“Journalism in Hostile Environments: Perspectives from the Field.” New America DC

The Washington Daybook

May 1, 2017

New America holds a discussion on “Journalism in Hostile Environments: Perspectives from the Field.”

SECTION: DISCUSSION; ||MEDIA/RIGHTS|| Media

LENGTH: 95 words

TIME: 9:30 a.m.
PARTICIPANTS: Emma Beals, freelance investigative journalist and co-founder of the Frontline Freelance Register; Arwa Damon, senior international correspondent at CNN; Delphine Halgand, U.S. director for Reporters Without Borders; and Peter Bergen, vice president of New America
LOCATION: New America, 740 15th Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C.

Why the ‘mother of all bombs’ and why now? CNN.com

Why the ‘mother of all bombs’ and why now?
Peter Bergen

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 7:05 AM ET, Fri April 14, 2017
In this U.S. Air Force handout, a GBU-43/B bomb, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, explodes November 21, 2003 at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. MOAB is a 21,700-pound that was droped from a plane at 20, 000 feet.

Story highlights

Peter Bergen: Use of bomb should be seen as part of effort to reverse course of Afghan war
Afghan conflict has not been going well for the country’s government or the United States

“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 author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”

(CNN)The dropping of a “mother of all bombs” Thursday by the United States on an ISIS cave and bunker complex in Achin district in eastern Afghanistan should be understood as part of an effort to reverse a war that is not going well for the Afghan government and, by extension, the United States.
The non-nuclear 21,600-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) “targeted a system of tunnels and caves that ISIS fighters use to move around freely,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.
Thursday’s bombing had a feeling of deja vu. A decade and a half ago the US Air Force dropped massive 15,000 pound “Daisy Cutter” bombs on the Tora Bora complex where Osama bin Laden was hiding in December 2001. Achin district is only a dozen or so miles from the Tora Bora region.

While those Daisy Cutter bombs certainly killed many members of al Qaeda, bin Laden and many of his senior leaders escaped. That’s a useful reminder that very few military campaigns are won from the air.
There are perhaps secondary effects of Thursday’s bombing in Afghanistan such as signaling to the North Koreans and the Syrians that the United States can deploy such weapons against their bunker systems, but the key is that the war in Afghanistan is at a critical point.
In fact, the war in Afghanistan is at its lowest point for the Afghans and their American allies since the Taliban were overthrown in the months after 9/11.
The Taliban “control or contest” about a third of the population of the country, according to senior US military officials, a total of around 10 million people, which is more than the population that ISIS controlled in Syria and Iraq at the height of its power during the summer of 2014.
In March 2001, Taliban soldiers stand at the base of the mountain alcove where a Buddha statue once stood 170 feet high in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The
Al Qaeda and ISIS have also established footholds in Afghanistan.
Whereas a few years back Kabul had a bustling restaurant scene and Westerners could live there and lead relatively normal lives, all that is now gone as a result of the multiple bombings in Kabul by the Taliban and the targeted kidnapping of Westerners. The exodus of Westerners from the country has had an adverse impact on both investment and development in Afghanistan.
Because of the worsening situation in Afghanistan, the Trump administration is engaged in a strategic review of Afghanistan both at the Pentagon and the
US National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is overseeing the Afghanistan review at the White House and will be traveling to Afghanistan soon to make his own assessment.
McMaster served in Afghanistan running an anti-corruption task force in 2010, as a result of which he understands the players and politics of the country well.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February, Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson said that the present troop level of 8,400 US soldiers was insufficient and noted, “We have a shortfall of a few thousand” advisers to train and assist the Afghan army.
The Obama administration had a counterproductive policy of announcing scheduled withdrawals from Afghanistan even as it surged troops into the country. Take, for instance, a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009, where President Obama announced a surge of troops into Afghanistan and also announced their withdrawal date. That withdrawal date, of course, came and went — as did a number of others.
It is in American and Afghan interests for the US to stay in Afghanistan so it doesn’t turn into Iraq circa 2014, with the Taliban controlling much of the country while hosting a strong presence of ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as every other jihadist group of note.

What to do? The Trump administration should publicly state that the US already has a strategic partnership with Afghanistan until 2024 that was negotiated by the Obama administration and that it promises to maintain a US military “train and advise” non-combat mission for the Afghan army that will stay in the country until the Taliban are contained.
Afghans don’t care if the United States has 8,400 troops in the country, as it does now, or 12,000 troops or 20,000 troops. Clearly there is a difference from a purely military point of view but from a political point of view the message Afghans want to hear is that the United States is not abandoning them.
A public announcement of such a long-term commitment to Afghanistan will help NATO and other allies also commit for the long term. It will also undermine the Taliban.

Trump’s attack on Syria — a decisive action, a good speech, but now what? CNN.com

Trump’s attack on Syria — a decisive action, a good speech, but now what?

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 5:24 AM ET, Fri April 7, 2017

Story highlights

Trump gave one of his best speeches but many key questions surround the US missile strikes in Syria, writes Peter Bergen
Were the strikes only a warning shot for Syrian dictator al Assad, or will they be part of larger campaign against him?

“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 author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”

(CNN)President Donald Trump gave one of the best speeches he has ever delivered when he announced late Thursday that he had ordered US cruise missile attacks in Syria — and that they were directed at the base that sent off the airstrikes on Tuesday that killed dozens with nerve gas, including many women and children.
From his estate in Palm Beach, Trump, visibly moved, described the “beautiful babies” whose lives has been choked out by the gas attacks. In acting against the Syrians over the use of chemical weapons, Trump chose a course that his predecessor, Barack Obama, avoided, even after drawing a “red line” on the issue.
The move was the highest profile use of American military force since Trump took office and it raises several urgent questions for the administration:

The questions Trump needs to answer

1. Were the cruise missile strikes only a warning shot for the Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, or will they be part of larger campaign against him?
The United States has previously launched cruise missile strikes to “send a message” in which the message wasn’t exactly received — for instance, the cruise missile strikes against an al Qaeda base in Afghanistan that followed the group’s attacks on two US embassies in Africa in 1998 that killed more than 200 people. Three years later al Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks. The message of the cruise missile strikes in that case clearly did not deter the enemy.
Officials in the George W. Bush administration later criticized the cruise missile strikes that were ordered by President Bill Clinton in Afghanistan in 1998 as only “pounding sand.” Will historians take a similar view of Thursday’s strikes?
2. The war in Syria has displaced 14 million Syrians and half a million have been killed since Assad unleashed a brutal war on his own population six years ago. Does the Trump administration have a larger plan to protect Syrian civilians going forward?
Already the Trump administration — despite legal challenges — has attempted to ban Syrian refugees who are largely women and children from entering the United States. These Syrian refugees are not terrorists. They are fleeing the brutal terrorism of the Assad regime and the brutal terrorism of ISIS. They are the victims of terrorism, not its perpetrators.
On the campaign trail, candidate Trump occasionally raised the idea of creating “safe zones” for Syrian civilians.
Is the next step for the Trump administration the creation of such zones? After all, one set of cruise missile strikes will hardly protect the millions of Syrian civilians who are currently at the mercy of the Assad regime.
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3. The Russia connection: Assad owes his continuation in power to the intervention of Russia in 2015 to prop up his regime. Given Trump’s warm feelings toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and against the backdrop of investigations into relationships between Trump campaign officials and the Russians, do the cruise missile strikes on Thursday mark a clear repudiation by the Trump administration of Putin? And how will the Russian leader react?
4. How does it end: Machiavelli wisely noted, “Wars begin when you will but they don’t end when you please.” Already Trump officials are saying that the cruise missile strikes are only a limited response to the sarin gas attack and they are not part of some larger campaign against Assad, but these are exactly the same kinds of statements we have often heard when the United States first gets involved in a conflict overseas.
5. What is the legal basis for the attack? The Trump administration launched the cruise missile strikes in Syria, an act of war, without a UN resolution or Congressional authorization. Will the Trump administration attempt to get some buy-in from the US Congress for any further military action in Syria? After all, it is Congress that is supposed to authorize US military actions, not the Commander in Chief who is tasked with carrying them out.

Trump’s menu of bad options for Syria, CNN.com

Bergen: Trump’s menu of bad options for Syria

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 7:12 PM ET, Thu April 6, 2017

Source: Trump weighs military action in Syria 01:58
Story highlights

Peter Bergen: When you are President and an international crisis lands in your inbox, there are generally no easy options
Whatever action the United States takes will suck it further into the morass of the Syrian civil war and even possibly into some kind of confrontation with the Russians, Bergen writes

“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 author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”

(CNN)Asked what would shape the future of his government, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is said to have remarked “Events, dear boy, events.”
The Trump administration just had its first big international event: Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime appears to have carried out a chemical attack against its own people, killing dozens, including many women and children.

The video images of young children writhing in agony and being hosed down with water are indelible. And those images certainly now have the attention of President Donald Trump, who said on Wednesday, “I will tell you, what happened yesterday is unacceptable to me … It’s already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

So what can be done? When you are President and an international crisis lands in your inbox, there are generally no easy options, just a menu of unappetizing least-bad options to choose from. Already Trump and his national security team are considering some kind of military option. But they may have to move forward without either a UN resolution or congressional authorization — and whatever action the United States takes will suck it further into the morass of the Syrian civil war and even possibly into some kind of confrontation with the Russians, Assad’s staunchest backers.
On the campaign trail, candidate Trump occasionally raised the idea of creating “safe zones” for Syrian civilians. He never elaborated on where those zones would be, nor did he say how they would be enforced.
Neither has his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who hosted a conference in Washington of the coalition of 68 anti-ISIS countries. The event was notable for the lack of news that came out of it, except for one brief comment that Tillerson made about creating “interim zones of stability, through ceasefires, to allow refugees to return home.” Tillerson didn’t explain how these zones of stability would work.
The United Nations is considering a resolution that would condemn the Assad regime for the suspected nerve gas attack. These kinds of resolutions have always failed in the past because Russia invariably backs Assad and will almost certainly veto it — as will China.
Hertling: Trump's first cold slap of reality
Hertling: Trump’s first cold slap of reality
For obvious reasons, neither Russia nor China are in favor of UN resolutions that condemn the human rights abuses of authoritarian regimes and that may even lead to their ouster. Both China and Russia felt duped by the UN “no-fly” zone resolution regarding Libya in 2011 that eventually led to the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. China and Russia had abstained from the Libyan resolution and neither country plans to make what they regard as a similar mistake again.
In the absence of some kind UN resolution on Syria, could the United States take unilateral action? US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley acknowledged the possibility on Wednesday. “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively,” she said, “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”
In the post-World War II era, the United States has, however, generally been hesitant to take unilateral military action, especially in the absence of a Congressional resolution to do so.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Congress, which is supposed to authorize military action, actually did its job and had a real debate about what to do in Syria? Paging three Republican senators with the most serious cred on national security — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake — to bring some legislation to the floor on this important issue. Already McCain and Graham are calling for the United States to lead a coalition to ground Assad’s air force.
Members of Congress: This could be your time to step up and strap on those big boy boots that you have been keeping in the closet for so many years. More than a decade and half after 9/11, US military actions in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and several other Muslim nations are governed by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed in the days immediately after 9/11.
Trump on Syria's Assad: 'Something should happen'
Trump on Syria’s Assad: ‘Something should happen’
Clearly military action against the Assad regime falls far outside of the post-9/11 AUMF that was directed at al Qaeda and its allies. Democratic Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Murphy have warned that President Trump will need Congressional authorization to use military force.
Of course, no one is holding his or her breath for Congress to do its job, as it has largely abdicated its responsibility when it comes to the authorization of wars — but wouldn’t it be nice to be pleasantly surprised?
Whether or not Congress passes some kind of authorization on Syria, the next issue to consider is what military steps can realistically be taken there, without support from the American public for another large-scale ground invasion in the Middle East, which seems unlikely at best.
Let’s go back to those safe zones for Syrian citizens. They’re an admirable idea, but based on multiple discussions I have had with senior US Air Force and other military officials, implementing a safe zone in Syria would be quite complex, because it would require a “no-fly” zone to succeed. This would possibly put Russia and the United States on a collision course because Russian jets are also conducting airstrikes in Syria, while some of the planes that the Syrian air force flies are the same model as some of the Russian planes that are flying in Syrian air space.
The Russians have also given the Syrians the SA-23 surface-to-air missile system, which is one of the most sophisticated air defense systems in the world, according to US military officials.
A “no-fly” zone in Syria would also require, at least theoretically, a UN resolution, but that would be a non-starter with Russia and China.

There are other options. In 1999, NATO did impose a no-fly zone in Kosovo without seeking a UN resolution to carry out air strikes on Serbian forces.
Trump could similarly order American warplanes to bomb Syrian airfields or take out Syrian chemical weapons facilities so Assad’s planes could not drop nerve gas on their own citizens. This would be a significant escalation of the United States’ role in the conflict and would put Trump on a collision course with Vladimir Putin. Such strikes would also skirt international law.
The bottom line is that on the campaign trail, it’s all too easy to spout slogans that the plan in Syria is to “Bomb the s*** out of ISIS” and the like. Once you sit in the White House Situation Room, however, it’s all a lot more complicated. Welcome to the NFL, Mr. President!

With Bannon out, White House gets serious about national security, CNN.com

With Bannon out, White House gets serious about national security
Peter Bergen

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Story highlights

Peter Bergen notes the White House is confronting serious foreign policy crises
It has a strong team in place at the NSC, while State and Defense are understaffed, he says

“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 author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”

(CNN)The news that President Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon no longer has a permanent seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council comes at a particularly opportune time.
The NSC is increasingly becoming the locus of the key decision-making about the United States’ place in the world, in part because the State Department under the Trump administration is barely functioning, while almost all of the key policymaking positions at the Defense Department remain unfilled.
Bannon should never have had a permanent seat on the NSC as he is a political operative and the NSC has traditionally been a place where American interests are considered rather than narrow Republican or Democratic interests.

In late January, White House spokesman Sean Spicer tried to justify Bannon’s seat on the NSC because he had once served in the US Navy, but Bannon left the Navy as a lieutenant in the early 1980s. The military and the world have changed quite a bit since Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” was a No. 1 song and Ronald Reagan had recently become president.
Another NSC official who may be sidelined is deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland. McFarland is a longtime Fox News talking head who had been out of government since she was a speechwriter in the Reagan administration and who has scant relevant expertise or experience for her present role. McFarland has been offered the soft landing of US ambassador to Singapore, although it’s not clear if she will take that job or some other role at the State Department or simply remain in place.
What Steve Bannon's demotion tells us about the Trump White House
What Steve Bannon’s demotion tells us about the Trump White House
The key role of the NSC in making national security policy and foreign policy was a pronounced feature of the Obama administration and it seems this will also be the case for the Trump administration.
Trump’s national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster inherited an NSC team from his predecessor Michael Flynn that is quite formidable in three areas that are key to American national security interests: China (and by extension North Korea), the Middle East and Russia.
This is fortuitous because the United States faces gathering foreign policy crises. In Syria the Russian-backed Basher al-Assad regime is credibly charged with using sarin gas against its own civilians, while the mercurial North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues his saber rattling.
The top NSC official on Asia is Matthew Pottinger, who spent many years in China working as a Mandarin-speaking reporter for the Wall Street Journal. After leaving the Journal, Pottinger then joined the Marines and served as a captain in Afghanistan and is now a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves. Pottinger has been deeply involved in the planning for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit with President Trump that begins on Thursday. What to do about North Korea will be one of the top agenda items for their meetings.

When it comes to the greater Middle East, McMaster brings to the table his own deep knowledge of Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where he served for many years.
Serving under McMaster is a triumvirate of well-seasoned Middle East hands. The senior director at the NSC for the Middle East is retired Col. Derek Harvey, an Arabic-speaking intelligence officer with a Ph.D. who served as the head of the US military cell examining the insurgency in Iraq in 2003.
It was Harvey who first laid out for President George W. Bush at the White House in the winter of 2004 the real scale and nature of the Sunni insurgency at a time when the Bush administration wouldn’t use the word “insurgency,” because it implied they were facing something much more serious than the “dead enders” Vice President Dick Cheney was then publicly talking about.
The NSC director for Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Syria is Col. Joel Rayburn who served in Iraq as an adviser to Gen. David Petraeus. An intelligence officer and historian, Rayburn published a 2014 book, “Iraq After America,” which is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Iraq descended into chaos in the years after the American troop withdrawal at the end of 2011.
Finally, there is Michael Bell, another retired colonel with a Ph.D. who also served under Petraeus as the leader of his Initiatives Group, which acted as Petraeus’ internal think tank when he was the commanding general in Iraq. Bell is now the director at the NSC for the Gulf States and Yemen.
Meanwhile, the top official on Russia at the NSC is a frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin: Fiona Hill, who joined the Trump administration last month. Hill previously worked as a US intelligence officer focused on Russia under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Since McMaster has assumed the role of national security adviser, he has beefed up the NSC in other areas. McMaster now has a new top deputy for strategy, Egyptian-born Dina Powell, who served in the George W. Bush administration, speaks Arabic and also worked at Goldman Sachs. Powell is widely respected and is close to Ivanka Trump.
McMaster also brought on defense expert Nadia Schadlow to the NSC to write the Trump administration’s national security strategy.
Schadlow just published a book, “War and the Art of Governance,” which examines how to turn “combat success into political victory,” an enormously relevant question right now as ISIS begins to crumble and the Trump administration looks to what the “day after” ISIS looks like in Iraq and eventually Syria.

The visit to Iraq by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on Monday received a lot of attention, but what went unremarked was the presence of the American official pictured next to him in the group photo that was released of the US delegation that met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
The man on Kushner’s right was Tom Bossert, who served on George W. Bush’s NSC and is an expert in cybersecurity. Bossert is now Trump’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser. Bossert has kept a low profile and is not a regular on cable TV, but he is well regarded by his peers in the national security field.
(Full disclosure: I know to a greater or lesser degree a number of the officials mentioned in this article, including McMaster, Rayburn, Harvey, Bell, Pottinger, Schadlow and Bossert.)
The significance of having an NSC staffed with officials with real expertise and experience cannot be underestimated at a time when both the State Department and the Defense Department are only thinly staffed in their top echelons. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, for instance, is the only senior Pentagon official to be confirmed at the Pentagon.

The likely culprits behind the St. Petersburg bombing, CNN.com

CNN Wire

April 4, 2017 Tuesday 1:54 AM GMT

The likely culprits behind the St. Petersburg bombing

BYLINE: By Peter Bergen and David Sterman, CNN

LENGTH: 924 words

DATELINE: (CNN)

Editor’s note: 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 author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” David Sterman is a policy analyst at New America’s International Security Program.
(CNN) — While it’s not clear who carried out the deadly attack on the St. Petersburg metro, there are two groups that have both the capability and the intent to carry out large-scale terrorist attacks in Russian cities.
First, there are Chechen separatists who have mounted a wide range of terrorist attacks in Russia. The Russians have been waging wars with these separatists since the 19th century.
Leo Tolstoy served in an artillery regiment in the Caucasus and wrote about his experience in “The Cossacks,” saying of the Chechens: “No one spoke of hatred for the Russians. The feeling which the Chechens felt, both young and old, was stronger than hatred.”
That hatred lingers. In 2002, Chechen militants raided a Moscow theater, where they took hundreds hostage and 130 were killed. Two years later, Chechen militants bombed a metro station in Moscow, killing 39.
In 2004, Chechen militants took hundreds of students and others hostage at a school in Beslan. The resultant multi-day siege, which Russia broke with the use of tanks, resulted in more than 300 deaths.
Militants continued such attacks through the late 2000s. In 2009, militants reportedly directed by the Caucasus Emirate, an Islamist group run by the Chechen warlord Doku Umarov, killed 28 people in a suicide bombing attack on the high-speed railway linking St. Petersburg and Moscow. Umarov’s group also claimed a 2011 attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo airport that killed 37 people.
But more recently, ISIS has mounted a series of terrorist attacks and plots against Russia. ISIS despises the Russian government for its support of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and so it’s no surprise that ISIS began targeting Russia in 2015, around the same time that Russia first intervened in the Syrian civil war.
It has also increasingly subsumed large parts of the Chechen militant movement that had already been moving in a more Islamist direction.
Indeed, Russian citizens — many of whom are from the largely Muslim Caucasus region of Russia and a good number of whom are Chechen — are the largest group of ISIS foot soldiers from a non-Muslim majority country.
In June 2015, ISIS announced the establishment of a “province” in Russia’s Caucasus region. Because the conflict in the Caucasus had tamped down in recent years, the announcement of the group’s Caucasus province stoked concern about the potential for terrorism. And, indeed, ISIS quickly began to carry out operations in the Caucasus. In September 2015, it claimed its first attack, which targeted a Russian military barracks in southern Dagestan.
Three months later, ISIS carried out another attack in which a gunman killed one person and injured 11 others at the Derbent citadel, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Dagestan.
Then, in February 2016, ISIS’ Caucasus Province mounted a suicide attack on a police checkpoint in Dagestan, which it followed one month later with two more attacks on Russian soldiers also in Dagestan.
ISIS also clearly signaled that it was planning attacks outside the Caucasus region and was planning to bring its so-called holy war to the key Russian cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
On October 31, 2015, ISIS bombed a Russian airliner carrying vacationing passengers from Sinai, Egypt to St. Petersburg, killing 224 people. ISIS celebrated the attack both in its English language magazine Dabiq as well as in its Russian language magazine Istok.
In August 2016, ISIS claimed its first attack in Russia outside of the Caucasus. Two men, reportedly of Chechen descent, attacked a traffic post near Moscow. Police killed the men, but ISIS released a video of the attackers pledging their allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
Then, in November, Russian officials arrested five people suspected of ISIS links who had obtained firearms and explosives. They were accused of plotting attacks in Moscow.
These terrorist attacks and plots in Russia are compounded by the fact that Russia has contributed the most fighters to ISIS from any non-Muslim majority country, surpassing even France, the leading European contributor of fighters to ISIS.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin estimated the number of fighters who had left for Syria and Iraq from Russia and the former Soviet republics at 5,000 to 7,000.
As ISIS loses on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, contingents of Russian ISIS fighters who survive may try and make their way home to foment additional terrorism on Russian soil. They must be stopped from possible re-entry.
In addition to continuing the aggressive campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria that began under President Obama and has been ramped up under President Trump, the international community must share with INTERPOL as many names of “foreign fighters” as possible– including the names of the thousands of Russian ISIS recruits — so that as the group’s foreign fighters disperse from the warzones in Iraq and Syria, they can be arrested as they attempt to transit out of the region.
And given the estimated 30,000 foreign fighters that ISIS has manged to recruit, Russia and the international community certainly have their hands full.
TM & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Will Iraq survive victory over ISIS in Mosul? CNN.com

Will Iraq survive victory over ISIS in Mosul?
Peter Bergen

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 4:03 PM ET, Wed March 22, 2017

Fight vs. ISIS has brought Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian groups together for the moment, Peter Bergen writes
But he says, rivalries could resurface with a vengeance

“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 author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”

Sulaimani, Iraq (CNN)

In a tea room in Sulaimani’s old bazaar that’s dense with the smoke of scores of cigarettes, bunches of grizzled, middle-aged men — some wearing traditional Kurdish baggy trousers, other wearing suits without ties — are arguing furiously about the great question of the day:
What happens to Iraq after ISIS loses the key Iraqi city of Mosul?
For the moment, the Iraqi army, Kurdish peshmerga forces, Shia militias and Sunni tribal units are all united in fighting ISIS. But even in Sulaimani, an Iraqi-Kurdish city close to the border with Iran that is one of the most stable corners of a very unstable Middle East, there is considerable worry about what comes next. As a senior Iraqi government official put it to me: “This is the $64,000 question.”

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, is where almost three years ago ISIS declared its self-styled caliphate.
This month Iraqi forces seized Mosul’s main government building and central bank from ISIS militants and they are now closing in on the historic Al Nuri mosque where ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, first declared himself to be caliph, an astonishing claim asserting that Baghdadi was not only the leader of ISIS, but also the leader of all Muslims around the world.
Baghdadi’s caliphate has proven relatively short-lived. ISIS has lost more than half of the territory that it once held in Iraq. Iraqi soldiers liberated eastern Mosul weeks ago and they are now working their way through western Mosul, on the other side of the Tigris River, which bisects the city.
The final push to dislodge ISIS from Mosul is a tough fight. Western Mosul is the historic heart of one of the oldest cities in the world. Its narrow streets and alleyways are impassable for armored vehicles. Most of the ISIS fighters who remain in Mosul are willing to fight to the death and ISIS has deployed a large number of suicide bombers and even armed drones to disrupt the Iraqi military advance. Already ISIS has launched a furious counter attack to reclaim the main government building in Mosul.
Several hundred thousand civilians are hunkered down in their homes in western Mosul, with half of them at risk of being displaced by the fighting, according to Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq. Grande told a conference in Sulaimani earlier this month, “We cannot rule out the risk of a prolonged siege” in western Mosul.
But after the sobering task of driving ISIS from Mosul is completed, an even more challenging question remains: Can Iraq remain in one piece?
Fears about anti-ISIS alliance dissolving
On Monday Iraqi Prime Minster Haider al-Abadi met with President Donald Trump in Washington DC. That meeting came ahead of a conference in Washington later this week of the 68 countries that make up the anti-ISIS coalition. What comes after the defeat of ISIS in Iraq will surely be a key part of the discussions among the coalition.
In a country that has endured a brutal civil war at the height of which a decade ago 100 civilians were dying every day, there is understandable fear among Iraqis that once ISIS is largely defeated, the anti-ISIS alliance that includes Kurdish peshmerga forces, Shia militias and Sunni tribal units and which has held together Iraq’s fractious ethnicities and sects will dissolve.
In order to avoid conflict between these various forces inside Mosul, a political agreement was hammered out before the Mosul operation began in October that allowed only the Iraqi army into the city and excluded the various Kurdish, Shia and Sunni militias that are also fighting ISIS. It is the elite special forces of Iraq’s Counter Terrorism Service and, in particular, its Golden Division, that is doing the bulk of the fighting inside the city.
The United States is supporting the Iraqi military with a mix of Special Operations Forces, intelligence and close air support. That last category includes armed drones, manned aircraft and Apache helicopters.
But what comes after ISIS loses Mosul? Or to invoke General David Petraeus’ famous question at the beginning of Iraq War in 2003: “Tell me how this ends?” Nearly a decade and half later, Petraeus’ question is still a very good one, as there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the future of Iraq.
On the plus side of the ledger, the largely Shia government of Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi is, by Iraqi standards, a relatively stable government and Abadi himself is a moderate Shia politician, unlike his highly sectarian predecessor, Nouri al Maliki.
After Mosul falls
Balanced against that, a senior Iraqi government official told me, when Mosul falls, “There will be plenty of revenge killings outside of the media lens,” adding that, “the government will not intervene.” The official said that reconstruction of the heavily damaged city “will take a while” and reconciliation between the six ethnicities and sects that inhabit Mosul is going “to be tough.” That’s because in some cases half of a particular tribe was for ISIS and the other half was against it.
Also for many Kurds the success of the Kurdish peshmerga on the battlefield is more than a matter of ethnic pride. It may lead to the creation of “facts on the ground” that argue for the creation of the long-cherished dream of a Kurdish state.
The Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without their own state. At least 25 million Kurds are spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria and also Turkey, which has a large Kurdish minority. The Turkish government will never tolerate the creation of a Kurdish state.
At the same time Sunnis, who make up the majority of Mosul’s population, are leery of the Shia militias and the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, and if their interests are marginalized as they have been repeatedly in years past, they will throw their support — or at least their acquiescence — to any Sunni militia group that seems to be fighting for their interests, just as some did with ISIS and before that its parent group, Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Add to these factors the understanding that the fall of Mosul will do nothing, of course, to end the continuing civil war in neighboring Syria, which is where ISIS first made significant battlefield gains. What remains of ISIS’s Iraqi branch after the fall of Mosul will likely regroup in Syria.
Compounding Iraq’s problem is that its economy is highly dependent on oil. Oil prices have tanked in the past couple of years, as a result of which the World Bank assesses: “The Iraqi economy is facing severe and pressing challenges…. [and] a sharp deterioration of economic activity.”
All of these factors are likely to cause continuing instability in much of Iraq.
Abadi meets Trump
Fortunately, Trump’s new executive order to temporarily ban the travel from six Muslim-majority countries to the United States no longer includes Iraq, as the first version of the travel ban did. This will make Monday’s visit between Abadi and Trump a much warmer one than if the Iraq travel ban were still on the table. This made Monday’s visit between Abadi and Trump a much warmer one than if the Iraq travel ban were still on the table.
The arbitrary nature of the Iraqi travel ban was underlined by the fact that Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati, who is the most important leader in the anti-ISIS fight since he heads the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service, could not get a visa to visit his own family members in the United States.
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Now that Abadi has met Trump, he should invite him to visit Iraq and see a city such as Sulaimani which is, by regional standards, a safe and well-ordered city of smooth highways and modern apartment blocks ringed by snow-capped mountains that feels a lot freer and more open than much of the rest of the Middle East.
At the American University in Sulaimani, female students wear a wide range of garb, from simple headscarves to tight-fitting dresses paired with high heels. At the annual Suli Forum that was held at the American University this month, students didn’t hesitate to pepper Lt. Gen. Shaghati, with pointed questions about the use of force against civilians, a level of free speech that is almost entirely absent in the rest of the region.
A little exposure to a city like Sulaimani will help Trump understand that the Middle East is a much more complex place than he seems to believe. Perhaps Trump could even give a speech at the American University in Sulaimani, just as President Obama did at Cairo University early in his first term. In the speech, Trump could celebrate the open society and free market that exists in Kurdistan and which are, of course, not only American values, but also the values of free peoples all over the world.
This article has been updated to reflect President Trump’s meeting with Prime Minister Abadi.

The Future of Counterterrorism: Addressing the Evolving Threat to Domestic Security. House Committee on Homeland Security Committee, Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee

http://docs.house.gov/meetings/HM/HM05/20170228/105637/HHRG-115-HM05-Wstate-BergenP-20170228.pdf

London shows the challenge of preventing low-tech terror, CNN.com

London shows the challenge of preventing low-tech terror
Peter Bergen

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Attack at the heart of UK’s capital is the latest in a series that have turned cars and trucks into ordinary weapons of terror, writes Peter Bergen
Such actions are difficult to prevent

“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 author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” This story has been updated to reflect the latest number of fatalities from London Metropolitan Police.”

(CNN)It’s a depressingly familiar tale. A vehicle slams into a group of pedestrians in a Western city and the terrorist driving the car then uses a knife to inflict further damage and is soon shot by police.
This time it was Wednesday’s attack outside one of the most iconic buildings in the world, the Houses of Parliament in London.

Four victims and the attacker are dead and there are at least 40 injuries. It’s the most lethal terrorist attack in the United Kingdom since al Qaeda directed four suicide attackers who killed 52 commuters on the London transportation system on July 7, 2005.

The Parliament attack is just one in a series of such relatively low-tech — and hard to defend against — terrorist attacks in the West over the past three years that have typically been inspired by ISIS, and occasionally also inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al Qaeda cleric.

On November 28, 2016, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an 18-year-old legal resident of the United States whose family was originally from Somalia, used a car to mow down a group of people at the Ohio State University. Artan then attacked the crowd with a knife. He injured 11 people before he was killed by a police officer.
In a message that Artan had posted on Facebook just before the attack, he told readers to “listen … to our hero Imam Anwar al-Awlaki.” Awlaki is a cleric prominent in al Qaeda who was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
A month after the Ohio State attack, 12 people were killed when a large truck plowed into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market. The attack was carried out by what ISIS termed “a soldier of the Islamic State.” This formulation didn’t mean that ISIS had any direct role in the Berlin attack, only that ISIS had inspired it.
Similarly, during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France on July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel killed 84 using a large truck as a weapon. ISIS claimed that the Nice attack was carried out by one of its “soldiers,” though French authorities said Bouhlel had no formal links to the group.

On October 20, 2014 Canadian Martin Rouleau Couture, an ISIS sympathizer, ran over two soldiers in Quebec with a vehicle, killing one and injuring another.
Using vehicles as weapons is a tactic that has often used by Palestinian terrorists to target Israelis, but in 2014 an ISIS spokesman had encouraged such vehicular attacks in the West, saying of ISIS’ enemies, “Run him over with your car.”
In 2013, two terrorists mowed down British soldier Lee Rigby with a car as he was walking down a street in London and then hacked him to death. In court, one of the terrorists described al Qaeda as “brothers in Islam.”
Three years earlier, al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch had encouraged its recruits in the West in its webzine, Inspire, to use vehicles as a weapon. An Inspire article headlined “The Ultimate Mowing Machine” called for using a vehicle as a “mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.”

These attacks are hard to defend against in free societies where crowds will gather, as was the case for Bastille Day in Nice, or the Christmas market in Berlin, or students attending Ohio State — and now the throngs of tourists and visitors that typically crowd the sidewalks around the Houses of Parliament.

Of course, Western countries cannot turn all of their heavily trafficked pedestrian areas into zones of walls and barriers, but law enforcement needs to have a deep understanding of who may be radicalizing before they carry out a lethal terrorist attack.
This is not an easy task, as some ISIS-inspired terrorists are radicalizing quite quickly before they take action.

According to an unpublished FBI study of 80 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States since 2009, those who typically have the most useful information about radicalization and potential acts of violence are peers and family members.
Enlisting the help of peers or family members is the best defense against the kind of attack we saw in London on Wednesday.

Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, New America DC

The Washington Daybook

March 30, 2017

New America holds a book discussion on “Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs.”

SECTION: BOOK DISCUSSION; ||HEALTH/GERMS/BOOK|| Health

LENGTH: 80 words

TIME: 12:15 p.m.
PARTICIPANTS: co-author Michael Osterholm, professor and director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy; co-author Mark Olshaker; and Peter Bergen, vice president of New America
LOCATION: New America, 740 15th Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C.