Trapwire Stratfor Email 30

Re: [alpha] Trapwire on Kabul Hotel Attack

Released on 2012-08-09 18:00 GMT
Email-ID 	83568
Date 	2011-06-29 16:14:18
From 	sean.noonan@stratfor.com
To 	burton@stratfor.com, alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name 	alpha@stratfor.com
This makes sense, they don't know anymore than we do on the targetting.
But the other thing is to compare their capabilities with available
targets. They may simply have not thought they could exploit a
vulnerability at the Serena, so chose the next most high profile target.

Did not see this before I sent out last Insight questions, but I had seen
this earlier insight-

Stormed in force out of a vehicle after one perp detonated a vest at the
gate. (That's preliminary -- not confirmed yet).

Can we confirm that? Once they got to the gate, which I assume is farther
away from the hotel at the bottom of a hill, how did they get through the
next checkpoints?

On 6/29/11 8:22 AM, Fred Burton wrote:

Two schools of thought on this at the moment:



1. Taliban expected the hotel to be full of westerners attending the
transition talks. The hotel is used by westerners, but not nearly as
much as the Serena Hotel downtown. The attackers allegedly communicated
to their Taliban planners during the operation that they were going
door-to-door and rounding up "many westerners." Whether or not this was
Taliban hype, they clearly wanted to give the impression they were
head-hunting foreigners.



2. The Taliban targeted the hotel due to fact that clan/tribal chiefs
were staying there ahead of the transition talks. (Which is true, there
were some in the hotel at the time of the attack). This could have been
the Taliban's attempt to send a mssg that they were still strong, and
that no decisions on the future of Afghanistan can occur without them.
In other words, a pure intimidation op.





Mike, Who do you think the target was? Thanks

--

Sean Noonan

Tactical Analyst

Office: +1 512-279-9479

Mobile: +1 512-758-5967

Strategic Forecasting, Inc.

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