Terrorism Archive

In his seminal essay the “Twenty-Seven Articles,” T.E. Lawrence wrote that “a bad start is difficult to atone for” in an insurgency or counterinsurgency effort. As the Obama administration prepares a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, it is learning that lesson all too well. For more than seven years, Afghanistan has been the neglected war, impaired by insufficient resources, troops, planning and oversight. Facing a resurgent Taliban, the administration now has no choice but to chart a new path. Some of the president’s strongest supporters are urging him to scale down U.S. ambitions in the country. They contend […]

A 2008 report entitled “World at Risk” garnered global headlines when it warned that, “It is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.” The report (.pdf), issued by a bipartisan committee established by the U.S. Congress, argued that biological rather than nuclear weapons presents the greatest near-term international terrorism danger. The warnings of the U.S. Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism were underscored by subsequent media reports that dozens of members of Al-Qaida in the Lands of the […]

Almost as soon as President Barack Obama took office, a chorus of commentators began to demand the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, in the hopes of ushering in a fundamental change in U.S. policy: ending the so called “war on terror” and the preventive detention regime, exemplified by the facility, that it had spawned. If one of President Obama’s first national security decisions was to order the closure of the facility within one year, the president’s decision was more symbolic than substantive. Contrary to the expectations of many Bush critics, nothing in that order would end the […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia —The drug wars in Mexico “will intensify,” says the head of Colombia’s anti-narcotics police, Gen. Álvaro Caro. “It’s going to get worse,” Caro said during an exclusive interview about the wave of drug violence in Mexico. “The Mexican cartels are very structured, well armed and organized, and have the power to corrupt.” Last year alone, 5,400 people were murdered in the surge in drug violence in Mexico. Caro calls it “narco-terrorism,” and says it is “the price you pay for taking on the cartels.” It also results from changes made by Colombian drug kingpins to their transporting routes. […]

Many of America’s actions in its post-9/11 campaign against al-Qaida have served to increase Muslim and Arab radicalism, rather than to dampen it as intended. The invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, the detainment of captured terrorists at Gitmo and subsequent revelations regarding the use of water boarding and other torture techniques all served to amplify negative perceptions of the United States in the Islamic world and facilitate the radicalization of potential recruits for the terrorists’ cause. But two recent developments have led many Americans to believe that al-Qaida and the threat it posed might be on the verge of […]