When CIA director Leon Panetta declared on a Sunday talk show in late June that “we’re looking at maybe 50 to 100” al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, “maybe less,” some commentators took this as a political turning point. British journalist and author Stephen Grey commented via his Twitter account,…
The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is now considering the case of several Uighurs, currently detained at Gitmo, who are asking to be released into the Washington metropolitan area. The D.C. Circuit has already ruled against the Uighurs once, affirming the government’s power to…
While many debate the work that current Justice Department attorneys previously did for Guantánamo Bay detainees, the detainees’ current lawyers continue to fight for their release—including, in one case, their release into the United States in violation of federal immigration law. The Supreme…
Raleigh, North Carolina
Old and new. A cluster of recent events has put homegrown terrorism on the country's radar for the second time in two months. We have seen alleged members of a jihadist cell arrested in North Carolina, a Minnesota-based Somali man plead guilty to aiding Islamic militants in Somalia, and the…
Recent turmoil in Pakistan has altered the political landscape in ways that should register with policymakers in Washington. Events have cast something of a pall over the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, a champion of the fight against Islamic militants, while elevating populist opposition…
The United States needs a new military strategy in Afghanistan. In 2008, NATO casualties rose to an all-time annual high of 294, 155 of them U.S. soldiers. Roadside bombs and kidnappings doubled last year. Underscoring the gravity of the situation, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral…
A sensationalistic Fox News report declares: "Britain Adopts Islamic Law." This story is referencing a new report, in the Times of London, that the UK now has its first official sharia courts. From the Times: The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases…
In the copious interviews that Bob Woodward has given promoting his new book, The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008, he has put forward a new reason meant to explain the success of U.S. forces in Iraq since January 2007: a "secret program" that the military used to kill terrorists.…
OIL DEPENDENCE IS America's Achilles' heel in the battle against terrorism--a fact that has not escaped the terrorists. Osama bin Laden and others have declared the oil supply a top target, and subsequent plots demonstrate that the desire to disrupt world energy markets is more than mere rhetoric.…
THE PRE-DAWN SILENCE in eastern Afghanistan's Nuristan province was shattered on July 13 by the racket of machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades; the attack on the new base was fiercer and the insurgent force larger than American troops could have expected. The first enemy fire struck the…
IN THE PAST MONTH, Iraqi and coalition forces have succeeded in their fight against the Mahdi Army's "special groups." On May 3, the U.S. military destroyed a special groups command center in Sadr City, killing a wanted leader in the attack. On May 25, Iraqi special operations forces captured a…
The good news is that some politicians apparently do keep their promises. Immediately after being appointed Pakistan's prime minister earlier this year, Yousaf Raza Gilani promised negotiations with the Taliban, saying that his government was "ready to talk to all those who give up arms and adopt…
In mid-May, Iraqi security forces began to crack down on Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in a Sunni area of Mosul that the U.S. military had described as AQI's last major urban stronghold. As AQI melted away in response to these operations, we gained a glimpse of the brutal and bizarre governance that the…
THE FBI'S NATIONAL SPOKESMAN was already prepared to dismiss a connection to terrorism the day after ricin was found in a Las Vegas hotel room. Special Agent Richard Kolko told the press on Feb. 29 that the presence of ricin appeared unrelated to terrorism "based on the information gathered so…
FOUR YEARS AGO, HIS WORDS WOULD have represented an almost unquestioned consensus view. In late January, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Dell Dailey, described al Qaeda's top leadership as isolated, saying that they have "much, much less central authority and much, much less…
IN THE MIDST OF AN eight-day trip through Europe designed to assuage fears that his country is sliding toward chaos, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has reaffirmed that parliamentary elections will be held on February 18. Though the last year has certainly shown us that events in Pakistan are…
Singer-songwriter Imran Raza and guitarist Faraz Anwar hope to bring an unlikely revolution to Pakistan--one guided by Sufi-oriented music inspired by Led Zeppelin and Metallica. The country's music-averse extremists were quick to take notice.
If there were any doubt about the reach of militants in Pakistan, last week's events should have put them to rest. The ostentatious procession celebrating the return home of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was tragically cut short by twin bombs that killed over 130 and wounded several hundred…
OSAMA BIN LADEN'S STRENGTH as an orator has always been his ethos. He is an eloquent and seemingly honest speaker, proud of his role in the attacks of 9/11, a principled spokesman for radical Islam's war against the West. Though bin Laden may not have penned all his words personally, the force of…
In a country that for the past year has consistently ceded ground to terrorists, the storming of the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad was a rare bit of good news. As Pakistani forces wrapped up their raid on July 11, their examination of 73 bodies recovered from the so-called red mosque suggested…
THE FACE OF TERROR is constantly evolving as terrorist tactics, and even the foot soldiers trying to attack America, change. When authorities announced last weekend that they had foiled a plot designed to blow up New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport, its fuel tanks, and a jet fuel…
AS THE DEBATE HEATS UP about whether the United States should set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, little attention has focused on the effect such a move would have on America's allies in that country. The world has not forgotten America's abandonment of the South Vietnamese and later the…
THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT has entered into two agreements in the past seven months that promise to destabilize Afghanistan and provide a haven for terrorists to plan and train for catastrophic attacks. Under the September 2006 Waziristan Accord, Pakistan agreed that its military would no longer…
AL CAPONE HAD BECOME a celebrity criminal by 1931. Everybody knew what he was up to: his litany of offenses included murder, bribery, and running illegal breweries. But the government would have had trouble proving Capone's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt for his most notorious activities. Instead,…
THESE DAYS, MOST EVERYONE AGREES that Americans need to develop a better understanding of Islam. They disagree, though, on how this understanding should be built. I've had ample opportunity to consider this question after the publication of My Year Inside Radical Islam, a book that details my time…
If there is one lesson to be drawn from American military engagements since 9/11, it is that the hard part is winning the peace. Nowhere is this truer today than in Somalia. With the army-vs.-army phase of the conflict in that country seemingly complete, Somalia's transitional federal government…
LESS THAN A MONTH AGO, the situation in Somalia seemed dire. The Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a radical group that is affiliated with al Qaeda, was on the brink of destroying the U.N.-recognized transitional federal government (TFG). Seventeen terrorist training camps were operational and terrorists…
AL QAEDA AND its allies now have their own 24-hour television station. Based at a secret studio in Syria, its signal is broadcast to the entire Arab world from a satellite owned by the Egyptian government. This development highlights al Qaeda's increasingly sophisticated propaganda efforts.
A ROCK STAR WOULD BE the last person one might expect to address a major defense policy conference. Yet the National Homeland Defense Foundation Symposium, held on October 3 in Colorado Springs, welcomed such a guest: thirty-four-year-old Ahmad Dhani.
WHEN FIGHTERS from the radical Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, in early June, the Western world briefly noticed. Analysts and talking heads were concerned that the country could become a terrorist haven. Then the media largely lost interest, though the situation…
BEFORE ENTERING THE COUNTERTERRORISM FIELD, I worked for a radical Islamic charity called the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation. In this capacity, I gained some familiarity with the kind of Islamic extremist literature that often finds its way into the U.S. prison system and thus influences inmates'…
INTELLIGENCE ANALYSTS woke up on September 5 to unsettling news. The government of Pakistan, they learned, had entered into a peace agreement with the Taliban insurgency that essentially cedes authority in North Waziristan, the mountainous tribal region bordering Afghanistan, to the Taliban and al…
ON SEPTEMBER 8, the American Constitution Society announced the formation of its first official law journal, the Harvard Law & Policy Review. According to the letter, the new journal "will be a forum through which many esteemed legal scholars, advocates and policymakers will rigorously engage and…
INDONESIA is currently embroiled in a high-stakes culture war between forces dedicated to Islamic law and more secular-minded citizens devoted to the freedoms and rights enshrined in the country's constitution. While Islamic conservatives have made significant gains, the entertainment industry is…
TWELVE PASSENGERS ON Northwest Airlines Flight 42, which departed Amsterdam for Mumbai on August 23, quickly aroused the crew's suspicions. Eyewitnesses reported that the 12 passengers, who were of South Asian descent, attempted to use mobile phones and pass them back and forth as the flight took…
WHEN FIGHTERS FROM THE RADICAL Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized the Somali capital of Mogadishu on June 5, analysts were immediately concerned that the country could become a haven for terrorists. Since then, the ICU's hold on the country has tightened. More alarming, the militia has come to more…
THE SHEER MAGNITUDE of the foiled plot that British authorities announced yesterday was breathtaking. This may well have been "the next big one" that experts have predicted al Qaeda would attempt. As Friday began, British authorities had apprehended 24 suspects alleged to be part of a plot to blow…
FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS, there have been rumblings among terrorism analysts about an unlikely alliance between Islamic radicals and the neo-Nazi far right. This union seems counterintuitive on the surface: The far right tends to see Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic radicals disdain most…
AFTER 9/11 BROUGHT RADICAL ISLAM to the country's attention, some Americans wondered, "Why do they hate us?" Since then, many answers have been offered. But the best way to understand what drives jihadists is an examination of their own words. To that end, Professor Mary Habeck's book Knowing the…
NOW THAT THE SUPREME COURT has ruled against the White House on the military detention of U.S. citizens and the presidential institution of military commissions, the next big legal issue seems to be the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of international communications. Sen. Arlen…
BEFORE THE DUST SETTLED on the rubble that had been Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's safe house, critics of the Bush administration were already arguing that our latest battlefield success in Iraq had to be measured against the administration's failure to kill Zarqawi back in 2002. But a full understanding…
FROM NEWSWEEK to the New York Daily News, nearly every major media outlet has fallen for at least one of the three major myths concerning Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: that he was an "American creation"; that he was not a unique warlord but was easily replaceable; or that American soldiers allegedly…
HISTORY NEVER REPEATS ITSELF precisely, but it often rhymes. Coalition forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a safe house just outside Baghdad. More than 800 years earlier, the life of Zarqawi's role model, Nur ad-Din Zanki (1118-1174), came to an end in Damascus, another power center of the…
CONSERVATIVE LEGAL SCHOLARS HAVE LONG warned that judges' reliance on foreign opinions might undermine the mechanism for setting domestic policy under the Constitution. Now, for the second time, a friend of the court brief has been submitted to the Supreme Court by foreign politicians in a case…
When Americans learned that 41-year-old Afghan citizen Abdul Rahman could be put to death for converting to Christianity, they were outraged. Chuck Colson spoke for many when he wrote, "Is this the fruit of democracy? Is this why we have shed American blood and invested American treasure to set a…
THE FIRST GENERATION OF CHRISTIANS faced severe persecution under the Roman Empire because of their refusal to bow down to the goddess Rome and the emperor. For Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old Afghani man who was charged with a capital offense last week for converting from Islam to Christianity,…
WHEN IT HEARS ARGUMENTS IN Hamdan v. Rumsfeld this Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Bush administration can try Guantanamo detainees in special military tribunals, or whether the detainees' cases have to be heard in federal court. In the run-up to the hearing, liberal proponents…
WHEN A JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE LAREDO surged onto the campus hub known as the Pit around noon on March 3, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students suddenly had far more to think about than the upcoming basketball game against Duke University. The driver, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, had been…
THE SEASON OF ABORTION LITIGATION is in full bloom. South Dakota's passage of a bill banning all abortions has captured most of the headlines, and Mississippi is considering similar legislation. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has quietly decided two abortion cases this term--the first dealing with…
IRAN KICKED OFF the new year by announcing that it would resume nuclear fuel research. Western governments are scrambling in the wake of this announcement, with no evident overarching strategy for preventing the regime from obtaining nuclear weapons. The United States and E.U. countries are intent…
BY NOW, there can be no doubt that al Qaeda's message to the West has been distilled down to two simple concepts. The first is that the terrorist group can be appeased. The second is that, if they aren't appeased, Westerners face grave consequences. The latest Osama bin Laden audiotape, released on…
LAST MONTH, Islamic radicals threatened to kill actor and Muslim convert Omar Sharif. Sharif had recently played St. Peter in an Italian TV film and spoke highly of the role, saying that he "seemed to hear voices" during filming and that "it will be difficult for me to play other roles from now…
FROM NEW YORK CITY'S subways to Baltimore's highway tunnels, October brought repeated instances of local authorities stepping up security in response to terrorist threat warnings. After New York City police decided to scale back their heightened security measures on October 10--just four days after…
ON SEPTEMBER 6 AND 7, Pastor Daniel Scot, who last year was found to be in breach of Victoria, Australia's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, met with human-rights lawyers and policymakers in Washington, D.C. In these meetings, Scot described his experience defending himself in Victoria's courts…
ALTHOUGH NEW YORK CITY police announced last week that they would scale back the increased security measures that followed the recent terrorism scare, the subway terror alert highlighted two basic facts. The first is that the terrorists would like to strike our mass transit system; the second, is…
THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT that our terrorist enemies keenly watched both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. One clear lesson they will seize on is the inadequacy of the governmental response to Katrina, which suggests that we're unprepared to handle the effects of a major terrorist attack. Another…
ON AUGUST 31, FOUR men were charged with participation in a terrorist plot hatched in a California prison. The six-count indictment describes a conspiracy to attack military and Jewish targets in the Los Angeles area, including military bases and recruitment centers, synagogues, the Israeli…
JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS'S Senate confirmation hearings last week were only the opening salvo in a broader war over the future of the Supreme Court. Most observers expect Justice O'Connor's replacement to generate far more contention than Judge Roberts did, since that nominee could substantially change…
THERE HAVE BEEN rumblings of late about the developing alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis. In late May, Israeli president Moshe Katzav gave a speech before the German parliament in which he warned, "Let's not be surprised if terror organizations use neo-Nazis for carrying out terror…
AFTER AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI released a new videotape on August 4, the media focused on how he placed the blame for the last month's terrorist attacks in London on Tony Blair's shoulders and threatened even greater carnage in the future. Less noticed but no less important is al Qaeda's changed tactical…
ON MAY 14, 2005, PAX-TV's Faith Under Fire broadcast a debate that I took part in against Mahdi Bray, the executive director of the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Freedom Foundation. Bray had selected the debate topic in advance, and chose to argue about "The United States of Islam?"--that is,…
On January 6, 2005, the U.S.-funded Arabic satellite network Al Hurra broadcast an explosive exposé detailing the financial links between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Arab press. Al Hurra's documentary--so far overlooked in the West--aired previously unseen video footage, recorded by Saddam…