult to detect using standard search methods, especially if they do not contain much metal.

This trend has been borne out by the large number of plots and arrests over the past several years, including several so far in 2009. The grassroots have likewise proved to pose a critical threat to Europe (although it is important to note that, while the threat posed by grassroots operatives is more widespread, it normally involves smaller, less strategic attacks than those conducted by the al Qaeda core). From a counterterrorism perspective, the problem posed by grassroots operatives is that, unless they somehow self-identify by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them 40 Principles and Challenges to authorities, attend a militant training camp, or conduct electronic correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny, they are very difficult to detect.