After 20 years, culminating in the collapse of the U.S.-supported government in Afghanistan, it is clear that militarized counterterrorism policies have failed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to increased numbers of global terrorist attacks which remain at high...
What have peacebuilding experts learned from twenty years of counterterrorism? Here are seven reflections. 1. Violent extremism results from fear and frustration paired with the fantasy of a “pure” society. Since 2001, Muslims have spoken out about the stigma they...
In the first 15 years of the United Nations’ post-9/11 counterterrorism program, gender issues were hardly mentioned. This, despite the clearly stated intention of violent extremists and terrorist groups to suppress gender equality, women’s rights, girls’ education,...
Aysegul Keskin Zeren As the war against ISIS unfolds, acknowledging the conditions and events that paved the way for ISIS is crucial for rethinking strategy. As a result of a decade of instability in Iraq and more than three years of civil war in Syria, ISIS had...
David Cortright The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a clear and present danger to international security that must be stopped. The question is how. President Obama said there are no military solutions to this crisis, but he has sent American soldiers back to...
Ebrahim Moosa With another U.S. aid worker beheaded by ISIS and unreported civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes in ISIS controlled territories in Iraq and Syria, the conflict is taking on the features of a military stalemate. As long as ISIS is America’s problem,...
Chicago — The Kroc Institute recently assembled some of the world’s leading experts on counterterrorism strategy, ethics and the use of force, international law and civil and human rights for a conference (March 19-21) on “The Ethical, Strategic and Legal Implications...
The Obama administration claims that drone strikes are directed at known leaders of Al Qaeda. The majority of those killed in these attacks, however, are insurgents from the Taliban and other locally based militant movements. At the drone warfare conference, Peter...
Mary Ellen O’Connell In the wake of 9/11 the United States adopted a new approach to countering terrorism, an approach made possible by two developments: adding missiles and bombs to unmanned drones and asserting the legal right to use these weapons outside combat...
David Cortright The nature of armed conflict has changed dramatically in recent decades. Gone is the old paradigm of industrial interstate war. Instead, conflicts have risen sharply within and beyond states. In the world today there are 37 armed conflicts (as measured...
Andrew J. Bacevich When it comes to America’s role in the world, the 2012 presidential campaign was notable chiefly for what was left unsaid. Other than uttering platitudes or striking postures aimed at particular domestic constituencies, neither candidate had much to...
Scott Appleby The war being waged in mineral-rich Mindanao, the southernmost island region of the Philippines, is a perfect storm of contemporary violent conflict. It is about land and resources, religion and clan, sovereignty, governance, and corruption in high and...
Ryne Clos The United States has adopted a static and stark picture of al-Shabaab that has magnified the truly dangerous aspects of the organization and alienated dimensions of the movement that could contribute to a solution to Somalia’s problems. Al-Shabaab is an...
John Paul Lederach The U.S. government’s list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” is a central part of a counter-terrorism strategy based on the isolation of individuals and groups who espouse violence defined as terrorism. This strategy makes it illegal to provide...
Laura Weis In July 2010, in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect groups or individuals who provide “expert advice or assistance” or “training” to proscribed terrorist groups, even when they do so to...
David Cortright I supported the no-fly zone over Libya as a necessary measure to protect civilians from imminent threat of military attack. During the course of the intervention, however, many questions emerged. What began as a limited mission to prevent a massacre...
George A. Lopez I disagree with my colleagues David Cortright and Mary Ellen O’Connell regarding the scope and direction of the Libyan intervention of the Security Council and NATO. The essential dilemma faced by the international community, as manifest in Security...
David Cortright As the scale of the military intervention has increased in Afghanistan, so has the armed violence and influence of the Taliban. Reversing this deadly dynamic will require an approach that pursues demilitarization through the gradual disengagement of...
Robert C. Johansen International law and time-honored ethical traditions prohibit the targeting of noncombatants. Yet in most recent conflicts, more civilians have been killed than soldiers. What can we do to increase the influence of legal and ethical norms...
Maryann Cusimano Love General David Petraeus was in the hot seat during his Senate confirmation hearings in Washington this summer, and it had nothing to do with the heat wave outside. While senators were confirming Petraeus as commander of U.S. and international...