The Culture & Conflict Review

Badghis Province:Examining the Taliban’s Northwestern Campaign

12/17/2008 12:00:00 AM

Recent Taliban and insurgent activity has significantly destablized the security and stability of Afghanistan. Taliban led violence, once confined to their strongholds in southern Afghanistan, has spread further west and north as of late, causing grave concern the Taliban and other groups have effectively opened a northern front.

Examining the situation in northwestern Afghanistan may provide clues into the Taliban's national agenda and what role the seemingly docile northwestern areas will play in the future battle.

The Role of Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Counterinsurgency Operations: Khost Province, Afghanistan

11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM

Khost province in Afghanistan was once considered the “model” of successful American counterinsurgency efforts, and the Provincial Reconstruction Team was cited as one of the reasons for that success. However, the “model” proved illusory. After a tour serving on the PRT in Khost Province, we can examine how the PRT fits into the overall counterinsurgency effort and suggest ways that it can be improved.

This article is a shortened version from the original published in Small Wars Journal.

Update from Kandahar: A City in Crisis and Implications for NATO

11/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

Kandahar is a city in crisis. In the six years that I’ve been visiting or living in the city, it is now in the worst state that I’ve ever seen. The challenge facing NATO forces in southern Afghanistan is both simple and daunting. If things continue as they are, the province will be lost to the Taliban, and the deaths of NATO and Coalition soldiers will have no meaning. Therefore, incoming NATO forces should begin their tours like they are heading into an emergency, where there is no time to waste and where every action taken should be critically focused to have a specific effect.

The Olive Branch and the Hammer: A Strategic Analysis of Hawala in the Financial War on Terrorism

7/15/2008 12:00:00 AM

Since September 11, 2001, U.S. counter-terror efforts to disrupt al Qaeda’s finances have been imprecise at best; at worst, they have had profound negative effects. The question of why hawala poses such a great threat and why there is a need for strict regulation or elimination of hawala has been the subject of great deliberation among policy makers and financial scholars since al Qaeda’s attack on New York and Washington, D.C. In the aftermath of 9/11, Executive Order 13224, which greatly expanded the U.S. ability to freeze, block and disrupt the transfer and storage of terrorist funds is based on a false assumption that hawala is a fundamental piece of al Qaeda's financial network. The incongruence of American foreign policy in the financial “war on terror” has been damaging. America has extended the olive branch to the Muslim world in rhetoric while wielding a deadly financial hammer.

CCS Research Update

7/15/2008 12:00:00 AM

An update of research programs, reports, publications, and conferences involving the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies.

The Security of Ecology

6/12/2008 12:00:00 AM

The standard paradigm for security in Afghanistan centers on military defeat of anti-government militants such as Taliban remnants. This aspect of affairs may be the most pressing, but not the most decisive for long term stability. Three decades of continuous war have damaged the relationship between the agrarian, subsistence oriented population and the fragile ecology of the land to the point where sustainment of both is threatened. Global climate change trends exacerbate this pessimistic view of Afghanistan's future. Straying from the standard ecology-of-security paradigm, this essay explores the security of ecology; that is, the obstacles to socio-economic survival and stability due to war's effects on the natural environment. Afghanistan's problems are so profound and multi-layered that military success may be insufficient to prevent comprehensive state failure. The consequences would be disastrous for regional security. If this situation proves transferable beyond Afghanistan, it may serve as a basis for heretofore unprecedented foreign intervention for environmental preservation.

Tribalism and the Future of Conflict

6/12/2008 12:00:00 AM

Ungoverned Territories, State Failure and the Emerging Tribal Front: Mapping the Sub- and Trans-State Contours of Tribalism and Laying the Micro-Foundations of a New Political Order

Human Terrain Mapping (HTM) presents an increasingly accepted solution for achieving victory in the Long War, enhancing security in regions deemed to be largely ungoverned or where state failure and regime collapse have left a political and security vacuum. Using HTM, warfighters as well as stabilization and reconstruction (S&R) teams are able to develop detailed, highly granular cultural knowledge to help focus the application of force and to customize S&R efforts in many parts of the world.

Examining the Suicide Terror Movement in Afghanistan

6/12/2008 12:00:00 AM

What is behind the surge of Improvised Explosive Devices and suicide attacks in Afghanistan? Suicide attacks in particular are a recent phenomenon in Afghanistan, increasing by 42 percent from 2006 to 2007. In Afghanistan, IED and suicide missions are founded upon three fundamental aims – to compel the United States and ISAF to leave the perceived homeland of Pashtuns, to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. backed government in Kabul, and to create a desperate environment that provides little alternative but to join the suicide jihad movement. This article will examine some of the factors behind the increasing use of suicide and IED attacks as tactics of unconventional warfare in Afghanistan. It will analyze the strategic environment in which these types of operations are used and provide some policy recommendations, particularly information operations, that will assist the counter IED effort.

The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

5/14/2008 12:00:00 AM

Pakistan, for such a young nation, has an extremely complicated history. Its identity has largely been forged by opposition; opposition to Hindu-majority India, opposition to foreign intervention in Afghanistan, opposition to corrupt elected officials, and then opposition to the military strongmen who overthrow them. In the latest episode, the leader of the democratic opposition, Benazir Bhutto, has been assassinated by forces opposed to Western-style democracy.

Suicide Attacks on the Rise

5/7/2008 9:24:43 AM

The last six weeks has brought some of the worst violence in Afghanistan since 2001. In 2007, there were more than 230 Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks and 145 suicide attacks. Casualty rates were at least 25 percent higher in 2007 than the previous year. In the past 18 months, IED attacks have targeted numerous police and army busses, a group of legislators outside a factory at Baghlan, a five-star hotel in Kabul, and a Canadian convoy near a busy marketplace. The trends show that attacks are increasing in number and becoming more violent and dreadful to the Afghan population.