Well, the Third Generation of the Global Jihad has landed smack dab back in the middle of the news. First off, apologies for my absence here on D&D -- finals landed pretty hard here at the Fletcher School, and I am only now coming out from under. The news about Faisal Shazhad should have been enough to jar me from my work, and back to blogging, but what can I say. Anyway, in the hopes of starting a discussion of Global Jihadi radicalization in the west (and some blatant self-promotion) here is the conclusion of my most recent paper on the subject. The paper (currently titled "Getting to Boom") seeks to analyze and synthesize the current theories and frameworks explaining self-starter radicalization.

I do hope to be adding more pertinent context vis-a-vis the Times Square "wanna-bomber", but for now, here is my valiant attempt of doing two things at once -- paper writing and blogging:

Conclusions and Today's Threat Environment:

Many scholars, social psychologists, and counter-terror analysts have sought to accurately describe the process of radicalization that transforms a Western citizen to shahid...

AQ Conspiracy theorists rejoice! Abu Omar al Baghdadi is back in the news -- and this time he's dead.

The reports (this time) came in from joint US and Iraqi forces. This week the Obama and al-Maliki governments confirmed the deaths of Abu Ayyub al Masri, the head of AQI, and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State in Iraq -- an AQ affiliate. For those of us AQ watchers, the al Masri elimination has been completely overshadowed by the reports surrounding al Baghdadi. al Masri, you see, at least has been confirmed to possess corporeal form.

Al Baghdadi, on the other hand, has been reported "captured", "killed", and "non existent" multiple times since 2007. There has also been an incisive debate about his hair.

(more after the jump)

This week, US Forces withdrew from Afghanistan's Korengal Valley -- known more commonly to those who served there as "the valley of death". It is a story that has landed relatively quietly in the US media, and deserves much more attention.

US troops arrived in the Korengal in 2005 -- they moved in, claiming the high ground of the tiny, isolated valley, and prepared for an impossible mission. The strategy was for those soldiers to draw the fire and attention from Taliban and foreign fighters who sought to enter into Afghanistan from the Pakistani theater via the .8km-wide valley.

The goal was not to secure the valley, nor to block the valley's entrance. The goal was to tie up insurgents in a battle away from more populated regions of Afghanistan.

The goal was put quite frankly by the Washington Post:

"The troops were, in essence, bullet magnets. "

Since 2005, over 40 US soldiers have been killed, hundreds wounded. The soldiers were met by daily small arms fire, ambushes, IED attacks, and mortar fire from the surrounding hills. Some of the fire came from Taliban, more from local insurgencies who sought to oppose the central government's expanded control over the remote valley -- filled with 5,000 fiercely independent Korengalis -- who speak their own language, and follow many of their own customs.

This year, a new command structure in Afghanistan has come to the conclusion that ISAF operations in Korengal run higher risks than rewards. The conclusion was that Capt. Mark Moretti's troops in the valley had not stumbled not into a hive of Taliban insurgency, but an internecine blood feud between Korengalis, who sought, above all, to be left to their own devices.

(more after the jump)

An unheard of story out of Helmand this weekend. On April 10, Afghani police and intelligence agents stormed a hospital run by the Italian NGO Emergency in Lashkar Gah -- the capital of Helmand. The charges are startling. IRIN News reports that three Italians and six Afghans from the aid organization of "terrorism and assassination". The charges come from the top -- Provincial Governor Golab Mangal.

Mangal accused the head of Emergency in Afghanistan, Marco Garatti, of taking a US$500,000 bribe from Taliban insurgents and involvement in a plot to kill him during a visit to the hospital. He also accused Garatti of the “deliberate killings” of patients and wounded people in the hospital at the behest of the Taliban.

To be specific: the charges are that Garatti was accepting Taliban money for organizing a suicide bombing. Mangal held his press conference with props -- two suicide vests, guns, and ammunition he claims were seized inside of the Emergency hospital.

Mangal is alleging that an Italian NGO was in the pocket of the Pakistani Taliban, targetedly killing their patients, and accepting money in a cash for suicide deal. The charges are shocking, surprising even the Afghan Ministry of Public Health.
(more after the jump)

Sometimes I have trouble with my intrepid searching for all things random in weird for my weekly column here at D&D. This was not one of those times.

Our story this week begins (and ends) at the Liverpool Airport. The players? Gitta Jarant, 66, and Anke Anusic, 41, and Willi Jarant (91).

The three arrived to catch their flight home to Germany. Gitta and Anke pushing Willi in a wheelchair up to the check in counter. Willi was dressed for a vacation, relaxing in his wheelchair, sporting his dark sunglasses to protect him from the tropical Liverpool/Manchester sun. Yet, the agents there were concerned about Willi's ability to fly -- mostly due to his lack of breathing (mostly because he was dead, and had been for approximately 24 hours).

(more after the jump)

UPDATE as of (Thursday, 22:56 EST)
Russian complicity in Kyrgyz revolution confirmed by opposition party now in power. Please see the following Reuters piece here

This news is both unsurprising and troubling. Snap analysis soon.


UPDATE as of (Thursday, 10:52 EST)

For those of you still following this story, please read Simon Shuster's piece at Time, and Peter Leonard from the AP.

Information is still trickling out of Kyrgyzstan to the western media as this snap analysis goes to print -- we here at D&D are monitoring the situation as we go here, and should any of you have contacts in Kyrgyz, please pass their information on to us at demagoguesanddictators@gmail.com

First -- a thanks from our reader Drew, who sent us the link for following pictures from Bishkek -- a quick warning: these pictures are graphic, but important. They can be viewed here.

Background, News and D&D Snap Analysis After the Jump

The headline from Sadr City, March 10, 2004:

Militants take control of huge Baghdad slum / Sadr City locked up by gunmen loyal to rebel Muslim cleric

The headline today?

Iraq's Sadrists hold vote for prime minister choice

What a difference an effective COIN operation makes.

Sadr City, the Shia dominated slums of Baghdad -- long oppressed, forgotten, and marginalized under the Ba'athist regime of Sadam Hussein, was once the most dangerous area of Baghdad. The powerful, yet irregular mehdi army, under the command of Muqtada al-Sadr, once rejected the new Iraqi government -- and American forces -- to the last. They attacked armed patrols and civil servants alike, and directly opposed the central government of post-invasion Iraq.

Today, the story is very different:

(Reuters) - Supporters of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stood in long lines on Friday to vote their choice for prime minister of Iraq in a two-day referendum that carried no government sanction or legal weight.

The unusual plebiscite is organized by Sadr's political movement, which won about 40 seats in a March 7 parliamentary election and stands to play a kingmaker role in the next government, was intended to determine the public favorite for prime minister after squabbling among election winners.

The background?

(more after the jump)

Poor Admiral Robert Williard had to go before the House Armed Services Committee this past week. He went as the head of US Pacific Command -- but he left as a defender of common sense and geology.

The cause of his title shift? Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), who was worried that the US Navy's decision to station an additional 8,000 personnel and their families on the island of Guam would, well, perhaps you need to see it for yourself:



This is a rare occurrence for me, but for commentary, I must defer to the National Review:

"Presumably, when you're the head guy of a major fleet for a big-time navy, you've got plenty of other ways of filling your time other than reassuring congressmen on whether miscellaneous land masses are likely to tip over and sink."

Only in America my friends!

In all fairness, Rep. Johnson's office released the following statement,

"The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern about the impact of the planned military buildup on this small tropical island."

I'm not buying it, and I doubt it will be enough to free him from the mockery of that series of tubes we call the internets.

Suspicions confirmed: Shahram Amiri, one of Iran's most important nuclear scientists, defected to the United States last June.

The story broke almost a year ago -- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast claimed that Saudi Arabia

"has handed over Iran's nuclear scientist Amiri to America...he is among 11 jailed Iranians in America"

Now we know that that is untrue, and Iran as a lot of egg on their face. Especially after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi maintained that:

"Amiri's fate is Saudi Arabia's responsibility."

In a massive coup for the CIA, Amiri (as reported by ABC news) voluntarily defected to the CIA while on Hajj in 2009, after a long courtship with the CIA through intermediaries inside Iran. He has, for the past year...
(more after the break)

Breaking News:

Two female suicide bombers, who's explosives were packed with metal rods and bars, detonated their devices 45 minutes apart in two Moscow subway stops this morning, killing at least 38, and injuring over 100.

If the FSB claims are to be believed, the bombers were tied to the northern Caucuses -- Chechnya. The bombers appear to be from the elite "Black Widow" squads of the Chechen Insurgency.

If the FSB is right, it appears that Doku Umarov has made real his threat that:

"Blood will no longer be limited to our (Caucasus) cities and towns. The war is coming to their cities."

the Chechen rebel leader made those remarks during in an interview on the unofficial Islamist website www.kavkazcenter.com

This attack, while horrific in and of itself, will have far reaching impacts on the Russian government. It is a direct challenge to Vladimir Putin's strong-man image -- something that Mr. Putin will respond to in a direct, violent, and unflinching way.

Mr. Putin's immediate response?

(more after the jump)

America's next act of terrorism will be domestic.

With the passing of health care reform in the US House, the rhetoric emerging from the American political right has reached new heights. From the yelling of Minority Leader "Hell No You Can't" Boehner in the House to the homophobic and racial slurs hurled by protesters outside the capital building, one thing has become even more clear: as the more mainstream conservative movement becomes more frustratedly vocal, the likelihood of domestic terrorism has unintentionally risen, and has done so exponentially.

While the attack will not come from the Tea Party proper, more radical members and affiliated groups that have allied themselves with the movement are beginning to mobilize.

The fringes are restless.

Worse yet, the fringes have been empowered by a frustrated conservative mainstream desperate for popular support. Now, conservatives may have whipped up the kind of anger that cannot be put back in the bottle. What began as the corporate funded, Dick Armey led, FreedomWorks organized, anti-health care rallying Tea Party movement has grown into...

Sometimes we here in the blogosphere seek to put words to issues that best describe our own perspectives on what is happening out there in the big bad world ... and then sometimes there is just a video that needs no such pithy analysis. I present to you, from Mobile Alabama, this glorious news story, in its unedited form. I have no more words to describe the hilarity:

So, without further ado, This Week in Weird: There is a Leprechaun in the Deep South!

While this blog is dedicated to the investigation of issues of international security and diplomacy, I ask you to forgive me for my domestically focused post below. As a former educator, both in the US and abroad, the recent decisions of the Texas Board of Education require my response, and I ask that you read on.

The state of Texas is one of our Nation's largest -- and thus, is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. Therefore, the standards set by the Texas board of education may very well dictate the content of all textbooks available for the entire US market. This year, that very board held their once-a-decade revision of standards for their textbooks -- and we have many reasons to be worried.

James McKinley Jr. at the NYT has done an excellent job of covering the facts of the proposed changes to the Texas standards, and I invite you to read his piece. However, the facts do not appropriately outline the danger presented by the board's decisions.

The danger is beyond left or right political leaning -- it lies between fact and fiction. As a former high school teacher, I can tell you that biased interpretation masquerading as fact is the most detrimental to a young child's education. While teachers frequently use interpretive analysis as secondary source material, it is to their textbooks that students retreat for their analytical 'north' when beginning their analysis of those more biased essays. Perhaps, after the Texas' board decision, they will not have that opportunity.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Mr. McLeroy's solution? Swing the pendulum back -- past the center -- to the right. The Texas board has decided that the past needs a reinterpretation in its textbooks -- a bit of conservative revisionist history...

Welcome to Friday! Your humble correspondent of all things odd and mockable is pleased as punch to offer you TWIW! Also, please feel free to continue emailing us your odd story finds from around the world...

This Week in Weird: Pillow Love!

The Otaku can be an odd beast. It is not a new phenomenon -- being obsessed with Anime and Manga, but lately it has reached new heights. Sure, people have chuckled at the pudgy, bespeckled, middle aged, ComicCon attending, mother's basement living, Otakus -- they laugh at their loneliness, sure that the poor Otaku is doomed to a life alone.

But some Otakus have struck back! Loneliness be damned...

In Marjah, the "Government in a Box" is about to deploy. It will be the moment of truth for General McChrystal and Hamid Karzai's battle strategy for Operation Moshtarak. The stakes are higher than simply the success of ISAF's COIN strategy in Marjah, and after Marjah comes Kandahar.

This past week I was lucky enough to attend two events featuring US Special Representative. Richard Holbrooke. During the second of these, a public address at the Kennedy School of Government, Amb. Holbrooke spoke of his fear of the possibility of a "dependency trap" in Afghanistan. This is not the first time the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan has touched on this subject. In a 2009 appearance with USAID, Holbrooke noted that his greatest concern was

“the dependency trap” in which USAID builds schools, clinics, and roads but they are not maintained once turned over to local control. “We can succeed only if the government of Afghanistan succeeds,”

Clear, Hold, and Build -- these are the first 3 stages of the current COIN strategy in Afghanistan. As Operation Moshtarak has shown in Marjah, ISAF forces are getting consistently better at these three things. But they are only the first three steps, and perhaps the least important in terms of grand strategic victory in Afghanistan. Without successful implementation of the fourth step -- Transfer -- clearing, holding, and building will not end...

Well here we are again -- Friday. Your humble correspondent asks your forgiveness for his few posts these past few days, but what better way to kick off a return to the blogosphere with a TWIW!

Now, I know that we love Facebook here in the West, but Israel is definitely addicted. While normally something about Isreali love for social networking would be a puff piece below the fold in a sad newspaper -- it has become an international security issue. Take a look!

From the facebook post of an IDF soldier:

On Wednesday, we’ll be cleaning up in Katnaa [an Arab village near Ramallah], and on Thursday, please G-d, we’re going home.

The problem? This was posted on a Monday. Whoopsiedoodle! The poor Farmville addict continued to list his unit name, and the ...

Well, it's Friday -- and that means we here at D&D take a short break from the serious hard analysis for a celebration of the weird and rediculous. To those loyal TWIW readers who were miffed at the lack of this column last week -- fear not ... we are now ready to reveal the project that has been taking all our free time.

For the past 2 weeks, Demagogues and Dictators has scoured the globe to assemble our team of Super-Friends from the Animal Kingdom. While the identities of our super-friends must remain, understandably, our highest guarded secret; below we have provided a few suggestions for your corps of animal adventure-warriors...

They have been preparing for this crisis since 1994. They have built a disciplined, equipped, determined force not of hundreds, not of thousands, but of tens of thousands. They are the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and they are not alone. They stand with the United Wa State Army and the Shan State Army, each able to field tens of thousands of fighters in their own right, and with whom the KIA has held extensive joint military training exercises in the past years.

Kachin news networks have been featuring stories of oppression and persecution of their ethnic group by Burmese Junta Soldiers. The BBC reports that:

On the car radio are freedom songs, and at one of the training camps a course in traditional dance is being run - cultural nationalism and propaganda is strong.

The Kachin stand against the Junta in charge of Burma, and, as you read this, they are digging trenches, fortifying their artillery positions, and mobilizing their reservists.

The Burmese Junta has ordered these autonomous ethnic armies undertake a Sophie's choice of sorts: disarm, or merge with the Burmese Army before the upcoming 2010 'elections'. The ethnic armies of Burma seem unwilling to comply. the KIA's Chief of Staff, Maj Gen Gam Shawng today told the BBC that:

Today, a bomb went off in a market in Thailand. Two Thai soldiers were wounded. That market had been fully swept, before the explosion, with the GT200 "bomb detector" (pictured above). Sharon Weinburger, a contributor for AOL News described the aftermath:

Two soldiers were wounded in the bomb blast that went off in in Thailand's restive southern Pattani province, even though the area where the explosives were placed had just been searched using the GT200, the Bangkok Post reported today. "We have to explain to them that the detector's effectiveness has not been scientifically proven," Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said after the latest bombing, according to the newspaper.

Last week, we here at D&D reported on the Thai Government's test results on the GT200 "bomb detector". For those of you who missed it, here is the executive summary:

Global Technical, a British "security" company, has made millions selling their alleged bomb detection equipment to militaries across the globe, specifically to nations like Thailand and Mexico -- where thousands die in undetected, undeterred explosions. The device, which is essentially a metal body attached to a small thin tube with insertable "cards" claims to possess the ability to detect the presence of anything from narcotics to explosives. It contains no electrical components, or, really, moving parts. After years of deployment, the Thai Science and Technology Ministry decided to test its effectiveness.

They found that the...

From the BBC today:

Mali has freed four militants from jail weeks after al-Qaeda's North African branch threatened to kill a French hostage if the men were not released.

Wait, what?

Yes, you read it correctly. Today, Mali released 4 militants belonging to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). While Malinese officials swear that they are not caving to the demands of the group, merely releasing people who had done their time, I find that highly unlikely. AQIM has been growing in strength in both Mali and neighboring Mauritania during the past year, and it appears that Malinese officials are taking an appeasing approach to growing Islamic radicalism amongst their people. From Olivier Guetta at the excellent Counter-Terrorism blog:

Mali enjoys a very good reputation around the world. It boasts a vibrant democracy with a multi-party system, a market economy and a tradition of a moderate Islam. But things might be changing: Since 2001, worrying signs have emerged— for example, the proliferation of Osama bin Laden's photo in stalls at the Bamako market and the exponential increase of radio stations preaching radical Islam.

This trend in Mali should be on every CT professionals radar. AQIM is...