As part of its escalating campaign against Islamic terrorists based in Yemen, the U.S. government has expanded efforts to crack down on terrorist financiers in the Middle Eastern country. But the counter-finance approach in Yemen is complicated by the same factors that have stymied similar efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Extremists operate increasingly cheaply — and what little money they do require, they can often raise without outside help. Yemen is increasingly a terror crossroads. U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 fellow soldiers in a November shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, reportedly had ties to radical Muslim [...]
Officials from Chad and Sudan are weighing a proposed treaty that would create a framework for joint patrols of their shared border, along and around Sudan’s Darfur province. If fully implemented, the security pact proposed in late-December could help lay the groundwork for peace talks with rebel groups, aimed at reducing cross-border violence that has claimed thousands of lives in Chad and Sudan since 2005. Central Africa’s arid deserts and lush forests are the scene of complex, overlapping conflicts over land, resources, ethnicity, religion and political power. Chad accuses Sudan of sponsoring rebel groups, based in Sudan, that threaten farmers [...]
It has become an article of faith that American counterterrorism policy — especially as practiced in Afghanistan — is a failure, and that as a consequence a new approach is required. This perception served as a major justification for the escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan by the Obama administration, while the associated elevated sense of risk explains much of the resistance to closing the detention center in Guantanamo and holding terrorist trials in federal courts. Fortunately for the United States, the real story is quite different, as the American Security Project’s latest annual report (.pdf) on terrorism trends documents. [...]
