Blog Posts

"The seven years of Syria’s crisis has cost half a million lives, displaced more than 5 million refugees and reordered the geopolitics of the Middle East. But the worst may be yet to come. Western policymakers cannot be allowed to turn the other way and need to show their mettle when the U.N. Security Council meets on Syria this month."

“Despite a siege last year that retook a major city in the Philippines and killed an estimated 1,000 ISIS fighters, reducing their ranks to about 200 in the area, Pentagon spending on the military mission there has nearly tripled, according to a recent report. And most of that money is being spent on running a fleet of drones to monitor terrorist activities while supporting ground patrols to clear out ongoing contested areas of the country.”

In an extraordinary breach of the Islamic State's culture of unquestioning obedience, an IS writer calling himself Ibn Jubayr has penned a series of five scathing articles leveling direct and unprecedented criticism at the militant group's leadership, according to a respected monitoring group. The articles come amid a growing number of dissident social media posts by apparent IS members, a stark change in a group where any suggestion of disobedience or criticism normally has been met with harsh punishment, including whippings, torture and often, execution.

"It is surprising that with the rise of urban conflict and importance of cities, the U.S. military does not have any schools, research institutes, or major organizations solely focused on the study of and preparation for the full range of military operations in dense urban areas."

The hunted and hunters frequently exchange roles depending on circumstances. For hundreds of years, the quarry has practiced its crafts, adhered to Darwin’s thesis and emerged as victors over the most sophisticated and technically armed societies.

“It’s an uncommon turnover in a war zone where the military traditionally hands over operations to incoming units on the ground — sometimes referred to as a left seat, right seat ride — where new units are familiarized with their battlespace from an outgoing unit.”

"The top U.S. commander in the Middle East said he doesn’t expect any major change in the Afghanistan war strategy this fall, as a new general takes over the campaign a year after the Trump administration unveiled a broad new plan to resolve the 17-year conflict."

"As people who have dedicated our careers to national security issues, we are deeply concerned about the Army’s imminent decision to eliminate the Department of Defense’s forces’ joint proponent for complex operations — the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI)."

“American efforts to cripple the Taliban drug trade in Afghanistan have fallen short of expectations, U.S. officials say, creating new challenges for the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken the insurgency as the warring parties try to jump start peace talks. Nine months of targeted airstrikes on opium production sites across Afghanistan have failed to put a significant dent in the illegal drug trade that provides the Taliban with hundreds of millions of dollars, according to figures provided by the U.S. military.”

Robert J. Bunker and Pamela Ligouri Bunker, Radical Islamist English-Language Online Magazines: Research Guide, Strategic Insights, and Policy Response. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. 8 August 2018, 225 pp.

"In early October, the Afghan war will be 17 years old, a milestone that has loomed with grim inevitability as the fighting has continued without a clear exit strategy across three presidential administrations. With this anniversary, prospective recruits born after the terrorist attacks of 2001 will be old enough to enlist. And Afghanistan is not the sole enduring American campaign. The war in Iraq, which started in 2003, has resumed and continues in a different form over the border in Syria, where the American military also has settled into a string of ground outposts without articulating a plan or schedule for a way out."

Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Tuesday that peace talks are underway to end the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan. "It is still early in that reconciliation process. I will have to give you an update to date as it matures,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Intensified efforts to root out and destroy the Islamic State terror group in Afghanistan are making progress in some areas but have so far failed to prevent the terror group from maintaining a foothold in the country, based on the latest U.S. intelligence estimates.

"It appears that after sixteen years of the U.S. military training, advising, and interacting with Afghans, Iraqis, and others with mixed results, the SFAB concept provides the Army with another opportunity to get it right. However, initial coverage of the SFAB suggests that the curricula are still not comprehensive enough for our forces to operate successfully in the human domain."

"Last January, the secretary of Defense, secretary of State and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) signed a new interagency framework for conducting stability operations. Known as the Stabilization Assistance Review or SAR, it’s the result of years of interagency friction over institutional rolls in conflict environments."

Officials in Afghanistan have vowed to bring to justice perpetrators of "war crimes" among scores of Islamic State militants who recently surrendered to the government in northern Jowzjan province to avoid being captured by the Taliban.

“Again and again over the past two years, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States has claimed it won decisive victories that drove al-Qaida militants from their strongholds across Yemen and shattered their ability to attack the West. Here's what the victors did not disclose: many of their conquests came without firing a shot.”

“Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused political foes of trying to kill him during an open-air speech on Saturday using explosive-laden drones, prompting a host of questions about the alleged attack and who might have been behind it. Wherever the investigation leads, Maduro's allegations raised the specter of unmanned aerial vehicles being used by militant groups or others to launch bombing, chemical or biological attacks, a tactic that has long worried security experts.”

“A failed assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday was mounted with explosive-armed drones, according to news reports. Nine days earlier, and on the other side of the world, terrorists claimed to have sent an armed drone to attack the international airport in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. No one was killed in either case, and the circumstances of both remain murky. But a new and dangerous era in non-state-sponsored terrorism clearly has begun, and no one is adequately prepared to counter it.”

Retired Marine infantry officer Joe L'Etoile remembers when training money for his unit was so short "every man got four blanks; then we made butta-butta-bang noises" and "threw dirt clods for grenades." Launched in February, the new joint task force is a top priority of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps infantry officer himself. With this level of potent support, L'Etoile is able to navigate through the bureaucratic strongholds of the Pentagon that traditionally favor large weapons programs.

"Drones armed with explosives detonated near Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Saturday in an apparent assassination attempt that took place while he was delivering a speech to hundreds of soldiers being broadcast live on television, officials said."

The overwhelming majority make no excuses for any small teams that went rogue. Soldiers fight principally for one another. Unethical conduct in Afghanistan made a tough job harder. Recklessness with the rules further embittered the Afghan locals and effectively betrayed the Australian mission, its soldiers and their mates. These soldiers also expect no excuses from the public. They hold to a proud heritage which honours toughness and decency. As one decorated SASR veteran put it: “We are not Viking raiders or Genghis Khan’s marauders. We are Australian soldiers.”

In a major setback for "Islamic State" in Afghanistan, over 150 of its fighters recently surrendered to security forces in the northern Jawzjan province. The credit for their defeat, however, does not directly go to Afghan government troops, but to the Taliban.

An official with the National Directorate of Security, the powerful intelligence agency, said the Islamic State group would be in for a surprise once they were transferred to the custody of the N.D.S. in Kabul. “We don’t do peace with ISIS,” he said. “ISIS is an international terror group. We don’t make peace with terrorists.”

"It’s still unclear if the new talks will lead to a political resolution; one expert I spoke to put the chances of success at around 20 percent. But others see it as an ambitious and bold move that could potentially lead to some kind of tenuous peace for the country. And the reason for this renewed optimism, surprisingly, has to do with the Taliban itself.'