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Special IPS-CISAC Colloquium - Beyond Hearts and Minds: The Impact of Afghan Political Disenchantment on US Options in Afghanistan

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With a flawed Afghan election and a request for more troop increases by General Stanley McChrystal, there is renewed attention toward whether and how the United States can turn the situation in Afghanistan around. Several options for going forward have been proposed: a resource- and manpower-heavy counterinsurgency strategy; a more scaled down counterterrorism campaign; and various models in between those extremes. Yet regardless of which option is chosen a key ingredient of success will be the degree to which Afghan communities are invested. Unfortunately, regaining their trust and confidence will be no small task given the current environment. High civilian casualties and a corresponding failure to protect Afghans from the daily brutality of insurgents, criminal groups, and warlords lead Afghans to regard international military as impotent, malevolent, or both. Though billions have been spent to build schools, support economic development, and other initiatives, corruption, security concerns, and mismanagement lead Afghans to view these projects as symbols of Afghan and international fecklessness and failure rather than reasons to cast their lot with them in the future. Successful Taliban propaganda, often based on legitimate community grievances, has further fueled mistrust between the Afghan population and those who are supposed to be protecting their interests. 

While there has been much talk about enhancing the legitimacy of the Afghan government and winning "hearts and minds", it seems unlikely that elections or military slush funds will get anywhere near what Afghan communities perceive as the problem. Based in large part on on-the-ground observations and discussions with Afghan civil society groups, this talk will focus on some of these community perceptions and narratives about what is fueling the conflict with a view toward better analyzing the strategic implications.

Erica Gaston is a human rights lawyer consulting on civilian casualties for the Open Society Institute in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She first visited Afghanistan in 2007 to conduct research for a legal study on private security companies, and then moved to Kabul in 2008 with the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), whose mission is to encourage warring parties to provide compensation, victim assistance, recognition or other redress to victims of conflict. In addition to her work with CIVIC, she worked extensively with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and was the lead editor on their 2008 report on the conduct of pro-government forces in Afghanistan. She also worked with the Afghan NGO WADAN, which focuses on grassroots civic education, governance and human rights advocacy.

In addition to her work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Erica has also been involved in other human rights documentation and advocacy related to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006, situations of ethnic conflict in Ethiopia, cluster munition use, among others.  She has also published legal articles related to the accountability of private security companies, issues and problems inherent in the humanitarian project, and the improvement of emergency preparedness for homeland security and counter-terrorism purposes. She is a blog contributor to the Huffington Post and has provided commentary on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, CBC, and other local and international radio programming.

Erica graduated from Harvard Law School in 2007. She graduated with a B.A. in International Relations, with honors in International Security, from Stanford University.

CISAC Conference Room

Erica Gaston Consultant on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Open Society Institute Speaker
Conferences

Between Moscow and Brussels: Emerging States, East or West?

The workshop is premised on the view that we are now entering a new phase in the development of post-Soviet Europe. Clearly, further NATO enlargement and EU expansion are unlikely to take place in the next few years, creating a zone of insecurity and potential instability dividing those countries which succeeded in winning integration into the EU and into NATO in recent years from those countries that have sought membership without any immediate prospects of achieving it.  Moreover, even among countries that have been successful in achieving membership in recent years there remains continuing anxiety about the degree to which their new European partners are prepared to support their economic viability and guarantee their security, particularly in light of increased assertiveness from Moscow.

The central purpose of this workshop series is to analyze the new dynamics emerging within this region, focusing on the external influences exerted by Moscow and Brussels and how they interact with the internal dynamics of the “corridor” countries, and to explore possible scenarios for future stabilization and development.

This workshop will be held November 5 and 6, 2009 at Stanford.  The primary focus will be the “corridor” of countries consisting of the Baltic and Central European members of the EU and NATO, together with Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Moscow and Brussels will enter as driving outside influences. The participants will include analysts and policymakers from the region itself as well as scholars from the relevant scholarly communities.

 

CISAC Conference Room

Workshops

2009-10 CISAC fellows and visiting scholars

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CISAC is pleased to announce fellows and visitors in residence at the Center during the 2009-10 academic year.

  • Max Abrahms
    University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Political Science
    Strategic Logic of Terrorism
  • Undraa Agvaanluvsan
    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Nuclear Experimental Group
    Energy, Security, and Economic Implications of Nuclear Industry Development in Mongolia
  • Chaim Braun
    CISAC
    Nuclear Power Growth and its Nonproliferation Implications in India, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, and South America
  • Sarah Zukerman Daly
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science
    Guns, Politics or Bankruptcy: Disentangling the Determinants of Armed Organizations Post-war Trajectories
  • Matthias Englert
    Darmstadt University of Technology, Interdisciplinary Research Group in Science Technology and Security
    Managing the Proliferation Risks of Gas Centrifuges - Technical and Political Measures
  • Andrea Everett
    Princeton University, Department of Politics
    Responding to Catastrophe: Democratic Society and the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention
  • Kelly Greenhill
    Tufts University and Research Fellow, Harvard University
    Fear Factor: Understanding the Origins and Consequences of Beliefs about National Security and the Threats We Face
  • Tom Isaacs
    Director, Office of Planning and Special Studies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
    Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and the Role of the U.S.
  • Joseph Martz
    Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • Katherine Marvel
    University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
    Nuclear Energy in Africa: Utility, Feasibility, and Security
  • Emily Meierding
    University of Chicago, Department of Political Science
    Fueling Conflict, Facilitating Peace: Oil & International Territorial Disputes
  • Eric Morris
    Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies
    Civilian Capacity for Peace Operations
  • Charles Perrow
    Yale University, Department of Sociology
  • Brenna Powell
    Harvard University, Department of Government and Social Policy
    Normalizing Security After Conflict: Jobs for the Boys and Justice for the Hoods
  • Arian Pregenzer
    Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Cooperative International Programs
    International Technical Cooperation to Support Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Review of Past Approaches, Identification of Lessons Learned, and Recommendations for the Future
  • William Reckmeyer
    San Jose State University, Department of Anthropology
    Systemic Connections: Developing an Integrated National Strategy to Promote International Security and Cooperation
  • Jefferey Richardson,
    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
    Science as a Tool for International Engagement
  • Robert Rosner
    University of Chicago, Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, and Laboratory Director, Argonne National Laboratory
  • Jan Stupl
    University of Hamburg, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy
    Missile Technology Control Regime
  • Michael Sulmeyer
    Stanford Law School
  • Phil Taubman
    Former Associate Editor and Reporter, The New York Times
  • Jianqun Teng
    China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
    Nuclear Free World Initiative in the Context of Sino-U.S. Relations
  • John Vitacca
    United States Air Force
    Nuclear Policy Issues
  • Gang Zhao
    Chinese Academy of S & T for Development (CASTED)
    Deepening the China-U.S. Relationship through Collaboration in Science and Technology with Particular Attention to Alternative Energy Solutions
  • Yunhua Zou
    General Armaments Department, People's Liberation Army, China
    Space Arms Control; Security Cooperation with China; U.S.-China Relations

 

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Martha Crenshaw awarded $500,000 to study terrorist patterns

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Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been awarded $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations and to analyze their comparative development.

The three-year grant is part of the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative launched in 2008, which focuses on "supporting research related to basic social and behavioral science of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy."

Crenshaw's interdisciplinary project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," will analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. It will be the first worldwide, comprehensive study of its kind-extending back to the Russian revolutionary movement up to Al Qaeda today.

"We want to understand how groups affiliate with Al Qaeda and analyze their relationships," Crenshaw said. "Evolutionary mapping can enhance our understanding of how terrorist groups develop and interact with each other and with the government, how strategies of violence and non-violence are related, why groups persist or disappear, and how opportunities and constraints in the environment change organizational behavior over time."

According to Crenshaw, it is critical to understand the organization and evolution of terrorism in multiple contexts. "To craft effective counter-terrorism strategies, governments need to know not only what type of adversary they are confronting but its stage of organizational development and relationship to other groups," Crenshaw wrote in the project summary. "The timing of a government policy initiative may be as important as its substance."

"Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will incorporate research in economics, sociology, business, biology, political science and history. It will include existing research to build a new database using original language sources rather than secondary analyses. The goal is to produce an online database and series of interactive maps that will generate new observations and research questions, Crenshaw said.

The results, for example, could reveal the structure of violent and non-violent opposition groups within the same movements or conflicts, and identify patterns that explain how these groups evolve over time. Such findings could be used to analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its Islamist or jihadist affiliates, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said.

The findings may also shed light on what happens when a group splits due to leadership quarrels or when a government is overturned, Crenshaw said. "Analysis that links levels of terrorist violence to changes in organizational structures and explains the complex relationships among actors in protracted conflicts will break new ground," the summary noted.

Extensive information on terrorist groups already exists, but it has been difficult to compile and analyze. Despite such obstacles, Crenshaw said, violent organizations can be understood in the same terms as other political or economic groups. "Terrorist groups are not anomalous or unique," she wrote. "In fact, they can be compared to transnational activist networks."

Crenshaw should know. Widely respected as a pioneer in terrorism studies, the political scientist was one of a handful of scholars who followed the subject decades before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She joined CISAC in 2007, following a long career at Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought. In addition to her research at Stanford, Crenshaw is a lead investigator at START, the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

End goal

Crenshaw wants to use the findings to better analyze how threats to U.S. security evolve over time. "Terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies abroad often appear to come without warning, but they are the result of a long process of organizational development," she wrote. "Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation from a wider social environment. Without understanding processes of development and interaction, governments may miss signals along the way and be vulnerable to surprise attack. They may also respond ineffectively because they cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions." The project seeks to find patterns in the evolution of terrorism and to explain their causes and consequences. This, in turn, should contribute to developing more effective counter-terrorism policy, Crenshaw said.

Conflicts to be mapped

  • Russian revolutionary organizations, 1860s-1914.
  • Anarchist groups in Europe and the United States, 1880s-1914. (Note: although the anarchist movement is typically regarded as completely unstructured, there was more organization than an initial survey might suppose, and the transnational dispersion of the movement is frequently cited as a precedent for Al Qaeda.)
  • Ireland and Northern Ireland, 1860s-present.
  • Algeria, 1945-1962 and 1992-present
  • Palestinian resistance groups, 1967-present.
  • Colombia, 1960s-present.
  • El Salvador, 1970s-1990s
  • Argentina, 1960s-1980s
  • Chile, 1973-1990
  • Peru, 1970-1990s
  • Brazil, 1967-1971
  • Sri Lanka, 1980s-present
  • India (Punjab), 1980-present
  • Philippines, 1960s-present
  • Indonesia, 1998-present
  • Italy, 1970s-1990s
  • Germany, 1970s-1990s
  • France/Belgium, 1980-1990s
  • Kashmir, 1988-present
  • Pakistan, 1980-present
  • United States, 1960s-present (especially far right movement)
  • Spain, 1960s-present
  • Egypt, 1950s-present
  • Turkey, 1960s-present
  • Lebanon, 1975-present
  • Al Qaeda, 1987-present
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Human Rights Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law

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The Center for the Study of the Novel is pleased to present a discussion of Professor Joseph Slaughter's new book, Human Rights Inc: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law.  Prof. Slaughter (Columbia) will be in conversation with Prof. Saikat Majumdar (Stanford) and Prof. Michael Rubenstein (UC Berkeley) in the Terrace Room of the English Department (Building 460, Room 426) on Friday, November 20th, at 3:30 pm.  A reading selection from this book is available as a pdf by email request and in hard copy on the second floor of the English Department, under the grad mailboxes.

Human Rights Inc is, in Simon Gikandi's words, "one of the most intense and intelligent reflections on the relation between the novel and human rights....a model of how students and scholars of literature can respond to the great humanitarian crisis of our time and transform the culture of human rights itself."

Joseph Slaughter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.  He teaches and publishes in the fields of postcolonial literature and theory, African, Caribbean, and Latin American literatures, postcolonialism, narrative theory, human rights, and 20th-century ethnic and third world literatures. His many publications include articles on the narrative foundations of human rights in Human Rights Quarterly, "Humanitarian Reading" in Humanitarianism and Suffering, torture and Latin American literature in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, ethnopsychiatry, Nigerian literature, and globalization in African Writers and Their Readers, colonial narratives of invoice in Emerging Perspectives on Chinua Achebe, city space and the national allegory in Research in African Literatures, human rights, multiculturalism, and the contemporary Bildungsroman in Politics and Culture, a short story translation of Argentine Elvira Orphée's "Descomedido" in The Southwest Review, as well as a co-authored article on contemporary epistolary fiction and women's rights in Women, Gender, and Human Rights. His essay, "Enabling Fictions and Novel Subjects: The Bildungsroman and International Human Rights Law," appeared in a special issue on human rights of PMLA (October 2006) and was honored as one of the two best articles published in the journal in 2006-7; another, "The Textuality of Human Rights: Founding Narratives of Human Personality," was named a winner in the Interdisciplinary Law and Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop held at UCLA in 2004. He has co-edited a special issue on "Human Rights and Literary Form" of Comparative Literature Studies.

Terrace Room
Margaret Jacks Hall / Building 460
Department of English
Stanford University

Joseph Slaughter Author, "Human Rights Inc: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law" Speaker
Saikat Majumdar Speaker Stanford University
Michael Rubenstein Speaker University of California at Berkeley
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Program on Human Rights
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