A series of explosions ripped through Nigeria’s second largest city of Kano on Friday, targeting government and police offices. By Saturday, the militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the deadly attack whose final death toll is not yet determined but is expected to be over 200 people. Boko Haram was founded in 2002 as […]
2011 proved a tumultuous year for states. The Arab Spring evidenced that stifling dissent through oppression and supporting autocracies should not be the status quo policy of the United States. Now we see states being made anew. How will these states fully differ from their previous forms? Will their previous economic or political strongmen truly be ousted […]
Book Review Assassins of the Turquoise Palace by Roya Hakakian 322 pages- published by Grove Press “Number seven,” he said to the agent beside him”. These were the words uttered by Parviz Dastmalchi, a survivor of and witness to an assassination that shook Europe and the continent’s relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Parviz […]
It’s called a ‘murder-for-hire’ sting, a standard law enforcement ploy designed to help the criminal find the very worst in his nature and act on it. But sting operations come with their own risks as well as rewards—and attorneys know that ‘entrapment’ can be a strong defense. . .
Informants are like sharks, scouring the underworld for opportunities and targets the feds can use as springboards to career-making cases. It’s the informant’s job to find two sticks (agent and opportunity), to rub them together vigorously, and to blow gently on the sparks of criminal enterprise.
Think about this as well….the ‘downpayment’ for the ‘hit,’ the100k wired to the US undercover bank account is enough to trigger a case for conspiracy, but it still doesn’t prove that the Iranian government was driving the bus. To do that, US authorities must establish a link between the owner of the account in the UAE — or the owner/s of an account held by an international financial institution with correspondent branches/banks around the world — and the government of Iran.
This is a critical point–one that could defuse the Obama Administration’s claim that ‘senior officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government’ were tied to the assassination plot and challenge the call of senior US officials for alterations to current foreign policy, in the US and abroad, toward Iran. If US authorities cannot prove that this was something more than a plot formulated by a small group of non-state actors, the President, the Secretary of State, DEA and the FBI have some explaining to do. . .
Anyone in the business of studying violence should look askance at recent US claims that Iran’s Quds Force – a unit belonging to the Pasdaran, aka the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – is behind the amateurish plot to assassinate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the US. The main issue in contention here is […]
The following is a contributing piece from guest writer Ladan Yazdian. Ms. Yazdian is a foreign affairs and Middle East specialist. She holds a BA and an MA in political science. She is currently a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech, working on global security, foreign policy, international relations, and human rights. In the wake of […]
Yesterday’s bombing of the UN compound in Abuja, Nigeria by the radical-Islamist sect Boko Haram is finally setting off alarm bells throughout the Nigerian Government and the global anti-terrorism establishment. And well it should. Boko Haram– the nickname for the group which is largely composed of disaffected, unemployed youth and university students from the predominantly […]
Two years and one conviction later, Mumbai was once again rocked by three serial bomb blasts last month (apparently to mark the 26/11 convict Ajmal Kasab’s birthday). Though smaller in comparison to the 26/11 terrorists attacks that killed some 166 people during a three day virtual siege on the city, the blasts on 13 July […]
Terrorist violence has once more ripped through Mumbai, India’s largest city and its commercial hub. Three bomb blasts, exploding over a span of 30 minutes in central and south Mumbai during the evening rush hour, yesterday killed at least 18 people and injured more than 130. The bombings are the latest in a string of […]
But let’s talk about bin Laden. The first notion we can discard is that the US pulled this feat off alone–that our intelligence and military capabilities allowed a convoy of Blackhawk helicopters carrying teams of Navy Seals, along with gunships (loaded with 100+ Army Rangers or Marines) flying defense above the Blackhawks, to penetrate, probably from Afghanistan, 100 miles or more into Pakistan’s airspace to one of the country’s most heavily guarded locations (Pakistan’s ‘West Point’) without detection by Pakistan’s intelligence/ military forces or without encountering Pakistani fighter jets.
Bin Ladin is dead. Again. In the last ten years he has been reported “killed” at least four times. The only difference this time was that the President of the United States announced the death of the number one terrorist in the world. Above all, this time he was killed not in Tora Bora, not […]
The location of Osama’s death underlines the work required on Pakistan After a decade of anxiety, fear and anticipation, the friends and families of the victims of 9/11 have finally received closure. Osama bin Laden was killed in his hideout in Abbottabad in Pakistan through a special operation by US forces in the wee hours […]
Many are familiar with the origin of Somalia’s protracted conflict in the fall of Said Barre’s regime in 1991 and the resulting competition for political control among warring clans. Yet the conditions of warfare in Somalia have evolved dramatically since that time as the impact of the conflict upon the local geography, the role of […]
Zainab Jeewanjee discusses CNN coverage of Libya’s Gaddafi and recent uprisings. She weaves that story into a larger discussion of enemy, but rational world figures operating against American interests and how understanding their political objectives is key to an effective counterterrorism strategy post 9/11, specifically in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In his budget proposal for 2012, President Obama has proposed $3.1 billion in aid to Pakistan. The aid is spread across various parts and will be provided partly under the five year Kerry-Lugar-Berman initiative and Oversees Contingency Operations (OCO). This proposal comes even as the two countries stand-off over the Raymond Davis affair and the […]