Stop Bombing Villages

President Barack Obama pledged in his first TV interview—with the Arab satellite channel Al Arabiya—that America under his watch would "listen with respect and not dictate" to the world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has further announced that this country will no longer just throw around its military might but will pursue a "smart power" approach by tempering the use of hard weaponry with the "soft power" of persuasion and cultural attraction. Or, as Madame Secretary's husband Bill has put it, America will now lead through the power of example instead of the example of power.
The first exceedingly complex test of Obama's smart power strategy will be how to end George W. Bush's misguided "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, keeping al-Qaida at bay without being swallowed by the quagmire of tribal politics. An array of experts from New Delhi to Paris offers their views in this section.     

原子弹轰炸日本秘闻

众所周知,人类历史上真正将核武器用于战争只有一次,那就是二战末期美国对日本进行的原子弹轰炸.1945年8月6日和9日,随着两朵蘑菇云在日本广岛、长崎腾起,威力巨大的原子弹加速了日本法西斯的最后灭亡,同时也宣告了人类核时代的到来.然而在原子弹投掷前后,却有许多鲜为人知的逸事秘闻.     

论巴基斯坦部落地区的塔利班化

由于持久的经济恶化与社会动荡、腐败的政府政治架构、在反恐议题上同西方进一步结盟与合作等原因,巴基斯坦的部落地区不断塔利班化,主要表现为极端主义、武装暴力和群众参与。其主要后果是严重影响到巴基斯坦国内政局的稳定。西方军事力量将可能长期驻扎在阿富汗,而中巴两国“全天候”的关系也将面临激进宗教势力和分离主义势力的挑战。     

Imam Samudra's Justification for Bali Bombing 1

The primary objective of this article is to provide a map of Imam Samudra's thinking behind Bali bombing I as written in his book Aku Melawan Teroris to those who are not able to read the book in its original Indonesian language with an assumption that counterideological effort cannot be executed effectively without understanding the ideas held by terrorism perpetrators. To add value, the article also offers a comparative study between Samudra's thinking and Al Qaeda's ideology. It then points out and provides brief alternative viewpoints to Samudra's thinking. The article ends with some policy recommendations pertaining to counterideological work.     

Al Qaeda in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan and Beyond

After the U.S. led coalition forces attacked Al Qaeda and Taliban infrastructure in Afghanistan beginning in October 2001, the epicenter of global terrorism moved from Afghanistan to tribal Pakistan. Known as the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) in Pakistan, this region has emerged as the premier hunting ground for the Al Qaeda leadership. With the co-option of new groups in FATA and its adjacent North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), the Al Qaeda threat has proliferated. The threat posed by the Afghan Taliban has been compounded with the addition of a new range of actors notably the Pakistani Taliban. Working together with multiple threat groups, both foreign and Pakistani, Al Qaeda directs its global jihad campaign from FATA. Unless the terrorist enclave is cleared on the Afghan-Pakistan border, the threat to Afghanistan and mainland Pakistan will continue. This article seeks to map the evolution of Al Qaeda and its associated groups since their relocation to FATA.     

Reinterpreting India's Rise through the Middle Power Prism

Abstract

India's spectacular rise in recent years has been the source of hyperbolic theorising and speculation on its major power status. Middle power theory offers a set of dynamic analytical parameters which allow for re-evaluating India's global influence and identifying both strengths and weaknesses of its power projection and resources. Placing emphasis on themes of Third World leadership, good international citizenship, multilateral activism, bridge-building diplomacy, and coalition-building with like-minded states, the middle power concept can encapsulate key aspects of India's contemporary agency and account for structural dynamics which constitute a reformist world-view through the reconfiguration of the Indian state within the existing world order. Overall, middlepowermanship delineates fundamental continuities in India's foreign policy tradition, epitomises India's existing position in the neoliberal world order, while providing a good indication of the directions India will take on the global stage in the short and medium-term.     

Without Effort to Overthrow Saddam, Bombing Strikes Are Counterproductive

Ahmad Chalabi is president of the executive council of the main Iraqi opposition coalition to Saddam's rule, the Iraqi National Congress. His comments here are adapted from a conversation with NPQ editor Nathan Gardels in London on December 17.     

Suicidality and Suicide Bombing Revisited: A Rejoinder to Merari

Ariel Merari purports to demonstrate a tendency on the part of suicide bombers to be motivated by depression and suicidal tendencies. However, he misconstrues the present authors' critique of his work and misinterprets their research. By clarifying both issues, this article seeks to substantiate three claims: (1) Merari's sampling procedure precludes generalization; (2) interviewer and contextual effects probably bias his findings; (3) evidence challenges his inferences.     

Beyond Horror: Terrorist Atrocity and the Search for Understanding-- The Case of the Shankill Bombing

The old order has broken up. We have reached the end of a postwar world whose premises were based on terror, but whose conditions had become familiar, and even comforting, over the years. The waters we are now entering are unchartered and perhaps treacherous, and we are not likely to steer safely through them unless we have the courage to question the old assumptions which once seemed eternal and have now become so threadbare.     

Radicalization and Subversion: Al Qaeda and the 7 July 2005 Bombings and the 2006 Airline Bombing Plot

This article analyzes the suicide bomb attacks on four London transportation targets on 7 July 2005 and the plot to bomb simultaneously at least seven American and Canadian passenger airliners as they departed from London's Heathrow Airport. American, British, and Pakistani authorities thwarted this planned attack in August 2006. Both incidents are among the most important Al Qaeda operations in recent years. Initially, they were dismissed by the authorities, pundits, and the media alike as the work of amateur terrorists—untrained “bunches of guys” acting entirely on their own with no links to Al Qaeda. Subsequent evidence, however, has come to light, which reveals clear links to senior Al Qaeda commanders operating in Pakistan's lawless frontier border area with Afghanistan.     

The Bombing of Omagh, 15 August 1998: The Bombers,Their Tactics,Strategy, and Purpose Behind the Incident

The purpose of this article is to review the above incident: what happened, how it happened and who did it and why. Also, to place it in the context of the current "peace process," Irish history and the history of Irish Republican violence. In looking at who carried out the bombing there is also an attempt to explain the split between the Provisional and Real IRA, their motives and ideas, the complex relationship between the two and what they hope to achieve. This is then followed by an analysis of the actual bombing, the tactics involved in carrying it out and what went wrong. And finally to look at the after effects of the bombing. In many ways the bombing was not as unusual as portrayed by the media, just a continuation of what had been happening for the last 30 years; thus, it is instructive in itself as an "ideal" terrorist operation.     

From Munich to Boston,and from Theater to Social Media: The Evolutionary Landscape of World Sporting Terror

Modern terrorist attacks are usually characterized by intentionally extreme public displays of massive violence to get wide propagation, courtesy of the media. This article uses large-scale, world sporting events, from the 1972 Munich massacre to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing to document and analyze how terror acts grew and acclimatized into a reality in which the symbiotic, massive linkage between two gigantic entities—sports and the media—allows terrorism to prosper.     

也谈苏联解体的一个原因--兼评美国学者科兹的几个论点

苏共及其社会主义失败的一个重要原因,是在苏共内部产生了一个特权阶层.美国学者科兹看到是这个特权阶层搞跨了苏共和苏联,却不懂得它产生的真正原因,而是把它归之于改革,进而得出了反对市场化改革的错误结论.历史已经证明,并将继续证明,社会主义不改革、不正确地进行改革,只能是死路一条.