• Euro 2016 security fears heightened as Frenchman arrested in Ukraine

    The Euro 2016, the European soccer championship tournament, opens this coming Friday amid growing security concerns. The Ukrainian security agency, the SBU, announced over the weekend that it had arrested a Frenchman who had in his possession a massive arsenal of weapons he had purchased in the Ukraine. The French media report that he was apparently not planning to target any Euro 2016 events. Rather, his idea was to attack other targets, exploiting the fact that thousands of security personnel would be diverted from their usual routines.

  • Inside ISIS' looted antiquities trade

    For excavators – archaeologists, but also looters like the Islamic State, or ISIS – the opportunity for discovery in modern Iraq and Syria is dazzling. Everyone seems to agree that ISIS is digging up and selling archaeological artifacts to make money. But no one seems to agree on how much money it’s actually making from its illegal antiquities trade: amounts have ranged from $4 million to $7 billion. Patchy data and methodological challenges do not fully explain why $7 billion fell to $4 million in public discussions about the ISIS antiquities trade. While market mystique and over-the-top plot lines are fine for Hollywood films and adventure novels, it’s no way to understand terrorist finance, and without that understanding we are unlikely to arrive at genuine and lasting solutions.

  • Iran still leading terrorism-sponsoring state: U.S.

    Last Thursday the Department of State released the 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism. The report is provided to Congress each year and covers developments in countries in which acts of terrorism occurred, countries which are state sponsors of terrorism, and countries determined by the Secretary to be of particular national security interest.

  • U.S. adversaries use measures short of war to advance their strategic goals

    Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Russia, China, and Iran have successfully exploited or stretched U.S. thresholds for war in order to further their strategic goals and undermine U.S. interests. The United States will have to address the problems of foreign intervention and threats short of war if it is to prevent further erosion of its global influence by its competitors, RAND researchers say.

  • Kurdish forces fight to retake Syria's “Little London”

    Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Thursday said that ISIS fighters have used the northern Syrian city of Manbij as a base to plan attacks against the West. U.S. Special Forces have joined Kurdish fighters in surrounding the militants’ stronghold. Manbij has earned the name “Little London” because of the many Britons who have made it their homes after joining ISIS.

  • Britain’s exit from the EU would necessitate review of British defense posture: Expert

    A new report states that a U.K. decision to leave the EU would be as significant a shift in U.K. national strategy, as the decision in the late 1960s to withdraw from bases East of Suez and,. As a result, the decision to leave the EU would necessitate a new Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR).

  • Terrorist or criminal? New software uses face analysis to find out

    Pulling a poker face means betraying no visible emotion, so that opponents cannot tell what you are really thinking. But a Tel Aviv startup’s face-profiling technology recently proved fairly accurate at predicting which four players were most likely to beat out forty-six other contenders in an amateur poker tournament. The company say that its technology, which analyzes faces shown in photos and videos and classifies them according to fifteen parameters predictive of personality traits and types, can help identify terrorists.

  • Nigeria has failed to stamp out Boko Haram in Buhari’s first year in power

    When Muhammadu Buhari — a former general and, for a year-and-a-half in the early 1980s, the military ruler of Ngeria — was sworn in as Nigeria’s president on 29 May 2015, he promised to “stamp out” Boko Haram within twelve months. Security analysts note that despite some progress, he has failed to do so. Critics of Buhari say that while Boko Haram has been pushed back and has lost large swaths of territory it used to control, Buhari’s heavy-handed approach to unrest or dissent of any kind in Nigeria has created more problems.

  • Snowden performed “public service” but should be punished: Eric Holder

    Eric Holder, the former U.S. Attorney General, has said Edward Snowden performed a “public service” by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques. Holder added, however, that he believed Snowden should be punished for leaking classified intelligence information which threatened U.S. national security.

  • Congress restores funds to NYC counterterrorism program

    Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) said on Thursday that Congress is set to approve a Homeland Security budget which would restore $600 million in anti-terror funding. The White House had proposed a budget with cuts to the anti-terror program. The proposed cuts involve reduction of the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), which would be funded at $330 million for fiscal year 2017, after being funded at $600 million in 2016.

  • Europe-wide ballistic information sharing would reduce gun death from terrorism, crime

    All countries across Europe are being urged to establish national “Firearms Focal Points” to collect, study, and share information about firearms and ballistics to help reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by gun crime and terrorism. This is one of the key findings following a 15-month multi-agency research project which looked to analyze the prevalence of gun crime across Europe and, based on the findings, identify initiatives and interventions that could be further pursued and developed to tackle the problem.

     

  • Declassified documents offer insights into ISIS origins, how to defeat the group

    Drawing from more than 140 recently declassified documents from the predecessors of the Islamic State, a new study shows that the group has been operating for years with remarkable continuity in its philosophy, methods, and goals, including the long-standing aspiration for creating a caliphate. The documents show that the leadership consciously designed the organization not just to fight, but also to build a state governed by the laws dictated by its strict Islamist ideology.

  • Claims of mistreatment of Mau Mau rebels “cannot be fairly tried”: U.K. government

    The British government told a court in London that claims from 40,000 Kenyans that they were beaten, raped, and mistreated during the British campaign against the Mau Mau rebellion cannot be fairly tried sixty years later. Responding to a lawsuit which opened at the high court in London this week, and which is expected to go on continue for more than a year, Guy Mansfield QC, representing the Foreign Office, said those accused of having inflicted the violence are now dead or untraceable.

  • Terrorists “stockpiling explosives in Europe”: EU security official

    Manuel Navarrete Paniagua, the Head of the European Counter Terrorism Center at Europol, said that terrorist cells in the EU are probably stockpiling explosives for future attacks. Europol said it had foiled 211 terror plots in the last year, but that the threat of similar attacks on the scale of November 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels in March remained a concern.

  • Violent extremists are not on the run -- they are on the march: Rep. Michael McCaul

    U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), after returning from a trip to the Middle East, last week shared his frank observation with an audience at George Washington University: “A worldwide terrorist exodus is underway, and we are woefully unprepared to deal with it,” he said. “We are not winning this war,” McCaul said. “Violent extremists are not on the run, as the president says. They are on the march.”