Far from offering America a face-saving exit from a 20-year war, a complete US military withdrawal from Afghanistan will make it an accomplice of the Taliban. And a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will cause lasting damage to the interests of the United States and its friends.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
As white nationalists across the world have gained prominence through racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic acts, the world’s focus on terrorism seems to have shifted. Many experts on extremism now focus heavily on the far-right in its many incarnations as an important driver of terrorist threat. But this myopic approach ignores the dynamism that the Islamic State injected into the international jihadist movement, and the long-term repercussions of the networks it built.
Read Here | Foreign Policy
The value of alliances in geopolitical competition between states has been frequently noted in the past few years. It turns out alliances are just as important to often-stateless militant groups. The difference between a terrorist group with ideologically aligned allies and a terrorist group without them can mean the difference between survival and defeat—as the ongoing fight to destroy ISIS is making all too clear today.
Read Here | Foreign Affairs
Extremists are increasingly emboldened, leaving a trail of victims across multiple countries. Networks are growing stronger and are more effectively inspiring and actively encouraging lone actors to mobilize to violence. And there is reason to believe this threat will continue to intensify. Beyond ongoing violence, the rising far right should concern law enforcement and government for three reasons: its relationship with members of the military, employment of cutting-edge technology, and the infiltration of far-right ideologies into other extremist communities.
Terrorist groups are increasingly using 21st-century technologies, including drones and elementary artificial intelligence (AI), in attacks. As it continues to be weaponised, AI could prove a formidable threat, allowing adversaries — including non-state actors — to automate killing on a massive scale. The combination of drone expertise and more sophisticated AI could allow terrorist groups to acquire or develop lethal autonomous weapons, or “killer robots,” which would dramatically increase their capacity to create incidents of mass destruction…
Following the 9/11 attacks, successive U.S. administrations have promulgated three consistent objectives: First, to prevent additional mass casualty attacks on our homeland. Second, to find and punish those responsible. And third, to shatter the larger transnational terrorist movement’s capability and capacity to be a future threat.
But when extremist groups walk away from negotiations—as happens ten per cent of the time—they often get crushed. Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers pioneered the suicide vest. It was the only terrorist group to assassinate two world leaders—India’s Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991, and the Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, in 1993. At its peak, it controlled strategic chunks of the country. But years of sporadic peace talks broke down in 2006. In 2009, the Sri Lankan military crushed the Tigers in a relentless offensive.
The news that researchers have recreated an extinct cousin to the smallpox virus using only commercially available technology and items purchased over the Internet renews concerns that bioterrorists could do the same if detailed information about the methods were published.
The surge in pirate activity in Somalia’s waters has been perplexing, not least since it contradicts popular expert opinion, which posits that sea-piracy is in a state of terminal decline in the Gulf of Aden. With NATO, the European Union, India, China and Japan still maintaining an active security presence in the region, regularly deploying warships to escort merchant traffic, maritime observers feel pirates have neither motivation nor incentive to carry out fresh attacks.
Lone wolves are an old problem, but in recent decades, the number of attacks by them has grown. And it won’t fall anytime soon: ISIS has embraced the tactic, and recent successes may well inspire copycats. And although lone wolves usually kill few people, they have an outsize political impact. In both the United States and Europe, they are fuelling Islamophobia, isolating Muslim communities, and empowering populist demagogues.
