Terrorism Archive

It’s been six months since the Islamic State lost the last slice of its territory in Iraq and Syria, where it once controlled a land mass roughly the size of the United Kingdom. This loss dealt a serious blow to the terrorist group, but not a fatal one. As many different counterterrorism analysts have written, ISIS continues to spread its message and gather adherents who carry out attacks in its name across the globe. One area where a metastasizing ISIS could seek to establish a greater foothold is Southeast Asia. In recent years, a number of countries in this diverse […]

Although President Donald Trump declared talks with the Taliban “dead” this week, the reality is that even as calls for a settlement in Afghanistan gained momentum, negotiations for a deal to end America’s longest war were bound to falter. Trump’s clumsy attempt to grab the spotlight by arranging for a last-minute summit at Camp David between the Taliban and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11 rightly rankled both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. But the White House obsession with striking a grand bargain in Afghanistan in time for the next U.S. presidential election is […]

In the four months since coordinated suicide bombers killed more than 250 people across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, the country’s embattled government has been forced to grapple with a common question in the post-9/11 era. How do you stop enemies willing to kill themselves for a political or religious cause? For Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, one answer has been to accept blame for errors in policing and intelligence gathering while calling on other countries to help curb the scourge of violent extremism. But even as Sri Lanka’s leaders look abroad for support, they must not forget that one of […]

The Trump administration has boosted security cooperation with right-wing governments in South America in recent months to address the perceived threat of Hezbollah in the region. In late July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended a counterterrorism conference in Buenos Aires, where the Lebanese militia and political party, which is backed by Iran, was a major focus of his meetings. Under pressure from the United States, Argentina and Paraguay have already designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization, and Brazil is considering doing the same. But according to Fernando Brancoli, a professor of international security at the Federal University of Rio de […]