Understanding U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Operations: In Memory of Michael Sheehan, New America online

Understanding U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Operations: An Event in Honor of the Memory of Michael Sheehan

DATE: March 14, 2022
TIME: 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Terrorist groups have evolved substantially in the two decades since 9/11. While the understanding of terrorism has grown immensely over the past two decades, similar advancements in the understanding of counterterrorism lag. In the Routledge Handbook of U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations, a range of contributors place the focus of analytic attention on U.S. counterterrorism efforts and how it has adapted alongside the changes in terrorist activity. In honor of the memory of Ambassador for Counterterrorism Michael Sheehan, who edited the volume, New America has convened a discussion of these topics.

To discuss the changes in counterterrorism and terrorism over the past two decades, New America welcomes four contributors to the volume: Peter Bergen, Liam Collins, Luke Hartig, and Elisabeth Kendall. Peter Bergen is Vice President at New America. Col. (ret.) Liam Collins is Executive Director of the Viola Foundation, a fellow with New America’s International Security Program, former director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and founding director of the Modern War Institute at West Point. Luke Hartig is a fellow with New America’s International Security program, previously served as Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, and is president of National Journal Research. Elisabeth Kendall is Research Fellow in Arabic & Islam at Oxford University (Pembroke). The discussion will be moderated by Karen J. Greenberg. Greenberg is the Director of the Center for National Security at Fordham Law, a fellow with New America’s International Security program, and author of Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Trump.

Join the conversation online using #CTOperations and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Peter Bergen, @PeterBergenCNN
Vice President, New America

Col. (ret.) Liam Collins, @LiamSCollins
Executive Director of the Viola Foundation
Fellow, New America International Security Program
Former Director, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Luke Hartig, @LukeHartig
Fellow, New America International Security program
Former Senior Director for Counterterrorism, National Security Council
President, National Journal Research

Elisabeth Kendall, @Dr_E_Kendall
Research Fellow, Oxford University (Pembroke)

MODERATOR

Karen J. Greenberg, @KarenGreenberg3
Director, Center on National Security at Fordham Law
Fellow, New America International Security Program
Author, Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Trump

At least 6 British citizens and 1 American are being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan, CNN.com

At least 6 British citizens and 1 American are being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan

By Kylie Atwood and Peter Bergen, CNN

(CNN)At least eight Westerners have been arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan during different incidents in the last two months, CNN has learned, marking a sharp escalation of Taliban actions against Westerners living in the country.

No formal charges appear to have been lodged against the detained men. The people being held now include six British citizens, one of whom is an American legal resident, and one US citizen, according to the sources with direct knowledge of the matter in Afghanistan, the United States, and the UK.

The former vice president of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, tweeted that “nine” Westerners had been “kidnapped” by the Taliban, naming journalists Andrew North, formerly of the BBC who was in the country working for the United Nations, and Peter Jouvenal, who has worked with the BBC and CNN. Both are British citizens.

The wife of North, Natalia Antelava, had confirmed to CNN that her husband was detained. Antelava tweeted Sunday confirming North’s release.

North was in Afghanistan on assignment for the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR).

The reason for each of the specific detentions is unclear, and they are not thought all to be related.

Jouvenal’s detention was confirmed by his family and friends to CNN.

“Peter Jouvenal’s friends are deeply concerned for his safety following his detention by the authorities in Afghanistan in early December. A British/German dual-national, Peter has been travelling to Afghanistan for more than forty years, as freelance cameraman, businessman and investor,” his family said in a statement. “He is a Muslim, knows Afghanistan better than most foreigners, is married to an Afghan (they have three daughters), and speaks both main languages. He is being held without charge, and with no freedom to contact his family or lawyers.”
The family also said that they believed his detention could have been an error and noted that he has health complications which make his detention more dangerous.

“Peter’s family and friends believe that he may have been detained in error, as he was in Afghanistan to discuss investments in Afghanistan’s mining industry as well as conducting family business. Before his arrest, he was working openly and had frequent meetings with senior Taliban officials. We urgently request that the Afghan authorities release Peter,” the family said. “He suffers from high blood pressure and needs medication. There is a high threat of COVID infection in the Afghan prison system.

Escalation by the Taliban

The detentions come at a delicate time for the Biden administration which faces a major foreign policy crisis in Ukraine. President Joe Biden withdrew all US troops from Afghanistan six months ago, which paved the way for the Taliban to take over the country.
The detentions also mark a sharp escalation of Taliban actions against Westerners living in Afghanistan and come at a delicate moment in US-Taliban relations. Since the group swept back into power as the US military withdrew last August, it has been seeking recognition as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.

Emily Horne, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, called the detentions “unacceptable” and said the US has been contact with the Taliban as it urges the group to release the Westerners.

“It’s completely unacceptable for the Taliban to hold hostage human beings, and completely antithetical to their purported aspiration to be viewed as a legitimate actor on the world stage. Through direct and indirect communications with the Taliban, we have urged the release of any and all individuals who are unjustly being held by the Taliban and their proxies. Due to privacy, safety, and operational concerns, we have no further comment at this time,” Horne said.

Seven of the men were arrested in Kabul in December in separate incidents, and they have been detained for the past two months, the sources told CNN.

The Taliban have not publicly said that they are holding the men, although they did allow a senior Qatari official to visit some of the detainees in Kabul in mid-January. The Qatari official saw no signs of obvious mistreatment of the men, the sources told CNN.

The Taliban and Qatari government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A senior British official also visited some of the men in prison this month, two sources told CNN. The detainees are not all being held together, sources tell CNN.
The UK government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Conditions in Afghan jails are spartan, especially during the cold Kabul winters, and the spread of Covid-19 in the country is worrying the families of the detained men.
From 2002, Jouvenal was the proprietor of the Gandamack Lodge hotel in Kabul, which was the key hotel used by journalists who were covering the Afghan War, until it was closed in 2014.
Jouvenal also filmed the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997 for CNN.

During the war against the Soviets, at great personal risk, Jouvenal traveled into Afghanistan more than 70 times to film the conflict for a variety of Western news organizations, one of the few Western journalists to do so.

The last time that the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, before 9/11, Jouvenal maintained a house in Kabul, and over the years he has repeatedly met with Taliban leaders.
Senior US and British officials have been working together to attempt to resolve the matter.

Qatari officials who are in frequent contact with the Taliban — as the protecting power of the US in the country — have discussed the issue with Taliban officials. For the last five weeks CNN has withheld reporting about the western prisoners held by the Taliban as diplomatic efforts by American, British and Qatari officials have continued to try and secure their release due to sensitivities around those efforts which have not been successful.

The Westerners are being held by the Intelligence Directorate of the Taliban in Kabul, according to sources familiar with the cases. The intelligence service is directed by Abdul Haq Wasiq, who was held at the Guantanamo prison camp for 12 years until he was released in 2014 in a prisoner swap for US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was being held by the Taliban.
Negotiating with the Taliban presents a huge challenge.

As the US military and diplomats completed their withdrawal from Kabul in August, they worked alongside the Taliban to facilitate the chaotic evacuation of foreigners and Afghans from the country. Since the withdrawal, there have been regular communications between US officials and the Taliban, but the trajectory of the relationship remains unclear.

As of earlier this year, there were about 80 Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan but could not because evacuation flights have not been leaving the country regularly. Last month a flight chartered by the US government left Kabul, which marked the first evacuation departure since November, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The Taliban Haqqani network also continues to hold US contractor Mark Frerichs, who was kidnapped two years ago while he was doing construction work in Afghanistan before the Taliban had seized the entire country in August.

No foreign country has recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, and so the Taliban crave any contacts with Western officials in which they are treated as the de facto government.

The US has made it clear that the Taliban must change their ways before being given any formal recognition.

The US gave $308 million of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan in January, to assist the Afghan people who are facing a growing humanitarian crisis.

And Biden signed an executive order Friday allowing $7 billion in frozen assets from Afghanistan’s central bank to be distributed for humanitarian assistance in the country and to victims of the September 11 terror attacks, senior administration officials confirmed.

The funds, held in the US, were frozen following the collapse of the central government in Kabul in August. Half the remaining assets — $3.5 billion — will go toward providing relief inside the country, where fears of mass starvation have taken hold in the months since the Taliban took over.

The Taliban wants this assistance to continue because millions of Afghans face the prospect of starvation this winter. But the Taliban also want other forms of support from the global community.
The diplomatic efforts to free the westerners are complicated by the fact there are different factions within the Taliban. They are: the Haqqani Network which is the strongest faction militarily; the “Doha Taliban” which is the most pragmatic group; and the “Kandahar Taliban,” named after the region in southern Afghanistan where the Taliban originated in the early 1990s.

These factions frequently disagree on policy matters, according to senior Qatari officials who facilitated the talks in Doha between the United States and the Taliban that resulted in all American troops being pulled out of Afghanistan in August.

More than half of the members of the Taliban cabinet who were appointed in September are the subject of UN sanctions, according to Edmund Fitton-Brown, who coordinates the monitoring of Taliban sanctions at the UN.

The Taliban’s acting interior minister is Sirajuddin Haqqani. His job is the equivalent of running the United States Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. Last year the United Nations reported that Haqqani “is a member of the wider Al-Qaida leadership.” Haqqani is also on the FBI’s most-wanted list, which has a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest, while the US State Department has a $10 million reward.

This story and headline have been updated with additional information, including Andrew North’s release.
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh contributed reporting.

An abrupt about-face for Biden on using the military, CNN.com

Updated 0202 GMT (1002 HKT) February 4, 2022

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His new book is “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.”

(CNN)This week, President Joe Biden made two decisions that belied his reputation as a dove. He approved the deployment of 3,000 US troops to Eastern Europe as a result of the growing numbers of Russian forces that are arrayed near Ukraine. And he authorized the special forces raid Wednesday that killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.

It seemed like quite an about-face for the President. Over the past decade, Biden has been far more cautious about deploying troops or using force. Biden pulled all US troops out of Afghanistan in August, which triggered the departure of thousands of allied NATO soldiers and American contractors, precipitating the takeover of the country by the Taliban.

Biden also oversaw the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq in December 2011, when he was vice president. After ISIS had seized much of Iraq in 2014, then-President Barack Obama subsequently ordered thousands of American troops back into the country.

Biden also opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011 because of the risks of carrying out a ground raid in Pakistan during which US forces might be captured or killed.

Yet, a little over a decade later, Biden seems to be in a different place when it comes to the use of force.
It’s worth considering Obama’s decision to carry out the bin Laden operation and compare it to Biden’s decision to authorize the raid that killed the ISIS leader.

Both of these operations had a good deal in common. They were risky ground operations carried out by US Special Operations Forces to avoid large-scale civilian casualties that likely would have resulted from simply bombing the compound in which bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan or bombing the building in Syria where the ISIS leader was holed up.

In the end, the bin Laden operation was a success because SEAL Team Six, which carried out the raid, repeatedly rehearsed the operation, while Obama’s national security team spent many months carefully planning for every eventuality, including if one of the helicopters on the raid crashed. A helicopter did crash during the raid on bin Laden’s compound, but it didn’t halt the operation.

Similarly, with Wednesday’s raid that killed the ISIS leader, US forces repeatedly rehearsed the operation, and the planning went on for many months.

And while a helicopter on the raid in Syria targeting the leader of ISIS developed a mechanical problem and had to be destroyed, the operation was a success from the standpoint of eliminating the ISIS leader, who blew himself up along with members of his family.

The operations against bin Laden and al-Qurayshi both resulted in civilian casualties; the wife of one of bin Laden’s bodyguards was killed, while a still undetermined number of civilians died during the raid against the ISIS leader.
Do ‘decapitation’ strikes work?

A larger question is whether this week’s raid will make a lasting difference. Decapitation strikes that kill the leaders of terrorist or insurgent groups do have some effect, but generally less than many assume.

After the death of their leader, jihadist groups typically soon name another leader and move on. Look at the Taliban today: Their leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed in a US airstrike in Pakistan in 2016, which was described as an “important milestone” by Obama, who had ordered the operation. Yet, now the Taliban control all of Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda’s core in Pakistan and Afghanistan never really recovered after bin Laden’s death, although it had already been greatly weakened in the years after the 9/11 attacks because of CIA drone strikes and the arrests of key leaders. The current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has not been able to resuscitate the core of al Qaeda.
Where such strikes can have real continuing utility is when US forces have the opportunity to perform what they term SSE, Sensitive Site Exploitation.

During the bin Laden raid, SEALs picked up computers, thumb drives and documents, amounting to some 470,000 files.
This led to a much better understanding of how bin Laden was attempting to control al Qaeda and its affiliates around the world and it also led to other strikes against leaders of al Qaeda which further damaged the group.
During Wednesday’s operation, US forces were on the ground in Syria for two hours, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.

Kirby said it was “common practice” that the US military would pick up anything they could find during a raid, and it would defy common sense that US forces didn’t search the house in which the ISIS leader was hiding for any computers, thumb drives, cell phones and documents that might be useful in the fight against ISIS going forward.

However, more than two decades after 9/11, jihadist groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda and their affiliates around the world continue to remain somewhat capable in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Killing one man doesn’t, of course, kill the ideology of militant jihadism, which will always find some takers, especially in failing or failed states in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Biden no doubt knows about the limits of Special Operations raids, but he chose to launch one this time. This shift to a more muscular foreign policy stance may end up paying dividends at a time when Biden’s popularity is flagging.

The threat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poses to Covid-19 vaccination efforts, CNN.com

The threat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poses to Covid-19 vaccination efforts

Opinion by Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the senior editor of the Coronavirus Daily Brief and author of the new book “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.”

(CNN)For many years, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a leader of the anti-vaccination movement in the United States. And, for much of that time, he has been seen as an outlier. Even before the pandemic, several of his family members — including Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and former US Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II — had taken him to task for spreading “dangerous misinformation” about vaccines.

Now Kennedy is one of the leaders of a movement that is encouraging Americans to risk their own health and even that of others, since those who are vaccinated can help reduce the risk of severe disease and help to limit the scope of the pandemic, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Kennedy, by virtue of his family name and the anti-vaxxer organization he leads — the innocuously named Children’s Health Defense Fund — as well as his high profile on social media, is now one of the largest sources of vaccine disinformation in the United States.

On Friday, a CDC report noted, “During October-November, unvaccinated persons had 13.9 and 53.2 times the risks for infection and COVID-19-associated death, respectively, compared with fully vaccinated persons who received booster doses.” In other words, a person could be more than 50 times more likely to die of Covid-19 if not vaccinated and boosted.

Notably, the vaccines against Covid-19 are also extremely safe. More than half a billion doses of these vaccines have been administered in the US, yet reports of serious adverse reactions or deaths attributable to the vaccinations are quite rare, according to the CDC.

Meanwhile, more than 860,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 since the pandemic began. But the US is so flooded with vaccine misinformation — and it’s only complicating further vaccination efforts. As of December 2021, 15% of American adults 18 and older remained unvaccinated, having not received even a first shot, according to the US Census Bureau — a figure that amounts to tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans.

Kennedy has contributed to this sorry state of affairs as one of the leading sources of vaccine misinformation in the US, according to a recent study released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization seeking to address digital hate and misinformation.

On Sunday, Kennedy addressed a crowd of anti-vaxxers at a Washington, DC, rally convened, in part, by his Children’s Health Defense Fund. He claimed that the Biden administration’s policies on vaccines were worse than the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews, saying, “Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did.”

One of Kennedy’s majors may have been history at Harvard, but it seems to have had little effect on his actual understanding of the subject.

The Biden administration’s legitimate public health push for vaccine mandates to save an untold number of American lives is quite the opposite of the Nazis hunting down and killing 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. The use of safe vaccines by more than 200 million Americans is not a perversion of science as practiced by the Nazis, but a legitimate and approved use of medical science. And that’s to say nothing of his reference to Anne Frank, who ultimately perished in Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp.

Though Kennedy’s invocation of the Nazis in the context of Covid-19 vaccine mandates is bonkers, it is not uncommon among anti-vaxxers. At Sunday’s rally, CNN reported on a number of anti-vaxxers carrying signs about Nazism — including “Make the Nuremberg Code great again!” The code, which explained the context in which medical experiments were permissible on human beings, was established during the prosecution of Nazis who experimented on Jews in the Holocaust.

And, in November, Fox Nation commentator Lara Logan compared Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to Biden, to Dr. Josef Mengele, who infamously performed experiments on children and others prisoners held at Auschwitz concentration camp. Logan has since disappeared from the airwaves.

Kennedy, who has degrees from Harvard University, the London School of Economics and the University of Virginia School of Law, has had notable success in his career as an environmental lawyer who helped spearhead efforts to clean up the Hudson River. And all of his education and professional success makes his crusade against vaccines even more puzzling.

Yet, today, approximately two years into the worst global pandemic in a century, Kennedy is no longer a small-time anti-vaxxer, but one of the leaders of a movement that is imperiling the lives of many Americans.

How Aafia Siddiqui became an icon for terrorists, CNN.com

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His new book is “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)The hostage-taker at the synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, Saturday was believed by US law enforcement to be motivated by the imprisonment of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani who is serving an 86-year sentence at a prison in Fort Worth. She was arrested by US forces in Afghanistan almost a decade and half ago, yet her arrest continues to reverberate today.

To most Americans Siddiqui is an obscure figure, but among Islamist terrorists the mother of three is an icon.

After ISIS kidnapped American journalist James Foley in Syria in 2012 the terrorists sent an email to Foley’s family in August 2014 demanding the release of Siddiqui.

In 2009, US soldier Bowe Bergdahl was taken hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of the key Taliban demands for Bergdhal’s release was Siddiqui being freed from US custody.

Siddiqui, a slight Pakistani in her mid-thirties, was arrested in eastern Afghanistan in July 2008. US officials said she was carrying documents about the manufacture of “dirty bombs,” which are radiological weapons. They said she was also carrying notes about attacks against New York City landmarks such as the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Siddiqui, who lived in the United States between 1991 and 2002, graduated from top US universities with a degree in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in neuroscience from Brandeis.

After Siddiqui was arrested in Ghazni, Afghanistan, she was interrogated on July 18, 2008 by US soldiers and FBI officials. During that interrogation Siddiqui found an unattended rifle and fired it at a US officer and other members of the interview team. She also attacked an FBI agent and a US army officer as they tried to disarm her. She was subsequently charged with attempted murder.

In her native Pakistan, Siddiqui is lionized by some as a victim of the “war on terrorism.” Thousands took to the streets in protest when she was convicted of the attempted murder of the US army officer in 2010.

Now, once again, Siddiqui’s imprisonment in Texas is being used as a rationale for terrorism against Americans, this time in the United States itself.

American troops may have all departed Afghanistan in August, but America’s long war there continues to reverberate today.

Guantanamo at Twenty What is the Future of the Prison Camp? New America online

[ONLINE] – Guantanamo at Twenty
What is the Future of the Prison Camp?

January 11, 2022, marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, which was established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It also marks the start of the prison’s second year under the direction of the Biden administration. So far, the Biden administration has released only one detainee, Abdul Latif Nasser. Thirty-nine detainees remain. What will happen to the prison and its detainees under the Biden administration? Will anyone else be released? Will the prison ever close?

Join New America’s International Security Program as they welcome Karen J. Greenberg, Thomas B. Wilner, and Andy Worthington for a discussion about what is next for the prison.

Join the conversation online using #GTMOat20 and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Karen J. Greenberg, @KarenGreenberg3
Director, Center on National Security at Fordham Law School
Fellow, New America International Security Program
Author, Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy From the War on Terror to Donald Trump

Thomas B. Wilner
Co-Founder, Close Guantanamo
Of Counsel, Shearman & Sterling, LLP

Andy Worthington, @GuantanamoAndy
Co-Founder, Close Guantanamo
Author, The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison

MODERATOR

Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President of Global Studies & Fellows, New America

When
Jan. 11, 2022
10:30 am – 11:30 am
Where
Online Only
Webcast link
RSVP

The infectious disease expert who warned us 800,000 Americans would die of Covid-19, CNN.com

Updated 2:02 PM ET, Thu December 9, 2021

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the senior editor of the Coronavirus Daily Brief and author of the new book “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) Michael Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and author of The New York Times bestseller, “Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs.” He has been publicly warning of the dangers of a global pandemic for more than a decade and half and was a member of Joe Biden’s Covid task force during the presidential transition. In April 2020, he told me that he estimated that there could be 800,000 deaths from Covid-19 within 18 months in the US. That prediction has proven eerily prescient; a year and a half after Osterholm made that prediction more than 793,000 Americans have died from the disease. I spoke to Osterholm this week about what he sees ahead for the pandemic. Our conversation was edited for clarity.

BERGEN: There are about 30% of Americans who have chosen not to be vaccinated. What’s your message to them?

OSTERHOLM: You cannot outrun the game clock with this pandemic. This virus will find you and, unfortunately, many of the outcomes are very sad. Look at what’s happening right now in the US. We have health care systems around the country, including in my home state of Minnesota, that are hanging on by a thread. We’ve seen health care systems virtually broken by this pandemic. They just couldn’t provide critical care to non-Covid patients.

If you’re not going to get vaccinated for yourself, please get vaccinated for your loved ones and for the community because this is a very challenging situation.
The other thing to emphasize is that I don’t know if the Omicron variant will replace the Delta variant. But I think it is likely. Could that be a good thing? Maybe if it results in milder illness than we see with the Delta variant. But nonetheless, you still are going to get infected if you are not vaccinated.

BERGEN: Can the pandemic continue indefinitely? We are already almost two years into it in the US.

OSTERHOLM: I look at this through a lens of evolution. Early on in the pandemic, I anticipated this would go at least 18 months. That was because the only real perspective I had to understand what this coronavirus might look like was previous influenza pandemics. And I think that many of us assumed that at some point it would become a seasonal infection like influenza after two years or so.

I got a rude awaking earlier this year in March and April when I saw the new Alpha variant emerge as well as the Beta and Gamma variants, and I had a sense that this was going to change how the pandemic would unfold. As a result, I thought that some of the darkest days of the pandemic would be ahead of us and that was at a time in the spring when case numbers were dropping markedly in the United States and vaccine was flowing. But I realized that variants were like 210-mile-an-hour curveballs, and we couldn’t predict if they might have increased transmissibility or the ability to cause severe illness. This conclusion was not popular among many of my colleagues and policy makers.

So, when Delta emerged in December 2020, it wasn’t really a surprise. There are still many unanswered questions. Why, for example, did we see Delta emerging in India rather than in other countries, which had a major surge of Covid-19 cases in late spring, early summer 2021?

BERGEN: Do you have a theory about why Delta emerged first in India?

OSTERHOLM: No, I don’t. India has already had a big surge of Delta. I don’t know why India is not having another surge now given only 35% of the population is fully vaccinated. And you can’t attribute the lack of current cases to seasonality. Here we are in the middle of South Africa’s summer seeing the emergence of the recently identified Omicron variant.
Earlier this year, the hottest Covid regions in the world were simultaneously in South Asia — India, Pakistan and Nepal — and South America — Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. One region is in the Northern Hemisphere around 30 degrees latitude and the other is around 30 degrees latitude in the Southern Hemisphere.
So there just hasn’t been a predictability about why or where Covid will take root.

If I could understand why surges occur or why they go away or why they don’t happen, then I’d be in a better place to answer questions about where Covid is headed. All I can tell you is when a surge starts, the level of vaccination has a tremendous impact on how much pain and suffering occur with that surge.
In the States, we’ve seen an extended surge in Minnesota since early September and Michigan just hit a record number of Covid-19 hospitalizations. Our experience in Minnesota and Michigan is similar to what is being seen in the United Kingdom, where their Delta surge has been ongoing since July. Why? I don’t know. I’d just say with great humility, I know less about this virus today than I probably did a year ago.

BERGEN: The travel bans on South Africa and other African countries — are they helpful?

OSTERHOLM: No. The new variant was all around the world in the month of November. It clearly is highly infectious.
A “travel ban” is something that nations might do initially just to lock things down while they understand what’s going on — it is not meant to be a long-term solution. It’s like police at a crime scene. They lock it down for several hours to gather information and then open it back up again.

The political reaction of implementing a travel ban is not helpful in most cases. If it gives you 24 to 36 hours to at least get a lay of the land about what’s happening, then I think it can be useful. But if it persists after that, particularly when you have widespread transmission of the virus in other parts of the world already, it’s counterproductive.

BERGEN: You predicted in April 2020 that there could be 800,000 deaths in the United States in 18 months, and we’re now at 790,000-plus deaths right around that 18-month time frame. How did you make that prediction?

OSTERHOLM: I based my estimates at the time on historic data from previous pandemics.
What is troubling to me is our fascination with modeling. I think modeling, particularly when it’s erroneous, can be very detrimental. I’ve watched so many different estimates of case numbers from these models taken literally by policymakers and the public and particularly the media.

The reality is you can’t model beyond 30 days out. Just look at what is happening right now. We can’t even predict why these surges occur or when they occur. Who, 30 days ago, could have developed a model that would accurately predict what we’re seeing right now with Omicron? Who could have predicted that?
BERGEN: Do we know how deadly the Omicron variant is compared to previous variants?

OSTERHOLM: While it’s early, I believe that Omicron is less virulent than Delta. The variant is being studied in South Africa, which is important because the virus has been in that country longer than others. And we do know that hospitalizations, serious illness and deaths are lagging indicators. Rates often rise two to three weeks after rises in case numbers start to occur. But as of today, the epidemiologic and clinical data on Omicron cases around the world support this virus is less lethal than Delta.

When I look at these major Covid case clusters that are occurring right now, the outbreaks in Norway, Denmark, and in the UK, it’s been quite remarkable to see how many of these large numbers of cases involve fully vaccinated people, and how often these have resulted in very mild illnesses.
BERGEN: How necessary are boosters?

OSTERHOLM: When we first investigated the Covid-19 vaccines, we had to prioritize the assessment of the safety of the vaccines, which was done well. But we never really understood how to best use the vaccine in terms of number of doses, dose spacing, even the dose amount to maximize our immune response both for the short and long-term. We know that oftentimes the best immune response occurs when you have an extended period between the doses; in other words, allowing the immune system to basically recover and be capable of this enhanced response with the next dose. Look at how many vaccine schedules we have where that’s the case.

We already had a history suggesting that immunity from a coronavirus infection may be short-lived. So, I was concerned that we had concluded that we do only need two doses, with the mRNA vaccines, and we’re done.

When we started seeing breakthrough infections in midsummer, often six months or more from their second dose, I was initially very concerned about waning immunity. In fact, I repeatedly addressed this issue in my public statements about the remarkable success of the vaccines. I called these breakthrough infections “the future of Covid-19.”

Subsequently, the Israeli data, which was collected because of Israel’s unique national health system, was clear and compelling in its findings that waning immunity does occur at six to seven months out, and that we do need that third dose — and not as a luxury dose, but the third dose of a three-dose prime series. It should have been three doses all along.

The whole world should have access to three doses of a mRNA Covid vaccine and there would be nothing more tragic to me than having someone protected by a two-dose regimen for six to eight months, and then to get seriously ill and die because they didn’t get a booster. I think that one day this won’t even be a question. It will be a minimum three-dose vaccine.
BERGEN: Two percent of the population of low-income countries has had one shot versus 65% for high income countries. does that portend for the future?

OSTERHOLM: Two things: One is that this pandemic has really provided a window into our global vaccine capacity in a way nothing else has ever done before.

I think that there’s been some red herrings in terms of what the issues are. For example, we keep hearing about technology transfer and giving these countries the ability to make their own vaccines, and yet the expertise needed to make these vaccines is really at a premium. It’s very difficult to find people who know how to do this. So, it’s not enough to transfer technology to a low-income country if you don’t provide the expertise to make these vaccines. It’s not as simple as making chicken soup.

Also, our focus has been almost solely on getting vaccines to people around the world, which is surely important. But we haven’t been thinking nearly enough about what it would take to turn a vaccine into a vaccination, that needle into the arm. We have seen the challenges in this country with administering vaccinations, and those challenges also exist around the world.
So, just shipping a couple of pallets of vaccines to a low-income country may be a useless effort if, in fact, they don’t have the infrastructure to deliver the vaccine and they don’t have a means for helping the population understand how and why they should want to be vaccinated. What this whole situation has highlighted, is the fact that we have a lot more work to do to understand not just how to make vaccines, but also how to turn vaccines into vaccinations.

National Intelligence University online

Silurians Meeting Online

December 15, Noon
Silurians Zoom Meeting:
Peter Bergen is our Speaker

Peter Bergen
Dear Silurians

How much damage did Donald Trump and his generals do to our national security? What’s the real story behind the pursuit and killing of Osama Bin Laden? Is Al-Qaeda regaining strength for new attacks on the West from hideouts in the Taliban’s Afghanistan?

For our December speaker, the Silurians Press Club will host a man who knows the answers to these questions better than most. Peter Bergen is a journalist, author, documentary producer and Vice President at New America. He is also a professor at Arizona State University, a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security and CNN’s national security analyst. He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Peter is also a compelling writer and author of a series of books on the threat to the U.S. from global terrorism. His latest is The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, which The Times describes as a page-turner that not only puts flesh on the terrorist icon but chronicles “the missed opportunities, ignored warnings and strategic blunders of the United States” that led up to 9/11. Bergen’s The Longest War takes us from that tragic day through the equally tragic war in Afghanistan that just ended in U.S. humiliation.

So tune in to Zoom on Dec. 15 at noon for our talk with Peter. And get ready to resume Silurian lunches and dinners, which we will launch February 4 with a gala celebrating the work of Times photographer Chester Higgins. In a few days we will send you an Eventbrite link to sign up for that milestone event.

Your president,
Michael Serrill

Afghanistan’s American University in exile, CNN.com

Afghanistan’s American University in exile
Opinion by Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen has reported from Afghanistan since 1993. His new book is “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

Doha, Qatar (CNN)Five years ago, Breshna Musazai was studying law at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. Her future seemed bright. She was attending the best university in Afghanistan, a coed institution offering an American-style education and was on a full scholarship provided by the US government.

Then, on August 24, 2016, Taliban gunmen stalked the campus killing anyone who moved. One of them shot Musazai in the leg. She pretended to be dead and the gunman shot her again to finish her off. A bullet struck her in the foot. For the next six hours, as the terrorists rampaged on the campus Musazai lay motionless in a hallway.

The Taliban killed a total of 15 students and staff that day. The university was a prominent symbol of the American presence in Afghanistan, which made it an appealing target for the Taliban. For students, particularly women like Musazai, the university represented the modern world of Enlightenment values to which the Taliban have long stood in staunch opposition.
Five years after their assault on the American University of Afghanistan, the Taliban took over the whole country.

Much of the world may have assumed that the evacuation of at-risk Afghans following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in mid-August is over. But for many Afghans the story is ongoing. Of the 4,000 students, alumni and staff of the American University of Afghanistan, only around 600 are now estimated to have departed Afghanistan, the university’s President, Ian Bickford, told me.
(Disclosure: In May, I took part in a planning meeting with university leaders in which they discussed what to do if the Taliban did take over).

Musazai’s journey

Breshna Musazai was one of the lucky ones who survived the Taliban assault on her university in 2016, but she was grievously wounded and spent four months in a hospital in Kabul. She was then flown to Dallas, Texas, where she spent over six months at the First Baptist Medical Center. Doctors performed surgery on her leg, which saved it.
In the summer of 2017, Musazai, now using a wheelchair, returned to Kabul to complete her studies at the American University of Afghanistan. The following year at her graduation ceremony the audience stood up and applauded when 28-year-old Musazai accepted her degree.

Musazai told me that during the years that followed, like many of the students, staff and alumni of her university, she was worried by the military advances that the Taliban were making in Afghanistan, especially after US President Joe Biden announced in April that the total withdrawal of US troops from the country would be completed by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

In the months following Biden’s announcement, most US troops pulled out of Afghanistan as did thousands of allied NATO troops and more than 15,000 contractors, which precipitated the collapse of the Afghan military and government.

On August 15, as the militants rolled into Kabul, a family member told Musazai “The Taliban are here.” Musazai was in shock.

Someone from the American University of Afghanistan texted Musazai and told her that she and her brother could get on a flight out of the country. On August 17, Musazai went to Kabul airport where many thousands of desperate Afghans were jammed up against the walls and gates of the airport trying to get out.

The Taliban were firing guns in the air to try to control the crowds. Musazai was frightened; she had found the sound of gunfire especially terrifying ever since the attack at the university.
Musazai’s brother helped her with her bags and wheelchair and they got on a flight that took them to Doha, the capital of Qatar. There they settled in a gated community of houses that the Qatari government had built to house players playing in the soccer World Cup, which will take place next year in Qatar.

The fortunate few

Also staying at the housing complex were seven Afghan female business students from the American University of Afghanistan. Unlike Musazai, their names have not been made public, so we are not identifying them.

The students had to make snap decisions to leave their families behind and make the difficult choice to leave Afghanistan quickly.
Their families urged them to continue their studies even if it meant leaving their country forever.

The students told me that they were unable to get through the bedlam at the airport gate by themselves. The university told them to contact Qatari diplomats located in the upscale Serena Hotel in Kabul who would help them navigate their way to the airport.
The students gathered at the hotel and were escorted to the airport by Qatari government officials, who maintain cordial relations with the Taliban.

On August 19 they arrived in Doha where they joined an exodus of their fellow students. As of this month, around 450 current students have left Afghanistan, while 375 remain there, says Bickford, the American University of Afghanistan’s president.

The students who made it out of Afghanistan are now dispersed around the world where they continue to be taught in online classes. One hundred and nine of the students attend the American University of Iraq in Sulimaniya, while 106 are at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and others are in countries such as Pakistan and Turkey.

Qatar will house 100 students at Doha’s Education City where American universities such as Georgetown and Northwestern maintain satellite campuses.

Only 50 of the American University of Afghanistan’s students have made it to the United States where they are housed in military bases while they are getting settled.

The seven female business students who made it to Doha are now living on the military base at Fort Dix, New Jersey. From there they will go on to attend Bard, a small, highly regarded liberal arts college in upstate New York.

Musazai remains in Doha. The injuries caused by the Taliban have complicated her ability to travel. Much of her immediate family did get to the United States and they are now living at a military base in the Midwest.

Musazai hopes to continue her studies in the United States in a master’s program on human rights law. It’s a career path that would not likely be available to her in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.