Counterterrorism Strategy: Recent and Upcoming Events

On November 9, New America screened a new documentary film directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and journalist Andy Worthington called "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo," which follows the stories of three current or former detainees from Guantanamo Bay and tells the story of Guantanamo, including segments on extraordinary renditions and secret prisons. With just over two months until President Obama's deadline for the closure of Guantánamo, and with the administration set to

This conference examined the civilian dimensions of counterterrorism, and took place on October 21, 2009, at the Mayflower Hotel. A full program agenda is below, as are video recordings from the webcasts of each discussion.

Higher resolution video and an MP3 audio recording will be added here as they become available.

David Loyn, developing world correspondent for the BBC and author of In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian, and American Occupation, expounded upon 200 years of Afghan history as being useful in understanding the problems the U.S. and NATO currently face there. After declaring that clear thinking is needed on Afghanistan, and apparently not currently forthcoming from the Obama Administration, Loyn described his own ten points the U.S. must consider when planning its next move in the country. The two primary

At today's launch event for the AfPak Channel, a joint project between the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine, a panel of journalists who have often traveled to the region that U.S. President Barack Obama has made the focal point of his foreign policy shared their experiences reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On July 23 Seth Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, joined the New America Foundation and Peter Bergen, senior fellow and co-director of the New America Foundation's Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative, to discuss Afghanistan and Jones' recently published book, In The Graveyard of Empires.  

On May 14th Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign relations, discussed his new book War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars with Steve Coll, President of the New America Foundation. Richard Haas described his role in the lead up to the war in Iraq and how the most recent Bush administration failed to properly calculate and prepare for the war.

Join us as journalist Nick Schmidle, who was deported from Pakistan in January 2008 after writing a controversial New York Times Magazine article entitled

As the U.S. engages in a simmering war as well as in continued attempts at building infrastructure, the conference will consider a wide-ranging set of questions in order to clarify policy choices regarding both military and civilian investment in the country. What is the current state of the Taliban? What might the reversion of Afghanistan into failed-state status mean? How prevalent -- and how effective -- has counterinsurgency been in the country? What are the possibilities for increasing the size… more

Panel 1: The Future of Al-Qaeda

Frances Fragos Townsend noted that the two foiled Al-Qaeda plots in 2004 and 2006 prove that Al-Qaeda ought to still be taken seriously. She stated that “North Africa is more significant than most people talk about…[and] is a threat to the U.S. because of immigration through Western Europe.” The recent attacks on the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad,

In May, terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank released an article titled, "The Unraveling: The jihadist revolt against bin Laden." The article was republished in media outlets around the world and became the subject for discussions on the current state and future of Al Qaeda. In this panel discussion, Messrs. Bergen and Cruickshank will discuss their continued research into the issue, with additional perspectives from panelists Contribuing Expert Evan Kohlmann and Stephen Coughlin and special guest… more

Ambassador Husain Haqqani will discuss the current situation in Pakistan.

The following are highlights of the event, while an MP3 audio recording of the full 90-minute event can be downloaded below and video can be viewed at right.

Karen Kornbluh“The Platform Committee itself was almost evenly divided between supports of Senator Clinton and Senator Obama…so what I was warned about is you really don’t want to have a minority report… but this process despite about all that went so smoothly and there was so much unity there was actually in… more

One of the more infamous adages to come from the Vietnam War said that, in waging counterinsurgency in the Vietnamese brush, American policy was to "burn the village to save the village," from communism. This sentiment did not die with Vietnam, however, and has found a clear place in the Bush administration's regard to traditional civil liberties, as described by New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer at the New America Foundation on July 15. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded… more

On June 20th the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program hosted the release of Terror Free Tomorrow’s groundbreaking new surveys of Pakistani public opinion, presented by Terror Free Tomorrow’s President Ken Ballen. New America scholars Peter Bergen and Nicholas Schmidle then provided expert analysis of the data and the detailed the implications of the report for future American policy toward Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan. American Strategy Program Deputy Director Patrick Doherty moderated the discussion. An MP3… more

**This event has been postponed until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience.**

Egypt has long played a pivotal role in the Arab world's cultural and political development. Five decades after the coup d'état that overthrew Nasser, John Bradley sorts through Egypt's tense political conditions with particular emphasis on a coming succession crisis in the face of a rising Islamist movement, corruption, and violence.

In "Building Global Alliances in the Fight Against Terrorism," a new report commissioned by the Better World Campaign, Alistair Millar and Eric Rosand contend that while targeting and capturing terrorists remain at the forefront of the nation's counterterrorism strategy, the United States will need to adopt a much more internationalist approach -- relying on multilateral cooperation for information sharing, enhancing counterterrorism capacities of states big and small, engagement of non-traditional allies, and international legitimacy. But in… more

On May 2, The New America Foundation hosted a book event for President and CEO Steve Coll’s new book The Bin Ladens. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video is available at right. Coll delivered a talk about the experience of Saudi Arabia, dealing with the pressures and prizes of modernity and globalization, through the prism of the Bin Laden family. He conveyed the diversity of experience that permeated the different members of the… more

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are the primary state players that make life in the Kurdish neighborhood complex, but non-state actors also roil the environment inside Iraq. The Kurdish question remains a major global flashpoint. As Iraq’s civil war rolls on and stability of the multi-ethnic state is called into question, Quil Lawrence believes how the U.S. handles the Kurds and their quest for statehood will define the region for decades to come. Quil Lawrence is the Middle East… more

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestseller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege. In The Bin Ladens, Coll shows how the family navigated though and around economic and cultural hurdles, and he presents an authentic story of Saudi Arabia, America and those caught in the crossfire. Revealing new information, Coll shows how American influence changed a family's fortune and how one family member's rebellion… more

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestseller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege. In The Bin Ladens, Coll shows how the family navigated though and around economic and cultural hurdles, and he presents an authentic story of Saudi Arabia, America and those caught in the crossfire. Revealing new information, Coll shows how American influence changed a family's fortune and how one family member's rebellion changed the world.

"Riveting" - The New York… more