On January 22, 2009, just days after becoming president, Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13492, ordering the closure of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet nearly six years later, while some detainees have been transferred to other locations, the prison remains open and 127 men are still being held. In fact, Sunday, January 11, will mark the 13th anniversary of the prison’s creation.
Following the Arab Spring protests in 2011, North Africa experienced one disruptive event after another, which spilled over into the Sahel. Tunisia’s dictator fell and the country held elections, Egypt overthrew Mubarak only to have the Muslim Brotherhood led government ousted, the United States intervened in Libya which has since devolved into an ongoing armed conflict, and jihadists took over two-thirds of Mali which they later lost in a French intervention.
Born and raised in Toronto, Canada amidst 21st Century Western values, Mubin Shaikh seemed to fit in with other peers his age – attending public school, joining the Canadian Army cadets, and partying just like everyone else. Though he attended an Islamic madrassa at night, it wasn’t until an acute identity crisis at age 19, that Shaikh recommitted himself to Islam. Then, a chance encounter with the Taliban in Pakistan and exposure to Canadian extremists took him down the militant jihadi path.
Featuring a number of contributors to this book including Konstantin Kakaes, 2013 Future Tense Fellow; Christopher Swift, Adjunct Professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown University, Attorney with Foley & Lardner, LLP; Rosa Brooks, Senior Fellow at New America, former Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Tara McKelvey, Features writer for the BBC; and Peter W. Singer Strategist and Senior Fellow at New America.
Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice by Dr. John Nagl, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army and a former president of the Center for a New American Security, is a profound education in 21st Century warfare – its theory, its practice, and the often-tortured relationship between the two.
A live discussion with counter terrorism experts Douglas Ollivant and Brian Fishman. After weeks of bombing ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, the United States is fully engaged in another military campaign in the Middle East. But many have doubts that the United States can eliminate ISIS without boots on the ground. With territory nestled between Iraq and Syria, financing from illicit oil sales, and a savvy social media operation, ISIS is more than a state in name.
More than a decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, most studies of the conflict focus on the twin questions of whether the United States should have entered the country in 2003 and whether it should have exited in 2011, but few have examined the new Iraqi state and society on its own merits. This is especially disconcerting in light of the recent crisis with the Islamic State.
Although they are some of the world’s foremost terrorist groups, not much is widely known about Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), one of the largest terrorist organizations in South Asia that operates out of Pakistan and was responsible for the three day siege of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai in 2008 that killed 165 people. But now, former New York Times contributor Arif Jamal has documented the history, ideology, and global operations of LET and other groups in South Asia, bringing little-known facts about the dangers they pose to global security to light.