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"A U.S.-led exercise aimed at boosting cooperation between West African nations in maritime policing comes at a time when seaborne piracy in some areas is increasing and the trans-Atlantic drug trade remains active."

"Here’s the thing that is even more disturbing than the simple, horrifying fact that this depraved man killed 49 people. Here’s the thing that’s more disturbing than his apparent copycat killing: He livestreamed the act, and in so doing he not only made millions of people direct witnesses to the slaughter, he may well have created the next innovation in the mass-killing contagion. He may well have written a new cultural script."

"U.S. Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the State Department continue to seek to silence any criticism of their framework deal with the Taliban."

"As U.S.-backed forces fight to seize the last bit of territory held by the Islamic State (IS) in eastern Syria, the battle against jihadist influence is far from over. Counterterror experts warn that extremist groups may still try to recruit a rising generation of hundreds of millions of millennials to their ranks."

"U.S.-backed forces are starting to search through the remnants of the Islamic State's final enclave in northeastern Syria, looking for fighters, mines and booby-trapped explosives."

"President Trump said the Islamic State extremist group would suffer its final territorial defeat by Wednesday evening, even as U.S.-backed fighters in Syria were still completing the battle against the militants."

"The Defense Department’s independent watchdog has opened an investigation into allegations that acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan violated ethics rules by taking actions to promote Boeing after leaving the aerospace company and accepting a top job at the Pentagon."

"In a move to bolster U.S. troop presence in the Pacific, the Army has plans to deploy thousands of soldiers to the region for ongoing rotations."

"An Afghan official in the country’s National Security Council Tuesday downplayed a Reuter’s report alleging that senior U.S. diplomats have informed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that his national security adviser is no longer welcome in Washington following his blistering public attacks on the U.S Special Representative for Afghan reconciliation last week."

"A human rights group says 14 civilians were killed during five U.S. airstrikes in Somalia in the last two years, an allegation the U.S. military strongly denies."

"Excluded from peace talks with the Taliban, estranged from Washington after sharply attacking its peace envoy and under growing pressure to postpone July elections, the Afghan government is running short on time, friends and options."

"American-backed forces in northern Syria have captured a group suspected of organizing a bomb attack that killed four Americans and a number of allied Syrian militia fighters in January, a spokesman for the local forces said on Tuesday."

"Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq are growing more powerful and confident as they operate with increasing impunity."

"Everyone knows that President Donald Trump wants out of Afghanistan, and the Afghans know that the State Department’s dealings with the Taliban will not deliver “peace.” Instead, Khalilzad’s talks have further empowered the same jihadists America has been fighting for nearly two decades."

"U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Tuesday seized control of an encampment held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, a spokesman said, signaling the group's collapse after months of stiff resistance. A group of suspects involved in a January bombing that killed four Americans in northern Syria were among militants captured by the Kurdish-led forces."

The Smith Richardson Foundation is pleased to announce its annual Strategy and Policy Fellows grant competition to support young scholars and policy thinkers on American foreign policy, international relations, international security, military policy, and diplomatic and military history. Continue on for more information.

"One of the best descriptions of subterranean warfare comes from the world of fiction—the hypothetical scenario in Max Brooks’s World War Z, a novel set in a future where small paramilitary units are fighting a zombie infestation in the catacombs beneath Paris. The US Army Asymmetric Warfare Group has produced two good handbooks—the Subterranean Warfare Handbook and the Subterranean Operations Handbook—which start to address subterranean warfare, but both fall short of establishing either a subterranean doctrine or comprehensive set of tactics, techniques, and procedures."

"As the United States makes its biggest diplomatic push in Latin America in years to try to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. military is zeroing in on a byproduct of the crisis: a strengthening of Colombian rebels on both sides of Venezuela’s border."

Zach Dorfman - Yahoo News - "Iranian espionage is nothing new, but the charges against Doostdar, and other recent court cases, including the indictment of a former Air Force linguist who defected to Iran in 2013, highlight what the U.S. intelligence community sees as an increasingly worrying part of Tehran’s covert strategy. Iranian operatives are compiling what are known as 'target packages' to undertake prospective future assassinations and terrorist attacks, according to more than half a dozen former U.S. intelligence officials."

"Few ever doubted that a U.S.-led coalition of 79 countries would ultimately prevail militarily over Islamic State. But the enduring appeal of the militants’ ideology among people like Umm Abdulrahman raises questions about the totality of its defeat. Even as Islamic State loses almost all territory and its less committed members fall away, a hardened core who remain in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, the Philippines, Libya and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula present a daunting challenge"

"The fight to depose Assad is over. The battle over his regime’s boundaries has no end in sight."

"The IDF would love nothing better than to fight an old-fashioned tank battle, at which it is famously proficient. But twenty-first-century warfare is more about guerrillas and tunnels, and these are the bane of high-tech, mechanized armies."

"Authorities in Afghanistan confirmed Monday that the Taliban captured 58 government forces during recent fighting in a northwestern district bordering Turkmenistan."

"To apply one standard to Israel, and another to the rest of the world – as the UN Human Rights Council does – is to be antisemitic, US Ambassador to German Richard Grenell said Monday in Geneva."

"President Donald Trump’s new executive order rescinding a provision of an Obama-era executive order that required public reporting of civilian and combatant deaths in U.S. counterterrorism strikes “outside areas of active hostilities” has garnered concern from transparency advocates. They express fears that President Trump’s action will deprive the public of information it needs to judge the appropriateness of the United States’ use of force in an era of persistent conflict against global terror threats."