Search: “Taliban”

Did you know that there is actually a post-punk indie rock band from the UK (but which later moved to Sweden) called “We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists“? Is that not the most original name you have ever heard for a musical group? It may even top ‘Five For Fighting’ for me! (NB I use […]

Here is the script that accompanies episode #4 of the podcast “An Intelligent Look at Terrorism”: W(h)ither Al Qaeda? There are a lot of good pieces on the status of Al Qaeda and here are links to a few of them: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/08/opinions/where-is-bin-ladens-partner-in-crime-ayman-al-zawahiri/index.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-isis-syria-iraq-iran-terror-islamic-state-washington-a8769936.html https://ctc.usma.edu/fighting-the-long-war-the-evolution-of-al-qaida-in-the-arabian-peninsula/ Here is a piece on the assessment of the Office of […]

Historical revisionism is inevitable I suppose. There are those who look back at events, both recent and less so, re-interpret them through a new paradigm, lens or self-interested agenda, re-package them, and present them to us in a way that goes against the previous collected wisdom. Sometimes this re-interpretation is necessary in the light of […]

There have been a lot of very good analytic pieces on Islamic State of late, especially in the wake of US President Trump’s Tweet “we have won against ISIS; we’ve beaten them, and we’ve beaten them badly”.  Here are links to  a few: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/17/its-not-just-isis-many-terrorist-groups-have-been-declared-dead-only-rise-again/?utm_term=.dab4f12cf0b8 https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/tracking-jihadist-movements-2019-islamic-state https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/islamic-state-terrorism-extremism-eyes-southeast-asia-11199586 https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1577356/pentagon-isis-syria-could-regroup-6-months https://www.thedailybeast.com/isis-smuggler-sleeper-cells-and-undead-suicide-bombers-have-infiltrated-europe?ref=home The US office of the Director of […]

Every end of year we are inundated with two phenomena in our newspapers, TV broadcasts and Web sites. These two are: the year that was and the year that will be. The former recaps the important events of the 12 months drawing to an end and always includes, and I am not sure why, a […]

I have just returned from a CVE (countering violent extremism) conference in Edmonton organised by the Organization for the Prevention of Violence (OPV), the Canadian Practitioners’ Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence, and the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS) where I gave a presentation on what we know about the extremist […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 12, 2018. Australia and Canada are very similar countries in many ways.  Both former British colonies, both (relatively) open to immigration, both members of the 5 eyes intelligence community.  I have visited Australia on many occasions and I must admit that I always feel at home […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on September 17, 2018. At the risk of engaging in pure self promotion I would like to announce that my fourth book on terrorism, entitled “An end to the ‘war on terrorism’”, is coming out later this month (for those in Ottawa who are  interested I will be […]