Blog Posts

Registan.net, a blog focusing on Central Asian affairs, can be found here.

In Responsible Transition, Barno and Exum provide policy recommendations - military and political - for how the United States and its NATO allies can get from summer 2011, when U.S. and coalition troops begin to draw down in Afghanistan, to 2014, when U.S. forces transition to a residual force and transfer full leadership of operations to Afghan security forces. Barno and Exum also consider "spoilers," or disruptive events, that could affect the success of any plan, including: a terror attack on U.S. soil originating in Pakistan; an adversarial Pakistan; a resurgent Taliban; and Afghan National Security Forces failure.

Update: "A Responsible Transition", a response by Joshua Foust at Registan.net.

There is a simple and well-known reason why successive South Korean governments have not explicitly made such a public commitment in the past: much of Seoul lies within range of thousands of North Korean cannons and battlefield missiles. That vulnerability has provided the North with "escalation dominance," a fact which hasn't changed even if resolve in South Korea may now be stiffening.

As long as Seoul's vulnerability persists, many will doubt the sincerity of General Kim's retaliatory threat. The most important of these doubters would be decision-makers inside North Korea, who seems to relish an exciting game of chicken.

The South Korean government could remove doubts about the credibility of its policy if it got serious about civil defense preparation in Seoul and elsewhere.

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Leiter's speech discussed the evolving terror threat and what U.S. citizens should expect from their government's CT efforts. Leiter's remarks had two themes. First, al Qaeda has transformed from a tightly controlled hierarchical organization into a highly diffuse and "headless" movement. Second, although he and his colleagues are striving mightily, Leiter warned that it will be "impossible" to prevent Islamist terrorist attacks inside the United States, especially small-scale attacks such as those experienced over the past year. Leiter recommended that the country adopt an attitude of "quiet, confident resilience" against this prospect. In his view, extravagant responses to non-existential attacks only reward the terrorists and are self-defeating. Leiter's remarks implied that the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan is at best peripheral to his mission and at worst making his job more difficult.

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Posting Cutoff Date is 9 December 2010

The U.S. Army Security Assistance Training Management Organization - Via the U.S. Army's STAND-TO! "The U.S. Army Security Assistance Training Management Organization (USASATMO) is a brigade-equivalent command, headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C., employing more than 260 Soldiers, Department of Army civilians and contractors who are deployed to more than 20 countries throughout the year to meet the requirements of the foreign nations requesting training assistance." More at the link.

November and December 2010 Issue of the CTC Sentinel - The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point contributes relevant scholarly perspectives through education, research and policy analysis to combat terrorist threats to the United States. Read the latest issue of the CTC Sentinel at the link.

The Foreign Fighter Problem: Recent Trends and Case Studies - Audio and video files of the proceedings of a 27 and 28 September 2010 conference sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Reserve Officers Association. The conference brought together recognized academic and analytical expertise to examine recent trends in the foreign fighter phenomenon and explore the particular cases of Somalia, the Maghreb, Yemen, and Afghanistan/Pakistan. The conference report can be found at the link.

World Almanac of Islamism - The American Foreign Policy Council's World Almanac of Islamism is a comprehensive resource designed to track the rise or decline of radical Islam on a national, regional and global level. This database focuses on the nature of the contemporary Islamist threat around the world, and on the current activities of radical Islamist movements worldwide. Browse the Almanac at the link.

A Community Based Approach to Countering Radicalization: A Partnership for America - Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi with Mehreen Farooq of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education. WORDE is a nonprofit, educational organization whose mission is to enhance communication and understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and to strengthen Muslim institutions that will mitigate social and political conflict. Read their report at the link.

Marines' Instant Gunship Blasts Taliban, Pentagon Bureaucracy - David Axe, Wired's Danger Room. The first Harvest Hawk-modified C-130 arrived in southern Afghanistan in October, just 18 months after the Marines first announced the program. Much more at the link.

22nd Annual SO/LIC Symposium & Exhibition - NDIA event with theme "Defense, Diplomacy, and Development: Translating Policy into Operational Capability". 8 and 9 February 2011 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Much more at the link to include agenda and registration.

Afghanistan and the Culture of Military Leadership - Dr. Lawrence Sellin at Human Events. Opinion piece that argues that while the U.S. military spends billions of dollars on service academies, war colleges, graduate programs and other forms of education in order to train people to think, it then places them inside a bureaucracy that prevents them from doing so. Go to the link for more.

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Has a war on Iran already begun?

2) U.S.-Russian negotiations over New START are not over.

Has a war on Iran already begun?

This week's WikiLeaks release of State Department cables highlighted the growing concerns of numerous Sunni Arabs leaders over Iran's nuclear program. Bahrain's king, for instance, pleaded to a U.S. diplomat that the Iranian nuclear program "must be stopped." In another leaked cable, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia supposedly implored the United States to "cut of the head of the snake" (presumably referring to the government in Tehran) before it was too late.

But how to stop the Iranian nuclear program? In yet another leaked cable, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates dismissed the traditional way, an air campaign, concluding that it "would only delay Iranian plans by one to three years, while unifying the Iranian people to be forever embittered against the attacker." Left unsaid by Gates, but no doubt at the front of his mind, are the bitter consequences of the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. For its efforts in these two very visible wars, the United States spent a huge fortune, lost thousands of soldiers and earned opprobrium from many quarters of the world. It is little wonder why Gates would be quick to find a reason to avoid yet another military commitment.

But Iran also seems to be under assault from a different kind of warfare. First was the arrival of Stuxnet, a highly sophisticated malware worm specifically designed to attack machinery produced by Siemens Corporation, a German industrial conglomerate.

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It's being hailed as "revolutionary" and a "game changer". It's the XM-25 Individual Airburst Weapon System. It's now deployed in Afghanistan (AFP, FOX) What say you?

Every PAO should have this in talking points -- if queried, repeat the SECDDEF's words.

Continue on to read SECDEF's remarks.

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Download the full report here.

The Center for Complex Operations in cooperation with NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan invites you to a discussion of progress and developments in Afghanistan's National Security Forces (ANSF). Join members of the NTM-A staff in discussing the past and future of the ANSF.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

George C. Marshall Hall, Room 155

National Defense University (NDU)

10:30 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.

Click here to RSVP and download a copy of the NTM-A report.

Continue on for more.

The Importance of Understanding How Arab-Muslims

Ideologically Counter al-Qaida:

The Work of Moroccan Writer Muntasser Hamada

Review Essay by CDR Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN

Foreword by Mr. Gary Greco, Chief, Office of Intelligence Operations, Joint

Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT)

to the United States must read copious amount of materials each day.  However,

it is easy to neglect the treasure trove of information and insights afforded by

Arabic authors who comment and analyze terrorist groups like al-Qaida.  Moroccan

journalist Muntasser Hamada represents a new trend among Arab authors who

deconstruct al-Qaida ideologically, philosophically, and theologically.  Arabic

language works attacking al-Qaida offers America's leaders a better way to

define the threat from Violent Islamist Groups who attack Muslims and

non-Muslims alike.  It offers the language by which to disaggregate al-Qaida

from Islamist Groups and those two from Islam.  Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein

has labored for several years bringing to life Arabic works of interest to

America's counter-terrorism analysts and military personnel.  His work is then

used to train better counter-terrorism analysts and prepare deploying units

utilizing fresh Arabic language materials that dissect al-Qaida and its

franchises.  I look forward to the debate and discussion this expose of Hamada's

work will generate among the readers of Small Wars Journal.

Introduction

Muntassir Hamada is a Moroccan journalist and author of three Arabic

books, who thinks deeply about the impact al-Qaida has had on the Arab Muslim

imagination.  The subject of this review essay is Hamada's 2008 work Nahnu wa

Tanzeem al-Qaida (Al-Qaida and Us), which offers valuable insight into Arab

discourse on al-Qaida and Usama Bin Laden.  The book was published by Al-Awael

Printers in Damascus, Syria who maintains the website:

www.darawael.com. 

America's leaders must take the time to understand and pay attention to Arabic

language books that discredit al-Qaida, its leaders, and its ideology.  Such

books provide a way in which Muslims and non-Muslims can better articulate the

threat and disaggregate the fragmented pseudo-intellectualism of al-Qaida's

Islamic narratives from the diverse and rich beliefs of 1.5 billion Muslims. 

The purpose of this essay is to introduce Hamada's work and to expose American

readers interested in counter-ideology to the level of Arab-Muslim discourse

that attacks al-Qaida philosophically, theologically, and ideologically.