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As a result of the Mumbai attacks, the Indian private security industry has been growing by leaps and bounds; already the country’s private security force numbers 5 million, 1.3 million more than India’s police forces
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Eye on Afghanistan
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) David Barno, the former head of coalition forces in Afghanistan, says Afghan war will last until 2025; testimony before a congressional panel opens window to Obama administration’s counterinsurgency approach to war
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Pakistani perplexities // Analysis
Using information partly supplied by the FBI, Indian police says the ten Islamist militants who rampaged through Mumbai spoke to their handlers in Pakistan during the attacks via mobile phones connected to Callphonex, an Internet telephony provider based in New Jersey; communication was facilitated by Col. Saadat Ullah of Pakistan Army’s Special Communications Organization (SCO), an offshoot of the signals corps
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New Mexico company awarded a contract to develop the “foam-based vehicle arresting system,” which could stop a car or a truck before it gets close enough to do real damage
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As I Was Saying // Ben Frankel
The U.S. military and elements in the Pakistani national security establishments collaborate much more closely than in the past; the strategy of General David Patreus and the new Obama administration is to recognize that Pakistan is a fractured, divided country, and to work with those elements closer to us
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To improve on X-ray and millimeter-wave scanning and go beyond group profiling, some suggest screening passengers for hostile intentions
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Eye on Afghanistan -- Analysis // Ben Frankel
A 7 February UAV strike on targets inside Pakistan killed 30; it was the fifth such attack since the beginning of the year — and the second since Obama took office; there were two things different about this attack: Its main target was a Pakistani insurgent leader, and it was launched from inside Pakistan
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Eye on Afghanistan
Shamsi airbase lies in a sparsely populated area about 190 miles southwest of the city of Quetta; it is also 100 miles south of the border with Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand and about 100 miles east of the border with Iran
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Iran watch
Iran says it has developed a UAV with a range of more than 950 kilometers; it is not yet clear what electronic and other capabilities Iran has mounted on the drone
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The number of cyber attacks on U.S. government computers and networks grow; there were 5,488 tracked incidents of unauthorized access to U.S. government computers and installations of hostile programs in 2008, compared to 3,928 such incidents in 2007, and 2,172 in 2006
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Security experts say U.S. and NATO forces are not likely to defeat the Taliban and other insurgent groups on their own; closer cooperation with Afghan tribes and local organizations is essential
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Counter Terror Expo round-up
Electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, has been typically associated with high-altitude nuclear explosions — explosions which disable electronic devices hundreds of miles away from the explosion; militaries and law enforcement want a hand-grenade-size EMP device for use in war and crime-fighting
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In the face of irrefutable evidence, Pakistan admits the 26 November attacks in Mumbai, in which more than 180 people were killed, were planned on Pakistani soil and carried out by Pakistanis
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The U.S. Army is looking for a stun grenade which would subdue targets by releasing a shower of high-velocity rubber pellets
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Former assistant chief of U.K.’s MI6 says pandemics posed more of threat to the U.K. population than terrorism; he also says that privacy worries about the international counterterrorist databases are exaggerated
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India is paying more attention — much more attention — to homeland security in the wake of the November 2008 Mumbai bombing; among the first priorities is securing the very long coast lines of the country; Raytheon, already a presence in India, stands to benefit
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The United States has launched some 40 UAV-carried missile attacks inside Pakistan in the last year; during the presidential campaign, Obama supported such attacks; Secretary of Defense Bob Gates says these attacks will intensify; is it a good idea?
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Sometime in the near future a lethal combination of transnational terrorism and criminal gangs is going to cross the U.S. border in force
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We use UAVs because they are inexpensive and can do many things manned aircraft can do; this is all the more reason for terrorists and insurgents to want to use them; the military is looking for effective anti-UAV systems
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Congress wants DHS to create a “white list” — a database of people who are not terrorists, but are routinely flagged at airports anyway
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The long view
To prevent Iranian nukes, a negotiated deal better than a military strike: David Albright
David Albright is the founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), and author of several books on fissile materials and nuclear weapons proliferation. In a testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, and an interview with Deutsche Welle on Thursday, Albrights says that there is every reason to be suspicious of Iran because it has cheated on its obligations in the past and has been uncooperative on an ongoing basis. Iran has also built many sites in secret, so any agreement with Iran should have extra insurance — a more powerful inspection and verification tool to try to ferret out any secret nuclear activities or facilities that Iran would build. Still, a negotiated deal, if it includes sufficiently robust inspection and verification measures, would be a more effective way than a military strike to make sure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.
Fusion centers, created to fight domestic terrorism, suffering from mission creep: Critics
Years before the 9/11 attacks, law enforcement agencies throughout the country, alarmed by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, began to monitor and investigate signs of domestic terrorism. That increased monitoring, and the need for coordination among various law enforcement agencies, gave rise to the fusion centers. A new report, which is supported by current and former law enforcement and government officials, concludes that post-9/11, fusion centers and the FBI teams which work with them shifted their focus from domestic terrorism to global terrorism and other crimes, including drug trafficking.Experts say that at a time when the number of domestic terrorism threats, many of which are linked to right-wing extremist groups, is surging, law enforcement must refocus their attention on the threats from within.
Lack of evidence-based terrorism research hobbles counterterrorism strategies
The Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland estimates that groups connected with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State committed almost 200 attacks per year between 2007 and 2010. That number has increased to about 600 attacks in 2013. As terrorism becomes more prevalent, the study of terrorism has also increased, which, in theory, should lead to more effective antiterrorism policies, and thus to less terrorism. The opposite is happening, however, and this could be partly due to the sort of studies which are being conducted. The problem: few of these studies are rooted in empirical analysis, and there is an “almost complete absence of evaluation research” concerning anti-terrorism strategies, in the words of a review of such studies.
California drought highlights the state’s economic divide
As much of Southern California enters into the spring and warmer temperatures, the effects of California’s historic drought begin to manifest themselves in the daily lives of residents, highlighting the economic inequality in the ways people cope. Following Governor Jerry Brown’s (D) unprecedented water rationing regulations,wealthier Californians weigh on which day of the week no longer to water their grass, while those less fortunate are now choosing which days they skip a bath.