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1. The Reinvention of Al-Shabaab

Author:
Matt Bryden
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The September 2013 attack on Nairobi's Westgate Shopping Center, which left more than 70 people dead, has positioned the Somali extremist group, Al-Shabaab, firmly in the global spotlight. While some observers have interpreted the attack as a sign of "desperation," others perceive it as an indication of Al-Shabaab's reformation and resurgence under the leadership of the movement's Amir, Ahmed Abdi aw Mohamud Godane. The reality is, as usual, more complex. Westgate provided a glimpse of a movement in the throes of a protracted, fitful, and often-violent transition: Al-shabaab is in the process of reinventing itself.
Topic:
Security, Islam, Terrorism, Armed Struggle, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Africa

2. Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate

Author:
James Andrew Lewis
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Americans are reluctant to accept terrorism is part of their daily lives, but attacks have been planned or attempted against American targets (usually airliners or urban areas) almost every year since 9/11. Europe faces even greater risk, given the thousands of EU citizens who will return hardened and radicalized from fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Topic:
Intelligence, Terrorism, Counterinsurgency, and Governance
Political Geography:
Iraq, America, Europe, and Syria

3. Shaping Iraq's Security Forces US-Iranian Competition Series

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman, Sam Khazai, and Daniel Dewit
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The last active US combat forces left Iraq in August 2010, marking the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the beginning of Operation New Dawn. Some 49,000 advisory troops, four advisor assistance brigades, and a limited number of special operations forces (SOF) remained to train, advise, and assist Iraq's security forces after that date, including the military, intelligence, and police. Until the end, these US troops continued to serve a number of other important security functions: carrying out kinetic operations against Iranian-backed and other militant groups; providing training to the ISF; taking part in joint patrols along the borders of the Kurdish provinces and helping integrate ISF and Kurdish forces; and acting as a deterrent to Iraq's neighbors–in particular Iran.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Counterinsurgency, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Iran, Middle East, and Arabia

4. THE GULF MILITARY BALANCE Volume III: The Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Robert M. Shelala II
Publication Date:
05-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The US faces major challenges in dealing with Iran, the threat of terrorism, and the tide of political instability in the Arabian Peninsula. The presence of some of the world's largest reserves of oil and natural gas, vital shipping lanes, and Shia populations throughout the region have made the peninsula the focal point of US and Iranian strategic competition. Moreover, large youth populations, high unemployment rates, and political systems with highly centralized power bases have posed other economic, political, and security challenges that the GCC states must address, and which the US must take into consideration when forming strategy and policy. An updated study by the CSIS Burke Chair explores US and Iranian interests in the region, Gulf state and GCC policies toward both the US and Iran, and potential flash-points and vulnerabilities in the Gulf to enhanced competition with Iran. This study examines the growing US security partnership with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – established as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It analyzes the steady growth in this partnership that has led to over $64 billion in new US arms transfer agreements during 2008-2011. It also examines the strengths and weaknesses of the security cooperation between the southern Gulf states, and their relative level of political, social, and economic stability. The study focuses on the need for enhanced unity and security cooperation between the individual Gulf states. It finds that such progress is critical if they are to provide effective deterrence and defense against Iran, improve their counterterrorism capabilities, and enhance other aspects of their internal security.
Topic:
Security, Islam, Oil, Terrorism, Natural Resources, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Arabia

5. Defense Cuts, Sequestration, and the US Defense Budget

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Robert M. Shelala II
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Concepts are not a strategy. Broad outlines do not set real priorities. A strategy requires a plan with concrete goals numbers schedules and costs for procurement, allocation, manpower, force structure, and detailed operational capabilities. For all the talk of 10 years of planned spending levels and cuts, the President and Congress can only shape the actual budget and defense program one year at a time. Unpredicted events and realities will intervene. There is a near zero real world probability that the coming plan and budget will shape the future in spite of changes in the economy, politics, entitlements, and threats to the US.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, International Cooperation, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States

6. Trends in Militancy across South Asia

Author:
Thomas M. Sanderson, Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, Stephanie Sanok Kostro, Zachary I. Fellman, and Rob Wise
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The bulk of international counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and related efforts over the last decade have focused on targeting a select few extremist organizations such as al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Yet looming security transitions, international fiscal strictures, demographic trends, religious and ethnic tensions, popular dissatisfaction, and weak governance are likely having significant and worrying effects on a wide array of militant actors around the world. A narrow focus on those groups perceived to be the most immediate threats has, at times, come at the cost of a broader understanding of militancy and how it may manifest in a given region.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Terrorism, Armed Struggle, Insurgency, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, South Asia, and Taliban

7. Changing US Security Strategy: The Search for Stability and the "Non-War" against "Non-Terrorism"

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
More than a decade into the “war on terrorism,” much of the political debate in the US is still fixated on the legacy of 9/11. US politics has a partisan fixation on Benghazi, the Boston Marathon bombing, intelligence intercepts, and Guantanamo. Far too much US attention still focuses on “terrorism” at a time the US faces a much broader range of threats from the instability in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) and Islamic world. Moreover, much of the US debate ignores the fact that the US has not actually fought a “war on terrorism” over the last decade, and the US failures in using military force and civil aid in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US has not fought wars as such, but rather became involved in exercises in armed nation building where stability operations escalated into national building as a result of US occupation and where the failures in stability operations and nation building led to insurgencies that forced the US into major counterinsurgency campaigns that had little to do with counterterrorism. An analysis of the trends in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts shows that the US has not been fighting a war on terrorism since Bin Laden and Al Qaida Central were driven into Pakistan in December 2001. The US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and then made stability operations and armed nation building its key goals. It was US mishandling of these exercises in armed nation building that led to major counterinsurgency campaigns although – at least in the case of Afghanistan --the US continued to label its military operations as a struggle against “terrorism.” By 2013, the US had committed well over $1.4 trillion to these exercises in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, the US made massive increases in its domestic spending on homeland defense that it rationalized as part of the fight against terrorism but often had little or nothing to do with any aspect of counterterrorism. At the same time, the US failed to develop consistent or useful unclassified statistics on the patterns in terrorism and its counterterrorism activities. The US government has never provided a meaningful break out of federal activities and spending at home or abroad which actually focus on terrorism, or any unclassified measures of effectiveness. The OMB has lumped a wide range of activities that have no relation to terrorism it its reporting on the President's budget request – activities whose total cost now approach $60 billion a year. The Department of Defense has never provided a meaningful estimate of the total cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or a break out of the small portion of total overseas contingency operations (OCO) spending actually spent on counterterrorism versus counter insurgency. The State Department and US intelligence community provide no meaningful unclassified data on the cost of their counterterrorism effort and it is unclear that they have developed any metrics at any level that show the cost-benefits of their activities. The annual US State Department country reports on terrorism come as close to an unclassified report on the status of terrorism as the US government provides. While many portions are useful, the designation of terrorist movements is often political and shows the US designation of terrorist movements conflates terrorism and insurgency. The closest the US has come to developing any metrics on terrorism has been to develop an unclassified database in the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) that never distinguished terrorism from insurgency. This database formed the core of the statistical annex to State Department reporting, but has since been withdrawn without explanation. As this analysis shows in detail, it now has been replaced by a contractor effort that makes all of the previous mistakes made by the NCTC. The end result is a set of official reporting and statistics in the annex to the State Department report where “terrorism” remains remained poorly defined, badly structured, ignored in parts of the world, and conflates terrorism with counterinsurgency, instability, and civil war. A review of the Afghan, Iraq conflicts, and other recent conflicts in the MENA region shows just how serious these problems are in distorting the true nature of the wars the US is fighting and the threats it faces. The same is true of the unclassified reporting the US government provides on terrorism. A detailed review of the most recent State Department report on terrorism provides important insights into key terrorist movements, but the narratives generally ignore their ties to insurgent movements, their statistical data include some major insurgent movements and exclude others, and many of the data seem to include violence that is not truly terroristic in character.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Islam, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Middle East, and North Africa

8. Afghanistan: Meeting the Real World Challenges of Transition

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The more one looks at the current situation in Afghanistan today, the more likely it seems that Transition will at best produce a weak and divided state and at worst a state that either continues its civil war or comes under Taliban and extremist control. More than a decade of Western intervention has not produced a strong and viable central government, an economy that can function without massive outside aid, or effective Afghan forces. There is no sign that insurgents are being pushed towards defeat or will lose their sanctuaries in Pakistan. This has made every aspect of Transition is a high-risk effort.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Civil War, Development, Islam, Terrorism, War, Armed Struggle, Counterinsurgency, and Governance
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Taliban

9. Patterns of Violence in Iraq

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Iraq is in an ongoing struggle to establish a new national identity, and one that can bridge across the deep sectarian divisions between its Shi'ites and Sunnis as well as the ethnic divisions between its Arabs and its Kurds and other minorities. At the same time, Iraq's leaders must try to build a new structure of governance, economics, and social order after a mix of dictatorship, war, sanctions, occupation, and civil conflict that began in the 1970s and have continued ever since.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Democratization, Post Colonialism, Regime Change, Counterinsurgency, and Sectarian violence
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, Arabia, and Syria

10. Iraq After US Withdrawal: US Policy and the Iraqi Search for Security and Stability

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Iraq is in an ongoing struggle to establish a new national identity, and one that can bridge across the deep sectarian divisions between its Shi'ite s and Sunnis and the ethnic division s between its Arabs and its Kurds and other minorities. At the same time, it must build a new structure of governance, economic, and social order after a period of dictatorship, war, sanctions, occupation and civil conflict that began in 1979 and has continued ever since. It must cope with a steadily growing population, and diversify an economy that is so dependent on petroleum exports that they provide some 95% of its government revenues. This struggle can still end in a new round of serious civil conflict and even in the division of the country. At the same time, Iraq does have great potential and its political divisions and ongoing low - level violence do not mean it cannot succeed in establishing stability, security, and a better life for its people.
Topic:
Democratization, Peace Studies, War, Counterinsurgency, and Self Determination
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, and Arabia