Gore Vidal once said, "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
There are many, many things I would not follow his advice on (and also I am a rapidly aging and happily married man) but I did accept an invitation to appear on France24 to discuss the implications of the dramatic rescue of the FARC hostages - and I had a great time.
It was a discussion format with three other guests, part two of the discussion can be seen here, I'll post part one as soon as the folks at France24 do.
For those less familiar with the mechanics of appearing on TV, the show is taped in Paris and, alas, they did not offer to fly me there for the appearance. Instead I sat in a small room with nothing but a table and a camera, and a TV screen displaying the camera's feed of my giant talking head. I could not see the host and the two Paris-based guests (although they could apparently see me.) The other guest, Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, was in a similar room next door - and again, we had no contact during the show.
There was also a second and a half delay between Washington and Paris, but the host handled this with aplomb and the discussion was actually very smooth.
The first half of the discussion focused on the future and status of the FARC. The second half discussed the impact of the rescue on Colombian and regional politics. Not to give away too much, but I managed a pair of good (funny) lines towards the end.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Me Discussing FARC on Covert Radio
Covert Radio a terrific podcast series has done a number of interviews with yours truly on FARC and other issues I track.
Here is today's discussion on the FARC hostage rescue. A fun, lively interview.
Here is an interview I did with them a few weeks ago, but it still has some good background on the FARC.
FYI - I appeared today on the France24 show Debate. I'll post the link as soon as it is up.
Here is today's discussion on the FARC hostage rescue. A fun, lively interview.
Here is an interview I did with them a few weeks ago, but it still has some good background on the FARC.
FYI - I appeared today on the France24 show Debate. I'll post the link as soon as it is up.
Questions About the Rescue in Colombia
The dramatic rescue of the FARC hostages raises a host of important questions, here are a few, with short answers following and lengthy answers below:
Was the rescue the cover for an arrangement with the FARC?
Probably not.
What effect will this have on future hostage releases?
It will probably lead to more units dissolving and possibly releasing their hostages.
Colombian security used a ruse claiming to be an NGO, could such ploys undermine the legitimate role of NGOs?
Possibly, it’s complicated.
Staged Rescue
Cesar, the commander of the FARC front holding the hostages put them on a helicopter after receiving an order he believed came from the FARC jefe Alfonso Cano. Consider the implications of this: it would be as if someone tricked a General into believing he had just received an order from the President. Such communications are not handled casually. The fact that Colombian intelligence could deliver this fake message probably indicates a very high-level of human and electronic penetration into the FARC’s communications networks. A few specialists have quietly speculated that this was an inside job – perhaps Cano wanted to arrange this to set the stage for a peaceful surrender. While anything is possible, the correspondence unearthed from Raul Reyes’ laptop – such as the talk of selling uranium – has a certain clueless quality. The blog of the Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program cites a FARC assessment of the U.S. elections as another example of strange assertions and gross inaccuracies in the FARC’s perception of the world. Based on the FARC’s seeming poor information about and ability to assess the outside world, it does seem conceivable that the organization has simply become dysfunctional and that its organizational nervous system has in fact been deeply compromised.
The fate of the hundreds of remaining hostages
The FARC holds many more hostages, possibly as many as 700, about 40 of whom are prominent. It is possible that the rescue operation will make it harder to negotiate for the release of the remaining hostages. Without their most valuable chits, the FARC cannot hope to obtain any of the concessions it demands – consequently the remaining hostages may languish. But, as the FARC breaks down, it is more and more likely that fronts will abandon the fight altogether, particularly as they become isolated from the central command (or mistrust its instructions). The rescue was a huge blow and FARC morale will sink even further. Expect the Colombian campaign to encourage FARC members to desert to expand and include incentives to bring in hostages as well.
NGO Quandaries
Finally, in my previous post I noted that there may be a cost in using ruses involving NGOs. Several people with a lot of background on the issue told me that many Colombian NGOs are effectively FARC fronts. The mere fact that the hostages’ guards fell for a ruse that an NGO was aiding in a FARC operation lends some credence to this argument. It is not an unfamiliar phenomenon, the Israelis complain deeply (and with much justice) about NGOs acting as fronts and agents for terrorist groups as well.
However, NGOs in principle are expressions of the fundamental right of association aka civil society – a right and value that is essential for the liberal democratic polity. That some become fronts for loathsome causes is not new, Stalin too had his useful idiots and front groups. One of the great challenges of asymmetric warfare (whether it is terrorism, counter-insurgency or something else) is distinguishing between groups exercising this right – even if their views are controversial – and groups that are fronts for organizations undermining legitimate authority.
This is a tricky problem, one faced here in the United States as well, as our law enforcement agencies attempt to determine if Islamic charities and other organizations are operating legitimately or are linked to Hamas, al-Qaeda or Hezbollah.
That being said, I am not questioning the Colombian use of the NGO ruse in this case – the benefits outweighed the cost. But, similar operations, if done too often could undermine the rightful place of legitimate NGOs. This could have pragmatic consequences such as hurting the ability of NGOs to deliver aid, to broader philosophical consequences of undermining freedom of association.
There is a parallel with the Colombian strike that killed Raul Reyes in Ecuador. As a matter of principle, military attacks that cross national borders are not a good idea. But, there are times and places where such strikes necessary. However, when done too often violating the national sovereignty of other states will exact a cost in legitimacy.
Was the rescue the cover for an arrangement with the FARC?
Probably not.
What effect will this have on future hostage releases?
It will probably lead to more units dissolving and possibly releasing their hostages.
Colombian security used a ruse claiming to be an NGO, could such ploys undermine the legitimate role of NGOs?
Possibly, it’s complicated.
Staged Rescue
Cesar, the commander of the FARC front holding the hostages put them on a helicopter after receiving an order he believed came from the FARC jefe Alfonso Cano. Consider the implications of this: it would be as if someone tricked a General into believing he had just received an order from the President. Such communications are not handled casually. The fact that Colombian intelligence could deliver this fake message probably indicates a very high-level of human and electronic penetration into the FARC’s communications networks. A few specialists have quietly speculated that this was an inside job – perhaps Cano wanted to arrange this to set the stage for a peaceful surrender. While anything is possible, the correspondence unearthed from Raul Reyes’ laptop – such as the talk of selling uranium – has a certain clueless quality. The blog of the Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program cites a FARC assessment of the U.S. elections as another example of strange assertions and gross inaccuracies in the FARC’s perception of the world. Based on the FARC’s seeming poor information about and ability to assess the outside world, it does seem conceivable that the organization has simply become dysfunctional and that its organizational nervous system has in fact been deeply compromised.
The fate of the hundreds of remaining hostages
The FARC holds many more hostages, possibly as many as 700, about 40 of whom are prominent. It is possible that the rescue operation will make it harder to negotiate for the release of the remaining hostages. Without their most valuable chits, the FARC cannot hope to obtain any of the concessions it demands – consequently the remaining hostages may languish. But, as the FARC breaks down, it is more and more likely that fronts will abandon the fight altogether, particularly as they become isolated from the central command (or mistrust its instructions). The rescue was a huge blow and FARC morale will sink even further. Expect the Colombian campaign to encourage FARC members to desert to expand and include incentives to bring in hostages as well.
NGO Quandaries
Finally, in my previous post I noted that there may be a cost in using ruses involving NGOs. Several people with a lot of background on the issue told me that many Colombian NGOs are effectively FARC fronts. The mere fact that the hostages’ guards fell for a ruse that an NGO was aiding in a FARC operation lends some credence to this argument. It is not an unfamiliar phenomenon, the Israelis complain deeply (and with much justice) about NGOs acting as fronts and agents for terrorist groups as well.
However, NGOs in principle are expressions of the fundamental right of association aka civil society – a right and value that is essential for the liberal democratic polity. That some become fronts for loathsome causes is not new, Stalin too had his useful idiots and front groups. One of the great challenges of asymmetric warfare (whether it is terrorism, counter-insurgency or something else) is distinguishing between groups exercising this right – even if their views are controversial – and groups that are fronts for organizations undermining legitimate authority.
This is a tricky problem, one faced here in the United States as well, as our law enforcement agencies attempt to determine if Islamic charities and other organizations are operating legitimately or are linked to Hamas, al-Qaeda or Hezbollah.
That being said, I am not questioning the Colombian use of the NGO ruse in this case – the benefits outweighed the cost. But, similar operations, if done too often could undermine the rightful place of legitimate NGOs. This could have pragmatic consequences such as hurting the ability of NGOs to deliver aid, to broader philosophical consequences of undermining freedom of association.
There is a parallel with the Colombian strike that killed Raul Reyes in Ecuador. As a matter of principle, military attacks that cross national borders are not a good idea. But, there are times and places where such strikes necessary. However, when done too often violating the national sovereignty of other states will exact a cost in legitimacy.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Article on LCCD (my day job): Computer Science & Counter-Terror
Security Management, a security industry trade magazine ran a piece in its June issue about the work I do with Professor V.S. Subrahmanian at the University of Maryland's Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics.
The short explanation is that the computer geniuses I work with developed something called SOMA that, given data on a group's past behavior, can develop rules for probable future behavior given different conditions. There are many potential applications. An immediate one was for me (as the resident terrorism specialist) to examine the rules and see if they taught me anything I didn't already know about a group. The findings about Hezbollah discussed below are based on a case study we did on that group which I presented at the First Annual Workshop on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling, and Prediction in April. At the link above you can find my presentation slides and the slides of other presenters. The conference is a window into how computer science is bringing new tools to social science, some of which have useful applications to counter-terror, counter-insurgency, and development. Just as the Cold War spawned new technologies that had profound impact on day to day life (like the Internet), so to will the present conflict.
I'm presenting a similar analysis of Hamas at an upcoming conference at the University of Maryland, the Second International Conference on Computational Cultural Dynamics.
Since the paper was published, we've tweaked our analysis and tools - but the key findings have stayed consistent.
The short explanation is that the computer geniuses I work with developed something called SOMA that, given data on a group's past behavior, can develop rules for probable future behavior given different conditions. There are many potential applications. An immediate one was for me (as the resident terrorism specialist) to examine the rules and see if they taught me anything I didn't already know about a group. The findings about Hezbollah discussed below are based on a case study we did on that group which I presented at the First Annual Workshop on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling, and Prediction in April. At the link above you can find my presentation slides and the slides of other presenters. The conference is a window into how computer science is bringing new tools to social science, some of which have useful applications to counter-terror, counter-insurgency, and development. Just as the Cold War spawned new technologies that had profound impact on day to day life (like the Internet), so to will the present conflict.
I'm presenting a similar analysis of Hamas at an upcoming conference at the University of Maryland, the Second International Conference on Computational Cultural Dynamics.
Since the paper was published, we've tweaked our analysis and tools - but the key findings have stayed consistent.
Calculating the Margin of Terror
By Joseph Straw
How likely is it that Hezbollah in Lebanon would launch suicide attacks or engage in kidnappings during an election year? Professor V.S. Subrahmanian, head of the University of Maryland’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), says that the right data combined with the right software can answer that question.
Subrahmanian has taken a decade’s worth of open-source data on political and terrorist activity in the Middle East and plugged it into his own behavioral modeling software program—which he calls a stochastic opponent modeling agents (SOMA) framework—to create the SOMA Terror Organization Portal (STOP).
The program, funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), is currently in use by four defense agencies. Via a simple, Web-based portal, users select a country, a terror group, and an environmental variable (usually political), and receive a percentage probability for activity during a given period. For some groups and countries, users can select a specific activity and motivation, such as kidnapping for ransom versus kidnapping for political demands.
Subrahmanian cautions, however, that the program’s data inputs and the Boolean logic behind the modeling are extremely coarse. Consequently, the program’s predictions carry a statistical margin of error far beyond that of a typical public opinion poll. Thus, STOP does not offer hard statistical predictions, but ranges, for example, a 68-87 percent chance of activity in a given period.
Despite the margin of error, the modeling has generated some valuable findings, says terrorism scholar and UMIACS researcher Aaron Mannes. For one, it has shown analysts that when a political group with ties to terror runs candidates in a national election, attacks spike in the period around the election. For that entire year, however, attacks by the group drop.
STOP’s data universe relies on existing research by the university’s Center for International Development and Conflict Management. It considers 31 terror groups operating in countries from Morocco east to Afghanistan, and considers roughly 150 action variables within those countries.
James Jay Carafano, counterterrorism expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., says Subrahmanian’s work is pioneering, although not groundbreaking. Separately, the CIA has modeled international political activity for more than a decade in hopes of predicting instability. The field is still maturing, but research indicates that the technology holds great promise in forecasting group action.
“Technology is increasingly making soft sciences, like anthropology or political science, into hard sciences. People are quantifying a lot of these things, making them interactive, and producing results,” Carafano says.
Subrahmanian explains that while free will makes it impossible to predict individual action, it is possible to look at group dynamics and make predictions with some degree of accuracy.
FARC is FARC'd: Assessing the Hostage Rescue
The first reports about the Colombian military’s rescue of the 15 hostages held by FARC (in Spanish) indicate an impressive intelligence operation. The hostages were held in three separate locations. Colombian intelligence had infiltrated one of the FARC fronts holding the hostages as well as the FARC Secretariat. They told the front commander “Cesar” that the hostages were being transferred on the orders of FARC chief Alfonso Cano. After gathering the hostages in one location the FARC unit was met by a helicopter, ostensibly from an NGO (that doesn’t actually exist). Then the hostages were loaded onto the helicopter and the FARC commander and his deputy were taken captive to be handed over to judicial authorities. The other members of the FARC front were permitted to escape.
The fifteen hostages were rescued without firing a shot. The long nightmare of the hostages and their families is finally over.
There are many implications to this tremendous success. It indicates both the FARC’s rot and impressive Colombian capabilities. That Colombian intelligence could manage this elaborate ruse shows how much information they have gathered about the FARC’s internal workings. The computer files seized, both from Raul Reyes, but also from the computer of FARC leader Ivan Rios – who was killed by his own men, were no doubt invaluable. That FARC would fall for this ruse indicates increasing fragmentation and decay. The loss of several top leaders, and the reported serious illness of FARC’s top military commander Mono Jojoy have all contributed to FARC's weakness.
Communications has long been an Achilles heel for the FARC, which is spread out in Colombia’s vast hinterland. The hostage rescue operation is the most dramatic capitalization of this weakness so far and it will also exacerbate it. FARC leaders will now doubt the origin of their orders – leading to further fragmentation.
It is an impressive operation – imagine if Iraqi forces could carry out operations like this. (Colombia’s security forces have benefited tremendously from U.S. support under Plan Colombia – hopefully some of the lessons learned will be transferable to the global counter-insurgency against radical Islamist terrorists.)
The escape of the rest of the FARC front was probably a wise operational move. Engaging them could have resulted in a firefight in which hostages could have been hurt or killed. The unit will probably dissolve and its members may join the chorus of former FARC members broadcasting calls for active FARC members to turn themselves in. (The program has been successful – over 1000 FARC fighters desert per year according to some reports and has included top commanders.)
One dark spot: the use of the NGO ruse may have consequences – not just in Colombia – but worldwide. Future efforts to negotiate these kinds of releases may be effected – and the FARC is believed to hold an additional 700 hostages. The NGO role of serving as interlocutors between states and terrorist groups – while easy to criticize – is often useful and necessary. Their neutrality in these conflicts worldwide does allow them to deliver humanitarian aid and facilitate communications. If terrorist groups are more hesitant to engage with NGOs because of this incident it may block these useful channels.
However, this kind of ruse may only work with a particularly isolated group. Less fragmented groups, like Hezbollah, would probably restrict their dealings to well-established NGOs - so that the impact may be limited.
Update
The invaluable Bloggings By Boz a leading stop for LatAm news reports the fascinating detail that the Colombian rescuers were wearing Che T-shirts.
The fifteen hostages were rescued without firing a shot. The long nightmare of the hostages and their families is finally over.
There are many implications to this tremendous success. It indicates both the FARC’s rot and impressive Colombian capabilities. That Colombian intelligence could manage this elaborate ruse shows how much information they have gathered about the FARC’s internal workings. The computer files seized, both from Raul Reyes, but also from the computer of FARC leader Ivan Rios – who was killed by his own men, were no doubt invaluable. That FARC would fall for this ruse indicates increasing fragmentation and decay. The loss of several top leaders, and the reported serious illness of FARC’s top military commander Mono Jojoy have all contributed to FARC's weakness.
Communications has long been an Achilles heel for the FARC, which is spread out in Colombia’s vast hinterland. The hostage rescue operation is the most dramatic capitalization of this weakness so far and it will also exacerbate it. FARC leaders will now doubt the origin of their orders – leading to further fragmentation.
It is an impressive operation – imagine if Iraqi forces could carry out operations like this. (Colombia’s security forces have benefited tremendously from U.S. support under Plan Colombia – hopefully some of the lessons learned will be transferable to the global counter-insurgency against radical Islamist terrorists.)
The escape of the rest of the FARC front was probably a wise operational move. Engaging them could have resulted in a firefight in which hostages could have been hurt or killed. The unit will probably dissolve and its members may join the chorus of former FARC members broadcasting calls for active FARC members to turn themselves in. (The program has been successful – over 1000 FARC fighters desert per year according to some reports and has included top commanders.)
One dark spot: the use of the NGO ruse may have consequences – not just in Colombia – but worldwide. Future efforts to negotiate these kinds of releases may be effected – and the FARC is believed to hold an additional 700 hostages. The NGO role of serving as interlocutors between states and terrorist groups – while easy to criticize – is often useful and necessary. Their neutrality in these conflicts worldwide does allow them to deliver humanitarian aid and facilitate communications. If terrorist groups are more hesitant to engage with NGOs because of this incident it may block these useful channels.
However, this kind of ruse may only work with a particularly isolated group. Less fragmented groups, like Hezbollah, would probably restrict their dealings to well-established NGOs - so that the impact may be limited.
Update
The invaluable Bloggings By Boz a leading stop for LatAm news reports the fascinating detail that the Colombian rescuers were wearing Che T-shirts.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Rotten Core of Mubarak's Egypt
Every sentence of the following short article from Agence France Presse reveals another facet of the soul crushing depth of corruption and repression in Egypt:
Egyptian security forces detained a schoolboy for several hours after he wrote in an exam that President Hosni Mubarak was a tyrant who ruled over cowards, an Education Ministry official said on Monday. Safwat Hassan, 17, wrote in his end of high school exam in the southern city of Luxor that Mubarak was "a tyrannical leader" and Egyptians were "a cowardly people," the official in Luxor told AFP. The official said the boy wrote the answer in a maths exam because he was convinced that he was going to fail as he comes from a poor family that could not afford treating school staff to the customary meals during exam time. Egyptian teachers are notoriously badly paid and almost always have to take on private classes and accept gifts to make ends meet. Hassan was questioned for several hours by local security forces and "might be charged with defamation," the official said, without being able to say how security services found out about the boy's answer. The teenager has been barred from taking more exams this year and will have to retake them all next year, the official said.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Remembering D-Day
I was too backed up to post about the anniversary of D-Day, but wanted to jot a few thoughts down. In my post about visiting Fort McHenry, I mentioned how shipyards in Baltimore churned out the Liberty Ships that made D-Day (and the Allied victory) possible. As it happens, I am also in the middle of listening to John Keegan’s Six Armies at Normandy. Keegan, a masterful military historian adeptly blends his personal story with the history. As a young boy during World War II, he was living in a quiet corner of west England, where the war was very interesting to a boy – but not close at hand. Then quite suddenly, the Americans began appearing. They came in numbers that were simply unimaginable, bringing with them vehicles and machines never before seen in England like their bulldozers. The American khaki itself glowed compared to the uniforms of the superannuated garrison of the home guard. They were charming and wonderfully casual, and readily tossed friendly children mounds of candy equivalent to a month’s sugar rations. Keegan notes that as a boy he observed, “Something was going on in west England that Mr. Hitler should be extremely concerned about.”
And this was only the engineering units building quarters. Then the troops arrived and just as suddenly were gone – had disappeared. It was June 6, 1944. Keegan reports that men in town kept fiddling with their radios – to keep up with events (a predecessor perhaps to scanning news sites and blogs for some new tidbit of breaking news.)
The mass citizen armies, drawing on America’s bottomless wealth are part of our national narrative. And it is true that it took American generals and bureaucrats to envision and implement the massive landing at Normandy that was the only way to bring the war to its inexorable close.
But while Keegan writes deftly about grand strategy, his books always come down to the furious small unit actions and the individual soldiers that fight them that actually comprise a war. Keegan notes that while there is an American national myth, the U.S. Army has its own soul – he feels it is in Leavenworth, Kansas. Leavenworth was the staging ground for the Indian War of the 1870s and 1880s. In these conflicts small detachments, far from home, fought savage battles on unfamiliar terrain. Keegan writes that their successors in the American paratroop divisions did credit to this ethos in the landing areas inside France on D-Day.
This ethos lives on as the U.S. Army confronts challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere) in places where inherent American advantages in material are neutralized and the soldiers are forced to rely on their training, guts, and initiative.
About 2500 Allied troops died on D-Day (and several thousand more Germans). World War II was a war of 9/11s weekly, if not daily. Terrorism is terrible, but so is a full-scale of war of attrition between industrialized great powers. Hopefully, that era of human history has drawn to a close.
And this was only the engineering units building quarters. Then the troops arrived and just as suddenly were gone – had disappeared. It was June 6, 1944. Keegan reports that men in town kept fiddling with their radios – to keep up with events (a predecessor perhaps to scanning news sites and blogs for some new tidbit of breaking news.)
The mass citizen armies, drawing on America’s bottomless wealth are part of our national narrative. And it is true that it took American generals and bureaucrats to envision and implement the massive landing at Normandy that was the only way to bring the war to its inexorable close.
But while Keegan writes deftly about grand strategy, his books always come down to the furious small unit actions and the individual soldiers that fight them that actually comprise a war. Keegan notes that while there is an American national myth, the U.S. Army has its own soul – he feels it is in Leavenworth, Kansas. Leavenworth was the staging ground for the Indian War of the 1870s and 1880s. In these conflicts small detachments, far from home, fought savage battles on unfamiliar terrain. Keegan writes that their successors in the American paratroop divisions did credit to this ethos in the landing areas inside France on D-Day.
This ethos lives on as the U.S. Army confronts challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere) in places where inherent American advantages in material are neutralized and the soldiers are forced to rely on their training, guts, and initiative.
About 2500 Allied troops died on D-Day (and several thousand more Germans). World War II was a war of 9/11s weekly, if not daily. Terrorism is terrible, but so is a full-scale of war of attrition between industrialized great powers. Hopefully, that era of human history has drawn to a close.
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