近年来起伏跌宕的印巴关系

近年来,印度与巴基斯坦的关系起伏跌宕,两国全面对话在2007年虽然正常进行,但逐步趋缓。2008年的孟买恐怖袭击事件使印巴关系跌入＂冰点＂,僵局持续到2009年印度大选后才出现转机。2010年以来,印巴重启对话,但进展缓慢。     

试析巴基斯坦参与阿富汗重建

自美国发动阿富汗战争以来,阿国内局势一直动荡不安,这给巴基斯坦的经济、政治、外交战略及安全局势都造成了严重影响。为尽快恢复阿富汗的和平与稳定,巴通过提供经济援助、增强战略互信以及加强反恐合作等方式积极参与阿富汗重建,并取得一定成效。同时,巴积极参与阿富汗重建对巴自身以及巴阿、巴美及巴印关系都产生了影响。此外,由于巴国内经济形势恶化、安全局势欠佳等因素,巴积极参与阿富汗重建也面临诸多困难和挑战。     

美国阿-巴“全面新战略”评析

奥巴马政府的阿一巴“全面新战略”是美国实施阿富汗反恐战争进入新阶段对反恐力量的一次大规模转移和重新部署,战略目标更加明确;美国在增加兵力的同时更注重加强阿富汗和巴基斯坦自身的反恐能力,达成战略目标的手段更加全面和明智。“全面新战略”出台尚不足一年,完全落实尚需时间以及复杂的政治和军事运作,其实际效果也同样有待时间的考验。     

2011年南亚地区形势分析与展望

2011年,尽管南亚的热度不及中东北非、南海等问题,但仍然引起了世界的广泛关注。在这一年里,南亚主要国家政局基本保持稳定,经济保持快速发展的势头,大国外交、地区外交活跃,但通货膨胀严重、社会发展滞后。反恐不仅未给南亚带来和平与稳定的社会环境,反而给巴基斯坦和阿富汗的社会安全局势增添了许多问题。2012年在全球经济前景不明朗的大背景下,南亚经济快速发展的势头可能会受到影响。     

India's response to terrorism after 13 December 2001

The nature of the December 13, 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament brought about an Indian reaction significantly different from the restraint exercised in the past, influenced by the ongoing global “war on terror”. India's response to terrorism became dynamic and multi-faceted, with alternating emphasis on a variety of measures, including diplomatic, military, political, administrative, and legal. Considerable emphasis was also placed on international cooperation, especially with the U.S. With continuing tensions in Indo-Pakistani relations, and the regrouping of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the risk of a high-value Al Qaeda-linked attack in New Delhi remains high. This could well escalate into another military confrontation between India and Pakistan, with inherent uncertainties.     

The Alienated Frontier: Why the United States Can’t Get Osama bin Laden

Since the Russian-supplied Afghan army overthrew progressive President Daud in 1978, the nation has endured the long Soviet-Afghan war, the Taliban, and the arrival of U.S troops. These military actions have only heightened the historical alienation of the Pashtun tribes who overspread the long-contested border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. These are the people who are almost certainly sheltering Osama bin Laden. The Alienated Frontier is a centuries-old problem that must be solved if we are to win the war on terror, and solving it will require rebuilding the infrastructure, developing alternatives to poppy cultivation, and solving the “Pashtunistan” question. The capture or elimination of given individuals will achieve little if the conditions that allow radicals to thrive are not addressed     

Intersectionality – A challenge for development research and practice?

“Intersectionality” as a concept is increasingly finding its way into development work. In order to develop an understanding of the concept, this article shows how intersectionality can be used as a conceptual framework to analyse identity-based development claims. The article builds on qualitative research with people living in the countryside in northwest Pakistan to develop an intersectional methodology to engage with development claims. It uses a three-step analytical model to identify subject positions from which different people negotiate “eligibility for development'' and ‘‘responsibility to develop”. The paper shows how frequently used categorisations such as gender and class should be complicated by development practitioners and worked with in a more nuanced way.     

The US discourse on political Islam: is Obama's a truly post-‘war on terror’ administration?

In this article, I examine the legacy of the discourse on political Islam in the context of George W. Bush's ‘war on terror’, reflecting on the role this discourse has performed in constructing and affirming the United States' self-identity as a beacon of ‘democracy’, ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’, in contradistinction to an Islamist ‘other’. It will evaluate the three most prominent manifestations of the modern rationalist paradigm in relation to the ‘war on terror’ discourse: the tendency to ‘ideologise terror’; the tendency to conflate Islamist movements and view them solely within a security/counterterrorism framework; and the tendency to employ double standards when distinguishing between what is regarded as legitimate and illegitimate uses of political violence. This article will then consider to what extent it is appropriate to label the period since the Obama election as a truly ‘post-war on terror’ politics.     

Why the “Sacred” Is a Better Resource Than “Religion” for Understanding Terrorism

The popular media and many in academia often overstate the role that religion, and its supposedly unique qualities, has played in recent acts of terror. In this article, I argue that the notion of religious violence is unhelpful and that there is a more useful concept that we can utilize to draw out the values and ideas that play a role in the move to violence in both religious and secular groups. From a series of case studies on religious and non-religious groups, I have drawn out an alternative framework for investigating and learning from the role that beliefs play in motivations and justifications for terrorism. This framework uses the concept of non-negotiable (or “sacred”) beliefs. It is as applicable to secular as it is to religious groups, and can show us much more about how such beliefs can contribute to violence.     

Grand Strategy of ‘Restrainment’

With the end of the Cold War, the subsequent global war on terror, the global economic recession, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, one would think that the United States would have formulated a grand strategy for dealing with these problems. This, however, is not the case. This article advances a grand strategy of “restrainment,” as a guiding concept for our approach to international politics. It builds from the principle that U.S. policy must seek to restrain—individually and collectively—those forces, ideas, and movements in international politics that create instability, crises, and war.     

Regime and Power in International Terror Crises: Strong Democracies Fight Back Hard

This study explores regime, power, and violence in international terror crises (ITCs). It examines terror strikes and retaliations against the terror groups and their hosts. The exploration tests two hypotheses: first, democracies, like other states, retaliate, even at the risk of escalation; and second, strong democracies fight back with massive violence as do authoritarian regimes. Historical narratives of ITCs from 1934 to 2006 show that strong democracies were the most common targets of terror. Like authoritarian states, they responded to terror, but were the most violent retaliators, followed by weaker states, democratic or not. So the democratic constraints affect weaker states more than stronger ones. These trends draw attention to the destabilizing nature of international terror and its challenge to the peaceful resolution of international disputes.     

Sam Fisher and the “war on terror”: an analysis of Splinter Cell in a post-9/11 context

This article examines the values and attitudes present within the 2002 video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and the methods employed to convey them. It compares the game’s message with the rhetoric contained in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative. A qualitative content analysis of a Splinter Cell “game movie” and gameplay sessions is undertaken to examine the messages communicated through elements of simulation and representation. This article finds that Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” narrative express similar perspectives of terrorism and counterterrorism. First, both exaggerate the physical and normative threat of terrorism, and portray it as overwhelmingly powerful. Second, both sources justify violent counterterrorism action through claims of necessity, urgency and self-defence. Third, violence is consistently portrayed as effective for achieving the desired objective. Finally, violence and military action are represented as simple solutions that ultimately lead to victory over terrorism. The parallels between the messages within Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” rhetoric indicate that the game was shaped by the post-9/11 culture in which it was developed. More significantly, however, Splinter Cell perpetuates and legitimises the “war on terror” narrative by conveying its message through an immersive interactive environment.     

Canada,the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the flexibility of terror identities

ABSTRACT

Security governance practices are contingent on the imagination of future threats. The “war on terror” has produced a very narrow imagination of threats, almost singularly focused on suspect communities that are Arab, Muslim, or perceived to be Middle Eastern. Discussing how immigration practices in Canada have been influenced by counter-terrorism trends, we argue that “terror identities” are mutable and highly racialised imaginaries that cast indelible marks of suspicion on subjects who are deemed as security threats. Examining the case of a journalist deemed inadmissible to Canada because of her “membership” in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), we argue that terror identities impose authoritative control over the status and lived experiences of individuals who are cast through these racialised labelling practices. Focussing on the shifting characterisation of the PLO by Canadian officials as both political interlocutor and terrorist organisation, our purpose is to highlight how racialised imaginations of terror identities enact punitive and discriminatory practices.     

Afghanistan's India–Pakistan dilemma: advocacy coalitions in weak states

This article seeks to examine the foreign policy behaviour of weak states in regions marked by politically turbulent geostrategic environments. An analysis of Afghanistan's foreign policy behaviour vis-à-vis Pakistan and India lends focus to this aim. India–Pakistan rivalry has gained traction as a key factor in determining Afghanistan's stability in the wake of the drawdown of Coalition forces. Missing from this debate, however, is consideration of Afghanistan's agency as a weak state with an independent set of policy preferences. Based on primary interviews with a diverse set of Afghan political actors the article outlines two competing policy advocacies: Pakistan friendly and Pakistan averse. The article argues that these advocacies are key to understanding Afghanistan's India–Pakistan dilemma. Departing from the ethnic lens used to explain Afghan politics and its regional linkages, this article shows that Kabul's relations with Islamabad determine its approach towards New Delhi regardless of ethnic rivalries. Understanding domestic Afghan narratives in this regional context is therefore imperative to adequately assess South Asia's prospective security calculus.     

Terrorist violence and the enrollment of psychology in predicting Muslim extremism: critical terrorism studies meets critical algorithm studies

Discourse on terrorist violence has long facilitated an especially liberal form of securitisation. Originally evoked in reference to anarchists and communists, a rational consideration of terrorist violence, inaugurated by the concept, asks for deferred judgement about the nature of, or reasons behind, violence related to terror on the premise that state and international legal norms governing the legitimate use of violence fail to circumscribe the proper capacities of the state to regulate and explain terrorism. Where sovereign powers along with their military and civilian instruments of coercion are deemed unable to regulate violence effectively, analysts of terrorist violence and their readership are invited to consider and cultivate new sensibilities. Beginning in the 1980s, studies by psychologists found renewed urgency among a growing cadre of interdisciplinary terror experts who found religion, Islam especially, a key variable of analysis. I situate their contributions in a longer history of secular and racialising discourse about terrorist violence. Central to this history are practices of reading, translating, interpreting and archiving texts. Evidence for the argument is based on the analysis of an algorithm that allegedly predicts the likelihood of terrorist strikes by counting words spoken by al-Qa?ida leaders and correlating their frequency with over 30 psychological categories.     

A Fifth Wave of Terrorism? The Emergence of Terrorist Semi-States

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Rapoport’s four waves thesis, this study asks whether the emergence of terrorist semi-states (TSS) in the 21st-century MENA region and Pakistan mean that we are seeing the beginning of a new (fifth) wave. We define a TSS as a rebel group that a) has control over portions of a weak state’s territory, maintaining governance there; b) but still launches terrorist attacks against third-party states. To be considered a fifth wave, the new terrorism phenomenon at hand must both fit Rapoport’s criteria of a wave (be global, have the same driving force) and also be significantly different from the prior wave. Clearly, the TSSs are different from the religious terror groups of the fourth wave in key respects: they prioritize territorial control, they engage in a much wider array of governance activities (not just social services), most of their victims have been members of the same religion—namely, Muslims (which suggests that they are driven more by the pursuit of power than by Jihad); and finally, their behavior (though not their statements) shows they have a local rather than a universal agenda. The main counter-argument is that TSSs are all Islamic and have so far not been exported globally.     

From Cottage Industry to International Organisation: The Evolution of Salafi-Jihadism and the Emergence of the Al Qaeda Ideology

Al Qaeda after the invasion of Afghanistan can now be understood as not only an international terror organisation but an ideology which inspires groups with similar goals of a supranational caliphate. The Al Qaeda ideology draws from long standing historical Islamic concepts that date to the time of Muhammad. The ideologues of the organisation, most notably Ayman al Zawahiri, have cleverly used these ideas and the works of other Islamists to create not just a terror organisation but an ideology designed to unite disparate groups of Islamic radicals around the world.     

Not quite the ‘Great Britain of the Far East’: Japan's security,the US–Japan alliance and the ‘war on terror’ in East Asia

Japan, in responding to US expectations for support in the ‘war on terror’, has displayed a degree of strategic convergence on global security objectives, thus prompting policy-makers and observers to dub it the ‘Great Britain of the Far East’. This article argues, however, that Japan is far from assuming this role. For Japan, the ‘war on terror’ serves more as a political pretext for legitimating long-planned changes in military security policy that are often only marginally related to the US's anti-terrorism agenda. Instead, Japan has focused much more on using the terror threat rationale as a means to push forward its response to the regional and traditional security challenges of North Korea and China, even if at times it attempts to depict both as ‘new security challenges’ or as involving elements of counterterrorism. The final conclusion is that US military hegemony may be weakened by Japan's and the Asia-Pacific's potential divergence from the US global security agenda.     

Blurring European and Islamic values or brightening the good – bad Muslim dichotomy? A critical analysis of French Muslim victims of Jihadi terror online on twitter and in Le Monde newspaper

Victimhood remains under analysed in the Critical Terrorism Studies literature, including the abilities of Muslim victims of terror attacks to blurring social boundaries and possibly de-securitise Muslims in Europe. This is of specific importance in France, which has not only suffered the most terror incidents in Europe in the past five years but also is a country where Muslims have been securitised for decades. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to analyse twitter data for the #jesuisahmed hashtag used to commemorate the Muslim police officer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the le monde online memorials created in the wake of the Paris and Nice terror attacks. This analysis demonstrates French Muslim victimhood attacks blur Muslim social boundaries, influences the way that terror events are constructed and also present opportunities for the de-securitisation of Muslims in France. Muslim victimhood does this through three key themes – Muslims being situated as defenders of European values on twitter, Muslim biographies demonstrating “banality” in the le monde online memories and visual nuances of group identity through victim photos included in the le monde memorial. However, these narratives also can re-enforce a problematic good/bad Muslim dichotomy.     

Misreading Islam in Iraq: Secular Misconceptions and British Foreign Policy

Though British foreign policy toward Iraq was officially separate from counterterrorism strategy, ideas about the “global war on terror” circulated in both policy milieus. This article deploys the concept of the security imaginary, adding insights from Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the habitus, to explore why this was the case. The British security imaginary, as structured by a secular social landscape coming to terms with “radical Islamism,” was beholden to a series of problematic assumptions about religio-politics. This article focuses on British perceptions of the Islamist Jaish al-Mehdi militia between 2003 and 2004. Beyond the Iraq example, this historical incident suggests intimate connections between the experience of domestic secularity and warfare.