Security

Russian military chief makes first public appearance since Wagner’s attempted mutiny

War crimes and human rights abuses

Russia strikes humanitarian aid delivery point in Zaporizhzhia Oblast

Russian military chief makes first public appearance since Wagner’s attempted mutiny

Russian forces continue to conduct offensive actions in Donetsk and Luhansk, with Ukrainian armed forces reporting thirty combat engagements between July 10 and 11 near Hryhorivka, Syeverne, Marinka, Krasnohorivka, and Novomykhailivka. According to the same report, Russian forces shelled villages and towns in the direction of Zaporizhzhia, Lyman, Kupiansk, and Kherson. Ukrainian Telegram channels also reported explosions on the morning of July 11 in Novooleksiivka, Kherson Oblast.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive advanced slowly amid heavy fighting along well-fortified Russian positions. On July 8, a video posted by RFE/RL’s Ukraine service showed how fighters from the 47th Separate Mechanized “Magura” Brigade, alongside soldiers from the Zaporizhzhia Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces, occupied elevated Russian army positions in the direction of Zaporizhzhia near Novodarivka. However, Russia’s use of remote-controlled landmines has made it difficult for Ukraine to advance. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar announced on July 10 that Ukrainian forces had taken control of elevated positions around Bakhmut, allowing them to establish fire control over Bakhmut. Russian military bloggers have expressed fears that Ukrainian forces could encircle Russian forces in Bakhmut.

The Russian Ministry of Defense published footage on July 10 of Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, his first public appearance since Wagner’s attempted mutiny. In the footage, Gerasimov receives reports about alleged Ukrainian attempts to strike Russian targets in occupied Crimea, Rostov, and Kaluga. The ministry published the footage the same day the Kremlin acknowledged President Vladimir Putin’s June 29 meeting with Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

On July 11, the Russian Telegram channel Military Informant reported that Ukraine had used British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles to strike a Russian army post near Berdyansk. The strike killed Oleg Tsokov, deputy commander of the Southern Military District. On the same day, explosions were reported in occupied Tokmak, Skadovsk, and Berdyansk. Also that day, the Russian army shelled Sofiivka, Kherson Oblast, with Grad multiple rocket launcher systems, killing at least one person and wounding another.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army is increasingly using equipment created by volunteers and local engineers in an attempt to diversify its supplies. On July 9, a team of Ukrainian engineers known as Immaterium reported that a first-person view (FPV) drone destroyed a Russian observation tower located nine kilometers from the departure point. Immaterium also claimed that the drone strike set a distance record for an FPV drone developed and produced locally. 

Elsewhere, Armin Papperger, head of the German defense company Rheinmetall, said on July 10 that an armored vehicle repair plant would open in Ukraine within twelve weeks. Papperger added that he hopes to increase Rheinmetall’s production of shells within one year so the company can provide Ukrainian forces with up to 60 percent of their needs. Meanwhile, Ukrainian Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin said construction was underway on a new plant to produce Bayraktar drones in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s defense ministry announced on July 8 that five former Azov commanders who fought in the battle over Mariupol were released from Turkey and returning to Ukraine alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey, Vasily Bodnar, said that Turkey did not put any conditions on Ukraine for the return of the Azov commanders. Bodnar added that their release was preceded by months of detailed diplomatic work. The commanders ended up in Turkey as a result of a prisoner swap brokered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The commanders participated in the Azovstal steelworks plant siege, regarded by Ukrainians as a heroic effort to resist Russian advancements. Russian forces eventually captured the commanders, among the highest-profile fighters to be captured. The commanders have vowed to return to the battlefield. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that Ukraine and Turkey had “violated” the prisoner exchange agreement.

—Ruslan Trad, resident fellow for security research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russia strikes humanitarian aid delivery point in Zaporizhzhia Oblast

On June 9, Ukraine’s interior ministry posted footage on Telegram showing the aftermath of a Russian air strike on a humanitarian aid delivery point in Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The attack reportedly killed at least seven people and injured thirteen. Cross-referencing the shared footage with images posted on Google Maps, the DFRLab determined the location of the incident to be Communal School No. 3, located on the corner of Myru Street and Pokrovska Street. Initial damage analysis, via the images, indicates that the strike destroyed two-thirds of the school’s facilities.

Reports from several Russian-speaking news outlets on Telegram confirmed that the school was converted into a humanitarian aid delivery point. Russian opposition media outlet Doxa indicated that a Russian jet may have dropped two guided bombs to attack the delivery point, though this information is not confirmed. According to the office of the prosecutor-general of Ukraine, the attack occurred around 1:30 pm local time.

The following morning, Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration head Yurii Malashko shared additional photos from the incident, including one featuring what appears to be a damaged canvas sign featuring the logo for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The Zaporizhzhia Regional Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into the “violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with intentional murder.”

—Valentin Châtelet, research associate, Brussels, Belgium

The post Russian War Report: Russian airstrike hits humanitarian aid station appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Security

Military camps for Wagner reportedly under construction in Belarus

Tracking narratives

Pro-Kremlin sources spreading disinformation to justify missile strike in Kramatorsk

Kremlin blames Colombian victims for the injuries they sustained in the Kramatorsk attack

Media policy

Prigozhin’s online assets reportedly blocked in Russia

International Response

Questions abound over the future of Wagner contracts and Prigozhin-linked businesses in Africa

Analysis: With Wagner mutiny, Russia’s loses plausible deniability about its involvement in Africa

Investigation sheds light on how Putin’s childhood friends allegedly evade sanctions

Military camps for Wagner reportedly under construction in Belarus

Russian independent outlet Verstka reported on the construction of camps for Wagner forces near Asipovichi, Mogilev Oblast, located in Belarus approximately two hundred kilometers from the Ukraine border. According to Verstka’s local forestry source, the area will cover 2.4 hectares (5.9 acres) and accommodate eight thousand Wagner fighters. The source also claimed that there will be additional camps constructed. Family members of Wagner fighters also confirmed to Verstka that they were deploying to Belarus. 

Radio Svaboda, the Belarusian-language edition of Radio Liberty, reviewed satellite imagery from Planet Labs that suggested signs of expansion at the Unit 61732 military camp adjacent to the village of Tsel, twenty kilometers northwest of Asipovichi. The outlet interviewed Ukrainian military analyst Oleg Zhdanov, who suggested it was “too early to tell” as to whether the military camp’s expansion is specifically for Wagner forces. “Very little time has passed to start building a camp specifically for the Wagnerites—it’s unreal,” Zhdanov told Radio Svaboda.

On June 27, in his first speech after the Wagner mutiny, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed the deal that ended the rebellion on June 24 in which Yevgeniy Prigozhin would relocate to Belarus. Putin praised those Wagner fighters who did not participate in the revolt and said they could sign a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense of other services. He added that other mercenaries who do not want to join could go either home or follow Prigozhin to Belarus.

—Eto Buziashvili, research associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Pro-Kremlin sources spreading disinformation to justify missile strike in Kramatorsk

Pro-Kremlin sources denied Russia targeted civilians when a missile struck a crowded pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, killing at least twelve civilians and injuring more than fifty others. According to this narrative, RIA Pizza was actually a military base hosting US and Ukrainian soldiers. To support the claims, pictures taken after the strike were published on Telegram and Twitter.

To support the claim that soldiers of 101st Airborne Division were located at the pizza “military base,” pro-Kremlin sources circulated grisly footage of the attack aftermath recorded by freelance journalist Arnaud De Decker. The clip shows a man wearing a morale patch of a US flag with the words “Always Be Ready: 5.11 Tactical.” 5.11 Tactical is a military apparel company that sells branded merchandise, including morale patches, worn to offer support to various causes and slogans but not used official unit patches. Various types of 5.11 Tactical’s “Always Be Ready” patches are readily available for purchase online.

Similarly, another post from Aleksandr Simonov’s Telegram channel that a man wearing an 101^st Airborne t-shirt was a member of the US Army division. These t-shirts are also readily available from online retailers.

—Sayyara Mammadova, research assistant, Warsaw, Poland

Kremlin blames Colombian victims for the injuries they sustained in the Kramatorsk attack

In addition to pro-Kremlin accusations that the Kramatorsk attack targeted a base housing US Army soldiers, Kremlin influencers also targeted citizens of Colombia, three of whom were injured in the attack, for being at the site of the incident. Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the attack targeted “three defenseless Colombian civilians” in violation of the protocols of war and called for the Colombian Foreign Ministry to submit a note of diplomatic protest to Russia. While the Kremlin acknowledged launching the attack, it insisted the assault struck military personnel rather than civilians.

The three Colombian citizens injured in the attack include acclaimed Colombian writer Hector Abad Faciolince; Sergio Jaramillo Caro, who previously led Colombia’s peace negotiations with FARC rebels; and Ukrainian-based journalist Catalina Gomez. According to the New York Times, Abad and Jaramillo were in Kramatorsk “collecting material” in support of their initiative, ¡Aguanta Ucrania! (“Hang On Ukraine!”), which seeks to garner support for Ukraine in Latin America.

Following the attack, Colombian influencers and officials criticized the attack through media outlets and social media accounts in Spanish. Danilo Rueda, Colombia’s current high commissioner for peace, issued a statement expressing support for the victims without mentioning Russia, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its “strongest condemnation of the unacceptable attack by Russian forces on a civilian target.” 

Gomez, who was injured in the attack, broadcast a video for France 24 from the site of the explosion. Meanwhile, Abad and Jaramillo conducted interviews with Colombian media outlets such as El Tiempo in which they described the incident.

Actualidad RT, a Russian media outlets with enormous reach in the Spanish-speaking world, insisted that the victims of the attack were mercenaries and instructors of NATO and Ukraine rather than civilians. Actualidad RT quoted statements from Igor Konashenkov, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defense,  and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, who said the attack struck “military targets” and that “Russia does not attack civilian infrastructure.” Actualidad RT promoted its claims via Twitter and Facebook multiple times on June 28.

Colombian radio station WRadio interviewed Kremlin foreign policy spokesperson Maria Zakharova on the morning of June 28. Zakharova stated that the restaurant was a Russian military target and called for an investigation into Victoria Amelina, a Ukrainian writer who was gravely injured while purportedly hosting the Colombians at the restaurant, claiming without evidence that Amelina had prior knowledge that the restaurant was a military target. Zakharova reiterated this statement after a WRadio journalist asked her to confirm the accusation. In contrast, Abad stated that it was Gomez who suggested they visit the restaurant, and that she apologized for doing so after the attack.

The Russian embassy in Colombia amplified Zakharova’s narrative later that same afternoon and evening. On Twitter, the embassy insisted that the city was “an operational and logistical-military hub, not a suitable place to enjoy Ukrainian cuisine dishes.” It also seemed to celebrate that the “reckless trip [of the Colombians] did not turn into an irreparable tragedy.”

—Daniel Suárez Pérez, research associate, Bogota, Colombia

Prigozhin’s online assets reportedly blocked in Russia

Over the course of the thirty-six-hour Wagner mutiny, the Kremlin attempted to limit information about Yevgeniy Prigozin on Russian social media and search engines, eventually blocking websites affiliated with Prigozhin. On June 24, the Telegram channel of Russian state-owned propaganda outlet RT reported that several Prigozhin-controlled media outlets including RIA FAN, People’s News, and Patriot Media Group were no longer accessible in parts of Russia. RT added that the reason for their disappearance was unknown. Similar reports appeared in Mediazona and several Telegram channels. 

The DFRLab used the Internet censorship measurement platform OONI to verify the claim and check the accessibility of RIA FAN within Russia. OONI detected signs that riafan.ru was blocked in the country. 

On June 29, independent Russian outlet The Bell claimed the Kremlin was searching for a new owner for Patriot Media Group, which includes media assets associated with Prigozhin. The following day, multiple Russian outlets reported that Prigozhin had dissolved Patriot Media Group.

—Eto Buziashvili, research associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Questions abound over the future of Wagner contracts and Prigozhin-linked businesses in Africa

For years, Wagner has acted as Russia’s primary form of influence in Africa—spreading disinformation and propaganda, securing military contracts, and exporting natural resources to support Putin’s war effort. Following Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny, the future of Wagner’s operations on the continent has come into question. While it is highly unlikely the Kremlin would willingly abandon its influence in Africa, if Wagner is retired or its troops absorbed into the Ministry of Defense, it is uncertain who would maintain the group’s operations on the continent.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that Russia’s work in Africa will continue. In a TV interview with Russia Today, Lavrov said, “In addition to relations with this PMC the governments of CAR and Mali have official contacts with our leadership. At their request, several hundred soldiers are working in CAR as instructors.”

A top advisor to Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadéra appeared unconcerned about the weekend’s events. Speaking of Wagner’s military instructors, Fidèle Gouandjika said, “If Moscow decides to withdraw them and send us the Beethovens or the Mozarts rather than Wagners, we will have them.” In a statement released to its Telegram channel, the Officer’s Union for International Security—a US-sanctioned Wagner front company operating in CAR—claimed CAR’s defense minister had apologized for Gouandjika’s remarks. It quoted Defense Minister Claude Rameaux Bireau as saying, “The people of the CAR are grateful to the Russian instructors of Wagner, ask any Central African on the streets of Bangui or in the village of the CAR—he will confirm my words.”

In Mali, where Wagner forces have taken over responsibility for pushing back jihadists after the departure of French forces, the online outlet Mali Actu reported that the situation could dramatically impact Mali. “This situation raises major concerns about the security, stability and sovereignty of Mali, as well as the impact on the local population and counter-terrorism efforts,” it wrote.

—Tessa Knight, research associate, London, United Kingdom

Analysis: With Wagner mutiny, Russia loses plausible deniability about its involvement in Africa

While Wagner’s future in Africa remains uncertain, it is important to consider that the Wagner Group not just a paramilitary force. It is also a conglomerate of companies active in different sectors, from mining and logistics to political warfare and moviemaking, able to travel the spectrum between private entrepreneurism to state proxy. This flexibility has previously allowed Moscow to deploy Wagner to act as a force multiplier in Africa while simultaneously denying Russia’s direct presence on the continent. In Africa, Russia has used Wagner multiple times as part of a strategy to help authoritarian leaders stay in power and gain a pro-Russian military presence on the ground, all while maintaining plausible deniability. Until now, the positive outcomes of this strategy have far exceeded the costs for the Kremlin, as Russia has built a strong network of African influence with relatively little effort, securing concessions in strategic extractive industries, and expanding military-to-military relations on the continent.

However, this principle of plausible deniability, which made Wagner so successful and so useful for Moscow as an extension of its foreign policy and influence, is now damaged. As previously noted, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as well as Putin, publicly confirmed direct links between Wagner and the Russian state apparatus.

Africa is intimately linked to Wagner: In the wake of Wagner’s involvement in Syria, Africa became the scene of the group’s expansion. Engaging in Sudan, the Central African Republic, Libya, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Mali, Wagner employed an opportunistic strategy of supplying security while taking concessions to mine natural resources. While its forces were in most cases invited to stabilize fragile states, its actions actively invited further instability, creating more opportunities and a greater demand signal for its services, ultimately granting renewing opportunities to Moscow to reinforce its footprint in the continent.

While denying direct links to Wagner’s actions in Africa might have become more difficult for the Kremlin, Russia is unlikely to waste the network of influence built by the group in recent years. Instead, Moscow will likely continue to deploy hybrid tools such as Wagner, although organized in different shapes and forms, so Russia can continue displacing Western influence, exploiting natural resources, and evading sanctions through dozens of front companies.

—Mattia Caniglia, associate director, Brussels, Belgium

Investigation sheds light on how Putin’s childhood friends allegedly evade sanctions

On June 20, the Organized Crime and Corruption reporting project (OCCRP) published a series of investigations titled “The Rotenberg Files” that shed light on the business dealings and alleged sanctions evasion attempts of Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, close friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The report is based on fifty thousand leaked emails and documents, examined by journalists from seventeen outlets. The OCCRP said the leak came from a source who worked for the brothers at a Russian management firm. The OCCRP investigation was conducted in partnership with the Times of London, Le Monde, and Forbes, among others.

Boris and Arkady Rotenberg are childhood friends of Putin. The billionaire brothers faced Western sanctions amid Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, but their lavish lifestyles do not appear to have been impacted. 

According to the OCCRP, the leaked documents demonstrate how the Rotenberg brothers allegedly used Western lawyers, bankers, corporate service providers, and proxies to evade sanctions. 

One of the report’s findings also alleges the brothers maintain business links to Prince Michael of Kent, a cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II who was previously accused by the Sunday Times and Channel 4 of profiting off close access to the Kremlin. According to the latest investigation, “Prince Michael distanced himself from earlier ties to the Putin regime in the wake of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But leaked emails and corporate records show he co-owns a company with two Russian businessmen who helped billionaire oligarch and Putin ally Boris Rotenberg dodge Western sanctions.” 

Another investigation from the Rotenberg files reported that Putin’s eldest daughter regularly visited a holiday property financed by Arkady Rotenberg in an exclusive Austrian skiing destination. Documents reviewed by the OCCRP suggest that the house was purchased by a Cypriot company in 2013 with a loan from a bank then owned by Arkady, using funds invested by another company he owned. Other records suggested that the former romantic partner of Putin’s daughter is connected to the company that owns the Austrian property. Residents claim to have seen Putin himself at the Kitzbühel residence, though this has not been confirmed. 

The Rotenberg brothers and Prince Michael declined to comment to the OCCRP investigative consortium.

—Ani Mejlumyan, research assistant, Yerevan, Armenia

The post Russian War Report: Kremlin denies that it targeted civilians in a missile attack on a pizza restaurant appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Despite a long-term military counterterrorism effort, Nigeria still ranks as the eighth most-affected country on the Global Terrorism Index. Because of the persistence of the problem, Tinubu will need all the help he can get, including from the United States. Thus—especially at a time when the Sahel and coastal West Africa are embroiled in ever-worsening security crises—it may seem illogical for the US State Department to remove Boko Haram, once considered the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).

However, this action is long overdue. To designate a group as an FTO, the State Department must demonstrate that 1) the group is a foreign organization, 2) the group is engaged in, or retains the capability and intent to engage in, terrorist activity and 3) this activity threatens US citizens, interests, or national security. The US secretary of state must revoke a listing if they find “that the circumstances that were the basis of the designation have changed in such a manner as to warrant a revocation.”

Sure, the circumstances have not changed. But the circumstances never met these criteria to begin with because Boko Haram, one of Africa’s most well-known terrorist organizations, does not exist at all. Ultimately, “unlearning” this term will yield more accurate and valuable insights into the reality of the threat. Revoking the designation will set the United States and its partners on a more productive path toward finally resolving the violence in Nigeria.

The source of the misnomer

Around 2005, a fundamentalist Islamist sect emerged in northern Nigeria under the direction of Mohammed Yusuf. He began preaching a specific interpretation of the Quran, and one of his core arguments was that Nigerian Muslims should reject Western education and schools that had been introduced under British colonial rule. Because of this message, locals began calling him and his followers “Boko Haram,” which translates to “Western education is forbidden” in the Hausa language. Outsiders used this phrase as a derisive term to refer to this secretive sect, their followers, and other suspected affiliates.

In 2009, Yusuf’s sect staged an uprising across several northern states following escalating tensions with the state police. Within a matter of days, the movement was essentially eliminated by security services in a brutal crackdown (killing approximately eight hundred members in just a few days) and Yusuf was taken into custody and then executed shortly after. Since then, several movements have emerged in the region. The most active group has been Jamāʿat Ahl al-Sunnah li-l-Daʿawah wa al-Jihād (JAS), which was founded around 2010 under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau. His organization is responsible for many of the murders and violent incidents in the country over the last decade. Several factions have split from JAS, including Ansaru in 2012, which later rejoined JAS and then splintered again. In 2016, a third group emerged that called itself Islamic State-West Africa Province. They have all, at various times, been active across the region.

What’s in a name?

“Boko Haram” doesn’t really fit into that history. From the first uses of the term to describe Yusuf’s sect, locals have repurposed the name to describe suspected fundamentalist and Islamist extremism in the region. All these operations and more, including a wide array of non-terrorist criminal and gang activity, have variously been attributed to “Boko Haram” by government officials, state security forces, journalists, and locals who lacked complete information about what they were describing.

In short, the use of the name survived even as the actual insurgent organizations in the region changed affiliations, splintered, or disbanded.

Thus, since the early years of the violence, many observers believed they were witnessing the rise of “Boko Haram,” but this perception did not correspond with the activity on the ground and the constellation of terrorist organizations (none of whom used the name) in the region. The ultimate challenge, therefore, isn’t just the use of the wrong name, but what it signifies: It gives an inaccurate impression that there is a singular operational group with a clear ideology and an organizational history. Researchers and experts have analyzed the activity in the region through this lens, bringing a host of largely unrelated activity under the umbrella of the supposed entity. In late 2013, when the State Department designated “Boko Haram” as an FTO, US decision makers seemed to be influenced by what the British anthropologist Ruben Andersson has called “the Timbuktu syndrome”—the mapping of the West’s jihadist fears onto the world’s less familiar peripheries.

Why delisting matters

The State Department’s FTO designation is essentially targeting a ghost. Delisting the organization would have several tangible benefits.

Most importantly, it would streamline the resources the United States dedicates to countering terrorist activity in northern Nigeria. An FTO designation unlocks new authorities for government agencies to target terrorists, but it also requires agencies to follow through and enforce these designations. Due to the host of violence and petty criminal activity that has mistakenly been attributed to “Boko Haram,” the United States is pouring resources into addressing unaffiliated crime and issues that fall solely under the jurisdiction of the Nigerian government without realizing any stabilizing counterterrorism benefits.

Removing “Boko Haram” and instead correctly listing JAS will also benefit the national research apparatus, including academic institutions, think tanks, and government agencies. Since the early years of the violence, independent researchers have helped shape the US approach toward “Boko Haram” and informed US counterterrorism strategies, including military involvement, intelligence collection, and humanitarian assistance. Researchers and academics have had no reason to question the existence of “Boko Haram” when conducting research on the region, which has allowed for persistent uncertainty to dominate the field. As a result, attempts to analyze the confusing array of activity and operations that have been linked to “Boko Haram” have yielded weak insights and less productive recommendations.

For example in 2021, two of the most influential and long-standing leaders in the region—Shekau and Abu Musab Al-Barnawi—were declared dead. For counterterrorism officials, whom Shekau had eluded for almost a decade, this development marked a welcome shift. With the en masse surrender of fighters formerly associated with JAS, some hoped that they had finally witnessed the end of “Boko Haram.” However, many scholars and experts believe that a fundamental aspect of the “group” is its perpetual adaptability, which in fact is largely driven by the loose application of the term to violent events in Nigeria. Thus media organizations, for example, are still publishing articles on new purported attacks by the “organization.” Absent a rejection of “Boko Haram,” the reliance on the term thus ultimately invites a perpetual motion of resurgence that leaves no real end to the violence in sight.

By delisting “Boko Haram,” the State Department will serve its own interests by setting new analyses and inquiries on the right track to accurately identifying terrorist activities and trends in the region. Without this change, there are two grim yet likely consequences. Counterterrorism research projects and resulting US strategies will continue to operate based on avoidable misconceptions and incomplete information on the violence. And more concerningly, without a real reckoning over the existence of the “group,” every new instance of violence in northern Nigeria risks becoming engulfed in the thickening fog of suspected “Boko Haram” activity.

The responsibility now lies with the global collective, and with these US State Department officials in particular, to consciously and deliberately unlearn the deep-seated belief in the “organization’s” very existence.

Alexandra Gorman is a young global professional with the Africa Center and is a masters’ candidate at Johns Hopkins University in the Global Security Studies program. As an undergraduate at Duke University, she received high honors on her senior thesis, “Nigeria’s Militant Jihadism in the Mirror of the Media: the Creation of ‘Boko Haram.’”

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The post Boko Haram is a ghost. The US needs to recognize that. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Security

Ukrainian counteroffensive sees advances in Zaporizhzhia and eastern Ukraine

Wagner attempts to draft gamers as UAV pilots

Tracking narratives

Deripaska blames hackers after his website briefly takes credit for potential war crime

Rumors of alleged death of popular pro-Kremlin war correspondent gain traction on Twitter

Ukrainian counteroffensive sees advances in Zaporizhzhia and eastern Ukraine

On June 19, Ukrainian forces launched counteroffensive actions in at least three areas and appear to have made gains in Zaporizhzhia and eastern Ukraine. The Telegram channel of Russian military blogger WarGonzo reported that Ukrainian forces continued attacks northwest, northeast, and southwest of Bakhmut and advanced near Krasnopolivka. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar announced that over the past week Ukrainian troops advanced up to seven kilometers in the direction of Zaporizhzhia and retook 113 square kilometers of territory. Russian Telegram channels also reported that fighting was ongoing south and southwest of Orikhiv on June 19. Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts continue to be the most active areas of the frontline, as the Ukrainian army attempts to advance in the directions of Novodarivka, Pryutne, Makarivka, Rivnopil, Novodanylivka, and Robotyne.

On June 17, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted ground attacks west and south of Kreminna. It also stated that the Russian army had repelled Ukrainian attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk sector. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces continued operations around Velyka Novosilka near the border between Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. 

According to Ukrainian forces, Russian forces conducted offensive actions in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The Ukrainian military reported forty-five combat engagements with Russian forces near Yampolivka, Torske, Hryhorivka, Spirne, Avdiyivka, Krasnohorivka, Marinka, Pobieda, Novomykhailivka, and Donetsk’s Dibrova and Orikhovo-Vasylivka. According to Ukraine, the Russian army continued to shell villages in the direction of Marinka, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Lyman, and Kupiansk. Ukraine also alleged that Russian forces launched Kalibr cruise missiles from a submarine in the Black Sea and Shahed drones from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov.

On June 20, Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, alleged that Russian troops mined the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s cooling pond, which is necessary for the safe operation of the plant. According to Budanov, if Russia triggers an explosion, there is a “high probability that there will be significant problems.” Budanov did not provide any evidence to support the allegation, and the statement cannot be independently verified at this time. If true, however, it would put the nuclear plant at greater risk of a significant accident. The power plant complex, Europe’s largest, has been under occupation since February 2022.

On January 22, the governor of Russian-occupied Crimea accused Ukraine of targeting a bridge that connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast, near the village of Chonhar. In a Telegram post, Vladimir Sal’do alleged that Ukraine struck the bridge with “British Storm Shadow missiles,” creating a hole in the middle of the bridge.

As fierce hostilities continue in eastern and southern Ukraine, there are signs of a new wave of arrests in Russia, including of people with ties to Ukraine. On June 20, Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti announced that a woman of Ukrainian origin was detained in Saransk and charged with treason.

—Ruslan Trad, resident fellow for security research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Wagner attempts to draft gamers as UAV pilots

A June 19 Telegram post from Russian opposition news outlet Verstka claimed that Wagner Group is encouraging gamers to apply to serve as unmanned aerial vehicle pilots in the war against Ukraine. The media outlet reported that no prior military experience was required to apply for the position. Posts from Wagner emerged on Vkontakte the same day, inviting gamers with experience in “manipulating joysticks in flight simulators” to enroll.

Verstka, which contacted a Wagner recruiter as part of its reporting, stated that the campaign aims to recruit soldiers to pilot “copters and more serious machines.” In this particular context, “copters” (коптеры) is a reference to commercial drones that are sold to the public and have been widely used in the war against Ukraine. A May 19 investigation published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found that Chinese manufacturers have reportedly continued to provide Russian armed forces with DJI drones through third parties in Kazakhstan. 

Verstka also noted that in 2022, the Russian defense ministry attempted to recruit gamers with a targeted ad campaign that invited them to play “with real rules, with no cheat codes or saves.”

—Valentin Châtelet, research associate, Brussels, Belgium

Deripaska blames hackers after his website briefly takes credit for potential war crime

The Russian-language website of Russian industrialist and US-sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska briefly displayed an article appearing to take credit for deporting Ukrainian children to Russian-occupied Crimea in partnership with Kremlin official Maria Lvova-Belova, who is already facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for allegedly deporting children. 

Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent at the Wall Street Journal, noted the article’s appearance and disappearance in a June 15 tweet. Trofimov shared screengrabs of the article, which by that time had already been deleted from Deripaska’s Russian-language website, deripaska.ru. A complete copy of the article can be found at the Internet Archive.

Later in the article, it added, “Separately, the Fund and personally Oleg Vladimirovich [Deripaska] express their gratitude to Maria Lvova-Belova and her project ‘In Hands to Children,’ which not only provided methodological materials, but also found an opportunity to send employees for psychological work with affected babies.” In March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova and Russian President Vladimir Putin, alleging they are responsible for unlawful deportation and transport of children from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

In a response to Russian independent news outlet Meduza, which also covered the incident, a team of representatives for Deripaska called the article a “gross fake press-release” and blamed hackers for the article’s appearance. “The team added that Deripaska ‘unequivocally condemns the separation of children from their parents’ and that he is ‘one of the very few prominent Russian industrialists who openly criticizes the fratricidal war and consistently advocates for peace in Ukraine, as well as a reduction in global military spending,’” Meduza noted.

—Eto Buziashvili, research associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Rumors of alleged death of popular pro-Kremlin war correspondent gain traction on Twitter

Rumors are spreading online that claim Ukrainian forces killed pro-Kremlin war correspondent Semyon Pegov, who operates an influential group of social media accounts under the name Wargonzo. The rumor first spread on Twitter on June 19 following the release of a graphic video from the 73rd Naval Center of Operations documenting how Ukrainian special forces unit had shot Russian soldiers in trenches. On June 19, Pegov’s Twitter account disregarded the allegations as fake. Wargonzo’s Telegram account has continued to operate as usual.

DFRLab analysis conducted with the social media monitoring software Meltwater Explore revealed that the most retweeted tweet came from the pro-Ukraine Twitter account @GloOouD, which stated, “LOOKS LIKE RUSSIAN TERRORISTS AND WAR REPORTER SEMEN PEGOV WAS KILLED BY UKRAINIAN SPECIAL FORCES.” The account shared a screenshot of a low-quality video frame depicting a red-bearded man that bears resemblance to Pegov.

The DFRLab confirmed that the video frame depicting Pegov’s look-alike was extracted from the graphic video posted posted by the 73rd Naval Center of Operations. The video’s metadata indicates the clip was created on June 18, 2023, at 22:16:07 GMT+0300. However, the video shows events occurring in daylight.

Pegov’s most recent public appearance was on June 13 during a meeting between Putin and Russian war correspondents. The Kremlin-controlled Channel One Russia broadcast the meeting on June 18.

—Nika Aleksejeva, resident fellow, Riga, Latvia

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A rift opens up

The war in Syria has grown into a major wedge between the United States and Turkey. Many Turks believe that Washington wants to erect a PKK-aligned state in Syria, and many in Washington believe Turkey has been insufficiently focused on eradicating Sunni extremism. Yet it was not always so; once upon a time there was a sense of shared purpose. National leaders from both countries demanded Assad’s ouster at the outset of the war. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged Turkish support should the United States impose a no-fly zone and saw general overlap on Syria with then US president Barack Obama.

Obama came to view the war as more about the IS than Assad, his support to the Syrian opposition evaporated and the war became overwhelmingly a matter of counterterrorism policy. The United States and Turkey each demurred from new military commitments while urging the other to take the lead. Between the fall of Mosul to the IS in 2014 and the fall of Aleppo to Assad in 2016, the United States exited the war against Assad and refocused on the war against the IS; this removed the common, if tenuous, shared political logic.

Unwilling to commit large US forces to Syria and disappointed in hopes that Turkey might, Obama in 2014 struck a bargain of “naked practicality” to support the PKK-aligned YPG. While the move was billed as “temporary, transactional, tactical,” its open-ended nature constituted a “ticking time bomb” by disregarding Turkish concerns over empowering PKK networks. Over time, some in Washington came to think that a rebranded YPG might be able to create an autonomous Kurdish region on the cheap, analogous to the Kurdish region in Iraq and useful as a long-term platform for US forces. The YPG seemed to offer what had eluded Washington for a generation: effective counterterrorism without the need for state building or a political theory of success.

A multiaxial proxy game

It became clear after 2014 that the YPG’s ambitions extended beyond the defense of Kurdish-majority areas right up to security and political control over northern Syria and a key role in shaping the political future of Syria. This comported with the broader PKK project of carving self-ruled regions out in Syria, Turkey, and elsewhere under a common ideological banner. Because the US “by-with-through” operational approach abjured strategic control over the YPG while arming and equipping it, the United States became a de facto sponsor of that project.     

The Euphrates River became a proverbial Rubicon in 2016 when YPG forces crossed it and remained in control of Arab-majority areas, despite US assurances of withdrawal. This proved to be a watershed moment for Ankara, as the Turks adopted an increasingly militarized approach to strengthening the anti-Assad opposition and rolling back YPG gains. A series of Turkish military operations in Syria eviscerated the YPG’s ambitions for autonomy, leaving them much-reduced territory and growing dependence on Damascus. Yet they retained a singular strategic asset—massive US military aid and a free hand in local and regional politics.

Northern Syria has become a region of intricate balances and overlapping conflicts. The Turkish-supported Syrian National Army (SNA) and the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, the core of which is the YPG) skirmish and spar uneasily while Ankara contemplates further action against the YPG.  The SDF works with Assad’s forces in some places, claiming official status under Assad, while the United States provides its salaries and logistical support. Turkish and Russian forces conduct joint patrols in sensitive areas. Iran-backed militias target US bases in the east, while YPG and Iran-backed militias confront the SNA in northern Aleppo.

Meanwhile, SDF forces appear increasingly enmeshed in the struggle for control of the neighboring Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The YPG’s parent organization, the PKK, has come into open conflict with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which the United States and Turkey support, while parlaying the weakening of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) into greater control of Iraq’s border with Iran. Meanwhile, highly trained elite counter-terror units (YAT) from the SDF have been operating in PUK-controlled Iraqi territory using PUK helicopters, likely with the knowledge of US forces. Even as Iran instrumentalizes the PKK to undermine the KDP, the PKK appears to be instrumentalizing the SDF to support its drive to supplant the KDP.  The US war against the IS has morphed into something else—a multiaxial proxy game with no clear end game and multiplying side effects—and the biggest beneficiary may be Iran, in Syria as well as Iraq.

A narrowing path

Turkish commitment to prevent a PKK-aligned entity from ruling northern Syria or northern Iraq has been amply demonstrated. Washington, too, seems committed to keeping troops in Syria, less for a clear political goal than to prevent any other power from filling in when they leave. The modus vivendi of simply staying in Syria but out of one another’s way satisfies no one (not even the YPG). Are there ways to find convergence between the respective national policies, other than one or both parties exiting Syria and leaving it to Assad and the Iranians?

One theoretical path would be the YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), renouncing the broader PKK movement and its armed campaigns against Turkey. This could result in the movement being seen as authentically Syrian, and cooperating with the Syrian opposition in negotiations to end the war. Yet YPG fighters consider themselves inextricably linked to the PKK and its ideology, rendering distinctions more cosmetic than substantive. Further, the US interest in sustained use of the YPG as a counter-IS force requires continued arming and training that by definition poses a threat to Damascus, Ankara, and other Syrians, making reconciliation unlikely. The PKK uses the YPG as connective tissue to the Assad regime, and PKK-appointed commissars or “kadros” in Syria ensure that key decisions taken by the YPG or PYD comply with the political line set by the PKK’s senior leaders. The United States lacks the means, or the will, to reform the PKK control mechanism to placate Ankara or promote power sharing with other Syrians.

Former US Syrian envoy James Jeffrey argued that a reasonable compromise for Ankara and Washington lies in physical separation between Turkish-backed groups and the SDF, with consistent efforts to address specific Turkish sensitivities. Yet how long can the United States keep nine hundred troops on Syrian soil while they are subject to increasing attacks from Iranian proxies and there is no discernible end state? Other observers have argued that the time has come to negotiate with Moscow and Damascus a US withdrawal that returns nominal control to Assad but maintains SDF control in fact. It is hard to conceive of a more blatant repudiation of US values than to reward, and trust, Assad as guarantor of what follows.

The path forward

One obstacle to the United States simply declaring victory and leaving is al-Hol and prison camps like it. These camps hold tens of thousands of IS members, supporters, and relatives, and the SDF guards them; US withdrawal would likely lead to their release. In a sense, the United States is prisoner to the prisoners; with fewer IS targets in SDF-controlled areas, preventing a new wave of IS attacks by keeping IS members in prison has become a key measure of “enduring defeat.” The assumption of this contingent form of stability that outside actors—Turkey, Iran, Russia, or Damascus—will refrain in perpetuity from disrupting it appears tenuous.

US forces will depart Syria in the coming years, and the YPG and its political wing lack the resources and legitimacy to maintain control of majority-Arab northeast Syria on their own. A reasonable political strategy for the United States must recognize that protecting US geopolitical and humanitarian interests, as well as effective counterterrorism, in the long run rest more on cooperation with Ankara and Erbil than on propping up the YPG. A soft landing of sorts for those that fought the IS with the United States should be part of the strategy but can only be achieved if Ankara and Erbil receive assurances that the massive US military subsidies and political license granted the movement will be removed, forcing it into compromises with them, rather than with the United States’ enemies in Tehran and Damascus.

In short, the United States might signal an off-ramp from the YPG to Ankara and Erbil while incentivizing authentically Syrian components of the YPG and PYD to seek peace and political cooperation with the Syrian opposition—and with the KDP. Ironically, the best protection for US interests in Syria may rest in building down the power of its current proxy in a deliberate and transparent manner and negotiating a new relationship between it and our other friends in the region. This is no mean task but offers much-needed clarity to all sides. The alternatives of propping up an unsustainable status quo or matchmaking between the YPG and Assad, whatever their other results, will perpetuate the deep Syria rift in US-Turkish relations.

Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY with thirty-two years of government service both in uniform and as a civilian. Follow him on Twitter @RichOutzen.

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US President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy deserve praise for avoiding a catastrophic default on the United States’ fiscal obligations that otherwise would have disrupted debt payments, Social Security payments to seniors, and the federal payroll that includes everyone who keeps the United States safe. Most commentators on the budget part of the deal have focused on the contrast between “defense spending,” where the agreement largely endorses the Biden administration’s requested increase for the Department of Defense, versus domestic programs, which are slated for a cut over the previous year’s levels. However, it is important to remember that DHS leads the defense of the United States against nonmilitary threats. DHS is responsible for border, aviation, and maritime security, as well as cybersecurity. It also helps protect critical infrastructure, oversees immigration, builds resilience, restores communities after disasters, and combats crimes of exploitation. As the third-largest cabinet department in the federal government, DHS’s budget is intrinsically linked to the security of the United States. However, DHS’s budget for fiscal year (FY) 2024 is not getting the same treatment as the budget for the Department of Defense (DOD).

When security is “nonsecurity”

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 classifies most of DHS’s budget as “nonsecurity.” This is paradoxical but true. Barring future changes to the deal, which are always possible, DHS will be in a zero-sum competition in the FY 2024 budget negotiations against other civilian programs such as nutrition programs for children, domestic law enforcement, housing programs, community grants programs, and national parks. Whereas the federal government should be spending more on cybersecurity, border and immigration security, and community programs to prevent violent extremism and domestic terrorism, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 will make this harder because the overall pot of money for nondefense programs for FY 2024 will be less than in FY 2023. This appears to be the case even though more spending on cybersecurity and border security has strong bipartisan support.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 follows the legislative language of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (the first of several debt ceiling deals in the Obama administration), which divided so-called “discretionary” federal spending into two different two-way splits. First, there is the “security category” and the “nonsecurity category.” The security category includes most of the budgets of the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs. It also includes the National Nuclear Security Administration, the intelligence community management account, and the so-called “150 account” for international programs such as military aid, development assistance, and overseas diplomatic operations. The nonsecurity category is essentially everything else, such as the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior. 

Central to the 2011 budget deal was that it did not apply to nondiscretionary programs such as Social Security and fee-based programs such as citizenship and visa applications, which are not considered “discretionary” spending. Emergency spending, narrowly defined, was exempt from the budget caps, as was most of the war against al-Qaeda, which was categorized as “Overseas Contingency Operations” and exempt from the budget caps that began in 2011.

The second split in budget law, which originated in a budget deal in December 2013, is between the “revised security category” and the “revised nonsecurity category.” The revised security category includes only budget account 050, roughly 96 percent of which is the Department of Defense (budget code 051). About 3 percent is for nuclear programs run by the Department of Energy (code 053), and about 1 percent is for national defense-related programs at DHS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (mainly counterintelligence programs), and parts of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The main DHS programs funded under this revised security category (budget code 054) are extremely limited: emergency management functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on things like emergency communications systems and alternate sites the federal government could use in case of emergency or an extreme event such as a nuclear attack, as well as some functions of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Thus, since 2013, most of the budgets of DHS, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and foreign military assistance have been in the “security category” but have also paradoxically been in the “revised nonsecurity category.”

In the May 2023 budget deal, the $886.3 billion spending cap agreed to by the White House and the House Republican leadership for FY 2024 is only for the “revised security category.” Most of DHS, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and military assistance are lumped in with the $703.6 billion cap for “revised nonsecurity” civilian parts of the federal government. Of that, $703.6 billion, $121 billion is earmarked for veterans’ programs. After several other adjustments and offsets, as the White House calculates it, this leaves $637 billion for all other “revised nonsecurity” programs. This is a nominal cut of one billion dollars from what those departments got in the FY 2023 budget passed in December 2022. Because inflation in the past year was 4.9 percent, the effective budget cut to “revised nonsecurity programs” would be greater than one billion dollars. The House Republicans calculate an even greater cut, to $583 billion, by not including the adjustments and offsets.

Flash back to 2011 and forward to 2024

In 2011, the debate between the Obama administration and the Republicans in Congress could be simplified into the idea that Democrats wanted more spending on social programs in the “nonsecurity category,” while Republicans wanted more money spent on “security,” principally defense spending but also including homeland security.

The debate in 2023 does not break down so neatly. There is increasing, bipartisan agreement that the United States needs to be spending more on border and immigration security, and that waiting until the start of FY 2024 to address this shortfall is not going to enable the administration’s strategy to succeed. There is also bipartisan agreement that the federal government as a whole should spend more on cybersecurity. And as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act showed, mental health and community grants to address the causes of school shootings have bipartisan support. There is also bipartisan support for military assistance to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression and to help Taiwan build up its defenses to deter a possible Chinese invasion. These programs are all funded mostly or wholly from “revised nonsecurity” programs. It is not clear how these programs will fare in the budget environment created by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.

Other departments and agencies can reallocate funds when priorities change, but not DHS. After DOD successfully led international efforts to take away the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s territory in Iraq and Syria, the military was able to pivot to Asia, redeploying drones and personnel out of the Middle East to defend the Indo-Pacific. However, for DHS, as the 2023 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review made clear, threats seldom go away, even when the homeland faces new threats. Commercial aviation and borders still need to be protected, even while cyber threats mount and increased quantities of fentanyl come through ports of entry.

As valid as these concerns are, they are no reason to torpedo the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. To the contrary, failure to pass the bill would gravely jeopardize national and homeland security, not to mention the economic security of the United States.

Nor do these concerns mean that other departments and agencies do not have their own justifications for increased resources in FY 2024. But the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 is not going to make it easier for homeland security. Congress needs to recognize this as it works toward the final budget for FY 2024, and, perhaps more urgently, when it considers whether to pass an emergency supplemental appropriations bill for border and immigration security. Congress needs to ensure, as it provided for military security in the “security category” of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, that DHS has the resources it needs to defend the nation against nonmilitary threats.

Thomas S. Warrick is the director of the Future of DHS project at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense program and a nonresident senior fellow and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council. He is a former DHS deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy.

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On April 20, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the third Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR). DHS calls the QHSR its “capstone strategy document,” setting out the short- and medium-term direction for the US government’s third-largest cabinet department. By law, the QHSR is a “review,” not a “strategy,” and so it devotes much of its ninety-two pages to a summary of DHS’s current activities and recent accomplishments, more than a pure strategy would contain. With these caveats in mind, experts with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense program read the 2023 QHSR and offered their assessment of its depth and importance for our latest scorecard.

Thomas Warrick

Senior fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security; director, Future of DHS Project

Given DHS’s size and the breadth of its missions—counterterrorism; law enforcement; cybersecurity; aviation, border, and maritime security; immigration; and infrastructure protection—the QHSR should be considered one of the most important strategic documents put out by a major US cabinet department. The QHSR, while subordinate to the Biden administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy, should, in theory, be comparable to the Department of Defense (DOD) National Defense Strategy (NDS), which gets enormous attention in Washington and around the world.

The QHSR’s reality is rather different. No major news outlet covered the QHSR’s release on April 20. Only specialized news sites and a few others reported on it or on Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’s speech the next day announcing the QHSR’s release along with DHS’s ninety-day “sprint” focusing on US nonmilitary vulnerabilities to China and establishing a DHS task force on uses and threats from artificial intelligence.

One reason for this lack of coverage may be that the QHSR, being a “review,” is more of a summary of DHS’s current activities and recent accomplishments. Lists of accomplish­ments seldom make news in today’s contentious Washington political scene. While the QHSR should educate the public about what DHS does, the people who need educating the most about DHS are probably the least likely to read ninety-two pages of government prose, even with pictures. Nevertheless, the QHSR is an important strategic road map to where the Biden administration and Mayorkas want to go.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

This QHSR is distinctive in three ways. First, it exists—the Trump administration did not release a QHSR during its four years between January 2017 to January 2021. While the Trump administration never produced a QHSR, it had a coherent—and divisive—approach to immigration and domestic terrorism, much of which was led from the White House, not DHS. Second, the Biden administration promised during the campaign and afterwards a break with many of the Trump administration’s homeland security policies, especially on immigration and domestic terrorism, and the QHSR makes this very clear. Third, this QHSR intentionally returns to the tone and structure of the two Obama administration QHSRs, released in 2010 and 2014, with three changes from the Obama QHSRs: 

1. showing how the threat landscape has changed since 2014,
2. highlighting the importance of partnerships to the Biden administration’s and Mayorkas’s model of the homeland security enterprise, and
3. recognizing a new mission area for DHS: combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims.

DHS has long fought crimes of exploitation—this QHSR elevates the importance of this work and explicitly aligns DHS with the victims of such crimes. This will make it hard for future administrations to backslide from protecting exploited victims.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

Just as the National Defense Strategy is primarily, though not exclusively, focused on military threats to the United States, the QHSR should bring equal focus and vigor on the nonmilitary threats to the United States. The third QHSR provides a good summary of today’s dynamic terrorism threats (both international and homegrown), the challenges and strains on what it calls our “broken” immigration system (Mayorkas goes so far as to call it “completely broken;” his critics would no doubt agree), cyber threats from criminals and hostile nation-states, crimes of exploitation, the threat from fentanyl and transnational organized crime, natural and man-made risks to critical infrastructure, and other challenges to homeland security. Of particular importance is elevating fentanyl, transnational organized crime, and crimes of exploitation to the strategic level—no longer are they issues of only crime. The third QHSR wants the United States to see these as strategic threats, requiring a more strategic response.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

A sound strategy needs to define what “victory” looks like. In DOD’s mission space, victory is understandable: the goal is victory in war, coupled with deterrence and maintaining the peace at all other times. It’s a lot harder to define the end state in homeland security, and this QHSR, like many national security strategies of previous administrations of both parties, often uses phrases like “preventing and mitigating active threats” and “continue advancing national efforts” that give the direction but leave the ultimate goal fuzzy. There are few concrete end states against which this QHSR’s success or failure can be judged, but this is not unique to this QHSR or this administration.

For example, no responsible counterterrorism strategy would publicly set itself the goal of “no successful terrorist attacks.” The difficulty of detecting lone violent extremists and their ability to get semiautomatic assault rifles, coupled with political realities in the United States, mean that the QHSR needs—rightly—to point toward other approaches like community programs (see QHSR numbered page 8) needed to reduce active shooter events well below their levels in recent years, which would be a worthy goal. In cybersecurity, the QHSR describes the many innovative programs that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has undertaken in the past two years, but mentions only at the end of the cybersecurity section (QHSR numbered page 35) the truly transformational National Cybersecurity Strategy’s effort to shift fundamental risks from end users to the tech companies that are best situated to build security into their hardware and software. This will fundamentally change the future of cybersecurity and is a worthy goal.

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

The third QHSR, like its predecessors, makes clear which DHS components are responsible for which missions and lines of effort. Unlike DOD’s military services, which encompass different domains but serve a (mostly) unified strategic mission, DHS’s eight components are organized functionally, and thus contribute differently to the QHSR’s six mission areas: 

• Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to aviation security (part of mission 1, counterterrorism and threat prevention).
• CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to land border security (mission 2, border security, but also part of mission 1) and immigration (mission 3).
• The US Coast Guard (USCG) and CBP to maritime security (part of missions 1 and 2).
• CISA, ICE, TSA (for pipelines), USCG (maritime cybersecurity) and the US Secret Service (USSS) to cybersecurity and fighting cybercrime (mission 4).
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency and CISA to infrastructure protection and resilience (mission 5); however both CBP and USCG have a part of mission 5.
• ICE, CBP, USSS, and USCIS to law enforcement (mission 6, combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims, but also part of other missions).

While this QHSR, like its predecessors (and like similar strategic summaries of DHS’s missions during the Trump administration), contains extensive descriptions of DHS activities, this QHSR proves the aphorism that—unlike DOD, where missions end when a war is over and the military pivots (for example) from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific—at DHS, missions never go away. In this respect, the “new” mission 6 of combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims is not at all new—it is the recognition of a mission DHS has had almost since its inception in 2003.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The QHSR is not a budget, but any DHS report on its missions raises the question whether DHS has the resources to succeed in those missions. Alignment between policy and resources is one of DHS’s greatest challenges. 

After the October 2022 National Defense Strategy, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in March 2023 that DOD’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget request was “the most strategy-driven request we’ve ever produced from the Department of Defense.” DOD is asking for $842 billion in FY 2024, $26 billion more than in FY 2023. A look at the China and Russia section of the NDS shows the link between DOD’s strategy and its budget request. 

DHS cannot say the same thing about the third QHSR and DHS’s FY 2024 budget, which calls for a 1.1 percent increase over FY 2023. DHS officials understand this. The QHSR calls for more efforts and resources on cybersecurity; border and immigration security; community-based programs to prevent future mass shootings as happened in recent years in Uvalde, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and elsewhere; and to head off threats to critical infrastructure from natural causes and nation-state adversaries.

The third QHSR does not have to quantify the resources required to achieve its goals, but it has rightly laid out this secretary’s road map for where DHS and the homeland security enterprise need to do more. One of the third QHSR’s most important benefits should be to focus a much-needed debate—inside the administration and with the Congress and the American people—over whether the United States is spending enough on homeland security.

Brigadier General Francis X. Taylor (ret.)

Nonresident senior fellow, Forward Defense, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Overall, DHS’s QHSR sets forth a comprehensive review of the challenges facing the homeland security enterprise. The program initiatives outlined in the report, if successful, will improve the security posture of the homeland. There are some concerns about whether there is sufficient political and popular support for the initiatives outlined in the report. In addition, DHS should consider an annual review of outcomes that have resulted from its initiatives to give US citizens a sense of how effective the department has been in improving security of the homeland. This report is a good start but needs annual reiteration that reflects sustained improvement in the United States’ overall security posture. 

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

The QHSR sets forth in clear detail the myriad of threats that face the homeland and the challenges for the homeland security enterprise to effectively address those threats. The world continues to evolve, as does the threat environment since the creation of DHS and this QHSR reflects the complexity of the threat environment and DHS’s initiatives to address that environment in new and innovative ways. 

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

The strategic context of the QHSR is sound and does not underplay the seriousness and challenges of the threat that faces the homeland security enterprise. The emphasis on partnerships to meet the challenges is an important underlying principle for DHS. Never has it been more important for DHS to strengthen and broaden its partnerships as the threat environment continues to change.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The QHSR clearly defines the programs undertaken to address each mission area to address the threats that face the US homeland, but the mere implementation of programs does not ensure effective outcomes. 

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

There are clear lines of effort that are identified in the QHSR. The core mission areas are addressed effectively, but it is not clear that the programs initiated are yet effective in achieving the goals of DHS. Time will tell what outcomes are achieved and how effective DHS has been in mitigating the threats to the homeland.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The QHSR fundamentally outlines the challenges that DHS must address to keep the homeland safe. It is not clear that there are sufficient resources to execute this mission as outlined in the QHSR. Congressional support of these initiatives and funding will be critical to DHS’s success. 

Seth Stodder

Nonresident senior fellow, Forward Defense, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Like any strategy or planning document produced by a federal bureaucracy, the report on the 2023 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review inevitably provokes some trepidation from a potential reader, as such documents produced by Washington bureaucrats rarely last five seconds in an email inbox and never touch a printer.  

But in all seriousness, this year’s QHSR is somewhat of a page-turner. It is the first one since 2014—almost a decade. And what a decade it has been! ISIS and Al Qaeda, while still threats, have taken a back seat to AR15-wielding white nationalist extremists in the minds of counterterrorism professionals. The sense of operational control of the border that US officials felt they had in 2010 seems like a quaint bygone era, as compared to the massive challenges the United States faces today at the US-Mexico border. The cyber threats are much more varied, with the rise of catastrophic ransomware attacks and the drumbeat of cyber threats to our critical infrastructure and our electoral system. Meanwhile, emerging technology presents opportunities and threats like nothing before—from the rising concerns about social media invasions of privacy, disinformation campaigns, and deep fakes, to the threat of quantum computing and the potentially civilization-altering challenge presented by artificial intelligence. Nation-state threats to the homeland from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have become far more serious since 2010. On the other hand, the ultimate challenge to the US homeland may be environmental, as the force and impact of global climate change and the likelihood of more deadly pandemics have become ever more severe.

The 2023 QHSR—and the evolving mission of DHS—aptly reflect the tectonic shifts happening in the global security environment overall and its implications for US homeland security. To be sure, the original five homeland security missions from the first QHSR Report in 2010 are still there: (1) preventing terrorism and enhancing security; (2) securing and managing US borders; (3) enforcing and administering US immigration laws; (4) safeguarding and securing cyberspace; and (5) ensuring resilience to disasters. But so many of the characters in the play have changed, or assumed greater or lesser prominence.  

Suffice it to say, DHS has its hands full—with a sprawling and ever-more important set of missions, all of which requiring close partnerships with other federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal agencies, the domestic and global private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and the millions of Americans and other nationals who interact with DHS every single day. And this new QHSR ably reflects this massive and growing responsibility. 

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

The key theme is the steadily evolving and, in some cases, radically changing and ever more complex threat picture, and the need for DHS and its components to evolve its missions and focus accordingly. This is expressed forcefully in the document. Unsurprisingly, most of the missions are the same—with one addition—as those stated in the previous QHSRs. But that does not necessarily warrant any effect on its score here as the missions of DHS and homeland security are what they are. Rather, it is the threat and broader strategic environment that has, in some cases, radically changed. And the 2023 QHSR articulates this extremely well.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions? 

The 2023 QHSR is extremely clear on the security environment facing the United States and, specifically, the US homeland. The QHSR also effectively nestles DHS and its six core missions neatly within the Biden administration’s broader strategic framework for the United States, as expressed in the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and other key documents. The analysis here is sound, and it does not rest on any specious or unfounded assumptions—either about the threat or the missions and capabilities of DHS.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals? 

The 2023 QHSR clearly sets forth various goals, backed up with various vignettes and descriptions of ongoing or past programs, initiatives, and other actions reflecting efforts in furtherance of goals. That said, the goals are for the most part relatively vague (e.g., “DHS must be a leader in the responsible use and adaptation of emerging technologies” or “DHS remains committed to facilitating and expanding naturalization pathways for new Americans”), without specifying any particular measurable outputs against which one might assess success or failure. However, one could argue the point of how does one know when the border is actually “secure” or under “operational control,” or when the asylum system is processing claims “fairly” or “efficiently?” And, from a fiscal standpoint, is there a way of knowing when increasing budgets hit a point of diminishing returns—where an additional dollar invested in, say, detection equipment or in efforts against drug smuggling might be better invested elsewhere, such as public health or education? It is hard to clearly find measurable goalposts for these from the QHSR. 

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

The QHSR—and previous DHS documents—have outlined the key missions and lines of effort, and the DHS operational components and management offices have (for the most part) worked out relatively delineated areas of focus meant to maximize unity of effort within DHS, while minimizing interagency conflict and rivalry. As is the nature of this kind of beast, the QHSR does have a bit of the whiff of a laundry list (or lists) of various component activities and success stories (albeit clean laundry, thankfully), but the lists are placed within an intelligently articulated framework of clear priorities. Again, as discussed above, it is difficult to discern measurable outputs or where the signposts are toward achieving mission goals and objectives—but the lines of effort are clearly stated.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

This is somewhere between an unfair question and an incomplete one—in the sense that the QHSR is not meant to be a budgetary document, and indeed there is no sense here as to whether resources are remotely adequate to achieving the goals. Moreover, as noted above, some of the goals are so vague or total (e.g., “preventing labor exploitation”), that it is hard to assess—judging solely from the QHSR—exactly how these goals might be achieved, how success or progress toward the goals could be measured, or at what point diminishing returns might be reached for additional spending. So, it’s hard to grade this one—but it surely isn’t a perfect score.

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

This article is part of the Future of DHS Project by the Forward Defense program with financial support from Deloitte.

Further reading

Scorecard Jul 7, 2022

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: NATO’s Strategic Concept clear on threats, but will require sustained commitment from Alliance

By Atlantic Council

Several of the Scowcroft Center’s strategy experts analyzed the Alliance’s new Strategic Concept, assessing the strategy based on five criteria. The reviewers generally agreed that the document was clear-sighted about threats facing the Alliance. However, implementing the ambitious strategy will require sustained commitment and high investment from Alliance members. Here are the full assessments.

Europe & Eurasia International Organizations

Scorecard Oct 14, 2022

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: What grade does Biden’s National Security Strategy get?

By Atlantic Council

Our strategy experts praised the document for being clear-eyed about the challenges posed by Russia and China, but downgraded it for a lack of focus as well as concerns about how to implement its ambitious aims.

National Security Politics & Diplomacy

Issue Brief Jan 31, 2022

Biometrics at the border: Balancing security, convenience, and civil liberties

By Seth Stodder, Thomas S. Warrick

Forward Defense nonresident senior fellows Seth Stodder and Tom Warrick consider how US Customs and Border Protection can employ biometrics for safer, more efficient border operations.

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

The post Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: Does the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review make the grade? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In this Pakistan Initiative conversation, Uzair Younus talks to Hassan Abbas, distinguished professor at National Defense University, about his recently published book The Return of the Taliban, the run-up to the fall of Kabul, and the group’s strategy in navigating their engagement on the world stage.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

Learn more

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SouthAsiaSource Apr 28, 2023

The stark choice facing the United States in Afghanistan: Leave entirely or finish the job

By Davood Moradian

The release of the White House’s review of the chaotic 2021 troop withdrawal showed once again that the realities of Afghanistan and US partisan politics take precedence over President Biden’s desire to permanently disentangle Washington from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan International Organizations

SouthAsiaSource Feb 2, 2023

For Pakistan, dealing with its Taliban problem is a walk on eggshells

By Javid Ahmad

Islamabad faces a lose-lose scenario against the Pakistani Taliban. But it is not too late for Pakistan to stop peeling the banana from the wrong end.

Afghanistan Pakistan

SouthAsiaSource Dec 22, 2022

Afghanistan and regional realignments since August 2021

By South Asia Center

When looking towards future solutions, there is no easy fix for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan Central Asia

The post A conversation with Hassan Abbas on his new book “The Return of the Taliban” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This post will be updated as news develops and more reactions come in.

Jonathan Panikoff: The attacks push judicial reform and normalization down the road

Shalom Lipner: The operation comes as the Israeli government is at a fraught political juncture

Tuqa Nusairat: Palestinians continue to face daily violence

Andrew L. Peek: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States are important factors as well

The attacks push judicial reform and normalization down the road

The targeted killing of three senior PIJ leaders by Israel early Tuesday is likely to spark at least a temporary resumption of hostilities with PIJ, one of the more prominent terrorist groups operating out of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli strikes follow PIJ’s firing of 104 rockets into Israel after the death of one of the group’s senior members, who had been on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison. Israel’s actions are not unusual, but they come during a confluence of challenges, both domestic and international.

The strikes will temporarily unite Israeli political leaders on the left and right. Both opposition leader Yair Lapid and far-right coalition member Otzma Yehudit—a political party led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—are supporting the strikes. But the temporary national coalescence is likely to be short lived. The strikes will probably push the judicial reform debate that has torn Israeli society apart a bit farther down the road. But the history of these skirmishes, especially when they do not include Hamas directly, suggests that a conflict with PIJ is more likely to last in the range of seven to fourteen days, rather than multiple weeks or a month-plus. And once operations are complete, the focus will again revert to the domestic judicial crisis.

At the same time, senior White House officials are in Israel to back-brief Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on last weekend’s conversation in Riyadh between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Reporting indicates that normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia was a point of discussion. In striking PIJ, however, Israel is attacking a terrorist group directly supported by Iran at a time when Riyadh is seeking to restore diplomatic relations with Tehran. Undoubtedly, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran will all seek to compartmentalize these issues. But Iran’s malign influence in the region ensures that such compartmentalization is not a permanent answer. Like Israel’s domestic challenges, it just pushes the real issue further down the road. 

—Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program. A former career US intelligence officer, Panikoff served as the deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) from 2015 to 2020.

The operation comes as the Israeli government is at a fraught political juncture

The launch of Operation Shield and Arrow on May 9—when three senior PIJ commanders were killed in targeted Israel Defense Forces (IDF) airstrikes—put an end to speculation about the Israeli government’s resolve to hit back powerfully against multiple rocket attacks from Gaza. The fact of a PIJ response is a foregone conclusion. What remains uncertain, however, is the future trajectory of this particular showdown.

Netanyahu—renowned for his disinclination toward military adventurism—would be satisfied certainly to contain the current round of fighting, leaving a depleted PIJ leadership to lick its wounds and returning to an earlier status quo where Hamas kept a (relative) lid on terrorist attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip. The nuanced language employed by the IDF, which isolated PIJ as the exclusive focus of its Gaza campaign, speaks precisely to this objective.

But escalation cannot be ruled out. Hamas has already declared that it intends to enter the fray with a vengeance. Eyes are trained also on Israel’s northern border for signs that Hezbollah might be mobilizing to open a second front. And following the dangerous precedent of May 2021—when rioting erupted in Israeli cities with mixed Jewish and Arab populations during Operation Guardian of the Walls—Israel’s domestic security could find itself compromised from within as well. Across the battlelines, hawkish elements of Netanyahu’s cabinet will be pressing uncompromisingly for the IDF to stay the course until all of Israel’s enemies are vanquished.

This predicament meets the Israeli government at a fraught political juncture, lagging in the polls as its judicial reform agenda stalls and the cost of living continues to soar. With opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz pledging their support for the IDF action, and Ben-Gvir halting his party’s boycott of coalition business, Netanyahu—if he manages Shield and Arrow responsibly—is poised to stabilize his majority in parliament. An outcome which the Israeli electorate perceives as suboptimal could, on the other hand, precipitate the demise of his tenure as premier.

—Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow for the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. He previously served seven consecutive Israeli premiers over a quarter-century at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

Palestinians continue to face daily violence

Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza early on May 9 were another example of its consistent attacks on a besieged Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and of lack of accountability from the international community. The airstrikes that killed more than a dozen Palestinians, including six women and four children, need to be contextualized. Just last week, a Palestinian prisoner died in Israeli custody after an eighty-six-day hunger strike in protest of being held in “administrative detention.” Israeli authorities demolished a European Union–funded Palestinian elementary school near Bethlehem. And numerous raids and attacks on Palestinians brought their death toll in the first fourth months of the year to more than 110, the highest in years. Last month, during the holy month of Ramadan, Israeli forces raided the Al Aqsa Mosque, desecrating sacred spaces and allowing extremist Israeli settlers to enter the compound. 

Besides the fact that such strikes have become a more regular occurrence, the timing in particular is tied to domestic Israeli politics as Netanyahu faces a significant threat to his agenda and leadership. Israelis continue to protest his judicial reform proposal for the eighteenth consecutive week, which generated significant international sympathy and put the spotlight on the extremist coalition he relied on to come to power. Netanyahu’s strength and ability to rally Israelis around him has more often focused on his military “successes” and shows of force against Palestinians. Striking Gaza in the midst of weekly protests against him is a convenient tactic to distract from the negative domestic and international headlines about his so-called anti-democratic push.  

As Netanyahu has continued pushing for the expansion of settlement activity, continued the targeting and humiliation of Palestinians in the occupied territories, and elevated the most extremist voices in Israeli society, he will continue to use strikes and crackdowns against Palestinians to advance his image internationally and domestically as a strong protector of Israel. Even under a liberal Israeli coalition, airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and raids in the West Bank are a consistent occurrence and a symptom of Israeli insecurity as an occupying power. Whether the strikes lead to a wider escalation in violence is less relevant for Palestinians who, if not killed by airstrikes, will continue to face daily violence at checkpoints, in their neighborhoods, and in their places of worship.

—Tuqa Nusairat is the director for strategy, operations, and finance at Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.

Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States are important factors as well

Israel is the master of small ball, especially with Iran. The United States looks for the grand bargain, such as a comprehensive nuclear deal. Israel is perfectly content to use limited and asymmetric attacks to degrade the threat Iran and its proxies pose.

So it is with PIJ, which Netanyahu has been clear that he views as a proxy of Iran. Tuesday morning’s airstrikes against PIJ leadership will not end the threat but will probably disrupt the group’s strategic operations in the short run.

The real question is why Iran seems to be escalating against Israel when it is reconciling with other states in the region such as Saudi Arabia. The answer is that it is trying to break apart the sweeping normalization between Israel and the Gulf Arab states, the primary threat to Iranian domination of the Persian Gulf. The Abraham Accords are something more than a peace treaty and something less than an alliance. Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco—plus Saudi Arabia—could constitute the heart of a sustainable security coalition that can balance the threat from Iran for the foreseeable future.  

At their core, the accords were intended to replace US power with Israeli power. The Sunni Arab states believe Washington is in the midst of a bipartisan departure from the region, and they need to replace the security the United States provided with something else. That something else is Israel, which for them had some baggage but also would never go anywhere.

This is intolerable for Iran. It believes it can eventually outlast the United States but cannot outlast Israel. That is why its reconciliation with Saudi Arabia is combined with increasing pressure, like support for PIJ: because the incentives go in opposite directions. Israel must fight and Saudi Arabia’s incentive is to settle.

—Andrew L. Peek is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He was previously the deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

The post Experts react: Israel strikes Gaza. How far will this conflict go, and how will it impact the region? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

For roughly two decades, cooperation on sanctions and anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) served as a cornerstone of US relations with the countries in the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf. Over that time, successive US administrations invested heavily in bolstering institutional capacity to identify and disrupt terrorist financing in the Middle East. The United States provided technical assistance to local financial regulators and law enforcement partners and encouraged them to comply with international standards and best practices on AML/CFT. Washington has also supported efforts to strengthen policies and enforcement mechanisms needed to fight financial crime, with the goal of building sustainable, effective partnerships in the region that could enhance the scope and power of its own sanctions programs and AML/CFT efforts.

Years of deep collaboration proved to be more than just diplomatic show—the United States took coordinated action with Qatar against a network of Hezbollah financiers, stood up a Gulf-wide coalition to formalize cooperation on countering terrorist financing, and worked jointly with the Iraqi government to prevent leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham from accessing the global financial system.

Despite assurances from the Biden team that the United States remains committed to the Middle East, however, US engagement—and with it, US influence—is waning. The changing international playing field, with Russia’s war in Ukraine and the United States’ simmering tensions with China, has driven much of this change. Washington has limited bandwidth to prioritize Middle East policy, even on issues like AML/CFT and sanctions that once drove the regional agenda. And clumsy missteps and miscalculations under the current White House, such as US President Joe Biden’s widely criticized visit to Saudi Arabia last year, have likely reinforced this geopolitical realignment.

Beijing waits in the wings

Ironically, as the Biden administration rebalances its strategic priorities to focus on allies in the Asia-Pacific region—with the hopes of countering China—it has left the back door unguarded in the Middle East. China has stepped in to fill the void, building on its trade and investment-centered international playbook but with none of the same commitment to international norms and standards surrounding counter-illicit finance that the United States demands of its allies. It’s a development that further weakens US relationships in the Middle East but also puts US national-security interests at stake.

Most notably, China’s recent diplomatic outreach to the region has chipped away at US geopolitical leverage in the Middle East. For example, in March, China brokered a deal in which long-standing rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to restore relations. While it remains to be seen how committed Riyadh and Tehran are to rapprochement over the longer term, Beijing’s role in brokering the deal has elevated its diplomatic profile in the region and sidelined Washington in the process.

The deal also raises important questions about whether the Biden administration will be able to maintain a sufficiently broad coalition against Iran, as Saudi Arabia is one of the coalition’s key members. With no signs of progress on talks to reenter the landmark Iran nuclear agreement, the United States will continue to rely on sanctions to try to force change in Tehran. But China’s diplomatic rise—and its role in these talks—may weaken the effectiveness of US sanctions on Iran, as isolating Iran from the global economy becomes more difficult.

This is already happening: For instance, the Treasury Department recently sanctioned a China-based network for selling and shipping aerospace components to Iran that could be used in unmanned aerial vehicles. One Iranian company receiving the parts produces a type of unmanned aerial vehicle that has been exported to Russia for use in the invasion of Ukraine. Procurement networks like these will be increasingly difficult to target effectively as China extends its reach in the Middle East.

Officials in the Middle East have taken note of Washington’s pivot away from the region and are exploring expanded economic ties with Beijing. In February, the Central Bank of Iraq announced that it would allow trade with China to be settled directly in yuan in an attempt to improve access to foreign currency. The move comes after reports last year indicated that Saudi Arabia was in talks with China about pricing some of its oil sales in yuan. The yuan is still far from being internationalized, and most global trade—especially in the energy and commodity markets—remains dollar-pegged. But a gradual shift toward yuan settlement in the Middle East is a concerning trend. This should give the Biden administration pause before further retreating from the region; while China’s ability to create a parallel financial system that doesn’t rely as heavily on the US dollar is far from a foregone conclusion, even modest steps in this direction could erode the effectiveness of US sanctions globally.

Beijing’s desire to use the yuan as a foreign-policy tool with Middle East partners has extended even into the digital realm. In 2022, the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, along with two other central banks, launched a pilot through the Bank of International Settlements to develop a prototype for an interoperable wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). The project, called mBridge, is exploring whether CBDCs can facilitate inexpensive and immediate cross-border transactions and address frictions in today’s cross-border payment systems. Yet the long-term geopolitical motivations cannot be ignored. Although China’s own CBDC—the digital yuan, or e-CNY—is mainly used for domestic retail payments and is only in its early stages of development, Beijing is laying the groundwork to influence how international standards around digital currencies are shaped, potentially edging out the United States from playing a leading role in this effort.

A legacy at stake

The Biden administration’s shift away from the Middle East is, at least in part, a necessary correction from the Donald Trump presidency—a period in which US fawning over autocrats in the region held Washington back from addressing thorny human-rights and governance challenges. But the pendulum may have swung too far: Washington’s current approach threatens to chip away at a critical piece of its bilateral relationships across the Middle East, undo years of meaningful progress on developing effective counter-illicit finance regimes in the region, and weaken US AML/CFT and sanctions efforts globally.

US national security is dependent on a robust, global infrastructure to protect against illicit finance threats. That infrastructure relies on cooperative action, information sharing, and joint standard setting. Yet as Beijing courts countries in the Middle East with its “no strings attached” approach, there is increasingly less incentive on the part of governments in the region to uphold and enforce US sanctions programs or support counter-illicit finance efforts. It’s a trend that should be deeply concerning for US national-security interests.

In public remarks last month, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States is seeking “healthy competition” with China. But that will take more than enhancing US hard-power capabilities and increasing diplomatic engagement in China’s backyard. To maintain its global leadership position, the United States must adopt a broad strategic effort, both geographically and functionally. In this case, that means remaining engaged with Middle East partners who were main characters in the United States’ alliances in the post-9/11 years. And it means investing in all forms of engagement, particularly economic statecraft.

Otherwise, future US administrations may look back decades from now, wondering how and why partners in the Middle East built stronger bridges to Beijing, leaving Washington without an invite to the majles.

Lesley Chavkin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Economic Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and served as the US Treasury Department’s financial attaché to Qatar and Kuwait from 2017 to 2020.

The post The United States is leaving an economic-statecraft vacuum in the Middle East appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Security

Russian soldier allegedly captured in Ukraine claims Gazprom formed military units

Google Earth updates to satellite imagery reveal destruction in Mariupol

Russia strikes residential building in pre-dawn missile barrage

Russian soldier allegedly captured in Ukraine claims Gazprom formed military units

A video has surfaced online showing a Russian soldier allegedly captured in Ukraine talking about military units formed by the state-owned energy corporation Gazprom. In the footage, he identifies himself as Alexei Tkachenko and claims to be a contractor for Russian private military company (PMC) Redut (“Redoubt”), where he “got through Gazprom.” Tkachenko claims that Gazprom created a military unit called Potok (“Stream”), which the energy corporation handed over to PMC Redut. He added that Gazprom also created two other military units named Fakel (“Torch”) and Plamya (“Flame”). According to Tkachenko, Gazprom handed over the Torch and Flame units to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, while giving Stream to Redut. The video footage then continues with Tkachenko telling a story on how he was wounded, left in the field by his compatriots, and crawled to Ukrainian positions. The author of the tweet wrote in the caption of the video that Tkachenko is a “first captured russian from the “Redut” PMC.”  

It is unknown whether the soldier’s testimony is accurate or voluntary; as the Washington Post noted last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross considers the sharing of POW footage as prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Ukrainian military intelligence previously claimed in February 2023 that Gazprom had created its own PMC. 

According to Meduza, Novaya Gazeta was the first to report about Russian PMC Redut in 2019. Prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Redut was engaged in the protection of Stroytransgaz’s facilities in Syria, which is a Russian engineering construction company in the oil and gas industry. Based on sources that include “one of Redoubt’s own former commanders,” Meduza reported that “Redoubt, which still has a substantial number of combatants in Ukraine, is under the Russian Defense Ministry’s complete control.” According to an interview that the Gulagu.net project recorded with a former Redut contractor, the PMC was also backed by Russian oligarchs Oleg Deripaska and Gennady Timchenko.

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia 

*A representative for Oleg Deripaska contacted the DFRLab and insisted that Deripaska has never provided any form of support, financing, or backing to any military companies or groups. He also took issue with referring to Deripaska as an “oligarch,” and added that Deripaska has consistently called for peace in Ukraine as well as for military spending to be reduced globally.

Google Earth updates to satellite imagery reveal destruction in Mariupol

Recently updated Google Earth imagery reveals the extent of the Russian bombing of Mariupol that occurred on March 26, 2022. The update, first reported by Meduza, also includes details of the dire condition in which the national drama theatre of Mariupol was left after the bombing. This facility was notably used for shelter by the civilian population and children, featuring the inscription “children” (“ДЕТИ“) in Russian in front of the theatre.  

Other key locations featured in the imagery update include the Azovstal plant, which the Russian air force had struck. The plant operated as a stronghold for the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol until May 2022. Google Earth imagery posted by Meduza also shows a line of civilians in front of the humanitarian aid established by United Russia. 

The update also reveals how burial sites in Mariupol have expanded as a result of the Russian occupation of the city. Other OSINT sources including Planet Labs imagery posted on Twitter by Benjamin Strick of the Center for Information Resilience indicate how the Staryi Krym graveyard in Mariupol has been expanding under Russian occupation. According to estimates by the OSINT project GeoConfirmed, the cemetery could have grown by around 15,000 graves between May 2022 and April 2023. 

–Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Security, Brussels, Belgium

Russia strikes residential building in pre-dawn missile barrage

In the early hours of April 28, Russia launched a barrage of missiles on Ukraine, killing more than twenty people. A residential building was struck in the central Ukrainian city of Uman, leaving multiple people dead and wounded. In Dnipro, a woman and her three-year-old child were killed, according to the city’s mayor, Borys Filatov. 

On April 27, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported fifty-four attacks by Russian forces in Bakhmut, Marinka, and individual villages in the direction of Avda. On April 25, Ukraine said it recorded forty-three attacks by the Russian army over the preceding twenty-four-hour period. The geography of the attacks followed the pattern observed in recent weeks, with fierce battles continuing in Bakhmut and Marinka and separate assaults on positions around Avdiivka. Artillery shelling was recorded in the direction of Lyman and the area around Vuhledar, but Russian forces appear to be decreasing their attacks on Lyman.   

According to an April 23 assessment from British military intelligence, the number of casualties among Russian personnel in Ukraine has likely decreased by about 30 percent in April compared to the high casualty period of January to March 2023. The reduced losses are likely due to the gradual curtailment of Russian offensive operations, which have failed to achieve their objectives, and the gradual transition to defensive operations. 

Ukrainian forces shot down nine drones on April 24, six Iranian-made Shahed drones in the eastern direction, two Russian Lancet drones, and one operational-tactical drone in the southern direction. On April 25, one person was killed, and ten were wounded due to a Russian missile strike with an S-300 missile on the museum in central Kupiansk. A second body found later in the day was also attributed to the attack. On the same day, explosions were reported in the occupied town of Tokmak, according to Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov, as well as in Kherson. 

Meanwhile, five villages in Russia’s Belgorod region were left without electricity after Ukrainian shelling, according to Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. Reportedly, projectiles damaged power lines around Cheremoshnoe, Ustinka, Yasnye Zori, Bochkovka, and Rovenek. 

Ukraine continues to diversify its arsenal with locally made weapons. Soldiers of the 68th Chasseur Brigade showcased the Ukrainian Shablya firing system. The remote-controlled robotic machine gun turret allows the operator to remain at a safe distance without exposure to return fire. These types of weapons are critical during military operations, such as those in eastern Ukraine, where soldiers are directly exposed to enemy fire.  

Footage of newly produced Bulgarian Arsenal MG-1M machine guns, delivered by the Come Back Alive Foundation, has appeared online. The machine guns and ammunition were produced in 2023, with 1,460 guns purchased, and distributed to twenty-one combat brigades within the Ukrainian Army, along with 7.62 x 54r FMJ/SC ammunition. According to the foundation, the weapons were purchased for €6.5 million (USD $7.1 million). 

Ukrainian engineers are closely examining Russian drones after changes in UAV design were observed. Serhiy Speshilov, head of the department studying robotic systems at the Center for Research of Captured and Advanced Weapons and Military Equipment within the Ukrainian army, said significant changes were noted in Iran-produced Shahed drones. According to Speshilov, the UAVs previously had relatively new microcircuits and chips, but recently there has been a degradation of components. Speshilov said this is due to the effect of sanctions. In one example, Speshilov’s team discovered a relay manufactured in Armenia in 1996. In addition, Speshilov noted the use of interference-proof satellite navigation receivers and said Ukrainian forces are working to counter the effects with anti-jamming equipment.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria 

The post Russian War Report: <strong>Updated Google Earth imagery details destruction in Mariupol</strong> appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In Season 1, Episode 2 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi speaks with the Russian defence analyst Pavel Luzin about what the proliferation of Russian mercenaries abroad tells us about Russia at home. They explore the domestic forces that gave rise to the Kremlin’s co-optation of Russian mercenaries, how they are funded by the Russian federal budget, and the effects mercenaries are already having on Russian society. They also discuss how Russia’s strategy of playing the troublemaker in Libya won it a seat at the table in determining Libya’s future.

Find the Guns For Hire podcast on the app of your choice

About the podcast

The Guns for Hire podcast is a production of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative. Taking Libya as its starting point, it explores the causes and implications of the growing use of mercenaries in armed conflict.

The podcast features guests from many walks of life, from ethicists and historians to former mercenary fighters. It seeks to understand what the normalisation of contract warfare tells us about the world as we currently find it, but also about the future of the international system and about what war could look like in the coming decades.

Further reading

MENASource Feb 28, 2023

To counter the Wagner Group’s presence in Africa, the US will need to prioritize stabilizing Libya

By Emadeddin Badi

Quelling the Wagner Group’s influence in Libya will be challenging, as the US must address Libyan realities and unite Europe and regional powers to support its foreign policy endeavor.

Libya Middle East

MENASource Feb 1, 2023

Libya’s political impasse and the $6 billion question

By Alia Brahimi

On January 5, after months of talks brokered in Egypt, Libya’s rival legislative bodies finally agreed to begin discussions to develop the constitutional basis for elections.

Libya Middle East

MENASource Nov 15, 2022

A moment of opportunity: Can the UN’s new special representative for Libya break the country’s cycle of devolution?

By Emadeddin Badi

After two months into the job, Abdoulaye Bathily may be quickly realizing that Libya’s war never abated, and that it is now simply fought by other means in the halls of the United Nations and corridors of foreign capitals.

Libya Middle East

Middle East Programs

Through our Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, the Atlantic Council works with allies and partners in Europe and the wider Middle East to protect US interests, build peace and security, and unlock the human potential of the region.

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The post What Russian mercenaries tell us about Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Security

Russia escalates Avdiivka, Marinka front lines; Belgorod accidentally bombed by a Russian jet

Russia’s Bashkir battalions form a new motor rifle regiment as more are sent to Ukraine to replenish Russian forces

Russian mobilized soldiers report signs of coercion to join Wagner in support of Bakhmut offensive

Russia cancels Victory Day parades and moves “Immortal Regiment” marches online

Tracking narratives

Pro-Kremlin experts use false story to claim military upper hand over Ukraine and NATO

Documenting dissent

Wagner members claim killing of Ukrainian civilians

International response

US investigates ex-Navy officer allegedly behind notorious pro-Russia social media accounts

Russia escalates Avdiivka, Marinka front lines; Belgorod accidentally bombed by a Russian jet

The offensive actions of the Russian army in Eastern Ukraine continue, as well as the defensive efforts of the Ukrainian forces. In recent days, there has been an escalation of attacks on Ukrainian positions in the direction of Marinka, Avdiivka, and Bakhmut. 

On April 17, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that more than seventy attacks by the Russian army were repulsed during the day. The most difficult areas to defend remain Bakhmut and Marinka. Offensive actions were registered in the direction of Avdiivka, with separate attacks carried out in the Kupiansk and Lyman areas. The Russian forces continued the assaults on Bakhmut and Marinka on April 18 and April 19 on par with offensive operations in the Avdiivka area, where Ukrainian forces repulsed attacks in the areas of six settlements. Between April 18-19, the Ukrainian army recorded more than sixty Russian attacks.

According to British intelligence’s April 18 assessment, even though heavy fighting continued in the directions of Avdiivka and Marinka, the Russian command still gave priority to the Bakhmut front. The front line there has become relatively stable, running along the railway line, as Ukraine’s soldiers are effectively resisting attempts by Russia to encircle the town. The question of sending reinforcements to Bakhmut is acute for both sides, since the Ukrainian command wants to attract as many units as possible for a future offensive, while the Russian army wants to form an operational reserve. On April 20, Russian forces reportedly attempted to advance near Kreminna and Serebryanske Forest, as well as Khromove, Vodyane, Pervomaiske, Pobieda, and Vuhledar. 

On the night of April 20, the Russian army attacked the south and east of Ukraine with Shahed attack drones. Ten out of eleven drones were shot down, the Ukrainian East Air Command reported. Sirens for Russian attacks were reported in Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Kyiv, Odessa, Rivne, Sumy, Poltava, and other regions of Ukraine.    

Meanwhile, Telegram users reported an explosion in Belgorod, Russia, near the Ukraine border, on the night of April 20-21. Images shared online show an explosion crater near a residential area of the city. There were reports moments before the explosion of Russian bombers launching a guided bomb in the direction of Kharkiv. At first, it was unclear whether the explosion was the result of a failed Russian attack that hit Belgorod instead of Kharkiv, or whether it was a drone attack from the Ukrainian side. Later, a Russian Ministry of Defense statement that was re-shared by Ukrainian sources said, “On the evening of April 20, during the flight of a Su-34 aircraft over the city of Belgorod, an abnormal derailment of aviation ammunition occurred.” The explosion was apparently large and caused material damage.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russia’s Bashkir battalions form a new motor rifle regiment as more are sent to Ukraine to replenish Russian forces

Radiy Khabirov, head of the Republic of Bashkortostan, announced on April 10 that the republic’s volunteer formations would undergo reformation as part of the creation of a new motor rifle regiment. Like many ethnic regions of Russia, the Republic of Bashkorstostan has been subjected to targeted military recruitment. These volunteers, alongside contract soldiers and mobilized military personnel of the Russian reserve, are constantly sent to Ukraine to replenish the regular Russian forces.

According to the federal media outlet FedPress, the idea was suggested by the commanders of the two national battalions, “Northern Amurs” and “Dayan Murzin,” created in Bashkortostan at the beginning of March. The newest regiment would comprise several motor rifle divisions and an artillery division, totaling between 900 to 1,500 men. Moreover, Bashkortostan has recently been pushing for more servicemen to be deployed to Ukraine. During an April 12 ceremony in the regional capital city of Ufa, Bashkirs celebrated the creation of yet another volunteer formation before it was deployed to Ukraine. The new volunteer formation, “Vatan,” Bashkir for “Fatherland,” was created at the beginning of 2023; estimates indicate it could comprise around 720 men. This would bring the number of volunteer formations in the republic to six, including four volunteer formations named after war heroes and local figures, and two volunteer battalions like “Vatan” and “Northern Amurs.” 

As the Russian State Duma recently approved a new e-drafting bill and is planning to conduct testing in Moscow and Saint Petersburg during its annual spring conscription, replenishment of military forces has become a top priority for the Kremlin. The DFRLab previously reported on regional ad campaigns targeting national minorities, including the Udmurt population. A new Bashkortostan-hosted recruitment website called BashBat  – short for “Bashkir Battalion” – launched on April 17. The domain’s WHOIS record directly points to the Bashkir Ministry for Digital Transformation. Like the Udmurt portal Delomuzhchin.rf (деломужчин.рф), BashBat was advertised in the press using the local Udmurt language, as well as on the Russian federal resource portal for recruitment, Ob’yesnyayem, in both Russian and Bashkir.

–Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Security, Brussels, Belgium

Russian mobilized soldiers report signs of coercion to join Wagner in support of Bakhmut offensive

An April 14 article posted by independent Russian-language media outlet Astra reported that hundreds of Russian mobilized soldiers had re-enlisted with Wagner Group. News outlets inside Russia described the situation as “volunteer enrolment.” However, information posted by Twitter user @Tatarigami_UA and subsequent reporting indicate that these episodes might have occurred forcibly. The report by Astra pointed at a video where a mobilized soldier declared that Wagner had been training mobilized personnel. Satellite imagery released by that same account points at a military training facility in Kursk, where instructors are reportedly “experienced Wagner soldiers.”

Later reports indicated one hundred soldiers disappeared after being sent into Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast and refusing to sign Wagner contracts. Astra’s leaked texts indicate the soldiers were forced to give up their phones and threatened by thirty Wagner representatives with rifles at the Stakhanov railway station. Other signs of coercion were brought to the attention of the Russian MoD after six mobilized soldiers from Yakutia informed their families they had been forcibly recruited by another PMC. In an April 19 post, Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin denied these accusations. 

Although user @Tatarigami_UA reports that the instructors are said to be part of a PMC called Volk (“Wolf”), the DFRLab could not confirm this. However, job ads analyzed in a previous DFRLab report mentioned instructors as “participants of the special military operation.” In their accusations of coerced re-enlistment, mobilized soldiers from the Sakha Republic also pointed to yet another subsidiary of the Wagner Group, called PMC Veteran.

–Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Security, Brussels, Belgium

Russia cancels Victory Day parades and moves “Immortal Regiment” marches online

Russia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) canceled May 9 Victory Day parades in annexed Ukrainian territory and adjacent Russian territory because of security concerns. “Immortal Regiment” marches were moved from their usual offline space to online. Previously, Victory Day celebrations and parades have traditionally been a significant event in Russia. 

Citing the Russia-installed head of annexed Sevastopol city Mikhail Razvozhaev, TASS reported on April 20 that it was the MoD’s decision to cancel the parade. Earlier, on April 12, Russia-installed head of Crimea Sergey Aksenov stated that parades were cancelled across annexed Crimea “due to security concerns.” Victory Day parades were also canceled in Ukraine-neighboring Russian regions of Kursk and Belgorod. In Krasnodar Krai the parade will only be held in the city of Novorossiysk. According to the governor of the Belgorod region, such a measure was necessary in order “not to provoke the enemy with a large accumulation of equipment and military personnel.”

UkraineAlert has named equipment shortages as one of the possible reasons behind the Kremlin’s decision to cancel parades. According to the report, “[N]umerous commentators have speculated that Moscow is increasingly short of tanks and is understandably eager to avoid highlighting the scale of the losses suffered by the Russian army in Ukraine.”

Similarly there will be no traditional organized march of the “Immortal Regiment” this year. The organizers have moved the march online, which previously happened twice during COVID pandemic years in 2020 and 2021. They told RBC that Russian regions will be posting “portraits of heroes” in interactive online formats. 

Citing Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Meduza reported that military parades are planned to be held in twenty-eight Russian cities, including Moscow, where “more than 10,000 military personnel are planned to participate,” with enhanced security measures.

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Pro-Kremlin experts use false story to claim military upper hand over Ukraine and NATO

Pro-Kremlin media continue to amplify a false story about the Russian army allegedly destroying a bunker in Lviv occupied by NATO officers with a Kinzhal supersonic missile. Snopes, the US fact-checking outlet, debunked the story as early as April 3, labeling it as “a lazy piece of obvious propaganda.” Russia previously attacked Ukraine with Kinzhal missiles on March 9 and hit two residential building in Lviv, according to Ukrainian fact-checking outlet StopFake, which debunked the story on April 19. There is no evidence of any underground NATO command center in Lviv. Both fact-checking outlets argued that it did not make sense to have such command center in Lviv, which around one hundred kilometers from Poland, a NATO member state. 

The first mention of the rumor was a March 1 report published by “Cossack Colonel Yuri Kominyenko” on the fringe website Cairns News. According to Snopes, the Greek outlet Pronews made the claim “regain virality” starting on March 12. From April 14 to April 18 pro-Kremlin media outlets resurfaced the story by citing pro-Kremlin experts who voiced contradicting numbers of NATO’s alleged casualties.  For instance, TopNews and Sibnet.ru cited Nikolay Sorokin, a pro-Kremlin political expert saying that “Kinzhal destroyed 300 officers from NATO countries.” 

Ekonomika Segodnya, ZOV Kherson, Lenta.ru, and Tsargrad cited Viktor Baranets, an author on Komsomolyskaya Pravda, who asserted, “Kinzhal destroyed secret bunker with 200 NATO and Ukrainian Armed Forces’ officers.” Baranets also claimed with no evidence that the US embassy called the representatives of Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces to “reprimand” them for “poor control center security” and that “capitals of NATO countries are silent about the incident because they are ashamed to admit this biting slap from Moscow.” 

Pravda.ru and RG.ru cited Anatoly Matveychuk, a military expert who declared, “Kinzhal destroyed 160 NATO and Ukrainian Armed Forces’ officers in Ukrainian bunker in Lviv.” Matveychuk reportedly suggested this led to Ukraine to cancel its plans for a spring counteroffensive. 

—Nika Aleksejeva, Resident Fellow, Riga, Latvia

Wagner members claim killing of Ukrainian civilians

On April 17, a Russian human rights project released testimonies of two Russian former prisoners, Azamat Uldarov and Alexei Savichev, who allegedly fought in Ukraine within the ranks of Wagner Group. In a conversation with Gulagu.net, Savichev and Uldarov reported the killing of Ukrainian civilians, including children, allegedly on personal orders from Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office launched an investigation into Uldarov and Savichev’s confessions.

Savichev argued that Wagner mercenaries in Bakhmut received an order to kill everyone over fifteen years old; he admitted killing at least ten teenagers and more than twenty unarmed Ukrainians in February 2023. In addition, Savichev claimed that he personally witnessed the killing of about seventy Russian former prisoners who served in Wagner and refused to comply with orders. He also asserted that he blew up a pit full of bodies of dead and wounded citizens of Russia and Ukraine then subsequently set fire to the remnants of dead people to hide traces of the crime. Uldarov, meanwhile, said that he killed minors in Bakhmut and Soledar and admitted that one of his victims was a girl who was “five or six” years old. 

Gulagu.net also published documents allegedly proving that Azamat Uldarov and Alexei Savichev were previously pardoned by presidential decree in September 2022 then sent to the front line in Ukraine. The founder of the Gulagu.net project, Vladimir Osechkin, argued that both of them are currently located on the territory of Russia and that they gave their testimony voluntarily. 

Following the publication of these claims, Yevgeny Prigozhin publicly addressed Alexei Savichev on April 28 and stated that he had been searching for him over the previous twenty-four hours. Prigozhin demanded that Savichev contact Wagner and explain “why he spoke falsehoods, who was behind it, how he was blackmailed.” Prigozhin promised that Savichev will be “left alive and unharmed” if he is willing to explain in person what took place. The events discussed by the ex-prisoners have not been verified independently. 

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

US investigates ex-Navy officer allegedly behind notorious pro-Russia social media accounts

The Wall Street Journal identified the individual allegedly behind the pro-Russian social media persona “Donbas Devushka” as Sarah Bils, a thirty-seven-year-old US Navy veteran from New Jersey who served as an aviation electronics technician at Whitby Island in Washington state. The US Department of Justice is currently investigating her for allegedly disseminating leaked classified documents. 

Donbas Devushka allegedly presented herself to her followers as a Russian Jew from occupied Luhansk. Their Twitter and Telegram accounts largely grew after Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year. The accounts continuously spread Kremlin propaganda, with their Telegram channel amplifying graphic content of possible war crimes by Wagner Group.

According a Bellingcat investigation, Donbas Devushka’s Telegram account was found to be the first to have shared leaked intelligence currently under investigation by the Justice Department and Pentagon. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bils played a key role in spreading the leaked documents, though she has denied these claims. Bils admitted she was the administrator of Donbas Devushka, however; she also said that there were fourteen other people involved in running the network but refused to name them.

Bils also ran a tropical fish business, which in part led to her discovery. During her stint in the US Navy, Bils imported tropical fish from Poland. According to Malcontent News, she appeared in a video from the Aquarium Co-op podcast; Malcontent and the pro-Ukrainian group North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) then matched her voice and home décor with footage from the Donbas Devushka account. 

—Ani Mejlumyan, Research Assistant, Armenia 

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Security

Belarus accuses Ukraine of plotting terrorist attack against Russian consulate

Identifying potential host sites for Russian tactical nuclear weapons

Documenting dissent

Individuals linked to Russian army form ‘angry patriots club’

Tracking narratives

Russian propaganda reaches Ukrainian users via Facebook ads

International response

Poland and Ukraine sign cooperation deal for production of tank shells

Belarus accuses Ukraine of plotting terrorist attack against Russian consulate

On April 4, Belarusian state-controlled TV channel ONT aired a documentary titled “Loud failures of the Ukrainian special services in Belarus. Gaspar did not get in touch.” Reports from Belarus’ State Security Committee (KGB) informed much of the program, which asserted that, under the leadership of Ukrainian special services, a network of Russian and Belarusian citizens planned several terrorist attacks in the Belarusian city of Grodno. The alleged perpetrators reportedly planned to target several facilities, including the Consulate General of Russia, a military enlistment office opposite Zhiliber Park, a military unit in southern Grodno, and two oil depots. 

The KGB claimed that Vyacheslav Rozum, an alleged employee of the Main Directorate of Intelligence in the Ukrainian defense ministry, planned the attacks. Ukrainian authorities had not commented on the accusations at the time of writing. According to the documentary, Rozum asked Russian citizen Daniil Krinari, known as Kovalevsky, to form a network of people to carry out terrorist acts. Krinari was reportedly arrested in Grodno in December 2022 and extradited to Russia at the request of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). He was charged in Russia for cooperating with Ukraine and acting in the interests of Ukraine. The Belarusian KGB asserted that, before his extradition, Krinari managed to recruit at least two people, Russian citizen Alexei Kulikov and Belarusian citizen Vadim Patsenko. Kulikov had allegedly fled Russia in 2022 to avoid conscription and moved to Belarus. 

The ONT documentary includes interviews with Kulikov and Patsenko, who argue that Rozum asked them to take photos and videos of the target facilities in Grodno. Moreover, Patsenko argued that Vyacheslav tasked him with blowing up an oil depot with a drone. The program claims Ukrainian special services promised Kulikov and Patsenko $10,000 each. While Patsenko and Kulikov allege that Ukrainian security services were involved in the operation, the ONT program does not include concrete evidence to prove this claim. 

The documentary also contains an interview with Nikolai Shvets, the main suspect behind a February 26, 2023, attack on an AWACS A-50 Russian military aircraft at Machulishchy airfield in Belarus. Shvets is reported to be a Russian-Ukrainian dual citizen and served in the Ukrainian army. In the ONT interview, he claimed he was working with a person from the Ukrainian security service while planning the sabotage. The Belarusian independent media outlet Nasha Niva reported that Maxim Lopatin, one of arrested suspects in the Machulishchy attack, had a broken jaw when he filmed the ONT doumentary. Nasha Niva suggested that he was possibly beaten by Belarusian law enforcement authorities. Belarus arrested more than twenty people in connection to the February aircraft incident and announced on April 3 that the suspects were charged with committing an act of terrorism, for which the maximum sentence is capital punishment. However, the ONT program again provides no concrete evidence linking Shvets to Ukrainian security services. 

In addition, the ONT documentary aired on the same day that Alyaksandr Lukashenka met Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, in Minsk to discuss joint counterterrorism measures undertaken by Belarus and Russia. 

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

Identifying potential host sites for Russian tactical nuclear weapons

On March 28, Belarus confirmed it would accept Russian tactical nuclear weapons. The announcement came after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on March 25 plans to store tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, promising to build a nuclear weapons storage facility in the country. Putin made the comments after the United Kingdom said it would supply Ukraine with ammunition containing depleted uranium. “The heavy metal is used in weapons because it can penetrate tanks and armour more easily due to its density, amongst other properties,” Reutersreported. On April 4, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu reported the transfer of Iskander-M tactical missiles, which are nuclear capable and have been utilized by the Russian military against Ukraine. 

Two days after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on February 26, 2022, Belarus approved via referendum constitutional amendments to remove the country’s non-nuclear status. The constitutional change allows Belarus to host nuclear weapons for foreign states. 

Amidst the speculation surrounding Russia’s nuclear deployment to Belarus, the most pressing questions concern the potential location of airfields capable of nuclear deployment and which type of equipment is nuclear capable in terms of maintenance and modernization efforts.  

Along with the confirmed transfer of the Iskander-M missiles (a mobile, short-range ballistic missile system with a range of up to 500 kilometers), Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jets are also a top contender in the Russian and Belarusian aviation arsenals. This aircraft is capable of carrying two nuclear bombs, which the Russian military categorizes as “special aviation bombs.” In June 2022, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka personally called on Putin to help upgrade and retrofit the Belarusian Su-25 fleet to be nuclear-capable. This resulted in a long-term project to enable Belarusian nuclear capabilities, legalize hosting Russian nuclear technology and nuclear-capable craft, enable joint-training programs for aviation sorties, and direct training for Belarusian pilots.

In conjunction with the Su-25’s capabilities against Ukraine’s current air defence networks and Russia’s non-strategic nuclear policy, Belarus’ acceptance of Russian tactical nuclear weapons can be viewed as escalatory. Video footage showed the Su-25’s capacity to evade Ukraine’s man-portable air defence system (MANPAD).

On April 2, the Russian envoy to Minsk announced that the nuclear weapons deployment would occur along Belarus’ western border. The exact location has not been specified, but Belarus has a number of bases along its western border, including Osovtsy, Ross, and Bereza. However, Lida is a primary staging base for the Belarusian fleet of SU-25s, and open-source researchers have confirmed a large presence of the aircraft on the base. Currently, Osovtsy is not one of the highly utilized bases in Belarus, but its proximity to the western border, especially in terms of proximity to Poland and the northern border of Ukraine, makes it a primary location to watch for potential signs of development, land-clearing operations, and heightened military activity.

—Kateryna Halstead, Research Assistant, Bologna, Italy

Individuals linked to Russian army form ‘angry patriots club’

On April 1, former Russian army commander Igor Strelkov (also known as Igor Girkin) published a video announcing the formation of the “angry patriots club” (Клуб рассерженных патриотов). According to Strelkov, the club aims “to help Russian armed forces” and “meet the stormy wind that will soon whip our faces as one team.” In the video, Strelkov says that Russia “is moving toward military defeat” because “we got into a long, protracted war for which our economy turned out to be completely unprepared. Neither the army nor the political system was ready for it.” In a Telegram post, Strelkov said the club “was created two weeks ago. So far, organizational issues have not been resolved publicly.” Strelkov previously played a crucial role in forming a separatist movement in the Donbas region.

The video also featured a statement from Pavel Gubarev, who in 2014 proclaimed himself the commander of the Donbas People’s Militia. In the video, he says, “We are angry that we are going from one defeat to another, and nothing changes.” He called the system in Russia “thievish and corrupt” and said the Russian elite are “elite in catastrophe.” 

The video further featured Vladimir Grubnik, who in 2015 was arrested in Ukraine in connection to an explosion near a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) building in Odesa; in 2019, he was part of a prisoner exchange and returned to the Russian forces in Donbas. Grubnik said that defeat would lead to Russia falling apart. 

Vladimir Kucherenko, an Odesa-born Russian propagandist better known by his pen name Maksim Kalashnikov, said, “We are not afraid to criticize the actions of the government. Why? Because it can somehow help victory. Otherwise, they will do nothing, they will not move.” He called the Russian elite “looters,” “resource grabbers,” and “corrupts.” He predicted the war would turn into “carnage to death” and that the “corrupt Russian elites” would organize a coup that would “betray the country” by agreeing to Russia’s “separation” and “giving up of nuclear arms” in order to “earn the forgiveness of the West.” In 2015, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture included Kucherenko in the list of Russians “threatening national security.”

Another figure in the video is Maksim Klimov, a pro-Kremlin military expert, who said, “The authorities do not know the real situation.” He added, “They do not hear nor see what is happening in the special military operation zone.” Klimov also did not rule out Russia’s defeat. 

The video gained some traction online, garnering 177,000 views on YouTube at the time of writing and 623,600 views and 2,500 shares on Strekov’s Telegram channel. According to TGStat, most of the shares on Telegram came from private accounts. Many Ukrainian media outlets reported on the newly founded club. The DFRLab did not identify any mainstream Russian media outlets reporting on the club besides Kommersant, a Kremlin-approved media outlet focused on business. 

—Nika Aleksejeva, Resident Fellow, Riga, Latvia

Russian propaganda reaches Ukrainian users via Facebook ads

This week, the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security (CSCIS) and Ukrainian civil society members reported that Facebook advertising campaigns are being used to spread negative content about Ukraine. The ads range from posts that claim “Romania wants to annex Ukrainian territories” to videos that claim “This is the end. There are no men to fight for Ukraine.” While these campaigns were quickly de-platformed and the pages sharing them were banned, the DFRLab was able to investigate some of the ads via the Facebook Ad Library. The DFRLab previously reported on Facebook ads promoting pro-Russia disinformation to Ukrainian users.

The ads included links to the website luxurybigisland.net, with some ads sharing variations of the URL, such as luxurybigisland.net/rbk or luxurybigisland.net/pravda. The website was built using the Russian website builder Tilda, and its the landing page featured German text that translates to, “Nothing that can’t be removed. We care for your textiles as gently as possible with the utmost care, iron and steam, so that you can enjoy your clothes for a long time. We care.” The same phrase appeared on the now-defunct Tilda-made website google-seo-top.com and the website of a German textile care company. Registration data for luxurybigisland.net is redacted, but WhoIs data for google-seo-top.com shows that the website was registered in Russia. Both luxurybigisland.net and google-seo-top.com include metadata, shown in Google results, that states, in German, “the USA are against the entire world.”

One URL shared in the ads, luxurybigisland.net/pravda, remained online at the time of writing. The URL redirects to a forged article mimicking the Ukrainian news outlet Pravda. The article shared in the ads never appeared on the authentic Pravda website, but its byline cited a genuine journalist working at the outlet. The DFRLab confirmed the article was a forgery by reviewing the journalist’s author page on the authentic Pravda website, reviewing Pravda’s archived section, conducting a Google search for the forged headline, and then a more specific website search via Google.

Visually the forged website is identical to the authentic one and even features links to contact information copied from the original website. However, the forged website’s image format is different. The text of the forged article claims that the Ukrainian economy is heavily damaged and that “continuation of the war will lead to even greater losses in the economy.” The data shared in the article appears to be copied from multiple media sources and is not false, but the article’s framing contains pro-Russian sentiments as it calls for Ukraine’s surrender.

A second forged article, discovered by CSCIS, was shared on the now-offline URL luxurybigisland.net/RBK. The article mimicked the website of the reputable Ukrainian outlet RBC. 

Meta itself has taken – and continues to take – action against similar cross-platform, pro-Russia networks that push users to websites designed to impersonate legitimate news organizations. The DFRLab could not tie its identified assets to those previous Meta actions, but there is some probability that they were related given the similarity of behavior.

A Facebook page with “Cripto” in its name shared some of the ads. The DFRLab identified another Facebook page with the word Cripto in the name sharing pro-Kremlin narratives via Facebook ads. The ads pushed a false story claiming there was a “riot in Kyiv over losses.” CSCIS previously debunked another narrative pushed by a similarly named page that also fomented anti-Ukrainian military sentiment.

—Roman Osadchuk, Research Associate

Poland and Ukraine sign cooperation deal for production of tank shells

During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Poland, Polish manufacturer Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa and Ukroboronprom signed a cooperation agreement for the joint production of 125-mm tank ammunition. The agreement assumes that the deployment of new production lines will be in Polish cities and the agreement indicates that they plan to produce a large amount of ammunition for 125-mm guns. The decision to start production in Poland was made due to the high risks of Russian missile attacks on production facilities if they were to be based in Ukraine. In place of locating the production in the country, the Ukrainian side will provide technologies and highly qualified specialists with experience in production. This will be the second factory that will produce 125-mm tank shells.

The supply of shells is of particular importance to Ukrainian forces, which are preparing a counter-offensive in southern and eastern Ukraine as heavy fighting with the Russian army continues in the Bakhmut and Donetsk regions.

Separately, German manufacturer Rheinmetall is building a service center for Western military equipment used by Ukraine’s armed forces in Romania, Reuters reported on April 2. The construction for the center is already underway in the Romanian city of Satu Mare, close to the country’s border with Ukraine. The hub is expected to open later this month. 

This development is happening against the background of diplomatic activity and statements. Ukraine is not ready to sign any peace agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the war could end as early as this year, according to an April 5 interview with  Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Oleksii Rezniko, who said, “I think this war will end soon. Of course, I would like it not to start, but I personally believe in this year as a year of victory.”

Rezniko also commented on a statement made in March by Czech Republic President Petr Pavel, who claimed that Ukraine had only one chance to conduct a successful counter-offensive this year. “I think that the president of the Czech Republic now speaks more like a military man than a politician, and the logic of the military is such that they constantly calculate the worst options. But even if this is his assessment, it is subjective, and he still lays down useful for us. The message is that European countries should unite more powerfully and strengthen assistance to Ukraine,” said Reznikov. Later, Andriy Sybiha, an adviser to Zelenskyy, told the Financial Times that Kyiv is willing to discuss the future of Crimea with Moscow if its forces reach the border of the Russian-occupied peninsula.

—Ruslan Trad, resident fellow for security research, Sofia, Bulgaria

The post Russian War Report: Belarus accuses Ukraine of plotting terrorist attack appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Terrorism has reemerged in Pakistan; since August of 2021, attacks have spiked approximately 50 percent, with Voice of America reporting that “violence claimed by or blamed on the TTP [Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan] and other militant groups killed almost 1,000 Pakistanis, including nearly 300 security forces, in some 376 terrorist attacks in 2022.”

Pakistan has long struggled to contain non-state groups operating on its soil, and it is a country familiar with intersecting crises. Today, the Islamic Republic is facing deep economic and financial challenges combined with political turmoil as various power centers vie for control of its fragile democracy.

In this context, Pakistan cannot afford complacency regarding its growing terrorism threat. The TTP’s operational capacity has grown significantly following the takeover of the Afghan Taliban next door, and it along with peer militant groups present an existential threat to Pakistan’s security and the stability of its neighborhood.

To understand how Islamabad should respond to this heightened threat, South Asia Center Distinguished Fellow Shuja Nawaz led a series of conversations with experts about fighting terrorism and militancy in Pakistan.

The interviews have been categorized into three segments:

• State security, cross-border dynamics, and law enforcement, featuring Sen. Mushahid Hussain, Lt. Gen. Aamer Riaz, and IGP Naveed Khan.
• Society, human security, and government-people social contract, featuring Dr. Farhat Taj, MP Mohsin Dawar, and Dr. Madiha Afzal.
• A conversation with Inspector General Police Tariq Parvez, former inspector general of police and the first coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Authority of Pakistan (NACTA).

State security, cross-border dynamics, and law enforcement

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Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed is a current Pakistani Senator and Chairman of the Senate Defence Committee. A graduate of the Georgetown Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program (Class of 1975), Senator Hussain Sayed has a distinguished career in the Pakistan public service as a four-time elected senator from the Islamabad Federal Capital. His public service career also includes positions as the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Central Asia (1992), Leader of Pakistan’s Delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva (1993), Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (handling relations with the U.S. & Central Asia) (1993), and Minister for Information, Culture & Tourism (1997-1999).

Lt. Gen. Aamer Riaz (Retd) was commissioned in the Pakistan Army in 1984. He commanded two corps, one on the western border and one on the eastern border and held various higher staff assignments, namely, Chief of Staff of a corps and Director, General Military Operations Directorate at GHQ. Lt. Gen. Riaz held instructional assignments at various military institutions and also remained president of National Defence University Islamabad. During his service, he remained engaged in military diplomacy to bring peace and stability in the region. Lt. Gen. Riaz has had speaking engagements at several civil and military institutions. Lt. Gen. Riaz is also a member of the board of governors of a newly established National University of Security Sciences, NUSS.

Inspector General Naveed Khan was born in Kohat, Pakistan in 1950. He graduated from Punjab University (Lahore) and joined the Police Service of Pakistan in 1972. Khan served as the Head of several district and divisional Police forces, provincial and federal intelligence agencies in KPK and as Commandant of Paramilitary force (Frontier Constabulary). He spent 5 years in the Middle East as a diplomat. His last posting before retirement in August 2010 was the Inspector General of Police, KPK province where he headed a 75,000 strong police force in the most difficult period during the height of Taliban militancy.

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Society, human security, and government-people social contract

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Dr. Farhat Taj has a Ph.D. degree in Sociology of Law. She is associate professor at the University of Tromso, Norway. She has also worked as Assistant Director, Colleges and as Planning Officer (education) in the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. She successfully led three field research projects (2011, 2011 and 2012) for the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, IDMC Geneva, on conflict-driven displacement in the northwest of Pakistan. Dr. Taj also conducted independent research funded by the Norwegian Writers Association and Fritt Ord. The research is reported in her books, Taliban and Anti-Taliban (2011) and The Real Pashtun Question (forthcoming 2016). 

Mohsin Javed Dawar is a Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from North Waziristan, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the National Assembly of Pakistan, and Central Chairman in the National Democratic Movement. He is the co-founder of the human rights movement Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). He has formerly served as president of the National Youth Organisation (NYO) and the Pashtun Students Federation (PSF), the allied wings of the Awami National Party (ANP). From 11 to 14 March 2022, he was part of the Pashtun National Jirga, which was held in Bannu to discuss the critical issues faced by Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Dr. Madiha Afzal is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Her research lies at the intersection of political economy, development, and security, with a focus on Pakistan. She previously worked as an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Afzal is the author of “Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State,” published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2018. She has also published several journal articles, book chapters, policy reports, and essays.

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A conversation with Inspector General Police Tariq Parvez on the rise of terrorism and militancy in Pakistan

Tariq Parvez joined the Police Service of Pakistan in the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police in 1973 and retired in the rank of Inspector General of Police in 2008, from the post of Director General of Federal Investigation Agency, Pakistan. Terrorism in the name of religion started in Pakistan, on a sustained basis in 1990 from Punjab. Parvez dealt with the phenomenon indirectly as DIG of Gujranwala, Bahawalpur, and Lahore from 1993 to 1997. In 1997, he was posted as Executive Head of Counter Terrorism Department Punjab, thus dealing directly with extremism and terrorism. He was awarded Sitara e Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan in 2004 for services in the field of CT. Parvez was posted as the Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency from 2005 to 2008 and dealt with terrorism at the national level. After retirement he was tasked to establish the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) and appointed its first National Coordinator. Presently he is a member of NACTA’s committee of experts as well as President, Advisory Board, National Initiative against Organized Crime.

Shuja Nawaz: In light of the recent attack on the Peshawar mosque, the bombing that killed large numbers of people, I wanted to ask you whether you see a similarity in the way the government is approaching this incident, as it handled the nine-year-old incident when the army public school in Peshawar was attacked and many lives were lost. Subsequently, attacks took place in Balochistan also where up to sixty people in one attack were killed. Do you see a similarity?

Tariq Parvez: Before I respond to your question specifically, I would like to give a brief overview of the context. 2009 was the worst year ever in Pakistan in terms of terrorist attacks in a year. Ever since then, there was a consistent and significant decline in the number of terrorist attacks over 2009-2020. In fact, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan decreased by almost 95 percent during these years. Then in 2021, we witnessed a reversal in this trend. For the first time in ten years, the terrorist attacks in 2021 were more than the terrorist attacks in the preceding year, i.e., 2020. A cause for further concern was that during 2022 this trend continued and the realization that this was not a short-term development, but a more sustained trend. 

I wasn’t surprised by this reversal of trend. Why? For two reasons. Number one, that while we got the short-term objectives right in countering terrorism, we erred in terms of formulating long-term policies and responses to the terrorist threat. The result was, that while we succeeded in effectively dealing with the terrorist threat in the short term, from 2009 to 2020, this effectiveness could not be sustained. The reasons were two-fold. One, the counter-terrorism effort was, primarily, military led, with the civilian institutions playing a secondary role. This was an ad-hoc approach because, for the long-term solution to succeed, you should let the civilian institutions, whose role it is to counter terrorism, play their role. That was one weak area in our earlier response. The second weak area was that our entire focus was on kinetic actions. Of course, eliminating these militant networks is required, and kinetic actions are a very important part of counter-terrorism, but that doesn’t mean that the non-dynamic part, the ideological part, the part that deals with the factors that breed terrorism, should be ignored. We chose only the kinetic approach. So while the TTP, the main terrorist organization in Pakistan, went down and was cleared from the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) it wasn’t eliminated. Its ideology continued to resonate with segments of our society, because we had ignored addressing the non-kinetic dimension. And as soon as it got an opportunity to come up, it did.

One important factor for the recent resurgence of terrorism by TTP in Pakistan was the change of its leadership. The TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah was killed in a reported drone attack in June 2018. He was succeeded by a leader from the Mehsud tribe again, Mufti Noor-Wali Mehsud. He focused on uniting the TTP factions. The TTP had become a fragmented organization with about twenty factions and they all were fighting each other. In fact, it was easier for the government to deal with factions, but now after two years of his efforts, he brought back all the factions and hence we are confronted with a united TTP once again. That is one factor, is important for the resurgence of terrorism, and more important than this unification is the takeover by the Taliban in Afghanistan which helped the TTP in two ways. One, it was a huge morale booster: the TTP morale had been low. They were down in the dumps. Suddenly they stood up and said, “well if the Taliban can defeat the American army and its allies, we can do it also.” Number two, their main safe haven was Afghanistan and so they got a very important sanctuary which was not there earlier. Now they can move freely, and they have active assistance also. That is the basic reason why we see the resurgence. 

Coming back to your question on the response of the Pakistani state, one of the weak areas of the response now is the Pakistan state itself is in a very weak position compared with 2009. Today we have political instability, we have an economic meltdown, and we have these security issues. 

Unless the government is completely focused on dealing with the terrorism and is not consumed by these issues of economic survival, or political partisanship, the terrorists may survive for long. They take economic and political chaos in Pakistan as an opportunity. We need to act comprehensively against them, focusing equally on kinetic and non-kinetic measures, to defeat them in the long term. We have to drain the swamp that breeds them.

SN: What non-kinetic actions need to be taken?

TP: Non-kinetic actions means two or three things. Number one, countering the narrative of the TTP. Unless the narrative of the TTP resonates with the roots of the TTP and within their strongholds, they’re not likely to get volunteers. We didn’t do anything to counter that ideology. That is one area of a non-kinetic aspect that we ignored. A second area is that we took a very important decision of merging Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province with FATA districts. FATA was a stronghold of the terrorists. The feedback which I have gotten from the people there about the commitments made to the people of the FATA in terms of investments for their development were not fulfilled. So what has happened is that while we have formally and institutionally made former FATA part of the KP province, we did not follow up with the promises which we made, and the result of that is resentment amongst the local population which provides fertile ground for the TTP.  

Another factor that I think was a policy decision to open negotiations with the TPP. I think that was an ill-advised move, not well thought out. It was probably not inclusive. By inclusive, I mean having all points of views of the local inhabitants contributing to it. It was confined to a very small group of people who decided to go ahead with it. I remember police officers in Swat told me they were informing the government that there were reports by the local inhabitants of sighting Taliban, although in small groups, in their villages. It was pointed out that it may be a planned return of the Taliban to their villages in Swat. No one paid any heed to these police reports. And then the Taliban told the locals that “we are coming here as the result of an agreement. We have been allowed to leave Afghanistan and come back to our homes in the villages in Pakistan.” They expressed their surprise that the local police were not told about this agreement. The police weren’t aware of it, the local people weren’t aware of it. 

We were told by the decision makers that “they are Pakistanis, who had left their homes as a result of the military operations against the terrorists, and they have to come back to their country.” They are Pakistanis, certainly, but they are criminals, they are terrorists. I think we were in too much of a hurry or trying to be too generous in taking them back. But thank God, thank God the people of Swat protested in a very powerful way, against the return of these members of TTP back to their homes and villages. As a result of these massive public protests against the return of the TTP members, the government was forced to give up the repatriation and resettlement plan of these Afghanistan based TTP members.

SN: What are the ties between the TTP and Punjabi militant organizations?

TP: Before the TTP came into existence in 2007, we used to have two terrorist organizations based in Punjab, v.i.z. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which was focused exclusively on targeting Shias, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was Punjab-based and with strong roots in South Punjab. In fact, that was the mother organization that fed other jihadist Islamist militant groups. After the emergence of the TTP, militancy in Pakistan became predominantly, if not primarily, a Pakhtun phenomenon. And the Punjabis slowly slid into the background. Maybe there are some factions which did fight in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban against the Coalition forces. But, I think the link now is much weaker than it was. In fact, this is a very important point that you raise. The TTP might be looking for ties in the Punjab, to expand its activities to the biggest province of Pakistan, instead of confining itself to Pakhtun communities.  

Another important point I would like to highlight is the anti-Shia sentiment in Pakistan. The militant organizations which held anti-Shia agendas have gone into the background. But those elements of militancy in Afghanistan who are anti-Shia are looking for alternative sources of support. In Afghanistan, the Islamic State-Khorasan has a strongly anti-Shia agenda and is looking for allies in Pakistan. In the years ahead, we might witness a resurgence of sectarian terrorism in Punjab, through a liaison between the Afghanistan-based IS-K and anti-Shia militants, spread over into many religiously motivated terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad, even TTP, because all these militant organizations belong to the Sunni subsect of Deobandis, which has streaks of anti-Shiaism. 

SN: So, who needs to coordinate the fight against militancy and terrorism inside Pakistan? Will it be NACTA?

TP: Absolutely. In fact, that was the original rationale for NACTA. Based on my own experience, I found that one weak area of counter-terrorism was that the provinces were acting in silos. The federal government, its Intelligence Bureau (IB), and the provinces, were not in touch with each other. ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and IB were not partnering or sharing information. There was no formal structure for collaboration. Whatever happened was sort of informal, on a friendly basis or whatever. That is why I proposed that there should be an organization which gives unity to the anti-terrorism effort, and that has to be a civilian institution. I remember people used to ask me, you are setting up NACTA, what if the military doesn’t cooperate? My reply was that the basic problem is the lack of coordination between the civilian agencies. Even the provinces are not talking to each other. So in the first place let the civilian intelligence bureau, and other civilian agencies share that information, and then after the ISI would also join in. 

The main point that I want to make is that the need of NACTA is based on the fact that there is no oversight body to inform the government about the implementation of the various policy layers. I don’t know who is supposed to do it. 

A twenty-point National Action Plan to counter terrorism was formally launched after the Peshawar public school incident in December 2014. It was expressly stated in the National Action Plan that for every point (twenty in all, I was a member of that committee so I know), specific action plans will be drawn up with specific measurable objectives. And for that the PM (prime minister) of Pakistan at that time, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, set up thirteen committees. But no follow-up occurred, because NACTA could not play an effective role due to various reasons.

Second, while the set of players for kinetic action are the military and the criminal justice system, for non-kinetic measures, a different set of players is needed, maybe headed by media experts, IT (information technology) specialists, development experts, religious leaders, youth leaders, education experts, etc. Carrying out the non-kinetic aspect of counter-terrorism through military or police is not likely to be effective, because it is not their expertise or field. So if there is a civilian organization that would give greater importance to this effort, then let us move forward with that. 

A lot of initiatives to win the hearts and minds of youth are being taken in Balochistan, but when I meet the Baloch youth, they care about the disappearances. They forget the good part, but they remember that so-and-so’s brother was picked up, so-and-so has been killed. We have to take these views into account.

I think NACTA is the way forward, although at present I don’t think an all-powerful interior minister is going to let it go. But I remember the day you told me that the DG-ISI (director-general, Inter-Services Intelligence) had said to you that if NACTA reports to the prime minister, we will cooperate. I hope that comes to pass.

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Moderated by

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Shuja Nawaz

Distinguished Fellow

South Asia Center

Security & Defense Politics & Diplomacy

About Shuja Nawaz Other Pakistan Experts

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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Read Imran Khan’s full Atlantic Council interview on failed peace with India, Pakistan’s plight, and his own fate

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The post The unfinished efforts against terrorism and militancy in Pakistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Pavia in DAILY SABAH: Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa: Growing concerns of the West appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In Season 1, Episode 1 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi speaks with the author and former mercenary Dr. Sean McFate about his three-pronged strategy for defeating the Wagner Group. They also discuss internal dynamics within the Kremlin-linked private military company, the dangerously outsized influence of its leader in the war in Ukraine, and Sean’s argument that there’s nothing more unconventional today than a conventional war– and that this is borne out by the way that Russia is fighting in Ukraine.

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The Guns for Hire podcast is a production of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative. Taking Libya as its starting point, it explores the causes and implications of the growing use of mercenaries in armed conflict.

The podcast features guests from many walks of life, from ethicists and historians to former mercenary fighters. It seeks to understand what the normalisation of contract warfare tells us about the world as we currently find it, but also about the future of the international system and about what war could look like in the coming decades.

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To counter the Wagner Group’s presence in Africa, the US will need to prioritize stabilizing Libya

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The post Defeating the Wagner Group appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Editor’s note: We have decided to retract this article because it did not go through the Atlantic Council’s standard editorial process prior to publication and therefore did not meet our editorial standards. We regret the error.

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Security

Russian army advances toward Bakhmut, but its offensive capabilities remain unclear

Large-scale Russian air attack targets Ukrainian civilian infrastructure

Tracking narratives

Transnistria accuses Ukraine of staging a terrorist attack

Russian army advances toward Bakhmut, but its offensive capabilities remain unclear

The Russian army continues to carry out operations in the Bakhmut area, with heavy fighting occurring in recent days. The battle for Bakhmut has become the face of the war’s battlefield brutality. On March 8, Chechen fighters within the Ukrainian army shared footage of the mass destruction caused by the recent offensives there.

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on March 8 that Russian forces, boosted by Wagner troops, had captured all of eastern Bakhmut. The Institute for the Study of War, however, assessed that Wagner “appears to have entered a temporary tactical pause and it remains unclear if Wagner fighters will retain their operational preponderance in future.” According to Politico.eu, Ukrainian army commanders agreed on March 6 to strengthen positions in Bakhmut.  On March 7, Ukrainian forces conducted a controlled withdrawal from eastern Bakhmut. Admitting the possibility that Bakhmut could soon fall, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that the Russian capture of Bakhmut would not “necessarily reflect any turning point of the war,” though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed concern to CNN that the fall of Bakhmut would give Russia an “open road” to capture other Ukrainian cities. 

It is unclear whether Russian forces can afford an offensive to pressure the Ukrainian army west and south of Bakhmut, however. Ukraine has fortified its frontlines in recent months, creating more obstacles for Russia, which is experiencing a series of issues in its command structure due to ongoing divisions between the Russian military and Wagner leadership. Prigozhin stated that Russia used Wagner forces to bear the brunt of the fighting and bled the unit’s ranks.

The reported infighting and probable lack of sufficient forces in the Russian army to launch an offensive could explain a recent announcement posted in the popular pro-Russian Telegram channel VoenKor (“Military Correspondent”) claiming that Gazprom is creating and supporting volunteer units. Initial reports suggested that Gazprom wanted to pursue creating its own private military company. On February 6, the Kremlin authorized Gazprom to create a private security organization to protect Russia’s energy infrastructure. Competition for resources between units can be expected if Gazprom pursues the use of mercenary units on the battlefield.

Over the past week, Ukrainian security forces have carried out raids as part of an anti-infiltration and anti-espionage operation, with the focus primarily falling on the Odesa region. The Security Service of Ukraine said they had detained the former commander of one of Ukraine’s special operations teams who allegedly agreed to cooperate with Russian intelligence and convinced the authorities in Ochakiv to side with Russia. According to the Ukrainian news outlet Babel, the former commander is Eduard Shevchenko, who until 2017 led the 73rd SOF Marine Operations Center, and fought in Sloviansk and Debaltseve, but he was relieved of his command due to a PTSD diagnosis. Shevchenko did not agree with this decision and filed a lawsuit in administrative court. On September 7, 2017, the court recognized the actions of the military leadership as illegal and ordered Shevchenko to be re-examined by the commission. In 2018, the Odesa Administrative Court of Appeals overturned the decision of the Ochakiv District Court of Mykolaiv Oblast, allowing Shevchenko to continue his military service in the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Large-scale Russian air attack targets Ukrainian civilian infrastructure

In the early hours of March 9, Russia conducted coordinated large-scale airstrikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. The attack involved twenty-eight Kh-101 and Kh-555 air-surface missiles, twenty Kalibr missiles, thirteen S-300 anti-air missiles and eight Shahed UAVs. The Ukrainian Air Force posted a statement on Facebook indicating dozens of aircraft conducted the attack, including Tupolev Tu-95 and Tu-22M3, MiG-31K, and Su-35 fighters. Russia also launched at least a dozen hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, which Ukraine is unable to counter with its current air defense systems.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russia launched eighty-one missiles in total, with only thirty-four of them successfully intercepted.

Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu stated the attack was in retaliation to the Russian Volunteer Corps’ infiltration of western Russia’s Bryansk Oblast last week, which official Russian media is calling a “terror attack.” Ukraine denied involvement in the incident.

As a consequence of the attack, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada reported disturbances to the energy grids in the Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, and Odessa Oblasts. The nuclear power plant of Zaporizhzhia was disconnected from the Ukrainian power grid for eleven hours, according to Ukrenergo, which operates Ukraine’s electricity transmission system. Power was later restored to the plant.

A residential area was struck as a result of the attack in the Zolochiv region of Lviv Oblast, killing six people. Pro-Russian sources countered Ukrainian reports on the incident by shifting the blame to Ukrainian S-300 anti-air missiles, which they allege missed while targeting a Russian missile.

—Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Security, Brussels, Belgium

Transnistria accuses Ukraine of staging a terrorist attack

On March 9, the so-called Ministry of State Security (MGB) of Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region claimed that they had stopped a “terrorist attack” against local high-level officials purportedly planned “under the guidance of the Security Service of Ukraine.” The investigating committee of the unrecognized republic claimed that the people behind the attack had planned to target a busy street in the city center of Tiraspol. The committee released a report that said attackers “packed a car with Transnistrian license plates with explosives and other deadly materials.”

A video purportedly showing the vehicle was uploaded to the Telegram channel of Transnistrian state television. The post claimed that “eight kilograms of RDX, screws, nuts, and wire were placed in the automobile doors (to hit as many people as possible).” The same Telegram channel claimed, without evidence, that the explosives were moved from Ukraine through Moldova.

Vitali Ignatiev, the foreign minister of the breakaway region, claimed in an interview with Russia24 that the materials used in the purported incident were manufactured in Ukraine. “We are talking about materials and technical means, which indicate that they were manufactured in or were associated with Ukraine,” he stated. Ignatiev also noted that the self-proclaimed republic could appeal to the United Nations Security Council “to draw attention to this egregious situation.”

Ukrainian authorities denied the allegations. According to a statement released by the Security Service of Ukraine, they view this “exclusively as a provocation coordinated by the Kremlin.” The SBU denounced Russia for trying to “destabilize the situation in the territory that is actually occupied and under its control.”

Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Mihail Podolyak said the accusation was the “the third phase of Russia’s plan” for the region. The first part was releasing information that Ukraine would invade Transnistria, and the second part was an attempt to plan a coup in Chisinau. “Ukraine has no reason, no intention to carry out certain actions that can be qualified as a terrorist act,” he said. “We don’t need that, we have things to do on the battlefield. No act of terrorism on foreign soil will give us any advantage.” 

The Reintegration Bureau of Moldova commented on Facebook, “Information regarding a possible terrorist attack in the Transnistrian region of the Republic of Moldova is currently being investigated by the appropriate national authorities. The authorities will follow up with more information.”

In response to Transnistria’s claims, Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean said, “As of now, we have no evidence,” adding, “There is no threat of escalation. The Moldovan government is preoccupied with maintaining peace and addressing the ongoing provocations.”

Last month, Russia accused Ukraine of planning an invasion of Transnistria. Both Kyiv and Chisinau rejected the accusation. In another attempt to inflame anti-Ukraine rhetoric, Moscow expressed concern about the possibility of delivering radioactive substances to Ukraine through the port of Odesa, fearing a provocation in Transnistria.

—Victoria Olari, Research Assistant, Moldova

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On January 30, FD Nonresident Senior Fellow Thomas Warrick offered his expert opinion on the recent drones strikes in Iran conducted by Israel. Warrick argues Israel’s use of quadcopter drones in the strike not only left the Iranian regime humbled militarily and technologically, but also sent a strong reminder to the United States and the “need for more effective US action to disrupt Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.”

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Thomas S. Warrick

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Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

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The post Warrick in Estonian Free Press on Drone Stikes in Iran appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Security

Wagner forces attempt to encircle Bakhmut and cut off vital Ukrainian supply routes

Alleged Russian agent captured as Moscow restarts offensives on the Kreminna-Svatove line

Tracking narratives

Russia claims ‘panicked West’ sent tanks to Ukraine

Media policy

New Russian maps redraw borders to include eastern Ukraine

Wagner forces attempt to encircle Bakhmut and cut off vital Ukrainian supply routes

After gaining control over Soledar in mid-January, Wagner Group soldiers are attempting to encircle Bakhmut. The DFRLab confirmed the progression of a bloc of forces that includes Wagner, the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and Russian armed forces. At the end of January, Wagner shared a photo of its soldiers standing in front of a sign reading “Blahodatne” as evidence they had seized the village of the same name. On February 7, the Russian MoD also stated that it had seized Blahodatne. The small village is strategically located on the key Ukrainian E40 highway, which serves as a supply route to Krasna Hora and Bakhmut. A photo of a burning Russian tank geolocated by OSINT researcher @Neonhandrail suggests that attempts to cut off the supply route have thus far been unsuccessful. 

Meanwhile on the southern flank, Russian armed forces are trying to consolidate their progression towards Ivanivske. Only one division of the Ukrainian army, the 30th Mechanized Brigade, has had to repel a Russian incursion on the road between Bakhmut and Sloviansk.

On Telegram, a post by WarDonbass speculated that Wagner could have gained control over two southern supply routes to Bakhmut. However, there is no evidence to support this claim. Inside the city of Bakhmut, footage released by the Georgian legion of the Ukrainian army indicates that Ukraine is strengthening its defensive positions.

Further south, the DFRLab geolocated footage published by the Telegram channel ColonelCassad, which was then reposted on Wagner’s own Telegram channel. Videos of drone strikes on the northern and eastern part of Marinka indicate a violent escalation on the southern flank. The footage also shows rubble where a hospital once stood. 

—Valentin Châtelet, Research Associate, Brussels, Belgium

Alleged Russian agent captured as Moscow restarts offensives on the Kreminna-Svatove line

Ukrainian military intelligence announced on February 6 the capture of a Russian agent who allegedly leaked information about Ukrainian military operations in “a strategically important sector of the front.” The suspect was an official in a Ukrainian military unit. He was allegedly recruited by Russia after the start of the invasion.

Elsewhere, the Russian army launched limited offensives on February 7 along the Kreminna-Svatove line. Russian forces have made gains in the Dvorichna area, northwest of Svatove. Units that have been spotted on this front include regular units, special intelligence units, regiments from the 144th and 3rd Motor Rifle Division, a regiment from the 90th Tank Division, and the 76th Airborne Division. On February 9, Ukrainian forces appear to have destroyed a Russian BMPT Terminator armored vehicle near Kreminna, according to a visual report published by the UNIAN Telegram channel. If confirmed, this would be the first documented loss of such a vehicle, which is only available in limited supply. Days earlier, on February 6, Russian pro-government media published footage showing how Russian units in the area used these vehicles in a local counter-offensive in Kreminna.

Russian forces continue to attack towns across Ukraine, with Russian channels reporting missile attacks in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. On February 9, Ukrainian media reported that drones over Dnipro were downed. 

Ukrainian parliament voted in favor of bills N8360 and N8361-d, which provide an exemption from taxes and duties for drones, thermal imagers, collimators, walkie-talkies, and night vision devices. Yaroslav Zhelezniak, deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Tax and Customs Policy, clarified on his Telegram channel that radios were added to the bills after appeals from volunteer organizations. The adopted bills will remove import restrictions, allowing for the express shipment of some military equipment.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russia claims ‘panicked West’ sent tanks to Ukraine

Following the decision from Western allies to provide armored tanks to Ukraine, there has been an increase in Russian narratives opposing the decision. The state-owned news outlet RIA Novosti published an article aimed at ridiculing Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov. The article’s banner photo depicts Reznikov holding a model tank with the accompanying headline, “Germany handed over toy Leopard 2 to Ukraine.” The narrative appears aimed at casting doubt on the efficacy of Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks.

Along with the heightened focus from Russian media on the transfer of tanks, other narratives presented the latest military aid package as a reaction from a panicked West due to the successes of the Russian “special military operation.” The pro-Kremlin journal International Affairs referred to Germany’s decision to send in tanks as capitulation to external pressure and a rash political decision arising from the tensions caused by Russia’s military successes. In addition, Ukraine’s latest round of anti-corruption measures resulted in speculation about the possible resignation or dismissal of Defense Minister Reznikov. Major Kremlin-backed publications, including TASS, have directly followed the developments, highlighting corruption problems in Kyiv. Other narratives have outlined Reznikov’s alleged refusal to resign amid the corruption charges as a result of his purported blackmail capabilities against the top echelons of the Ukrainian military and defense leadership, while also casting into doubt Ukraine’s entire leadership and ability to function as a government.

—Kateryna Halstead, Research Assistant, Bologna, Italy

New Russian maps redraw borders to include eastern Ukraine

The Kremlin-approved media outlet RBC reported on February 8 that Russian bookstores are selling new maps that include Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts as part of Russia. The DFRLab found a version of this map for sale on the website of the Russian publishing company Atlas Print. 

Atlas Print Director Yuri Sukhanov spoke to RBC about how a bill in the Russian Duma “on countering extremist activity” prevented retailers from selling previous maps. The bill, which passed its first reading on December 20, 2022, stipulated that “extremist materials will include cartographic and other documents and images intended for distribution and public demonstration that dispute the territorial integrity of Russia.” The new maps appear to have been printed in response to the bill. According to Sukhanov, “There are large retail chains that are ready to sell only updated maps with the new borders of Russia.”

On September 23, 2022, Russia launched rigged referendums in Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Russian President Vladimir Putin then signed decrees to recognize Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as independent and held a ceremony to incorporate all four oblasts into Russian territory. The newly printed maps do not correspond with the reality on the ground. On November 12, 2022, Ukraine forced Russian troops out of Kherson as it regained control over the area.

—Nika Aleksejeva, Research Fellow, Riga, Latvia

The post Russian War Report: DFRLab confirms Russia’s push to encircle Bakhmut appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The recent chain of troubling events involving the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, wreaking havoc paints an alarming picture of rising instability across Pakistan. At a disturbing rate, the TTP has killed members of Pakistan’s security services, brazenly broken into a prison, breached military checkpoints, attacked mosques, and undermined Pakistanis’ confidence in their government’s assurance of security. Amid Pakistan’s toxic political scene, the TTP threat has accelerated the danger of many smoldering fires across Pakistan’s sprawling network of jihadists waiting to be lit.

Alas, despite Pakistan’s spirited crisis marketing, much of the country’s internal upheaval is a consequence of its own making. Amid the complex of a divided nation stoked by anti-Americanism and on the brink of financial default, the government’s discriminatory treatment of ethnic Pashtuns and indigenous communities has steadily weaponized local grievances against the state. The Pakistani establishment has treated those communities effectively as a colony, disenfranchising the population and creating an extremist mercurial street. Historically, Pashtuns have not taken pleasure in how they are viewed as solid fighters, but rather that they are survivalists. And today, the establishment fears moderate Pashtuns more than extremist ones like the Pakistani Taliban. To be sure, the Pakistani Taliban are neither Afghan nor Indian, but disgruntled ordinary Pakistanis who are waging a dangerous domestic insurgency against the state.

But they are not alone in their struggle.

For years, the TTP delivered significant operational support to their ideological siblings in the Afghan Taliban and later romanticized the Taliban’s reclaiming of their lost emirate. For the TTP, the Afghan Taliban’s takeover presented an important victory template—a model the former has shrewdly followed to carve out its own Sharia-compliant territory inside Pakistan. To do so, elements within the Afghan Taliban have returned the favor to select TTP factions for their historical cooperation, including offering some TTP members refuge inside Afghanistan while also delivering others to Pakistan. Scores of TTP members have since relocated to Afghanistan—a bitter reality for ordinary Afghans who often derisively identify certain Afghan districts as the “TTP districts,” whose members despise being referred to as “foreign fighters.”

Quite fatefully, the Pakistani Taliban has slowly mutated into a reverse insurgency, tactically supported by elements within the Taliban government who ironically owe their own victory to Pakistan. This epiphenomenon has turned the tables against Islamabad—a cruel irony in which Pakistan’s stability is threatened by its own Taliban while also betrayed by old friends in the Taliban government. Predictably, the phenomenon has created tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban government and has put the latter in a tough spot, especially over Islamabad’s demands that the Taliban rulers contain the TTP inside Afghanistan.

But what has often been ignored by Pakistani leaders is that the TTP is not a monolithic organization, but a consortium of various spinoffs and breakaway factions craftily coalesced under the current leader, Noor Wali Mehsud. Beyond their partners in the Taliban’s government, this consortium today enjoys strong tactical relationships and transactional alliances with several competing groups. It involves al-Qaeda, militant Uyghurs, Pakistani and Iranian Baloch groups, Islamic State-Khorasan Province, Uzbek jihadists like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Katibat Imam al-Bukhari, as well as scores of unaffiliated jihadists. Once regarded as proxy groups, most of these jihadists now command their own proxies. This ineffable network ensures that the TTP does not face a shortage of volunteers or resources like weaponry, raw materials, and fertilizers used in explosives, nor encounter logistic hurdles, problems accessing the black market, or finding targets to hit.

For their part, the Afghan Taliban are either tied by kinship or owe gratitude to these groups for years of collaboration—and thus appear unwilling or unable to control them.

In this frenzy, Pakistan has tried sending a message to the Taliban government by conducting sporadic cross-border strikes against TTP hideouts in Afghanistan, including in eastern Kunar and Khost provinces. While those strikes likely had the blessings of senior Haqqani Taliban—Pakistan’s all-weather friend and a governing partner in the Afghan Taliban’s government—other powerful factions in the southern Taliban have objected to these attacks. This includes the Taliban’s defense minister, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, who publicly warned Pakistan against such operations.

As these developments unfold, it remains to be seen how they will shape Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban government, particularly the southern Taliban. But it is more important to watch how the TTP’s partnership with the Taliban government might evolve, especially if the Haqqani Taliban sign off on future Pakistani operations. These brewing tensions portend an unequal cost for the Taliban government, likely benefiting southern Taliban rulers but straining the TTP’s ties with the Haqqani Taliban. Further Pakistani attacks against TTP camps in Afghanistan (if carried out with the Haqqani Taliban’s blessing) also risk fueling tribal tensions between the TTP and the Haqqanis, who have historically clashed.

For now, the Haqqani Taliban have played “peacemaker” between the TTP and the Pakistani state, which resulted in a rushed ceasefire agreement that soon collapsed. One important factor behind the failed agreement was arguably the duplicitous role Pakistan played during the talks with TTP. Pakistan exploited the dialogue as a trap to lure senior TTP commanders out of the woods to the negotiating table—only to target and kill several of them under the Taliban’s watch inside Afghanistan.

To be sure, even though Pakistan has claimed plausible deniability for the killings, the Pakistani Taliban are no fools and scrapped the ceasefire agreement. Whether those assassinations were endorsed by the Afghan Taliban or not, it certainly put them in a tricky position with the Pakistani Taliban. Although the Taliban rulers have since taken remedial actions to relocate many TTP members, it would be foolish for Pakistan to again expect the Afghan Taliban’s divine intervention towards facilitating another TTP dialogue. But even if the Taliban government initiates another dialogue by securing concrete security guarantees from Pakistan, it is unlikely that the TTP will participate at a senior level.

For now, the Taliban government will be reluctant to endanger its multilayered partnership with the TTP, primarily because it cannot afford to turn them into an enemy. Despite Pakistan’s recent assassinations of senior TTP members in Afghan territory, the Pakistani Taliban and the Taliban government have managed to stick together as codependents, believing their ultimate survival depends on it. As a result, the Pakistani establishment has openly flirted with the idea of expanded cross-border operations against the TTP inside Afghanistan. Yet, the establishment appears to have deferred the final decision for a signoff in Washington, principally because Pakistan needs US resources to fight it. But expanded cross-border operations carry a greater risk of making Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban government yet more unmanageable.

Going forward, three key developments could complicate Pakistani efforts against the TTP.

1. The Pakistani Taliban are likely to change their operational tactics and push for territorial gains inside the country. This could involve adjustments in TTP operational fieldcraft, arsenal, networks of facilitators, and how they pick targets, including those involving the Chinese. Already, Pakistani authorities have acknowledged that the suicide bomber at this week’s mosque attack received help from the government’s security forces. This speaks volumes about the TTP’s deep informant network to identify key target locations, including those veiled in the middle of cities. Meanwhile, the group’s lethality will grow as it expands its tactical collaborations with the regional network of commercial or unaffiliated jihadists.
2. Pakistani leaders need to rethink how this homegrown threat has shifted public sympathy in local communities away from Pakistani soldiers and towards extremists. Consider this: when ordinary people in affected communities refuse to offer funeral prayers to the slain members of Pakistan’s army or police, it should raise eyebrows among the country’s establishment. To an extent, this has made the establishment wary to direct its army to take extreme measures against the Pakistani Taliban.
3. While the TTP is not Washington’s fight, Pakistan has sought US support and resources to fight it. Some targeted US assistance is likely to follow, but should the fight take Pakistan deep into Afghan territory, it would seriously escalate tensions with the Taliban government and the Afghan people. In such an event, it is not unlikely to expect more overt Taliban government support for the Pakistani Taliban.

For now, Islamabad faces a lose-lose scenario against the TTP in which its loss will be bigger than the Pakistani Taliban. But it is not too late for Pakistan to stop peeling the banana from the wrong end. Wholesale anti-TTP operations will not only strain its limited resources but also open a bloody Pandora’s box.

Instead, the Pakistani government could expand basic policing work inside the country and engage in a no-nonsense dialogue with the TTP, involving hard tradeoffs and compromises. The alternative risks Pakistan becoming another Lebanon.

Javid Ahmad is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and a nonresident scholar with the Middle East Institute. On Twitter: @ahmadjavid

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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The post <strong>For Pakistan, dealing with its Taliban problem is a walk on eggshells</strong> appeared first on Atlantic Council.

With violence escalating once again, Netanyahu will be under pressure from members of his cabinet and his right-wing base to enact tougher measures against Palestinians. But if the prime minister is to achieve his long-sought goal of normalization with Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, he will have to find a way to end the bloodshed—and keep a lid on his far-right ministers who too often only inflame tensions.

In recent days, international condemnations poured in quickly against both the Jenin raid and the synagogue attack. Saudi Arabia called the raid a “serious violations of international law” and advocated for an “end to the occupation.” The statement was followed by criticism from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Oman. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Netanyahu on Monday, called the East Jerusalem attack “abhorrent,” while Saudi Arabia said it “condemns all targeting of civilians,” a rare show of support to Israel.

This renewed wave of violence is the culimination of tensions that have been mounting between Israelis and Palestinians ever since Netanyahu’s government took office in early January. On January 3, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir staged a provocative visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—also known as the Al-Aqsa Mosque—the holiest site for Jews and third-holiest for Muslims, where a delicate status quo allows only Muslims to pray, with Israel overseeing the security of the site and Jordan managing its religious buildings. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two countries involved in normalization and peace talks with Israel, called the visit an “attack” on the holy site. (Netanyahu was forced to postpone a trip to Abu Dhabi that was slated to be his first official foreign visit since becoming prime minister again.) Oman, a country that many had believed was next in line to sign the Abraham Accords, outlawed any relations with Israel. While Oman’s decision was most likely an appeasement strategy toward Iran, Ben-Gvir’s actions gave the sultanate the perfect way out.

The security minister has become the face of the most far-right faction of Netanyahu’s new cabinet. Ben-Gvir has advocated for reinstating the death penalty for Palestinians sentenced of crimes against Jews, was convicted of terrorism incitement in 2007, and supports unilaterally ending the agreement about the Temple Mount that has been in place since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967. After visiting the Temple Mount, Ben-Gvir continued his stream of contentious behavior when he ordered the removal of Palestinian flags from public spaces.

It’s not just Ben-Gvir stirring the pot. Netanyahu’s new cabinet includes ministers who have called for the annexation of the entire West Bank, are activitely limiting Israel’s Supreme Court’s powers through a deeply controversial justice reform, are fervently against the LGBTQ+ community, wish to reduce women’s rights in the military, and seek to limit Jewish immigration to Israel only to those who fit the Orthodox criteria. More recently, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted about his refusal to cooperate with the United Arab List party, while the new Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar seeks to either completely halt or significantly reduce state funding to artwork and movies that in his view offend Israel.

Netanyahu has far greater plans for Israel than solely steering the country to the far right on domestic issues. Internationally, Netanyahu’s most ambitious goal is to expand the Abraham Accords’ reach to include Saudi Arabia, a once far-fetched notion that has become more realistic given the two countries’ recent rapprochement. Normalization would be a major diplomatic win for Netanyahu, as it would help define his legacy, bring about enormous economic gains for the region, and pave the way for other Arab and Muslim-majority countries to normalize ties with the Jewish state. Netanyahu has made this point clear time and time again, most recently stating that normalization with Saudi Arabia would be a “quantum leap” for peace with Palestinians and pressuring the Biden administration to move past the murder of Saudi journalist (and US resident) Jamal Khashoggi and “reaffirm” its alliance with Saudi Arabia.

Whether Saudi Arabia also intends to negotiate a peace deal with Israel is the multi-billion-dollar question. The kingdom certainly views the deal as advantageous, first and foremost for security reasons.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia view Iran as the most acute threat in the region, and a peace deal would strengthen the anti-Iran bloc that the Abraham Accords has already established through the Bahrain-UAE-Israel alliance. Additionally, a deal with Israel would strengthen Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman’s (MBS) attempts to show Western allies that he is a moderate leader and Saudi Arabia is a moderate country, a quest he has been pursuing since 2018 when he approved a series of reforms to reduce the country’s strict adherence to Islamic law, including wide-reaching reforms ameliorating women’s lives in the kingdom.

It would also undoubtedly help restore the longstanding US-Saudi alliance, which has seen major setbacks since the 2018 killing of Khashoggi (for which the Central Intelligence Agency found MBS responsible) and last year’s Saudi agreement with Russia to cut oil production—which led US President Joe Biden to vow unspecified “consequences” for the kingdom. MBS reportedly told a visiting delegation of Americans that he had three main demands of Washington in exchange for peace with Israel: assurance over the strength of the US-Saudi alliance, consistent weapons supplies, and a deal allowing a civilian nuclear program.

However, Saudi Arabia is also a historic champion of the Palestinian cause, and it has made it clear on several occasions that normalization with Israel must come hand-in hand with the creation of a Palestinian state. At the recent Davos conference, Prince Faisal bin Farhan claimed that peace with Israel will only come by “giving the Palestinians a state”—and it’s hard to imagine Israel’s current government ever agreeing to that. Saudi Arabia is also home to Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest sites, and is keen to maintain its legitimacy as their rightful religious custodian in the eyes of the Muslim world.

A careful reading of the tea leaves shows that Netanyahu may, in fact, be able to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia without a two-state solution. But actions by his far-right ministers and his own further crackdowns on Palestinians may push Arab countries further away from normalization. Support for the Palestinians is still a uniting (perhaps the only uniting) cause among the Arab world, as evidenced by the most recent Arab Barometer survey, which indicated that the vast majority of citizens in most Arab countries still oppose normalization with Israel. At the Qatar World Cup, soccer players and fans alike showed their support for the cause by brandishing Palestinian flags on multiple occasions.

Netanyahu is showing a willingness to save face with his Arab neighbors at the expense of political allies at home. He recently backed the Israel defense minister’s decision to evacuate an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank, creating fractures within his coalition, as Netanyahu defied Smotrich, who leads the far-right Religious Zionism Party. Netanyahu also paid a surprise visit to King Abdullah in Jordan, home to some three million Palestinians.

The Abraham Accords are undoubtedly a significant milestone for peace and prosperity in the region. The Accords could generate up to one trillion dollars in new economic activity if everything goes as planned and new countries normalize ties with Israel. They would create new jobs, incentivize trade, and create new business opportunities for millions. Yet, if left unchecked, Netanyahu’s far-right ministers will make it harder to continue on this trajectory. Witness how after Netanyahu’s surprise Jordan visit, Ben-Gvir stated that he will continue to “go up to the Temple Mount” regardless of Jordan’s stances on the matter.

If Netanyahu wants to move forward with his most ambitious foreign-policy aim, he will need to find a way to tamp down the right-wing domestic political theater—including from his own ministers—and make things right with his putative Arab allies. And none of that is possible unless he is able to first stop this cycle of violence.

Alissa Pavia is an associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.

The post Escalating violence and right-wing provocations are threatening Netanyahu’s Abraham Accords agenda appeared first on Atlantic Council.

1. What’s the back story on this assassination plot?

This was an escalation from a previously disrupted Iranian government plot to kidnap the same journalist, Masih Alinejad. What makes this case different is that, thanks to the efforts of the FBI and foreign partners, all three plotters are now in custody.

—Thomas S. Warrick is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice and a former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security.

While not named in the indictment, the journalist in question is Alinejad, a fierce critic of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its discriminatory gender-based policies. The events in the indictment relate to events in July, which predate the tragic killing of Mahsa Jina Amini—a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who died in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s so-called “morality police” in September—which sparked nationwide protests in Iran that continue to this day. 

There can be no mistake that the efforts of the Islamic Republic to surveil, harass, kidnap, and even kill Iranian dissidents outside of Iran will have only accelerated in recent months, given the ferocity of the opposition to the regime and the critical role of advocates outside of Iran to convince governments to support a foreign policy that supports the Iranian people, not the Islamic Republic. Hacked emails circulating on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-controlled Telegram channels, videos of personal moments obtained through surveillance technology, and unwanted visits from hit men paid by the Islamic Republic are just some of the ways the Islamic Republic is seeking to intimidate and threaten those outside of Iran’s borders into submission and to quell the exercise of their freedom of speech, association, and assembly. Law enforcement around the world will be dealing with more and more requests to look into threats. Their ability to deal with the patterns inherent in this transnational repression will be key to the safety of regime opponents abroad.  

—Gissou Nia is the director of the Strategic Litigation Project and a human-rights attorney.

2. What does this plot say about Iran’s capabilities and ambition when it comes to targeting regime opponents overseas?

​​Tehran funnels resources to the IRGC for a strategy that relies on geographic unpredictability and plausible deniability for both deterrence and offense: You don’t know when or where we’ll hit you. And when we do, you can’t prove it was us. The unpredictability still works in their favor, but plausible deniability proved fully eroded in 2019 at the United Nations General Assembly when European countries for the first time held Iran accountable for attacks, that time on Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq. Since then, Western intelligence services beyond just the United States stepped up monitoring and collection and have foiled Tehran’s plots to strike abroad. However, the regime’s external strike ambition remains, and its strategy now seems to rely on luck and numbers: You may know when and where we wanted to hit you this time, but we just need to get lucky once to prove resilience.

—Kirsten Fontenrose is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former senior director for the Gulf on the US National Security Council.

As outrageous as this plot was, it is the latest in a long history of the current Iranian government’s willingness to commit murder on US soil. There was, for example, the 1979 murder of Ali Akbar Tabatabai in Bethesda, Maryland, and the 2011 plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States and others in a Washington restaurant.

—Thomas S. Warrick

3. How much of a threat is Iran to the US homeland, and what more can the United States do to stop it?

US administrations of both parties have understandably given top priority in recent years to radically different approaches to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian officials, the IRGC, and many state-owned and private businesses in Iran are under some of the world’s toughest economic sanctions, even though many of these sanctions are unilateral by the United States.

The fact that three individuals are now in custody for a plot to kill Alinejad is a welcome advancement. They will face justice. But today’s announcement also highlights that conventional thinking about deterrence—including even the occasional military reprisal, such as the 2020 strike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani—has failed to deter Iran from continuing to sponsor terrorist attacks on US soil. There are, however, other methods, including working closely with allies to isolate the Iranian regime, that have proven successful in changing Iranian behavior. Iran has vulnerabilities. The United States now needs to broaden its focus beyond just the nuclear program to build an alliance that can succeed in changing the behavior of the current Iranian government, even as Iran’s own citizens try to open up their society in ways that will end the need for arrests like the ones announced today.

—Thomas S. Warrick 

Iran bungled its attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States at Café Milano in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood in 2011 and has not displayed the same ham-handedness in plots since. The United States nearly bungled its attempt to prevent that assassination and learned lessons about coordinating between intelligence services and processing gathered intelligence.

But since nothing in Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, cruise missile, or drone arsenals can reach the US homeland, Iran still relies on targeting individuals. Americans live and travel globally, so the globe is target-rich. The United States can’t round up all Americans into a homeland corral, so ways to reduce risk are to continue working with (and sometimes pressuring) other nations to make it tougher for Iranian operatives to travel outside of Iran, and to disincentivize these plots by revoking the visas that allow former plotters’ families to live safely in the West.  

—Kirsten Fontenrose

The post What will it take to deter Iran from targeting opponents inside the US? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Younus in Newlines Institute: With no help from Kabul, Pakistan faces the TTP threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Samad in The Diplomat: The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan is back. Washington should take note. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Even as recently as November 2019, some prominent politicians and opinion-makers were challenging the value, effectiveness, and functionality of NATO. In just two years from that date, when credible intelligence indicated in late 2021 that serious military preparations by Russia were underway, which later resulted in the form of its “special operation” in Ukraine, that doubtful approach was quickly replaced with a renewed trust in NATO.

In fact, the Alliance has always found consensus for practical solutions enabling its inner preparations. In reality, timely defensive measures and increasing defense investments since 2014 by allies had already been yielding concrete results beyond expectations, thereby ensuring overall deterrence and defense at least in certain frontiers. Yet, the image created following the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 as well as less-than-satisfactory cooperation in the fight against terrorism, especially against PKK and its extensions or affiliated terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, have created some question marks about the Alliance’s coherence and solidarity.

Observing existing shortfalls and developing an understanding toward further adaptation needs of the Alliance in a rapidly changing security environment, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has demonstrated remarkable leadership in preserving the Allied unity and preparing NATO for the new decade. Upon his initiative, intensive Allied consultations took place with a view to developing and implementing the NATO 2030 Agenda and considerable progress was achieved in areas and domains that had not been addressed earlier. With subsequent historic decisions taken at NATO’s Madrid Summit on June 28-30, 2022, including on a new Strategic Concept, the purpose, fundamental principles, and core tasks of the Alliance have been reaffirmed and the course to be followed by NATO and Allies in the coming decade has become clearer.

The strategic vision discussed and adopted in Madrid at the highest level by leaders, reflects, as required, a genuine 360-degree approach to Allied security, and a renewed determination in addressing the full range of threats and challenges the Alliance and Allies are expected to face in the coming decade. This transformative vision, which is fully incorporated into the new Strategic Concept, is based on the indivisibility of security for each and every Ally. The principle of the indivisibility of security stems from the very foundation of the NATO Alliance, constituting the center of gravity, which is unity among all Allies. This is and will remain a sine qua non for any credible deterrence and defense that should be carried forward in an integrated manner for the Alliance and Allies as a whole.

It is not a coincidence that Article 1 of the new Strategic Concept reads: “NATO is determined to safeguard the freedom and security of Allies. Its key purpose and greatest responsibility is to ensure our collective defence, against all threats, from all directions. We are a defensive Alliance.”

This language should be clear enough. Yet, how the principle of indivisibility is going to be applied and to what extent all core tasks defined in the new Strategic Concept are to be implemented in practice will determine the level of success as well as the future relevance of NATO. If they are interpreted in a narrower sense and allowed to be implemented only to focus on collective defense for a number of selected Allies that are currently considered as those most exposed to Article 5–type threats, while the remaining core tasks including countering terrorism that is essential to our collective defense as defined in Article 34 of the new Strategic Concept are arbitrarily left mostly at the discretion of other “partner organizations” and/or “coalitions of the willing led by one or few Allies,” the center of gravity cannot be maintained. Such an exclusive and short-sighted approach would not only undermine the unity among Allies by leaving certain threats unaddressed, but also lead to an unnecessary duplication of efforts with other partner organizations, resulting in an ultimate and inevitable inertia or, worse, a cacophony in overall security and defense efforts.

In order to prevent such an undesirable eventuality, Article 3 of the new Strategic Concept provides the necessary guidance: “NATO is the unique, essential and indispensable transatlantic forum to consult, coordinate and act on all matters related to our individual and collective security. We will strengthen our Alliance based on our indivisible security, solidarity, and ironclad commitment to defend each other, as enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Our ability to deter and defend is the backbone of that commitment.”

The successful deterrence of Article 5– or “near Article 5”–type threats so far cannot and should not be taken for granted in the mid to long term since the Alliance and Allies would be facing so many diverse threats and challenges from many directions and domains. Only a truly genuine, inclusive, and comprehensive approach to security can ensure a sustainable and continuous deterrence and defense for the whole Euro-Atlantic area. A division of labor between NATO and the European Union as contemplated by some would be counterproductive and inevitably lead to bifurcation of defense efforts. Under all circumstances, we must take into account the fact that there is only one single set of forces and one single budgetary framework of resources available for any Ally. 

At a time of increasingly dangerous great-power competition and given the existence of so many diverse challenges and threats as well as huge uncertainties that are extremely difficult to predict, it is inconceivable and self-defeating to insist on senseless blue-on-blue sanctions and restrictions. They are not only detrimental to the very foundations of this Alliance, but also in gross contradiction with the letter and spirit of the North Atlantic Treaty.

NATO is not a simple “military Alliance” or a “military toolbox” as contemplated by some. It is an Alliance among thirty free and democratic member states. The parties to the Washington Treaty agree that an armed attack against one or more of them shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently agree that they will assist each other in exercising the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. This cannot be achieved without full solidarity among all Allies also in the political and economic spheres as well as being together in addressing all other relevant aspects of resilience. It is not a coincidence that Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty stipulates the following: “In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”

The signing of the Trilateral Memorandum among Türkiye, Sweden, and Finland on June 28, 2022, was a decisive contribution to the overall success of the Madrid Summit, which enabled their invitation at the summit to become members of NATO. It has set the standards for being a better ally. As prospective NATO allies, Finland and Sweden committed “to prevent activities of the PKK and all other terrorist organisations and their extensions, as well as activities by individuals in affiliated and inspired groups or networks linked to these terrorist organisations.” By doing so, they have not only extended their “full support to Türkiye against threats to its national security”; they also confirmed that there would be no national arms embargoes among the three parties.

Türkiye, having the second-largest armed forces in the Alliance, being the fifth-biggest contributor to NATO’s many missions and operations, being the eight-largest contributor to the Allied common-funded programs and budgets, is an indispensable and irreplaceable major NATO Ally with its hugely critical geopolitical importance at the southeastern flank of the Alliance. Full and genuine solidarity with Türkiye is the minimum required responsibility that other Allies must demonstrate now.

Ambassador Basat Öztürk is the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Türkiye to NATO.

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Public Event Tue, December 20, 2022 • 4:00 pm ET

A conversation with Foreign Minister of Pakistan Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – The South Asia Center hosted a conversation on the Pakistani government’s foreign policy goals, opportunities for deepening the Pakistan-US relationship, and Pakistan’s plan to address the climate crisis and resulting economic challenges.

Climate Change & Climate Action Economy & Business Pakistan Politics & Diplomacy

The role Pakistan plays in the international scene may depend on how the global community responds to its growing litany of challenges, as the South Asian nation grapples with heightened political and economic insecurity, as well as the aftermath of a historically devastating monsoon season.

“The way in which we engage with each of these issues, the solutions we find for them, and our ability to implement those solutions will decide the direction of Pakistan’s policy in the coming decade, two decades… and it will decide the direction of Pakistan’s foreign policy in the times to come,” said Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday at an Atlantic Council Front Page event in Washington.

Pakistan’s youngest ever foreign minister— the thirty-four-year-old whose mother was prime minister and father was president assumed the post in April under the new government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif—spoke at length about the mounting challenges his nation is facing and his vision for rallying the international community to address them. Read on for more highlights from his remarks and conversation with Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Council’s South Asia Center.

Coping with climate disaster

• “We experienced this year what can only be described as a climate catastrophe of biblical proportions,” Bhutto Zardari said of the monsoons that raged over Pakistan from June until the end of September, affecting thirty-three million people, roughly one in seven Pakistanis. By the time the rains had stopped, one third of Pakistan’s land mass—an area roughly the size of Colorado—was underwater, with damages topping thirty billion dollars.
• Nations could see serious geopolitical consequences if Pakistan’s already teetering institutions worsen. “If we get this wrong, this is a crisis situation waiting to explode in our faces,” Bhutto Zardari said, even as he acknowledged that asking for humanitarian relief funds was a challenge given the fiscal constraints on economic powers because of COVID-19, inflation, and Russia’s war against Ukraine.
• However, Bhutto Zardari hoped nations would rally to help Pakistani citizens now and use it as a test case for building resilience against future climate disasters, wherever they should next arise. “Granted it will take time, but once we address their needs and we rebuild, we can do so in a manner that they are better off than they were before,” Bhutto Zardari said.

More than security

• In the past decade, Bhutto Zardari said that 90 percent of US-Pakistan conversations were focused around counterterrorism. Now the agenda has broadened to include everything from climate to agriculture to health care. “We have a far more comprehensive itinerary around which we are engaging,” he said.
• Still, particularly after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year, security remains a critical discussion. Bhutto Zardari said he would try to work with the Taliban, particularly when it comes to striking back against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan terrorist organization. “We can’t change what happened in the past” in Afghanistan, Bhutto Zardari said. “What we can do is be serious about what we’re going to do going forward. Are we going to learn from our mistakes?” The answer, he added, will define “the safety and stability of our region.”
• Bhutto Zardari recently visited Singapore and Indonesia, the latter of which is the world’s largest Muslim nation yet doesn’t even have a direct flight to Pakistan. He imagines Pakistan could become a hub between Southeast Asian and Central Asian nations. “In order to get there, I need to get my house in order,” he said.
• “Of course, it’s far more appetizing, the less chaos we have,” Bhutto Zardari said, adding that there are “definitely” still questions about Pakistan’s political and economic stability. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not trying to address it. Questions? Yes. But does it mean shutting the door? No.” 

His investment pitch

• Pakistan hopes to expand and deepen its financial arrangements with a broader group of partners, particularly after it was removed in October from the “gray list” for terrorism financing operated by the global watchdog Financial Action Task Force—although this week’s hostage crisis hasn’t helped assuage Pakistan’s reputation for insecurity. “The main selling point we have is that we can become a logistical and trade hub… it’s the geographical location,” Bhutto Zardari said.
• The challenges facing Pakistan represent a major risk for businesses, but that risk also is a key part of Bhutto Zardari’s message to investors as he believes the country will be a story of opportunity within a decade or two. “My pitch to everyone is get in now, while you can—when everyone doesn’t see that opportunity—so you can maximize your benefit later.”
• Google has opened an office in Pakistan, and Meta has invested in fiber optic cable infrastructure. Bhutto Zardari noted that Facebook accepts rupees and could pursue a monetization model that rewards content creators in Pakistan. However, existing “data protection” policies—including Pakistan’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act of 2016—have kept tech companies from fully investing in the country, with Bhutto Zardari revealing that Pakistan leads the world in requests to remove content on Facebook. 

Nick Fouriezos is a writer with more than a decade of journalism experience around the globe.

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Security

Heavy fighting in the Bakhmut trenches as Russia continues to attack critical Ukrainian infrastructure

Tracking narratives

Russian Telegram channel spreads digitally modified photo of Poland’s prime minister

War crimes and human rights abuses

New reports of Russian forces killing Ukrainian civilians

International response

European Parliament declares Russia a state sponsor of terrorism

US, Bulgaria, Lithuania expand support efforts

Heavy fighting in the Bakhmut trenches as Russia continues to attack critical Ukrainian infrastructure

The Russian army has been implementing defensive facilities in the Kherson region since October, preparing for either a Ukrainian army advance or an organized retreat. Russian forces remain entrenched in various parts of Kherson and southern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces reportedly damaged a rail bridge north of Melitopol that served as a critical supply route for Russian troops. 

After the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson, Russian forces are likely to increase attacks on critical infrastructure, such as factories and warehouses. On November 19, the Russian armed forces attacked the Motor Sich plant in Zaporizhzhia with Iranian drones. Video emerged on Telegram of explosions at the site of the attack. The plant manufactures aircraft engines and industrial marine gas turbines.  

Russian forces are also expected to escalate the front line in the Donetsk region after the retreat at Kherson. The situation remains dire in Bakhmut, a strategically important city that has seen months of fighting as Russia attempts to capture the territory, which would provide the Russian army with an opportunity to launch an offensive. According to the Guardian, hundreds of soldiers from both sides are killed or wounded on the Bakhmut front on a daily basis. The fighting on the front includes artillery fire, with Ukrainian forces managing to inflict losses on Russian units with precision-guided shells. Bakhmut is heavily fortified and has sustained significant damage. Ukrainian forces also conduct patrols inside the city, fearing possible infiltration behind the defensive line.  

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was shelled on November 19 and November 20, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which warned that such attacks risk causing a nuclear disaster. Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the attack on the facility, which is in Russian-controlled territory. While some media reports claim Russian forces are preparing to abandon the Zaporizhzhia power plant, the Kremlin denies it plans to leave the facility. The Russian wartime administration recently promoted the chief engineer of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to director.  

On November 23, Russia launched a large-scale missile attack targeting different regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv, where a missile hit a high-rise building. Strikes took place on critical infrastructure facilities across Ukraine, causing electrical outages that stretched from Kyiv to the western city of Lviv. Meanwhile, Moldova also experienced electrical outages as a result of the shelling in Ukraine, including in the occupied region of Transnistria. On December 1, electricity in Kherson was cut due to Russian shelling. Ukrainian authorities, fearing new attacks, began evacuating civilians from recently liberated areas of Kherson and Mykolaiv. Attacks targeting energy infrastructure will likely continue during the winter months and the new year.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russian Telegram channel spreads digitally modified photo of Poland’s prime minister

On November 26, a Russian Telegram channel disseminated a manipulated photo showing Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at a Stepan Bandera monument during his visit to Ukraine. The image was digitally modified, with the original photo of the prime minister taken at a memorial to Holodomor victims. The Russian Telegram channel Ненасытный Гардемарин (“Insatiable Gardes-Marine”) shared a false quote they alleged to have come from Morawiecki: “The memory of this great fighter against Russians will remain in our hearts forever. Bandera has always been a great friend of the Polish people.”  

Stepan Bandera is a polarizing figure in Poland and Ukraine for his role in the massacre of Polish civilians in 1943-1944. The Polish fact-checking platform Konkret 24 confirmed the alleged photo at the Bandera monument was digitally modified. The prime minister’s office published authentic images taken during Morawiecki’s visit to a monument for Holodomor victims in Kyiv, where he laid a symbolic wreath. The forgery extracted the prime minister and his companion’s bodies from the original photo, flipped the image, and then added it to a photo of the Stepan Bandera statue. A Yandex reverse image search revealed that the photo of the Stepan Bandera statue previously appeared on multiple websites, including Wikipedia.

Two days before Morawiecki’s visit to Kyiv, pro-Kremlin Russian Telegram channels also spread images of forged questionnaires allegedly prepared by the Polish embassy in Ukraine. The pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Украина.ру (Ukraine.ru) asserted that the embassy organized the questionnaires to ask Ukrainian citizens whether they wanted to be under a Polish “protectorate.” The Telegram post also included a photo of a forged letter addressed to the Polish the consuls general in the Ukrainian cities of Lutsk and Lviv, asking them to conduct public opinion polls in Lviv and Volyn. According to the letter, the Consuls should submit the results of the polls to the embassy no later than November 21.  

The Telegram post also contained a video of a printer making copies of the questionnaires. The documents contained the logos of two Polish organizations, the White Eagle Association of Poles (Orzeł Biały) and the Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation (PAUCI). The forged documents are written in Ukrainian. Konkret24 translated the documents and found three questions visible in the video regarding the respondent’s nationality, whether they count on Poland increasing support for Ukraine, and a partially obscured question appearing to ask their thoughts on a Polish protectorate over the Volyn region.  

A spokesperson for the Polish foreign ministry denied the questionnaires were authentic. “Entries regarding the preparations for the referendum on joining the western regions of Ukraine to Poland are disinformation,” he stated.  

The alleged forgery appears to be another attempt to trigger disputes between Poland and Ukraine. The DFRLab has previously reported on similar false claims that Poland intends to occupy the Western part of Ukraine.

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

New reports of Russian forces killing Ukrainian civilians

Russian armed forces reportedly killed a family on November 18 in the village of Komysh-Zoria, Zaporizhzhia, according to Ukrainian news agency Ukrainska Pravda, citing anonymous law enforcement officials and Ukrainian security services. The online Ukrainian publication Obozrevatel also reported on the killing, claiming that pro-Russian militants from the Donetsk People’s Republic and soldiers from Ossetia drove into the occupied settlement to Pochtovaya Street, where the family had lived.  

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Ukraine division published an article on November 30 about atrocities reportedly committed by a high-ranking Russian officer. Sergey Safonov, commander of the 27th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, allegedly stabbed an elderly Ukrainian woman to death while retreating from the Kharkiv region.  

Meanwhile on November 22, a Russian missile strike damaged a maternity ward at the central district municipal hospital in Vilnyansk, Zaporizhzhia. Civilian casualties were reported.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

European Parliament declares Russia a state sponsor of terrorism

On November 23 , members of the European Parliament voted to adopt a resolution designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. The final vote was 494 in favor and fifty-eight against, with forty-four abstentions. The resolution was in response to Russian atrocities in the war against Ukraine, including strikes against hospitals, schools, shelters, and other civilian targets. The resolution also called for the Russian state-backed Wagner Group and Chechen forces led by Ramzan Kadyrov to be added to the European Union’s list of persons, groups, and entities involved in terrorist acts. 

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

US, Bulgaria, Lithuania expand support efforts 

The US Department of Defense submitted a purchase order for the production of UKR/TPQ-50 lightweight anti-mine radars for use in Ukraine. These radars can track the trajectory of mortar fire at up to ten kilometers, calculating the location of the mortar. The order is scheduled to be completed in June 2023.  

According to Bulgarian Minister of Defense Dimitar Stoyanov, Bulgaria will send at least nine Boeing C-17 Globemasters to Ukraine. Bulgaria has sought logistical assistance from the US and the United Kingdom to help deliver the shipment of military transport aircraft. 

Lithuania, meanwhile, will provide Ukraine forces with 25,000 pieces of winter clothing. The country’s defense ministry will spend $2 million purchasing warm clothing for Ukraine, according to Ukrainian sources.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

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A major new operation has been referenced by Erdogan since at least June of this year, but he has consistently emphasized that the timing will be of his choosing: “suddenly in the middle of the night.” Preparations for the ground operation appear nearly complete, so the clock could strike proverbial midnight within days.

The new escalation was prompted by a deadly November 13 bombing on Istanbul’s iconic and crowded Istiklal street that killed six people. Turkey has carried out arrests and interrogations identifying the bomber and her support network, and has detailed alleged ties to the PKK’s Syrian branch, the so-called People’s Defense Units or YPG. PKK affiliates including the YPG have conducted attacks in Turkey and against Turkish targets in Syria both before and since the beginning of Claw-Sword, so in Ankara’s view the particulars of the bombing are secondary. More important is Erdogan’s commitment to removing the YPG from within thirty kilometers (18.6 miles) of the Turkish border, at least west of the Euphrates River. This likely means an operation against Tel Rifaat and Manbij, areas jointly controlled by the YPG and forces of Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s regime, from which Turkish forces and their Syrian National Army partners have been attacked.

The prospective operation may be causing heartburn in Washington, but it could present an opportunity for the United States and Turkey to find an elusive end game to the Syria conflict—if they can overcome their mistrust.

Where Claw-Sword fits

Claw-Sword is the latest in a decades-long series of anti-PKK operations in northern Iraq and Syria. Since its launch on November 20, it has consisted mostly of sustained air and artillery strikes, with manned and unmanned (drone) aircraft in the lead. Expectations of a ground operation have prompted urgent outreach from Washington and Moscow to prevent or limit the scope of the ground offensive, but Turkish official statements and past operations leave little doubt that it will occur.

Ankara’s motive in Claw-Sword entails revenge for the November 13 Istiklal attack, but it ultimately focuses on completing a “safe zone” to remove PKK-aligned forces from sensitive border areas, enable refugee returns, and ensure Turkish influence over eventual political arrangements to end the war in Syria. With the YPG out of Manbij and Tel Rifaat, the group’s post-2015 territorial gains in predominantly Arab northwest Syria—which the Turks believe were enabled by the West—will be reversed. The coalition of anti-Erdogan political opposition parties (the “Table of Six”) has signaled support for military action to secure the border areas, while Turkish public opinion has generally backed cross-border operations against the PKK.

Neither the United States nor Russia is positioned to stop a ground operation from beginning, though they will doubtless apply pressure to end it once it does. Both countries’ intelligence chiefs were likely briefed during recent visits to Ankara, and the betting line in Ankara is that ground operations west of the Euphrates will be tacitly tolerated if modest in scope and careful in execution. This might be the last ground operation Ankara views as necessary to declare success in establishing its “safe zone” in northern Syria. Ground operations will almost certainly avoid Kobane, east of the Euphrates, for a number of reasons: Its population is overwhelmingly Kurdish and generally pro-PKK, it would be far more daunting to seize or administer, and it abuts areas where US forces are conducting counter-Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) operations in northeast Syria.  

Why now, what after?

A number of considerations beyond the Istiklal attack likely have informed the timing of Claw-Sword. The short list includes:

• The war in Ukraine has bolstered Turkey’s diplomatic leverage, weakened Russia’s military credibility and resources, and made multilateral pressure far less plausible.
• Regional diplomatic rapprochement has reduced the number of neighboring countries inclined to vigorously oppose Turkish anti-PKK operations.
• Escalating Iranian provocations against US forces and interests in Iraq and Syria cast Turkey’s role in those countries in a different light. The United States is increasingly likely to need Turkish cooperation to achieve counterterrorism goals and other regional aims in the coming years, including the protection of Iraq’s Kurdistan region from Iranian subversion.
• Turkish elections are scheduled for June 2023, and Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has an imperative to fulfill its pledges related to Turkish interests in Syria.

Turkish ground operations may prompt calls in Washington to protect the current status quo in northeast Syria through threats and sanctions, such as invoking provisions of 2019’s Executive Order 13894 to block the assets of Turkish officials and ministries. But such threats have not deterred Turkish operations in the past, though they may hasten the conclusion of specific operations.

Sanctions run the risk of ramping up nationalist and anti-US sentiments in Turkey or imperiling other Western interests related to Ukraine, Iran, and NATO enlargement. It is unlikely that Washington, or other Western capitals, will enter that sort of leverage game over a ground operation that has been signaled, delimited, and meticulously prepared.

The US military remains in Syria explicitly to suppress the remnants of ISIS and implicitly to deter the expansion of malign Iranian activities. Turkish ground operations may prompt the YPG to suspend cooperation against ISIS, but this would likely be temporary as such operations are the sine qua non of US support to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is the primary component. As during the last major Turkish operation in northern Syria—Operation Peace Spring in 2019—Ankara will likely maintain clear limits on the scope of its ground operation and scrupulously avoid areas near US troops in order to firewall Turkey’s war against the PKK in Syria from the campaign by the United States and SDF against ISIS remnants. The latter may be interrupted, but will likely resume after a short delay.

Ankara and Washington have been talking past one another on northern Syria since the United States aligned with the YPG in late 2014, but in the wake of the coming operation, there may be a fleeting opportunity to address a mutually acceptable end game to the Syrian conflict.

Erdogan has contemplated re-establishing relations with Assad, though he is unlikely to make any deals that do not protect the Syrian opposition and Turkish security interests. Washington, for its part, seems to have accepted the proposition that Assad will likely remain in power, though he must be pressured into acceptable treatment of his country and people in post-conflict arrangements.

The two players with the strongest cards to extract concessions from Assad are Turkey and the United States; the obstacle to their collaboration is Turkish concern over the presence of the YPG near its border. A carefully controlled and delimited operation may reduce the Turkish threat perception without fatally wounding either the SDF or the campaign against ISIS.

Neither side benefits from the current chasm on Syria policy, and if the ground operation is unavoidable, the possibility remains that its swift conclusion might lead to more serious attempts at forging a common approach. That may be overly optimistic given the deep mutual mistrust and misaligned priorities, but the alternative—continued division that leads to separate bad deals in the Syrian end game—is worse.

Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY with thirty-two years of government service both in uniform and as a civilian. Follow him on Twitter @RichOutzen.

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None of these arguments stands up to serious scrutiny. Instead, the various different narratives coming out of the Kremlin reflect Moscow’s increasingly desperate efforts to justify what is in reality an old-fashioned colonial war of imperial conquest.

Putin has long sought to use NATO expansion as an excuse for his own aggressive foreign policies. This plays well with the Russian public and also resonates among segments of the international community who believe the United States has become too dominant since the end of the Cold War. However, Putin’s attempts to position the invasion of Ukraine as a reasonable response to NATO encroachment have been comprehensively debunked by his own actions.

According to Reuters, Ukraine informed Russia during the first days of the invasion that it was ready to meet Moscow’s demands and rule out the possibility of future NATO membership, only for this offer to be rejected by Putin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went public in the following weeks with similar proposals to abandon Ukraine’s NATO ambitions, but Russia chose to continue its invasion.

The entire notion that Russia views NATO as a credible security threat was further undermined in summer 2022 when Moscow passively accepted neighboring Finland’s historic decision to join the military alliance. Putin has repeatedly cited Ukraine’s deepening NATO ties as justification for his invasion, but the prospect of imminent Finnish membership provoked no meaningful security response whatsoever from the Kremlin.

If Putin genuinely believed a NATO invasion of Russia was even a remote possibility, he would surely have reinforced the Finnish border. On the contrary, in the months following Helsinki’s decision to join the alliance, Russia dramatically reduced its military presence close to Finland and the nearby NATO member Baltic states in order to bolster the invasion of Ukraine. Whatever Putin may say in public, he clearly understands that NATO poses no threat to Russia.

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Russian myth-making about “Ukrainian Nazis” is even older than complaints over NATO expansion and dates all the way back to Soviet World War II propaganda. For decades, Moscow has exaggerated wartime cooperation between Ukrainian nationalist groups and the Third Reich while conveniently ignoring the far more consequential Nazi-Soviet Pact. By conflating Ukraine’s centuries-old liberation movement with Nazism, generations of Kremlin leaders have sought to render Ukrainian national identity toxic in the eyes of domestic and international audiences alike.

Putin’s enthusiasm for the “Nazi Ukraine” trope is very much in line with his broader efforts to place the Soviet World War II experience at the heart of modern Russian identity. Over the past two decades, Putin has turned traditional Russian reverence for the generation who defeated Hitler into a quasi-religious victory cult complete with its own feast days, holy relics, and doctrinal dogmas. This has enabled him to whitewash the crimes of the Soviet era while attacking contemporary adversaries as the spiritual successors to the Nazis. In Putin’s Russia, accusations of Nazism are a routine feature of the public discourse and have been leveled against a dizzying array of individuals, organizations, and entire countries, but Ukraine remains by far the most popular target.

The effectiveness of these tactics has always depended heavily on outside ignorance of Ukraine and Russia-centric reporting by Moscow-based international correspondents. Unfortunately for Putin, his invasion has shone an unprecedented media spotlight on Ukraine that has done much to debunk the whole “Nazi Ukraine” narrative.

This was long overdue. Throughout the past 31 years of Ukrainian independence, the far-right has never come close to achieving power in Ukraine and remains significantly less influential than in many other European countries. While far-right candidate Marine Le Pen received 41.45% in France’s 2022 presidential election, the Ukrainian far-right typically struggles to secure low single digit support at the ballot box. During Ukraine’s last presidential election in 2019, the leading nationalist candidate garnered 1.6% of the vote. Months later in the country’s most recent parliamentary election, many of Ukraine’s far-right parties joined forces in a bid to improve their fortunes. This united nationalist platform failed miserably, winning a mere 2.15% of votes.

Nothing highlights the absurdity of Russia’s “Nazi Ukraine” allegations better than the rise of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian President is both Jewish and a native Russian speaker. According to the Kremlin, this should make him deeply unappealing to Ukrainian voters. On the contrary, Zelenskyy was elected president by a record margin and subsequently secured a unique parliamentary majority for his newly formed political party. This success was all the more remarkable as it was achieved during wartime elections held amid an atmosphere of heightened patriotic fervor.

Since the start of the invasion, Russia’s failing efforts to portray Ukraine as a Nazi state have forced Moscow into ever more implausible mental gymnastics. Unable to produce any actual Ukrainian Nazis, regime officials and propaganda proxies have attempted to argue that the very idea of an independent Ukraine is in itself a Nazi concept, while also acknowledging that Putin’s stated war aim of “de-Nazification” in practice means the “de-Ukrainization” of Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s confusion was perhaps most immediately evident in the bizarre and disgraceful anti-Semitic comments made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a May appearance on Italian TV program Zona Bianca. When asked to address the obvious contradictions between Russia’s “Nazi Ukraine” claims and the fact that Ukraine has a Jewish president, Lavrov responded by declaring that Adolf Hitler also had “Jewish blood.” His statement sparked a wave of global condemnation, with Putin eventually forced to intervene and offer a personal apology to Israeli leaders.

This embarrassing incident illustrated the remarkable recent degradation of Russian diplomacy, which has now reached the point where it is often indistinguishable from internet conspiracy theories. Forced by Putin’s invasion to defend the indefensible, Russia’s top diplomats have retreated into an alternative reality world of blanket denials and dark fantasies. While Lavrov rants about “Jewish Hitler,” Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya stuns his colleagues with fantastic tales of genetically engineered Ukrainian mosquitoes. No wonder exasperated British Ambassador Barbara Woodward recently felt moved to ask, “How much more of this nonsense do we have to endure?”

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The awkward absence of Ukrainian Nazis and Russia’s non-response to Finland’s NATO membership bid have left Putin in desperate need of new narratives to explain his ongoing invasion. Disinformation researchers have recently noted a spike in Russian references to Ukraine as a “terrorist state” amid apparent efforts to position the war as a counter-terrorism operation. This has included a high-level campaign led by Putin himself and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who have both groundlessly accused Ukraine of plotting an act of nuclear terrorism involving a dirty bomb.

While the idea of Ukraine nuking itself may seem far-fetched even by Russian standards, this is by no means the Kremlin’s most audacious excuse. Since late September, senior regime officials have gone even further and have been actively seeking to rebrand the invasion of Ukraine as a holy war against Satanism. Putin set the tone by calling his opponents “Satanic” during a landmark address marking the official annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

Others have enthusiastically followed Putin’s lead. In October, the deputy secretary of Russia’s influential National Security Council, Alexei Pavlov, declared that it was becoming “more and more urgent to carry out the de-Satanization of Ukraine.” This call was echoed by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who stated in a November 4 post marking Russia’s National Unity Day that the goal of the Ukraine invasion was “to stop the supreme ruler of Hell, whatever name he uses: Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis.” Key propagandists including Vladimir Solovyov have also endorsed the idea that Russia is at war with Satanism.

Behind Moscow’s increasingly outlandish attempts to justify the invasion stands a deeply unpalatable truth. Far from being a reaction to Western encroachment or Ukrainian extremism, Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is the product of an unapologetically imperialistic mindset that he shares with millions of Russians who refuse to accept the verdict of 1991.

Putin’s entire reign has been shaped by his burning resentment at the perceived injustice of the Soviet collapse, which he regards as the “disintegration of historic Russia.” This has fueled his obsession with Ukraine, which for centuries occupied a key position at the very center of Russian imperial identity. Putin sees the existence of an independent Ukraine as a symbol of the unjust post-Soviet settlement and regards the country’s embrace of European democracy as an existential threat to Russia. He has repeatedly denied Ukraine’s right to statehood while arguing that modern Ukraine has been artificially separated from Russia. On the eve of the invasion, he called Ukraine “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”

The Russian dictator’s most revealing remarks came in summer 2022, when he directly compared his invasion of Ukraine to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great. Putin sought to qualify this claim by insisting he was merely “returning historically Russian lands,” but the actions of his invading army bear all the hallmarks of a brutal colonial conquest. Russian troops have reduced entire cities to rubble and killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. In areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control, the Russian military has engaged in mass executions and forced deportations. Meanwhile, all symbols of Ukrainian national identity have been ruthlessly erased.

This is the grim reality that all advocates of appeasement and proponents of a negotiated peace must address. Nobody wants to end the current war more than the Ukrainians themselves, but they also recognize that there is no room for compromise between genocide and survival. Russia has gone to great lengths to disguise the true nature of its imperial war in Ukraine, but Ukrainians are not fooled. They understand perfectly well that unless Russia is decisively defeated, Ukraine will cease to exist.

Instead of listening to Moscow’s fake grievances and fairytales about devil-worshiping phantom fascists, the international community must make clear to the Kremlin that Russian imperialism has no place in the modern world. The increasingly absurd nature of Putin’s excuses is an indication of his mounting desperation, but he has yet to abandon the colonial conquest of Ukraine. Unless he is forced to do so, Russia’s unreconstructed imperial ambitions will remain a threat to world peace.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Oct 17, 2022

Putin’s blackout blitz: Russia aims to freeze Ukrainians into surrender

By Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti

Russia is seeking to plunge Ukraine into darkness ahead of the winter heating season by destroying the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s partners must step in to make sure Ukrainians are not frozen into surrender.

Conflict Energy Markets & Governance

UkraineAlert Oct 18, 2022

Bowing to Putin’s nuclear blackmail will make nuclear war more likely

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk

Giving in to Putin’s nuclear blackmail would not end the war in Ukraine. What it would do is set a disastrous precedent that makes a future nuclear war far more likely while encouraging uncontrolled nuclear proliferation.

Arms Control Conflict

UkraineAlert Oct 25, 2022

Poll: 86% of Ukrainians want to fight on despite Russian terror bombing

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s campaign to destroy Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure marks a dramatic escalation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the increasingly desperate Russian ruler seeks to avert military defeat.

Conflict Human Rights

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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The post NATO, Nazis, Satanists: Putin is running out of excuses for his imperial war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Executive summary

Cyberspace as a domain of conflict often creates an asymmetric advantage for comparably less capable or under-resourced actors to compete against relatively stronger counterparts.¹ As such, a panoply of non-state actors is increasingly acquiring capabilities and integrating offensive cyber operations into their toolkits to further their strategic aims. From financially driven criminal ransomware groups to politically inspired patriot hacking collectives, non-state actors have a wide range of motivations for turning to offensive cyber capabilities. A number of these non-state actors have histories rooted almost entirely in armed kinetic violence, from professional military contractors to drug cartels, and the United States and its allies are still grappling with how to deal with them in the cyber context.² Militant and terrorist organizations have their own specific motivations for acquiring offensive cyber capabilities, and their operations therefore warrant close examination by the United States and its allies to develop effective countermeasures.

While most academic scholarship and government strategies on counterterrorism are beginning to recognize and address the integral role of some forms of online activity, such as digital media and propaganda on behalf of terrorist organizations, insufficient attention has been given to the offensive cyber capabilities of these actors. Moreover, US strategy,³ public intelligence assessments, and academic literature on global cyber threats to the United States overwhelmingly focuses on the “big four” nation-state adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Before more recent efforts to address the surge in financially driven criminal ransomware operations, the United States and its allies deployed policy countermeasures overwhelmingly designed for use against state actors.

To the extent that US counterterrorism strategy addresses the offensive cyber threat from terrorist organizations, it is focused on defending critical infrastructure against the physical consequences of a cyberattack. Hamas, despite being a well-studied militant and terrorist organization, is expanding its offensive cyber and information capabilities, a fact that is largely overlooked by counterterrorism and cyber analysts alike. Overshadowed by the specter of a catastrophic cyberattack from other entities, the real and ongoing cyber threats posed by Hamas prioritize espionage and information operations.

This report seeks to highlight Hamas as an emerging and capable cyber actor, first by explaining Hamas’s overall strategy, a critical facet for understanding the group’s use of cyber operations. Next, an analysis will show how Hamas’s cyber activities do not indicate a sudden shift in strategy but, rather, a realignment that augments operations. In other words, offensive cyber operations are a new way for Hamas to do old things better. Finally, the policy community is urged to think differently about how it approaches similar non-state groups that may leverage the cyber domain in the future. This report can be used as a case study for understanding the development and implementation of cyber tools by non-state entities.

As the title of this report suggests, Hamas is like a green hat hacker—a term that is not specific to the group but recognized in the information security community as someone who is relatively new to the hacking world, lacking sophistication but fully committed to making an impact and keen to learn along the way.⁴ Hamas has demonstrated steady improvement in its cyber capabilities and operations over time, especially in its espionage operations against internal and external targets. At the same time, the organization’s improvisation, deployment of relatively unsophisticated tools, and efforts to influence audiences are all hallmarks of terrorist strategies. This behavior is in some ways similar to the Russian concept of “information confrontation,” featuring a blend of technical, information, and psychological operations aimed at wielding influence over the information environment.⁵

Understanding these dynamics, as well as how cyber operations fit into the overall strategy, is key to the US development of effective countermeasures against terrorist organizations’ offensive cyber operations.

“Pwn” goal

In the summer of 2018, as teams competed in the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup in Russia, Israeli soldiers followed the excitement on their smartphones from an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) base thousands of miles away. Like others in Israel, the soldiers were using a new Android application called Golden Cup, available for free from the Google Play store. The program was promoted in the lead up to the tournament as “the fastest app for live scores and fixtures for the World Cup.”⁶ The easy-to-use application delivered as advertised—and more.

Once installed, the application communicated with its command-and-control server to surreptitiously download malicious payloads onto user devices. The payloads infected the target devices with spyware, a variety of malware that discreetly monitors the target’s device and steals its information, usually for harmful use against the target individual.⁷ In this particular case, the spyware was intentionally deployed after the application was downloaded from the Google Play store in order to bypass Google’s security screening process.⁸ This allowed the spyware operator to remotely execute code on user smartphones to track locations, access cameras and microphones, download images, monitor calls, and exfiltrate files.

Golden Cup users, which included Israeli civilians and soldiers alike, did not realize that their devices were infected with spyware. As soldiers went about their daily routines on bases, the spyware operators reaped reams of data from the compromised smartphones. In just a few weeks of discreet collection, before discovery by IDF security, the adversary successfully collected non-public information about various IDF bases, offices, and military hardware, such as tanks and armored vehicles.⁹

The same adversary targeted Israeli soldiers with several other malicious Android applications throughout the summer of 2018. A fitness application that tracks user running routes collected the phone numbers of soldiers jogging in a particularly sensitive geographic location. After collecting these numbers, the adversary targeted the soldiers with requests to download a second application that then installed spyware. Additional targeting of Israeli soldiers that same summer included social engineering campaigns encouraging targets to download various spyware-laced dating applications with names like Wink Chat and Glance Love, prompting the IDF to launch the aptly named Operation Broken Heart in response.¹⁰

Surprisingly, this cyber espionage campaign was not the work of a nation-state actor. Although the clever tradecraft exhibited in each operation featured many of the hallmarks of a foreign intelligence service, neither Israel’s geopolitical nemesis Iran nor China,¹¹ an increasingly active Middle East regional player, was involved.¹² Instead, the campaign was the work of Hamas.

1. Introduction

The asymmetric advantage afforded by cyberspace is leading a panoply of non-state actors to acquire and use offensive cyber capabilities to compete against relatively stronger counterparts. The cyber threat from criminal ransomware organizations has been well documented, yet a range of other non-state actors traditionally involved in armed kinetic violence, from professional military contractors to drug cartels, is also trying their hand at offensive cyber operations, and the United States and its allies are still grappling with how to respond. Each actor has a discreet motivation for dabbling in cyber activities, and lumping them all into one bucket of non-state actors can complicate efforts to study and address their actions. The operations of militant and terrorist organizations in particular warrant close examination by the United States and its allies in order to develop effective countermeasures.

A robust online presence is essential for modern terrorist organizations. They rely on the internet to recruit members, fund operations, indoctrinate target audiences, and garner attention on a global scale—all key functions for maintaining organizational relevance and for surviving.¹³ The 2022 Annual Threat Assessment from the US Intelligence Community suggests that terrorist groups will continue to leverage digital media and internet platforms to inspire attacks that threaten the United States and US interests abroad.¹⁴ Recent academic scholarship on counterterrorism concurs, acknowledging the centrality of the internet to various organizations, ranging from domestic right-wing extremists to international jihadists, and their efforts to radicalize, organize, and communicate.

The US government has taken major steps in recent years to counter terrorist organizations in and through cyberspace. The declassification of documents on Joint Task Force Ares and Operation Glowing Symphony, which began in 2016, sheds light on complex US Cyber Command efforts to combat the Islamic State in cyberspace, specifically targeting the group’s social media and propaganda efforts and leveraging cyber operations to support broader kinetic operations on the battlefield.¹⁵ The latest US National Strategy for Counterterrorism, published in 2018, stresses the need to impede terrorist organizations from leveraging the internet to inspire and enable attacks.¹⁶

Indeed, continued efforts to counter the evolving social media and propaganda tools of terrorist organizations will be critical, but this will not comprehensively address the digital threat posed by these groups. Counterterrorism scholarship and government strategies have paid scant attention to the offensive cyber capabilities and operations of terrorist organizations, tools that are related but distinct from other forms of online influence. Activities of this variety do not necessarily cause catastrophic physical harm, but their capacity to influence public perception and, potentially, the course of political events should be cause for concern.

Several well-discussed, politically significant non-state actors with histories rooted almost entirely in kinetic violence are developing, or otherwise acquiring, offensive cyber capabilities to further their interests. More scrutiny of these actors, their motivations, and how they strategically deploy offensive cyber capabilities in conjunction with evolving propaganda and kinetic efforts is warranted to better orient toward the threat.

Hamas, a Palestinian political party and militant terrorist organization that serves as the de facto governing body of the Gaza Strip, is one such actor. The group’s burgeoning cyber capabilities, alongside its propaganda tactics, pose a threat to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and US interests in the region—especially in tandem with the group’s capacities to fund, organize, inspire, and execute kinetic attacks. This combination of capabilities has historically been the dominion of more powerful state actors. However, the integration of offensive cyber capabilities into the arsenals of traditionally kinetic non-state actors, including militant organizations, is on the rise due to partnerships with state guarantors and the general proliferation of these competencies worldwide.

This report seeks to highlight the offensive cyber and information capabilities and behavior of Hamas. First, a broad overview of Hamas’s overall strategy is provided, an understanding of which is key for evaluating its cyber activities. Second, this report analyzes the types of offensive cyber operations in which Hamas engages, showing that the adoption of cyber capabilities does not indicate a sudden shift in strategy but, rather, a realignment of strategy and an augmentation of operations. In other words, offensive cyber operations are a new way to do old things better. Third, this report aims to push the policy community to think differently about its approach to similar non-state groups that may leverage the cyber domain in the future.

2. Overview of Hamas’s strategy

Principles and philosophy

Founded in the late 1980s, Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah, translated as the Islamic Resistance Movement and better known as Hamas, is a Palestinian religious political party and militant organization. After Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas used its 2006 Palestinian legislative election victory to take over militarily from rival political party Fatah in 2007. The group has served as the de facto ruler of Gaza ever since, effectively dividing the Palestinian Territories into two entities, with the West Bank governed by the Hamas-rejected and Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority.¹⁷

Hamas’s overarching objectives are largely premised on its founding principles—terminating what it views as the illegitimate State of Israel and establishing Islamic, Palestinian rule.¹⁸ The group’s grand strategy comprises two general areas of focus: resisting Israel and gaining political clout with the Palestinian people. These objectives are interconnected and mutually reinforcing, as Hamas’s public resistance to Israel feeds Palestinian perceptions of the group as the leader of the Palestinian cause.¹⁹

Despite Hamas’s maximalist public position on Israel, the organization’s leaders are rational actors who logically understand the longevity and power of the State of Israel. Where the group can make meaningful inroads is in Palestinian politics, trying to win public support from the more secular, ruling Fatah party and positioning itself to lead a future Palestinian state. Looming uncertainty about the future of an already weak Palestinian Authority, led by the aging President Mahmoud Abbas, coupled with popular demand for elections, presents a potential opportunity for Hamas to fill a leadership vacuum.²⁰

To further these objectives, Hamas attracts attention by frequently generating and capitalizing on instability. The group inflames already tumultuous situations to foster an environment of extremism, working against those who are willing to cooperate in the earnest pursuit of a peaceful solution to the Israel–Palestine conflict. Hamas uses terror tactics to influence public perception and to steer political outcomes, but still must exercise strategic restraint to avoid retaliation that could be militarily and politically damaging. Given these self-imposed restraints, Hamas seeks alternative methods of influence that are less likely to result in blowback.

Terrorism strategy

Hamas’s terror tactics have included suicide bombings,²¹ indiscriminate rocket fire,²² sniper attacks,²³ incendiary balloon launches,²⁴ knifings,²⁵ and civilian kidnappings,²⁶ all in support of its larger information strategy to project a strong image and to steer political outcomes. Through these activities, Hamas aims to undermine Israel and the Palestinian Authority²⁷ and challenge the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO)²⁸ standing as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people.”

Terrorism forms the foundation of Hamas’s approach, and the organization’s leadership openly promotes such activities.²⁹ While the group’s terror tactics have evolved over time, they have consistently been employed against civilian targets to provoke fear, generate publicity, and achieve political objectives. Israeli communities targeted by terrorism, as well as Palestinians in Gaza living under Hamas rule, suffer from considerable physical and psychological stress,³⁰ driving Israeli policymakers to carry out military operations, often continuing a vicious cycle that feeds into Hamas’s information campaign.

These terrorist tactics follow a coercive logic that aligns with Hamas’s greater messaging objectives. Robert Pape’s “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism” specifically names Hamas as an organization with a track record of perpetrating strategically timed suicide terrorist attacks for coercive political effect.³¹ In 1995, for example, Hamas conducted a flurry of suicide attacks, killing dozens of civilians in an attempt to pressure the Israeli government to withdraw from certain locations in the West Bank. Once negotiations were underway between Israel and the PLO, Hamas temporarily suspended the attacks, only to resume them against Israeli targets when diplomatic progress appeared to stall. Israel would eventually partially withdraw from several West Bank cities later that year.³²

Similarly, just several months before Israel’s 1996 general election, incumbent Labor Party Prime Minister Shimon Peres led the polls by roughly 20 percent in his reelection bid against Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party. However, a spate of Hamas suicide bombings cut Peres’s lead and Netanyahu emerged victorious.³³ The attacks were designed to weaken the reelection bid of Peres, widely viewed as the candidate most likely to advance the peace process, and strengthen the candidacy of Netanyahu. Deliberate terror campaigns such as these demonstrate the power Hamas wields over Israeli politics.³⁴

The Israeli security establishment has learned lessons from the phenomenon of suicide terrorism, implementing countermeasures to foil attacks. Since the mid-2000s, Hamas has shifted its focus to firing rockets of various ranges and precision from the Gaza Strip at civilian population centers in Israel.³⁵ The rocket attacks became frequent after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, ebbing and flowing in alignment with significant political events.³⁶ For instance, the organization targeted towns in southern Israel with sustained rocket fire in the lead up to the country’s general election in 2009 to discourage Israelis from voting for pro-peace candidates.³⁷

Strategic restraint

Each of these terror tactics has the powerful potential to generate publicity with Israelis, Palestinians, and audiences elsewhere. However, unrestrained terrorism comes at a cost, something Hamas understands. Hamas must weigh its desire to carry out attacks with the concomitant risks, including an unfavorable international perception, military retaliation, infrastructure damage, and internal economic and political pressures.

Hamas addresses this in a number of ways. First, it limits its operations, almost exclusively, to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Hamas has learned from the failures of other Palestinian terrorist organizations, whose operations beyond Israel’s borders were often counterproductive, attracting legitimate international criticism of these groups.³⁸ Such operations also run the risk of alienating critical Hamas benefactors like Qatar and Turkey.³⁹ These states, which maintain important relationships with the United States—not to mention burgeoning ties with Israel—could pressure Hamas to course correct, if not outright withdraw their support for the organization.⁴⁰ The continued flow of billions of dollars in funding from benefactors like Qatar is critical, not just to Hamas’s capacity to conduct terror attacks and wage war,⁴¹ but also to its efforts to reconstruct infrastructure and provide social services in the Gaza Strip, both key factors for building its political legitimacy among Palestinians.⁴²

Second, with each terrorist attack, Hamas must weigh the potential for a forceful Israeli military response. The cycle of terrorism and retaliation periodically escalates into full-scale wars that feature Israeli air strikes and ground invasions of Gaza. These periodic operations are known in the Israeli security establishment as “mowing the grass,” a component of Israel’s strategy to keep Hamas’s arsenal of rockets, small arms, and infrastructure, including its elaborate underground tunnel network, from growing out of control like weeds in an unkempt lawn.⁴³ Hamas’s restraint has been apparent since May 2021, when Israel conducted Operation Guardian of the Walls, a roughly two-week campaign of mostly airstrikes and artillery fire aimed at slashing the group’s rocket arsenal and production capabilities, crippling its tunnels, and eliminating many of its top commanders. Hamas is thought to be recovering and restocking since the ceasefire, carefully avoiding engaging in provocations that could ignite another confrontation before the group is ready.

Third, and critically, since mid-2021, the last year-plus of the Israel–Hamas conflict has been one of the quietest in decades due to the Israeli Bennett–Lapid government’s implementation of a sizable civil and economic program for Gaza.⁴⁴ The program expands the number of permits for Palestinians from Gaza to work in Israel, where the daily wages of one worker are enough to support an additional ten Palestinians.⁴⁵ Israel’s Defense Ministry signed off on a plan to gradually increase work permit quotas for Palestinians from Gaza to an unprecedented 20,000, with reports suggesting plans to eventually increase that number to 30,000.⁴⁶ For an impoverished territory with an unemployment rate of around 50 percent, permits to work in Israel improve the lives of Palestinians and stabilize the economy. The program also introduced economic incentives for Hamas to keep the peace—conducting attacks could result in snap restrictions on permits and border crossing closures, leading to a public backlash, as well as internal political blowback within the group. The power of this economic tool was evident throughout Israel’s Operation Breaking Dawn in August 2022, during which Israel conducted a three-day operation to eliminate key military assets and personnel of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), another Gaza-based terrorist organization. Israel was careful to communicate its intention to target PIJ, not Hamas. Ordinarily a ready-and-willing belligerent in such flare-ups, Hamas did nothing to restrain the PIJ but remained conspicuously on the sidelines, refraining from fighting out of its interest in resuming border crossings as quickly as possible.⁴⁷

Searching for alternatives

Given these limitations, blowbacks, and self-imposed restraints, Hamas is finding alternative methods of influence. Under the leadership of its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, Hamas is endeavoring to inspire Arab Israelis and West Bank Palestinians to continue the struggle by taking up arms and sparking an intifada while the group nurses itself back to strength.⁴⁸ To further this effort, Hamas is turning to more insidious means of operating in the information space to garner support and ignite conflagrations without further jeopardizing its public reputation, weapons stockpiles, infrastructure, or the economic well-being of the Palestinians living under its control. Like many state actors working to advance strategic ambitions, Hamas has turned to offensive cyber operations as a means of competing below the threshold of armed conflict.

Deploying offensive cyber capabilities involves exceptionally low risks and costs for operators. For groups like Hamas that are worried about potential retaliation, these operations present an effective alternative to kinetic operations that would otherwise provoke an immediate response. Most national cyber operation countermeasures are geared toward state adversaries and, in general, finding an appropriate response to non-state actors in this area has been challenging. Many state attempts to retaliate and deter have been toothless, resulting in little alteration of the adversary’s calculations.⁴⁹

3. Hamas’s cyber strategy

The nature of the cyber domain allows weak actors, like Hamas, to engage and inflict far more damage on powerful actors, like Israel, than would otherwise be possible in conventional conflict.⁵⁰ This asymmetry means that cyberspace offers intrinsically covert opportunities to store, transfer, and deploy consequential capabilities with far less need for organizational resources and financial or human capacity than in industrial warfare. Well-suited to support information campaigns, cyber capabilities are useful for influencing an audience without drawing the attention and repercussions of more conspicuous operations, like terrorism. In these ways, cyber operations fit into Hamas’s overall strategy and emphasis on building public perception and influence. Making sense of this strategy allows a greater understanding of past Hamas cyber operations, and how the group will likely operate in the cyber domain going forward.

Hamas’s cyber capabilities, while relatively nascent and lacking the sophisticated tools of other hacking groups, should not be underestimated. It comes as a surprise to many security experts that Hamas—chronically plagued by electricity shortages in the Gaza Strip, with an average of just ten to twelve hours of electricity per day—even possesses cyber capabilities.⁵¹ Israel’s control over the telecommunications frequencies and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip raises further doubts about how Hamas could operate a cyber program.⁵² However, in 2019, Israel deemed the offensive cyber threat to be critical enough that after thwarting an operation, the IDF carried out a strike to destroy Hamas’s cyber headquarters,⁵³ one of the first acknowledged kinetic operations by a military in response to a cyber operation. However, despite an IDF spokesperson’s claim that “Hamas no longer has cyber capabilities after our strike,” public reporting has highlighted various Hamas cyber operations in the ensuing months and years.⁵⁴

This dismissive attitude toward Hamas’s cyber threat also overlooks the group’s operations from outside the confines of the Gaza Strip. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP Party share ideological sympathies with Hamas and have extended citizenship to Hamas leadership.⁵⁵ The group’s leaders have allegedly used Turkey as a base for planning attacks and even as a safe haven for an overseas cyber facility.⁵⁶ Hamas maintains even more robust relationships with other state supporters, namely Iran and Qatar, which provide financing, safe havens, and weapons technology.⁵⁷ With the assistance of state benefactors, Hamas will continue to develop offensive cyber and information capabilities that, if overlooked, could result in geopolitical consequences.

For at least a decade, Hamas has engaged in cyber operations against Israeli and Palestinian targets. These operations can be divided in two broad operational categories that align with Hamas’s overall strategy: espionage and information. The first category, cyber espionage operations, accounts for the majority of Hamas’s publicly reported cyber activity and underpins the group’s information operations.

Espionage operations

Like any state or non-state actor, Hamas relies on quality intelligence to provide its leadership and commanders with decision-making advantages in the political and military arenas. The theft of valuable secrets from Israel, rival Palestinian factions, and individuals within its own ranks provides Hamas with strategic and operational leverage, and is thus prioritized in its cyber operations.

The Internal Security Force (ISF) is Hamas’s primary intelligence organization, comprised of members of the al-Majd security force from within the larger Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, a military wing of Hamas. The ISF’s responsibilities range from espionage to quashing political opposition and dissent from within the party and its security apparatus.⁵⁸ The range of the ISF’s missions manifests through Hamas’s cyber operations.

Tactical evolution

Naturally, Israel is a primary target of Hamas’s cyber espionage. These operations have become commonplace over the last several years, gradually evolving from broad, blunt tactics into more tailored, sophisticated approaches. The group’s initial tactics focused on a “spray and pray” approach, distributing impersonal emails with malicious attachments to a large number of targets, hoping that a subset would bite. For example, an operation that began in mid-2013 and was discovered in February 2015 entailed Hamas operators luring targets with the promise of pornographic videos that were really malware apps. The operators relied on their victims—which included targets across the government, military, academic, transportation, and infrastructure sectors—withholding information about the incidents from their workplace information technology departments, out of shame for clicking on pornography at work, thereby maximizing access and time on the target.⁵⁹

Later, Hamas operations implemented various tactical updates to increase their chances of success. In September 2015, the group began including links rather than attachments, non-pornographic lures such as automobile accident videos, and additional encryption of the exfiltrated data.⁶⁰ Another campaign, publicized in February 2017, involved a more personalized approach using social engineering techniques to target IDF personnel with malware from fake Facebook accounts.⁶¹ In subsequent years, the group began rolling out a variety of smartphone applications and marketing websites to surreptitiously install mobile remote access trojans on target devices. In 2018, the group implanted spyware on smartphones by masquerading as Red Alert, a rocket siren application for Israelis.⁶² Similarly in 2020, Hamas targeted Israelis through dating apps with names like Catch&See and GrixyApp.⁶³ As previously mentioned, Hamas also cloaked its spyware in a seemingly benign World Cup application that allowed the group to collect information on a variety of IDF military installations and hardware, including armored vehicles. These are all areas Hamas commanders have demonstrated interest in learning more about in order to gain a potential advantage in a future kinetic conflict.⁶⁴

According to the Israeli threat intelligence firm Cybereason, more recent discoveries indicate a “new level of sophistication” in Hamas’s operations.⁶⁵ In April 2022, a cyber espionage campaign targeting individuals from the Israeli military, law enforcement, and emergency services used previously undocumented malware featuring enhanced stealth mechanisms. This indicates that Hamas is taking more steps to protect operational security than ever.⁶⁶ The infection vector for this particular campaign was through social engineering on platforms like Facebook, a hallmark of many Hamas espionage operations, to dupe targets into downloading trojanized applications. Once the malware is downloaded, Hamas operators can access a wide range of information from the device’s documents, camera, and microphone, acquiring immense data on the target’s whereabouts, interactions, and more. Information collected off of military, law enforcement, and emergency services personnel can be useful on its own or for its potential extortion value.

As part of its power struggle with the Palestinian Authority and rival Fatah party, Hamas targets Palestinian political and security officials with similar operations. In another creative cyber espionage operation targeting the Palestinian Authority, Hamas operators used hidden malware to exfiltrate information from the widely used cloud platform Dropbox.⁶⁷ The same operation targeted political and government officials in Egypt,⁶⁸ an actor Hamas is keen to surveil given its shared border with the Gaza Strip and role brokering ceasefires and other negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Other common targets of Hamas’s cyber espionage campaigns are members of its own organization. One of the ISF’s roles is counterintelligence, a supremely important field to an organization that is rife with internecine political rivalries,⁶⁹ as well as paranoia about the watchful eyes of Israeli and other intelligence services. According to Western intelligence sources, one of the main missions of Hamas’s cyber facility in Turkey is deploying counterintelligence against Hamas dissenters and spies.⁷⁰ Hamas is sensitive to the possibility of Palestinians within its ranks and others acting as “collaborators” with Israel, and the group occasionally summarily executes individuals on the suspicion of serving as Israeli intelligence informants.⁷¹

Information operations

While the bulk of Hamas’s cyber operations place a premium on information gathering, a subset involves using this information to further its efforts to influence the public. This broadly defined category of information operations comprises everything from hack-and-leaks to defacements to social media campaigns that advance beneficial narratives.

Hack-and-leak operations, when hackers acquire secret or otherwise sensitive information and subsequently make it public, are clear attempts to shift public opinion and “simulate scandal.”⁷² The strategic dissemination of stolen documents, images, and videos—potentially manipulated—at critical junctures can be a windfall for a group like Hamas. In December 2014, Hamas claimed credit for hacking the IDF’s classified network and posting multiple videos taken earlier in the year of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.⁷³ The clips, which were superimposed with Arabic captions by Hamas,⁷⁴ depicted sensitive details about the IDF’s operation, including two separate instances of Israeli forces engaging terrorists infiltrating Israel—one group infiltrating by sea en route to Kibbutz Zikim and one group via a tunnel under the border into Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha—to engage in kidnappings. One of the raids resulted in a fight that lasted for roughly six hours and the death of two Israelis.⁷⁵ By leaking the footage, including images of the dead Israelis, Hamas sought to project itself as a strong leader to Palestinians and to instill fear among Israelis, boasting about its ability to infiltrate Israel, kill Israelis, and return to Gaza. These operations are intended to demonstrate Hamas’s strength on two levels: first, their ability to hack and steal valuable material from Israel and second, their boldness in carrying out attacks to further the Palestinian national cause.

Defacement is another tool in Hamas’s cyber arsenal. This sort of operation, a form of online vandalism that usually involves breaching a website to post propaganda, is not so much devastating as it is a nuisance.⁷⁶ The operations are intended to embarrass the targets, albeit temporarily, and generate a psychological effect on an audience. In 2012, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, Hamas claimed responsibility for attacks on Israeli websites, including the IDF’s Homefront Command, asserting that the cyber operations were “an integral part of the war against Israel.”⁷⁷ Since then, Hamas has demonstrated its ability to reach potentially wider audiences through defacement operations. Notably, in July 2014 during Operation Protective Edge, Hamas gained access to the satellite broadcast of Israel’s Channel 10 television station for a few minutes, broadcasting images purportedly depicting Palestinians injured by Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas hackers also displayed a threat in Hebrew text: “If your government does not agree to our terms, then prepare yourself for an extended stay in shelters.”⁷⁸

Hamas has conducted defacement operations itself and has relied on an army of “patriotic hackers.” Patriotic hacking, cyberattacks against a perceived adversary performed by individuals on behalf of a nation, is not unique to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. States have turned to sympathetic citizens around the world for support, often directing individual hackers to deface adversaries’ websites, as Ukraine did after Russia’s 2022 invasion.⁷⁹ Similarly, Hamas seeks to inspire hackers from around the Middle East to “resist” Israel, resulting in the defacement of websites belonging to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and Israel’s national airline El Al by Arab hackers.⁸⁰

In tandem with its embrace of patriotic hackers, Hamas seeks to multiply its propaganda efforts by enlisting the help of Palestinians on the street for less technical operations. To some extent, Hamas uses social media in similar ways to other terrorist organizations to inspire violence, urging Palestinians to attack Jews in Israel and the West Bank, for instance.⁸¹ However, the group goes a step further, encouraging Palestinians in Gaza to contribute to its efforts by providing guidelines for social media posting. The instructions, provided by Hamas’s Interior Ministry, detail how Palestinians should post about the conflict and discuss it with outsiders, including preferred terminology and practices such as, “Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.” Other instructions include, “Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from [Gaza] city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip.”⁸² Information campaigns like these extend beyond follower indoctrination and leave a tangible mark on international public discourse, as well as structure the course of conflict with Israel.

Hamas’s ability to leverage the cyber domain to shape the information landscape can have serious implications on geopolitics. Given the age and unpopularity of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—polling shows that 80 percent of Palestinians want him to resign—as well as the fragile state of the Palestinian Authority,⁸³ the Palestinian public’s desire for elections, and general uncertainty about the future, Hamas’s information operations can have a particularly potent effect on a discourse that is already contentious. The same can be said, to some extent, for the information environment in Israel, where political instability has resulted in five elections in just three and a half years.⁸⁴ When executed strategically, information operations can play an influencing, if not deciding, role in electoral outcomes, as demonstrated by Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.⁸⁵ A well-timed hack-and-leak operation, like Russia’s breach of the Democratic National Committee’s networks and dissemination of its emails, could majorly influence the momentum of political events in both Israel and Palestine.⁸⁶ Continued failure to reach a two-state solution in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict will jeopardize Israel’s diplomatic relationships,⁸⁷ as well as stability in the wider Middle East.⁸⁸

4. Where do Hamas’s cyber operations go from here?

As outlined in its founding charter, as long as Hamas exists, it will place a premium on influencing audiences—friendly, adversarial, and undecided—and mobilizing them to bend political outcomes toward its ultimate objectives.⁸⁹ Terrorism has been a central element of the group’s influence agenda, but cyber and information operations offer alternative and complementary options for engagement. It stands to reason that as Hamas’s cyber capabilities steadily evolve and improve, those of similar organizations will do the same.

Further Israeli efforts to curb terrorism through a cocktail of economic programs and advancements in defensive technologies, such as its integrated air defense system, raise questions about how Hamas and similar groups’ incentive structures may change their calculi in light of evolving state countermeasures. There is no Iron Dome in cyberspace. Militant and terrorist organizations are not changing their strategies of integrating cyber and information operations into their repertoires. Instead, they are finding new means of achieving old goals. Important questions for future research include:

• If states like Iran transfer increasingly advanced kinetic weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hamas, PIJ, Hezbollah, Kata’ib Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to what extent does this assistance extend to offensive cyber capabilities? What will this support look like in the future, and will these groups depend on state support to sustain their cyber operations?

• What lessons is Hamas drawing from the past year of relative calm with Israel that may influence the cadence and variety of its cyber operations? How might these lessons influence similar organizations around the world?

• What sorts of operations, such as financially motivated ransomware and cybercrime, has Hamas not engaged in? Will Hamas and comparable organizations learn from and adopt operations that are similar to other variously motivated non-state actors?

• What restrictions and incentives can the United States and its allies implement to curb the transfer of cyber capabilities to terrorist organizations?

Cyber capabilities are advancing rapidly worldwide and more advanced technologies are increasingly accessible, enabling relatively weak actors to compete with strong actors like never before. Few controls exist to effectively counter this proliferation of offensive cyber capabilities, and the technical and financial barriers for organizations like Hamas to compete in this domain remain low.⁹⁰ Either by obtaining and deploying highly impactful tools, or by developing relationships with hacking groups in third-party countries to carry out operations, the threat from Hamas’s cyber and information capabilities will grow.

Just like the group’s rocket terror program, which began with crude, short-range, and inaccurate Qassam rockets that the group cobbled together from scratch, Hamas’s cyber program began with rather unsophisticated tools. Over the years, as the group obtained increasingly sophisticated, accurate, and long-range rockets from external benefactors like Iran, so too have Hamas’s cyber capabilities advanced in scale and sophistication.

Conclusion

Remarking on Hamas’s creative cyber campaigns, a lieutenant colonel in the IDF’s Cyber Directorate noted, “I’m not going to say they are not powerful or weak. They are interesting.”⁹¹ Observers should not view Hamas’s foray into cyber operations as an indication of a sudden organizational strategic shift. For its entire existence, the group has used terrorism as a means of garnering public attention and affecting the information environment, seizing strategic opportunities to influence the course of political events. As outside pressures change the group’s incentives to engage in provocative kinetic operations, cyber capabilities present alternative options for Hamas to advance its strategy. Hamas’s cyber capabilities will continue to advance, and the group will likely continue to leverage these tools in ways that will wield maximum influence over the information environment. Understanding how Hamas’s strategy and incentive structure guides its decision to leverage offensive cyber operations can provide insights, on a wider scale, about how non-state actors develop and implement cyber tools, and how the United States and its allies may be better able to counter these trends.

About the author

Fellow

Simon Handler

Nonresident Fellow

Cyber Statecraft Initiative Digital Forensic Research Lab

Cybersecurity Middle East

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank several individuals, without whose support this report would not look the same. First and foremost, thank you to Trey Herr and Emma Schroeder, director and associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, respectively, for helping from the start of this effort by participating in collaborative brainstorming sessions and providing extensive editorial feedback throughout. The author also owes a debt of gratitude to several individuals for generously offering their time to review various iterations of this document. Thanks to Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, Shanie Reichman, Yulia Shalomov, Stewart Scott, Madison Cullinan, and additional individuals who shall remain anonymous for valuable insights and feedback throughout the development of this report. Additionally, thank you to Valerie Bilgri for editing and Donald Partyka and Anais Gonzalez for designing the final document.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, under the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), works at the nexus of geopolitics and cybersecurity to craft strategies to help shape the conduct of statecraft and to better inform and secure users of technology.

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Security

Heavy fighting expected in Kherson, Prigozhin aims to boost Wagner operations

Tracking narratives

Russia again accuses Ukraine of plotting to use a “dirty bomb”

Facebook ads spread pro-Russian narratives

Polish Senate declares Russia a terrorist regime

Heavy fighting expected in Kherson, Prigozhin aims to boost Wagner operations

Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated on October 21 that Russian forces are actively transferring ammunition, military equipment, and units from the Dnipro River’s west bank to the east bank. Russian forces are likely not fully withdrawing from the upper Kherson region but preparing to defend the city. Humanitarian facilities in Kherson have also reportedly ceased operations. 

Russia continues to use missiles and drones against critical infrastructure in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that on October 23 Russia conducted at least two missile strikes and twenty-five airstrikes. Ukrainian forces also said they shot down twelve Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones. Civilian infrastructure in Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Novotavrycheske were among the targeted areas.  

Meanwhile, Russian bloggers reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the main financier of the Wagner Group, is sponsoring the formation of a volunteer battalion, with recruitment led by former Russian officer Igor Girkin. Girkin is a critic of the Russian military command and a prominent figure among the Russian nationalists who participated in the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Russian army is depending more heavily on Wagner fighters to gain territory in Bakhmut, which Russia has been trying to seize for months. Additionally, according to Russian sources, Wagner is recruiting crews for Pantsir-S1 and S-300 missile systems, Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS), electronic warfare, Su-25 aircraft, and other equipment. While Wagner fighters utilize the infrastructure of the Russian military, the group’s equipment and operations are funded separately. It appears that Wagner’s command wants to strengthen the unit’s independence on the battlefield. 

There is also an increasing possibility of ethnic conflicts among soldiers as racial discrimination emerges among Russian military ranks. Footage released on October 24 showed a Russian officer beating a Muslim soldier allegedly for attempting to pray. Russian commentators have denied the authenticity of the clip. However, this is not an isolated case, as two Tajikistan nationals are suspected of being behind a deadly shooting at a training ground in Russia’s Belgorod region on October 15.  

In addition, General Oleksiy Gromov, a senior Ukrainian military official, said on October 27 that Belarus is preparing for an escalation. As evidence, he said that Russian officers are now checking the degree of combat readiness of Belarusian military units and that “secret transfers of personnel, equipment and military maneuvers continue in the country.” 

Gromov’s claims have not been independently verified.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russia again accuses Ukraine of plotting to use a “dirty bomb”

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on October 27 that Ukraine is plotting to use a “dirty bomb,” reigniting a narrative that has spread through pro-Kremlin sources since the early days of the war. Russian state media outlets amplified the latest iteration of the claim.   

In remarks delivered to the Kremlin-associated Valdai Discussion Club, Putin acknowledged that Russian intelligence services intentionally published information about Ukraine’s “dirty bomb.” He said that Kyiv authorities “are doing everything to cover up the traces of the preparation.” Putin also stated that he “instructed [Russian Defense Minister] Shoigu to call all of his colleagues and inform them.” Shoigu indeed called his Western counterparts on October 23 to warn that Ukraine was planning to use a “dirty bomb.”  

Along with Putin, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed that Ukraine’s goal “is to blame Russia for using weapons of mass destruction,” while simultaneously planning to use WMDs against Russia.  

On October 26, the Kremlin-owned outlet RIA published an article, based on an anonymous source, that claimed Kyiv had “already completed the technical preparations for the dirty bomb provocation.” The article stated that Ukraine’s state-owned rocket manufacturer “prepared a mockup of a rocket, which is planned to be filled with radioactive material, then supposedly to shoot it down over the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and announce the launch of a nuclear charge by the Russian armed forces.” 

On October 24, Igor Kirillov, chief of the radiation, chemical and biological defense forces of the Russian army, claimed that “Kyiv possesses the scientific base for creating a dirty bomb.” According to Kirillov’s comments, the “dirty bomb” can be prepared at the research base research base of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology. He added that this institute participated in the nuclear program of the Soviet Union. 

Along with these statements from Russian officials, Kremlin-owned and pro-Kremlin media outlets have amplified the accusation. While some outlets explained the mechanics and usage of dirty bombs, others claimed that the United Nations Security Council has already stopped Ukraine from deploying a “dirty bomb.” 

The DFRLab has previously reported on Russia’s attempts to propagate the narrative that Ukraine plans to utilize “dirty bombs.”

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Facebook ads spread pro-Russian narratives

This week, the DFRLab observed multiple Facebook ads spreading pro-Russian narratives that criticized Ukrainian anti-air defense systems, claimed that Ukraine is under external control, called for the removal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and discredited the Ukrainian government. User comments responding the ads expressed anger towards their content, with some accounts saying they were reporting the ads. The narratives are another example of how ad platforms can be exploited in influence operations. The DFRLab has previously reported on how Facebook ads are used to spread disinformation.

The DFRLab identified at least four different pages that amplified disinformation through Facebook ads. The pages have abstract names and profile pictures. They published and advertised a single post in Russian featuring poorly made caricatures, usually stolen from Russian or Belarusian sources. The pages have only a few followers but are not newly created, with some dating prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. 

As all of the ads and pages were removed at the time of publication. As all of the ads and pages had been removed at the time of writing, the DFRLab could not establish its precise reach, but one ad in the library received between 200,000 and 250,000 impressions. Other ads received between 800 and 1,000 engagements.

The Facebook ads and pages appear to be linked to a network based in Russia identified by the DFRLab and other outlets earlier this fall. According to a spokesperson for Facebook’s parent company, Meta: “We detected and removed these ads and the associated Pages. We’ve also blocked hundreds of domains as part of our ongoing work to prevent the networks we took down from reconstituting on our platform. As we said last month, this operation is persistent in trying to set up new domains spoofing news organizations and drive people across social media to these websites. The majority of this operation’s accounts, Pages and ads on our platforms were detected and removed by our automated systems. We keep updating our threat report, including the list of spoofed domains, to help inform open-source research by security researchers and our industry peers.”

—Roman Osadchuk, Research Associate

Polish Senate declares Russia a terrorist regime 

On October 26, the Polish Senate passed a resolution declaring Russia a terrorist regime. Eighty-five senators voted in favor of the resolution while fifteen others abstained. The resolution states that Russian armed forces “unleashed a brutal war with Ukraine” and that the purpose of the conflict is to “wipe out a sovereign country from the map and destroy the Ukrainian nation.” The Senate condemned Russian aggression and called “all countries in favor of peace, democracy and human rights to recognize the authorities of the Russian Federation as a terrorist regime.” The Senate also praised all institutions and organizations that undertake research and document war crimes committed against Ukraine.  

On October 27, Senate Marshal Tomasz Grodzki announced that a “strong” cyberattack on Senate servers was underway and added that he did not know if the attack was related with the adoption of the resolution on Russia or whether it was a coincidence.  

On October 18, the Parliament of Estonia also adopted a resolution declaring Russia a terrorist state, following Lithuania and Latvia, who have also designated Russia as a terrorist state. On October 13, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe  also passed a resolution declaring Russia a terrorist regime.

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

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Non-state organizations native to cyberspace, like patriotic hacking collectives and ransomware groups, continue to impact geopolitics through cyber operations. But, increasingly, non-state armed groups with histories rooted entirely in kinetic violence are adopting offensive cyber capabilities to further their strategic objectives. Each of these groups has its own motivations for acquiring these capabilities and its strategy to employ them, making developing effective countermeasures difficult for the United States and its allies. In Ukraine, the Russian government is increasingly outsourcing military activities to private military companies, such as the Wagner Group, and it may continue to do so for cyber and information operations. In Mexico, drug cartels are purchasing state-of-the-art malware to target journalists and other opponents. Elsewhere, militant and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Boko Haram have employed cyber capabilities to bolster their existing operations and efficacy in violence against various states.

The proliferation of offensive cyber capabilities and low barriers to acquiring and deploying some of these powerful tools suggest that the cyber capacities of non-state armed groups will only continue to grow. We brought together five experts from various backgrounds to assess the emerging cyber threats posed by non-state armed groups and discuss how the United States and its allies can address them.

#1 How significant is the cyber threat posed by non-state armed groups to the United States and its allies? What kinds of entities should they be concerned about?

Sean McFate, nonresident senior fellow, Africa Center, Atlantic Council; professor, Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and the National Defense University:

“Currently, the most powerful non-state armed groups that use cyber do it on behalf of a state, offering a modicum of plausible deniability. For example, The Concord Group in Russia is owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch close to Putin. Under the Concord Group is the Wagner Group (mercenaries) and the Internet Research Agency, also known as “the troll farm.” Outsourcing these capabilities lowers the barrier of entry into modern conflicts and allows the Kremlin to purse riskier stratagems.”

Steph Shample, non-resident scholar, Cyber Program, Middle East Institute; senior analyst, Team Cymru:

“The cyber threat posed by independent actors or criminal groups—not advanced persistent threats (APT)—is high, and the first impact is primarily financial. Ransomware flourishes among non-state groups, and can makes these actors, at times, millions of dollars. Consider the SamSam ransomware operations, carried out by Iranian nationals. According to the publicized indictments, the two actors were not found to have ties to the Iranian government, but they took in $6 million in profit—and that is just what was traceable. The second impact is reputational damage for businesses. Once they are impacted by a cyber incident, building the trust of users back is often more difficult than recouping financial loss. Entities to worry about include fields and industries that do not have robust cyber protection or excessive funds, as malicious actors often go after them. These industries include academia, healthcare, and smaller government entities like cities and municipalities.”

Aaron Brantly, associate professor of political science and director, Tech4Humanity lab, Virginia Tech:

“Non-state armed groups do not pose a significant cyber threat at present to the United States and its allies. There are very few examples of non-state actors not affiliated or acting as proxies for states that have the capacity to develop and utilize vulnerabilities to achieve substantial effect. The threat posed by these groups increases when they act as proxies and leverage state capacity and motivation. It is conceivable that non-state armed groups may use cyberattacks to engage in criminal attacks to achieve financial benefits to fund kinetic activities. Yet, developing the capacity to carry out armed attacks and cyberattacks often require members with different skillsets.”

Maggie Smith, research scientist and assistant professor, Army Cyber Institute, United States Military Academy:

The views expressed are those of the author, and do not reflect the official position of the Army Cyber Institute, United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

“I find the most confounding factor of non-state groups to be their motivations for attacking particular targets. Motivations can be financial, ideological, religious, grievance-based, or entities could be targeted for fun—the options are endless and they are not static. Therefore, our traditional intelligence and the indicators and warnings that typically tip and cue us to threats, may not be there. This makes defending against non-state actors that much more unpredictable, confusing, and challenging than defending against states.”

Jon Lindsay, associate professor, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech):

“The greatest threat to the United States remains other nuclear-armed states, as well as collective existential threats like climate change and pandemics. Non-state actors are a serious but less severe threat, and cyber is the least severe tool in their kits. Cyber is a minor feature of a minor threat to the United States and its allies.”

#2 How do strategies vary among different types of non-state armed groups and compare with those of states when it comes to cyber capabilities?

Lindsay: “A really interesting feature of the cyber revolution is the democratization of deception. The classic strategies of intelligence—espionage, subversion, disinformation, counterintelligence, and secret diplomacy—that were once practiced mainly by states are now within reach of many actors. The more interesting variation may be in capabilities—states can do more for many reasons—than in strategy. Like it or not, we are all actors, intermediaries, and targets of intelligence.”

McFate: “Outsourcing cyber threats allows states to circumnavigate international and domestic laws. This creates moral hazard in foreign policymaking because it lessens the likelihood of punishment by the international community.”

Brantly: “Whether terrorist organizations or insurgencies, armed groups historically use violence to achieve effects. The strategy of armed groups is to shift the public view of an organization, or issue in such a way as to compel a state actor to respond. Cyber threats do not achieve the same level of visibility that kinetic violence does, and are therefore strategically and tactically less useful to non-state groups. By contrast, state actors seek intelligence and signaling capabilities that control escalation. Because cyberattacks are frequently considered less impactful due to several factors including reversibility, levels of violence, etc., they are a robust tool to enable broader strategic objectives.”

Shample: “There is often overlap. If we again think about APT groups, or those directly sponsored by state governments—the “big four” US adversaries include Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia. All of these countries have mandatory conscription, so all men (and in selective cases, women) have to serve in these countries’ militaries. That mandatory military training can be fulfilled by going through one of their cyber academies and acting as what the United States and Five Eyes community considers a “malicious cyber actor.” Mandatory service is completed eventually, but then these actors can go and act on their own accord, using the training they received to cover their online tracks. State-trained individuals become part of the non-state actor community. They take their learned skills, they share them with other actors on forums and chat platforms, and voila. With training and sophistication, along with a way to evade tracking from their home countries, these individuals continue to improve their skills and networks online, which is a very serious problem. They are sophisticated and able to keep acting in a criminal capacity. The more sophisticated actors can also sell ready-to-use kits, such as Ransomware-as-a-Service, phishing kits, and so on that are premade and do not take high skill to use. The trained malicious actor can not only act independently, but they could have an additional stream of revenue selling kits and supplies to other malicious actors. It is an entire underground ecosystem that I see on closed forums all the time.”

Smith: “One difference is that strategies are more ad hoc or responsive and shift when a non-state group’s motivation for attacking changes. For example, Killnet, the now-infamous pro-Russian hacker group that has been conducting distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against European nations since March, started off as a DDoS tool that criminal and threat actors could purchase. Just after updating the version of the tool in March, the non-state, but pro-Russian criminals behind Killnet pulled the tool offline and declared that the name was now an umbrella term applied to hacktivism against Russia’s enemies.”

#3 What makes cyber capabilities attractive (or not) to these kinds of non-state groups?

Lindsay: “The obvious answer: cyber tools are low cost and low risk. Cyber becomes an attractive option to actors that lack the means or resolve to use more effective instruments of power. The more that an actor is concerned about adverse consequences like retaliation, punishment, and law enforcement, the more likely they are to use cyber capabilities.”

McFate: “Cyber is important, but not in ways people often think. It gives us new ways of doing old things: sabotage, theft, propaganda, deception, and espionage. Cyber war’s real power is malign information, not sabotage like Stuxnet. In an information age, disinformation is more important than firepower. Who cares about the sword if you can manipulate the mind that wields it?”

Brantly: “Cyber capabilities are less attractive to non-state armed groups because their cost-to-impact ratio is less than kinetic violence. At present, insurgents are unlikely to win by using cyberattacks, and terrorist organizations are unlikely to draw the desired levels of attention to their cause through cyber means that they would by comparable kinetic means. Where attacks disrupt, embarrass an adversary, or facilitate financial concerns of non-state armed groups, such attacks are more likely.”

Shample: “Pseudo-anonymity, of course. They can act from anywhere, target any entity, use obfuscation technology to cover their tracks, and target cryptocurrency to raise money. First, they can cover their tracks completely/partially. Second, they may have enough obscurity to provide plausible cover and not be officially tracked and charged, despite suspicion. Third, they can make a decent amount of money and/or cause damage without any personal harm that comes back to themselves. Fourth, they are able to be impactful and gain notoriety amongst the criminal contingent. The criminal underground is very ego driven, so if an actor can successfully impact a large business or organization, and in so doing make world-wide news, this only helps them gain traction and followers in their community. And they build, keep learning, and repeat, fueled by their financial success and notoriety.”

Smith: “Cyber capabilities are attractive for a lot of reasons—e.g., they can be executed remotely, purchased, obfuscated, difficult to positively attribute, among other attributes that make them easier to execute than a kinetic attack—but if I were a malicious cyber actor, I would be in the business because nation states are still figuring how to respond to cyberattacks. There is not an internationally agreed upon definition for what constitutes a cyberattack, when a cyberattack becomes an act of war, or any concrete estimation for what a proportional response to a cyberattack should be. Additionally, the legal mechanisms for prosecuting cyber activities are still being developed, so as a criminal, the fuzziness and ability to attack an asset within a country without clear consequences is very attractive—especially when law enforcement cyber capabilities are stretched thin and the courts have yet to catch up to technology (or have judges that do not understand the technology used in a case).”

More from the Cyber Statecraft Initiative:

Hackers, Hoodies, and Helmets: Technology and the changing face of Russian private military contractors

Untangling the Russian web: Spies, proxies, and spectrums of Russian cyber behavior

Countering cyber proliferation: Zeroing in on Access-as-a-Service

#4 Where does existing theory or policy fall short in addressing the risks posed by the offensive cyber operations of non-state armed groups?

Lindsay: “Generally, we need more theory and empirical research about intelligence contests of any kind. Secret statecraft, and not only by states, is an understudied area in security studies, and it is also a hot research frontier. I do think that the conventional wisdom tends to overstate the threat of cyber from any kind of group, but it is consistent with the paranoid style of American politics.” 

McFate: “How many conferences have you been to where ‘experts’ bicker about whether a cyberattack constitutes war or not? Who cares? US policymakers and academic theorists think about war like pregnancy: you either are or are not. But, in truth, there is no such thing as war or peace; it is really war and peace. Our adversaries do not suffer from this bizarre false dichotomy and exploit our schizoid view of international relations. They wage war but disguise it as peace to us. Cyberattacks are perfect weapons because we spend more time on definitions than on solutions. We need more supple minds at the strategic helm.” 

Brantly: “Many scholars have focused on proxy actors operating in and through cyberspace. The theories and policies developed on the motivations and actions of proxies is robust. This subfield has grown substantially within the last three to four years. Some theorizing has focused on the use of cyber means by terrorist organizations, but most of the research in this area has been speculative. Little theorizing has been done on the use of cyberattacks by non-state armed groups that are not operating as proxies or terrorist organizations. Although there are few examples of such organizations using cyberattacks, increased analysis on this area is potentially warranted.” 

Shample: “The United States and its allies are overly focused on state-sponsored actors. This is because they can issue things like sanctions against state-tied actors, and have press conferences publicizing pomp and circumstance. They ignore the criminal contingent because they usually cannot publicly sanction them. This is short-sighted. The United States needs to combine its intelligence and military efforts to focus on all malicious actors, state-sponsored, criminal groups, and individual/independent actors. Stop worrying about sanctions—malicious APTs often laugh at sanctions from countries without extradition, and the sanctions will quite literally never impact them. They joke about them on underground forums and then continue attacking.” 

Smith: “An area that I am working on is the threats posed by non-state actors during periods of conflict—even ones that we cheer on from afar. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent rise of the Ukrainian IT Army and pro-Russian groups like Killnet really complicate the conflict and have shown how organized non-military, non-state-sponsored, and mixed-nationality groups can have a direct impact on the modern battlefield. For entities like US Cyber Command and our foreign counterparts, this is an area of concern, as it is really the modern instantiation of civilians on the battlefield. When do those civilians become enemy combatants and how to we deal with them? Those questions are not answered yet and they are further complicated by the various motivations among groups that I discussed above.”

#5 How can the United States and its allies address the cyber threats posed by the many disparate non-state armed groups around the world?

Lindsay: “We should start by accepting that cyber conflict is both inevitable and tolerable. Cyberattacks are part of the societal search algorithm for identifying vulnerabilities that need to be patched, which helps us to build a better society. The United States and its allies should continue to work on the low-hanging fruit of cybercrime, privacy, and intelligence coordination (which are not really hanging that low), rather than focusing on bigger but more mythical threats. The small stuff will help with the big stuff.” 

McFate: “Three ways. First, better defense. Beyond the ‘ones and zeros’ warriors, we need to find ways to make Americans smarter consumers of information. Second, we need to get far more aggressive in our response. I feel like the United States is a goalie at a penalty shootout. If you want to deter cyberattacks, then start punching back hard until the bullies stop. Destroy problematic servers. Go after the people connected to them. Perhaps the United States should explore getting back into the dark arts again, as it once did during the Cold War. Lastly, enlist the private sector. ‘Hack back’ companies can chase down hackers like privateers. It is crazy in 2022 that we do not allow this, especially since the National Security Agency does not protect multinational corporations or civil society’s cybersecurity.”

Brantly: “The United States and its allies have already addressed cyber threats posed by different groups through the establishment of civilian and military organizations designed to identify and counter all manner of cyber threats. The United States has pushed out security standards through the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and US Cyber Command and the military cyber commands have worked to provide continuous intelligence on the cyber activities of potential adversaries. Continuing to strengthen organizations and standards that identify and counter cybersecurity threats remains important. Building norms around what is and is not acceptable behavior in cyberspace and what are critical cybersecurity practices among public and private sector actors will continue to constrain malicious behavior within this evolving domain of interaction. There is no single golden solution. Rather, addressing cybersecurity threats posed by all manner of actors requires multiple ongoing concurrent policy, regulatory, normative, and organizational actions.”

Shample: “If all entities working cyber operations (law enforcement, intelligence, and military) worked together and with the private sector more, the world would benefit. The private sector can move quicker with respect to changing infrastructure and the quickness of tracking malicious actors. Cyber criminals know they need to set up, act, and then usually tear down their infrastructure, change, and rebuild from scratch so as to avoid tracking. Cyber truly takes all efforts, all kinds of people working it together to be effective. There is too much focus on state-sponsored vs. criminal, and there is too much information not shared among practitioners. Counterterrorism focused analysis needs to be combined with combatting weapons and human trafficking and counter-narcotics, which all then come back to a financial focus. Terrorists like ISIS and others have been observed funding their operations by selling weapons, drugs, or humans, and then putting those funds into cryptocurrency. We have pillars of specialists that focus on one area, but there needs to be more combined efforts vs. singular-focused efforts. Underground forums need to be monitored. Telegram, discord, and dark web forums all need more monitoring. There needs to be a collective effort to combat serious cyber threats, versus dividing efforts and keeping ‘separate’ tracking. Government, military, and law enforcement need to work with the private sector and share the appropriate amount of information to take down criminal networks. There are too many solo efforts vs. a collective one to truly eradicate the malicious cyber criminals.”

Smith: “First, there is no silver bullet because there are so many variables to consider for each threat as it arises—context, composition, etc. are all confounding factors to consider. But I think that international partnerships and domestic partnerships with the private sector and critical infrastructure owners are the key to addressing non-state cyber actors and the threats they pose. The more we communicate and share intelligence and information among partners, the better we will be at anticipating threats and mitigating risk, while also ensuring that we are steadily working to create an ecosystem of support, skills, knowledge, processes and partnerships to combat the multi-modal threats coming from non-state cyber actors.”

Simon Handler is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative within the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). He is also the editor-in-chief of The 5×5, a series on trends and themes in cyber policy. Follow him on Twitter @SimonPHandler.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, under the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), works at the nexus of geopolitics and cybersecurity to craft strategies to help shape the conduct of statecraft and to better inform and secure users of technology.

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Examples of such cases include criminal organizations in Latin America that maintain support by providing social services, building roads, maintaining water distribution systems, and handling trash disposal, the Mafia in Southern Italy which gained support by providing security and dispute resolution mechanisms, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the Islamic State in Syria. In each of these cases, the organization provided many social services to the local population to maintain and gain support.

In our recently published paper in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, we provide causal evidence that violent organizations gain support by providing goods and services in competition with the state. And, that this strategy is only effective when and where there is a weak state. If violent organizations compete with an effective state, they lose support.

Why would terrorist organizations’ provision of public goods have an effect on citizens’ preferences? When citizens have incomplete information about the relative capacity of the state and the violent organization in providing social services, they update their beliefs about this relative capacity by observing the quality of the services delivered by these two organizations. Citizens’ perception of the ability of the state increases if there is a swift provision of public goods. The perception of the ability of the state decreases if there is inadequate provision of public goods, leaving an opportunity for a terrorist organization to show its ability.

We used data from Pakistan to show this evidence and, specifically, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Pakistani state’s effectiveness in the provision of public goods. To ensure that there are no confounding variables that may conflate our estimates, we studied the competition between the state and terrorist organizations in the provision of public goods after two different natural disasters. Both the TTP and the state compete in the provision of natural disaster relief. Furthermore, both the state and the TTP provide food, water, and medicine as immediate relief after natural disasters. In the long run, they are both involved in reconstruction efforts and provide a legal system to resolve disputes—often land-related—that arise after natural disasters. These two organizations compete in the provision of many other services such as education, medical care, and a legal system.

Due to changes in Pakistan’s international relationships, we can study two comparable situations in which the TTP provided services but were met with different state capacities by studying two natural disasters of similar magnitudes. We studied the 2010 floods that instead occurred after the relationship between the United States and Pakistan had deteriorated. With unusually low levels of aid, the government was unable to respond to this natural disaster adequately. We then examined an earthquake in 2005 that struck Pakistan in a period when it was a vital ally to the United States. This led to the arrival of substantial international aid and a swift response from the government.

Similarly, we used two difference-in-differences strategies to measure the effect of 2010 floods for support for the TTP and the effect of the 2005 earthquake on support for the Taliban. We measured support for the TTP using the fact that there is a close relationship between the extreme Islamist political alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and the TTP. That is, we compared changes in the political results of the MMA between areas affected by each natural disaster to areas unaffected by each natural disaster. We found that the MMA vote share increased by 5.1 percent more in areas affected by the flood relative to the unaffected areas. This effect represents a sizable change, given that their average vote share before the flood was 9.8 percent. These effects are stronger in districts where more people were affected by the flood, where the state particularly underdelivered, and where the TTP provided relief. These results represent a change in the beliefs of citizens exposed to the flood about the relative capacity of the state compared to the TTP.

On the other hand, we showed that the 2005 earthquake, a natural disaster of comparable size that received a swift response from the government, led to a 19.4 percent decrease in the MMA vote share relative to areas unaffected by the earthquake. This demonstrates how positive information about state capacity can reduce support for non-state organizations.

These results cannot be explained by alternative explanations such as political competition, voters punishing incumbents for poor management of a natural disaster resulting in political gains for other parties, changes in voter turnout, changes in the number of political parties, or the presence of selective migration out of the affected areas.

Instead, they highlight an important determinant of extremist ideology and support for such groups. 

Individuals respond to the way non-state actors and the state provide for them. We demonstrated that the efficiency of the state in a post-natural disaster period can move citizens to and away from a terrorist organization. Future public policy and research should consider the complementarity between government relief efforts and the rise of extremist groups in areas with weak institutions and extremism. With our results, we can provide a back-of-the-envelope calculation on the cost and benefit analysis of international aid as a tool in supporting anti-terrorism efforts. In the 2005 earthquake, around 53 percent of aid was delivered after three months. In contrast, in the 2010 flood, only 27 percent was delivered in the same amount of time. This 26 percent difference in aid delivered amounts to around one billion dollars. 

According to our estimates, this shortfall in aid motivated around two million voters to vote for the MMA.

Click here to view the full report, The Charitable Terrorist: State Capacity and the Support for the Pakistani Taliban. 

Dr. Federico Masera is a senior lecturer in Economics at the University of New South Wales and at the Resilient Democracy Lab.

Dr. Hasin Yousaf is an applied microeconometrician with interests in political economy and public economics, with additional interest in development economics and urban economics.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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Russia adds Meta to its ‘terrorist’ organizations list, blocks EUvsDisinfo website

Russia escalates war by targeting cities across Ukraine

Russia escalated its war against Ukraine this week with missile attacks and airstrikes on cities across the country, including the first serious attack in the capital Kyiv in months. The Russian army reportedly launched at least ten missile strikes, nineteen airstrikes, and ninety artillery attacks targeting more than thirty settlements across Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Odesa, Sloviansk, Novobakhmutivka, Sieversk, Bilohorivka, Nikopol, and Blahodativka, according a Facebook post from the Ukrainian General Staff. Russia shelled twenty-five settlements in the direction of the Pivdennyi Buh river, across the frontline, they added. In the direction of Novopavlivka and Zaporizhzhia, the Russian army shelled twenty villages, including Vuhledar, Novopil, Shakhtarske, Mali Scherbaky, Velyka Novosilka, Malynivka, and Mala Tokmachka. As a direct result of the strikes, five regions were left without power for days, while elsewhere the power supply was partially damaged, according to the Ukrainian state emergency service. It specified that Lviv, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Ternopil regions were completely deprived of electricity. 

According to a United Nations assesment, “Explosions were reportedly heard, and missiles and drones were reportedly intercepted in the western Khmelnytskyi, Lviv, and Rivne regions, in the northern Kyiv region, and in the southern Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, as well as in the central Dnipropetrovsk region.”  

In the central Vinnytsia region, the Ladyzhyn thermal power plant was reportedly hit with Iranian-made Shahed drones. Soon after, the Ukrainian energy ministry stated that it was halting its electricity exports in order to stabilize its energy systems. This halt has a significant impact on Moldova, which purchases approximately one-third of its electricity from Ukraine, including twenty percent from Ukrhydroenergo and ten percent from Energoatom. 

According to Serhiy Bratchuk,  spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, Russian forces brought Iranian instructors to Dzankoi in Crimea, as well as Zaliznyy and Lanivtsi in Kherson, to train Russian forces on how to use the Shahed-136 kamikaze drones. This claim has not been independently confirmed. 

In yet another signal of a broader escalation by Russia, on October 8 the Ukrainian ambassador in Belarus received a note accusing Ukraine of “preparing an attack on Belarus.” The letter can be interpreted as providing a pretext for attacks on Ukraine from Belarusian territory. On October 10, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka announced Russia and Belarus had agreed to deploy a “joint regional group of forces.” This raises concerns about whether the northern fronts in the regions of Chernihiv and Kyiv would be reactivated.  

Meanwhile, Moldova said Russian missiles that targeted Ukraine crossed Moldovan airspace, prompting the Foreign Ministry of Moldova to summon the Russian ambassador. Moldova also announced that it is considering the possibility of declaring a partial mobilization. Moldovan Minister of Defense Anatolie Nosatîi said that Moldova would have to close its airspace due to the launch of Russian missiles. Later in the day, however, the Moldovan Ministry of Defense denied that a Russian missile had entered the country’s airspace. 

The Russian army continues to experience difficulties with new recruits and the mobilization process. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Mark Krutov, more than one hundred Russian conscripts from Bryansk allegedly refused to go to Ukraine, stating that they lacked training and new equipment. “One of the soldiers reached out to journalists with his complaints,” Krutov reported. “He says commanders told them they will be sent in a few days ‘to retake Lyman’, while only one man from the previous group of 100 mobilized soldiers sent to Ukraine returned.” 

According to a report by Middle East Eye, “Money and menace are being used to recruit Muslims in the Caucasus….Parents in the deprived region are encouraging their sons to fight out of fear that local authorities could retaliate if they refuse.” The report stated that around one thousand Chechen fighters have lost their lives in Ukraine.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russian deepfake attempt targeting Bayraktar drones CEO disrupted

The Ukrainian defense ministry’s intelligence department (GUR) has claimed that Russian operatives used deepfake technology in an attempt to discredit Ukraine’s partnership with Turkey.  

According to a GUR Telegram post from October 9, Russian intelligence services attempted to use deepfake technology to call Haluk Bayraktar, CEO of of Baykar Defense, the Turkish defense company providing Bayraktar drones to Ukraine. The GUR claimed that Russian intelligence services tried to impersonate Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in the video call with Bayraktar. However, instead of speaking with the Bayraktar executive, GUR said the Russian intelligence service was connected to an “equally fake” individual impersonating a Bayraktar employee. The GUR added that the Russian intelligence service made pronunciation errors when speaking in the Ukrainian language. Specifically, the speaker used the Ukrainian expression babyne lito (бабине літо, “Grandmother’s summer” or “Indian summer”), but used the Russian pronunciation bab’ye lyeto (бабьє лєто) instead.

The GUR stated that the purpose of the operation was to discredit the cooperation between Ukraine and Turkey. “At the end of the conversation, the Russian operatives were informed that they had been exposed and would be prosecuted,” it said. 

There have been several instances of deepfakes used since the beginning of the Russian invasion. In the early days of the war, Kremlin supporters circulated a deepfake of Zelenskyy urging the Ukrainian military to surrender. The latest incident demonstrates how pro-Russian deepfakes have moved beyond recorded footage to livestream deepfakes, in which a synthetic face can overlay an individual’s face in real time, creating an additional illusion of authenticity.

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Russia blames Ukrainian military intelligence for Kerch bridge explosion

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed that a truck with explosive materials caused the detonation on the Kerch bridge on October 8, and accused Ukrainian military intelligence of carrying out what it called a “terrorist attack.” The blast resulted in two road spans partially collapsing and seven fuel tanks catching fire. The FSB said that four people were killed as a result of the explosion. On October 12, the FSB said it had detained eight people in connection with the incident, including five Russian citizens as well as three Ukrainian and Armenian nationals. 

According to the FSB, explosives weighing 22.7 tons were camouflaged in plastic film rolls and sent from the Ukrainian port of Odesa to Bulgaria’s Ryse port in early August. They allege the cargo was sent to a Georgian port in Poti; from there it traveled to Yerevan and cleared customs at the Trans Alliance terminal. According to Russia’s version of events, the cargo left Yerevan on a Georgian registered DAF truck and crossed the Russia-Georgia border via the Upper Lars checkpoint on October 4. The FSB claimed that the truck was unloaded at the Armavir wholesale base in the Krasnodar region of Russia on October 6. The next day, the cargo was allegedly loaded on to a different vehicle, owned by a Russian citizen, and left for Simferpol. The explosion took place at 6:03am Moscow time on October 8.

On October 12, Kremlin-controlled media outlet Ria Novosti published a CCTV video on Telegram allegedly depicting Russian police inspecting the truck. The Telegram post included x-ray style photos from the customs checkpoint showing the contents of the truck. However, the truck seen in the CCTV video has at least two elements that are not visible in the x-ray image. The truck in the CCTV video has two front wheels, whereas the truck in the x-ray image does not. In addition, the truck seen on the CCTV camera has a spare wheel, and while the x-ray photo shows a holder for a spare wheel, it appears to be empty. This indicates that the CCTV video and x-ray photo depict different trucks, which Ria Novosti did not acknowledge. 

On October 12, the Russian Telegram channel Baza published two x-ray photos of a truck, alongside another photo showing the contents of the truck. The photos were reportedly taken in Armenia. The DFRLab used Google reverse image search and found that both photos were first published in an article by Armenpress, which stated that according to Armenian customs control, the truck went through the customs clearance procedure “duly and legally and no risk factors were detected.” The article contained photos taken during the inspection, stating that the x-ray examination of the truck “did not reveal any risk factors”. The x-ray photos published by Ria Novosti and Baza appear to be similar, based on the placement of plastic rolls inside the truck. It is possible that Ria Novosti’s photo is also from Armenian customs control. 

On October 10, the Baza Telegram channel also published a photo of a DAF truck with a Georgian license plate. The post claimed that the pictured truck was used to transport the explosives to Russia. On a same day, the Russian Telegram channel Mash Gor published another photo of a similar truck and claimed that Russian police were searching red DAF trucks with Georgian license plates and found the vehicle in Vladikavkaz, Russia. The post said there was no driver in the vehicle when police arrived, but soon after a driver appeared and was arrested. According to Armenpress, the arrested driver is Artur Terjanyan, a dual citizen of Armenia and Georgia.

Georgian and Bulgarian authorities have denied Russia’s accusation that the truck traveled through their territories.

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland

Bulgaria investigates claims of involvement in Kerch bridge blast

Russian media outlets claimed that Bulgaria was complicit in the October 8 explosion targeting the Kerch bridge. While many details about the explosion are still unknown, and speculation is rife, pro-Kremlin media exploited the incident to spread rumors about the role of Bulgaria, a NATO member, in the attack. Bulgaria’s main intelligence agency DANS launched an investigation into Russian claims that the truck that blew up on the bridge came from Bulgaria. Investigations began immediately after the Kremlin released the claim, following an order by acting Prime Minister Galab Donev. The agency has also notified the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office.  

Ukrainian analysts previously proposed three possible explanations for what happened, including mines detonating on the bridge, a truck bomb, or a rocket attack. While the cause of the blast has not been confirmed, a truck bomb is believed to be the most likely explanation. 

In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Russian Investigative Committee, announced that the route of the truck that allegedly blew up the Crimean bridge started in Bulgaria and then passed through Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia, and Krasnodar. The European Commission spokesperson Peter Stano said Bastrykin’s words were unreliable. Kiril Petkov, former Bulgarian prime minister and leader of the We Continue the Change party, called on the caretaker government to reject the Kremlin’s suggestion that there was a Bulgarian connection to the bridge bombing. Meanwhile, Bulgaria’s pro-Russian political parties insisted on an investigation, prompting angry reactions in the media. This is not the first attempt by Russia to discredit Bulgaria. 

Sofia is in a difficult position because of political differences over the provision of military aid to Ukraine; there is already evidence of Bulgarian weapons in Ukraine. However, the topic has become a major dividing line between political parties in the country, as pro-Kremlin politicians insist that Bulgaria should not be drawn into a war with Russia by providing weapons to Ukraine. In this context, the pro-Kremlin military channel Rybar alleged that Bulgaria had delivered a new shipment of weapons to Ukraine. The channel shared blurry photos, reportedly taken on October 9, of an Antonov An-124 aircraft at an airfield in the city of Burgas. Just one day earlier, the far-right Russian paramilitary group Rusich, which is accused of carrying out executions and war crimes in Ukraine, shared on its Telegram channel a photo of a Bulgarian and Polish passport with the text, “Different people, different countries, one goal.” 

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria

Russia adds Meta to its ‘terrorist’ organizations list, blocks EUvsDisinfo website

On October 11, Russia added Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to its list of terrorist and extremist organizations. While Facebook and Instagram are blocked in Russia, WhatsApp remains available.  

The latest designation by Russia’s financial monitoring agency means that Russian citizens and companies who buy advertisements on Facebook or Instagram could face imprisonment on charges of “sponsoring extremism” or “terrorism.” According to the pro-Kremlin outlet Interfax, Russian law requires banks to freeze funds and stop serving citizens and organizations on the list. 

Russian human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov reported that a Russian prosecutor’s office is already sending letters to Facebook and Instagram users “threatening administrative and criminal liability for posting posts on social networks.”  

Russia declared Meta an extremist organization in March 2022. Following the Kremlin’s crackdown on Western social media platforms, Russian citizens have been using virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass official bans and access the platforms. In light of the latest designation, it is possible that Russian citizens could face criminal charges for accessing Meta’s products through a VPN. 

In addition, on October 8, Russian internet censor Roskomnadzor blocked the website of EUvsDisinfo, a counter-disinformation project of the European Union. For years, EUvsDisinfo has exposed the Kremlin disinformation campaigns. Roskomnadzor’s move is a continuation of the Russian policy to restrict Western online media and social networks in an attempt to suppress factual information about Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia 

The post Russian War Report: Russia escalates war by targeting cities across Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Security

Ukraine secures new territory as Prigozhin recruits Russian prisoners

Renewed clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan as Armenia calls for Russian military aid

War crimes and human rights abuses

Ukraine says hundreds of dead civilians unearthed in Izyum

Tracking narratives

Kremlin claims Russian troops are ‘regrouping’

Moscow police investigate journalist for ‘gay propaganda’

Fake RAND Corporation document promoting US conspiracy to weaken Germany spreads online

Russian War Report: Ukraine secures new territory as Prigozhin recruits Russian prisoners

Ukraine has successfully pushed back Russian forces over the last several weeks, launching counteroffensives in the regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Kherson. With active fighting concentrated in the eastern and southern parts of the country, there has been an increase in civilians attempting to flee hard-hit areas. The Ukrainian army regained 600 square kilometers in the Kherson counteroffensive, according to Ukrainian media reports. In Kharkiv, Ukraine retook roughly 300 settlements across 3,000 square kilometers and liberated 150,000 people from Russian occupation. The frontline of the battle in the Kharkiv region is reaching closer to occupied areas of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. On September 13, reports claimed that Russian army units had abandoned Kreminna in Luhansk oblast; while partisans raised the Ukrainian flag over the town, as of September 14, Ukrainian forces had not entered the city. 

Separate attacks have also affected humanitarian assets in Donetsk oblast. On September 12 and 13, the Russian army shelled cities on the frontline of Sloviansk, killing at least one person and injuring another. An agricultural technical school and eight buildings were damaged in the shelling. Russian rockets also hit a hospital and a private residence in Kramatorsk. The town of Hostre, in area of Kurakhove, also came under fire. Meanwhile, Russia has shelled Avdiivka for several days in a row. Russian forces also launched an airstrike on Siversk on September 12. 

As the counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces continues, Russia is attempting to obstruct Ukraine’s progress in various parts of the country. Ukrainian sources reported that eight Russian missiles struck targets in Kryvyi Rih, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, resulting in flooding. The water level of the Inhulets River, which runs south of Kryvyi Rih, rose as result of the strike on the Kherson-Mykolaiv axis, flooding area homes. The target of the attack was likely the Karachun dam. 

Meanwhile, Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin was filmed making an appeal to convicts, promising amnesty if they sign up to fight in Ukraine. In the footage, Prigozhin revealed that prisoners have already been fighting on the frontlines with the Wagner Group. “In the first attack in Ukraine using forty prisoners, three died and seven were injured….Nobody goes back behind bars,” he said. “If you serve six months, you are free.” Russian law does not permit commuting prison sentences for military service, though it is unclear if exceptions can be made during wartime. Prigozhin is mobilizing combat power for the Russian army, which has suffered heavy losses in recent weeks. Prigozhin’s comments are not just about recruiting mercenaries; they are also an indication that Russia is seeking further mobilization, a practice that, even in Soviet times, relied on prisoners.

Prigozhin’s comments coincide with increasing domestic pressure on the Kremlin to mobilize more recruits and to officially declare the “special operation” in Ukraine a war. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov called on regional governors in Russia to carry out self-mobilization and not wait for the Kremlin’s decision. Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Russian communist party, joined the calls for a nationwide mobilization.  

These recent developments indicate that paramilitary formations, like those in Syria who fought alongside the forces of President Bashar Assad’s regime, may be emerging in Russia. In Syria, amid the worst fighting in the civil conflict, the government allowed businessmen to gain influence in the state apparatus in exchange for sponsoring and creating local militias to support the army. The latest developments in Russia indicate that a similar process could be unfolding.  

According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, officials in the occupation administration of Crimea and southern Ukraine have begun to secretly evacuate their families to Russia, indicating that the state of security in Russian-occupied territories is poor. These claims have not been independently confirmed. 

Meanwhile, the first visual confirmation of Iranian drones being used by Russia in Ukraine surfaced this week. A Shahed-136 (Герань-2) drone was most likely used in Ukaine’s Kupiansk region. This is a critical revelation that strongly suggests Tehran is sending Russia military aid, despite earlier denials. It also indicates that Russia may be experiencing a shortage of high-tech equipment and weapons. 

In addition, global sanctions may further hinder the Kremlin’s military efforts, as the group of seven nations is working to cap the price of Russian oil in an attempt to limit Moscow’s ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine. Currently, Russia relies on revenue from exporting energy resources to Asia. 

Lastly, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers approved the draft budget for 2023, Minister of Finance Serhiy Marchenko announced on Facebook.  The 2023 state budget is the budget of a country that will become stronger, strengthen its defense capabilities, be able to rebuild after damage caused by Russian armed aggression, and also take care of those citizens who need it,” he said.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria 

Renewed clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan as Armenia calls for Russian military aid

On September 13, the Armenian Ministry of Defense reported that Azerbaijani Armed Forces shelled Armenian military positions in Goris, Sotk, and Jermuk. Azerbaijan reportedly used large-caliber artillery, small arms, and drones in the attack. Azerbaijan reported fifty casualties, while Armenia said 105 Armenian servicemembers were killed in the strikes. Prior to the recent escalation, both parties had accused each other of planning and organizing a large-scale provocation. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Azerbaijan had gained ten square kilometers of Armenian territory this week. For comparison, in May 2021, Azerbaijan occupied forty square kilometers of Armenian territory. OC Media reported at least nineteen different Armenian locations along the border with Azerbaijan were hit by missiles this week. 

Amid renewed clashes, Armenian authorities asked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led military block, to aid in restoring the territorial integrity of Armenia. Pashinyan stated that Armenia was invoking  Article 4 of the agreement, which stipulates that an attack on a member state is an act of aggression against other member states. In response to this request, CSTO held an emergency meeting and proposed the creation of a working group to assess the situation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Armenia previously invoked Article 4 in May 2021, when Azerbaijan made advances in Armenia’s Gegharkunik and Syunik provinces; in response, CSTO advocated diplomatic negotiations. Armenia also asked Russia to provide military aid under the Russian-Armenian treaty on mutual defense that was signed in 1997. The Kyiv Independent reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had declined to provide military assistance to Armenia, but did not cite a source.  

On September 13, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Azerbaijan to stop the military operation along the border with Armenia. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price noted that the US has seen “significant evidence of Azerbaijani shelling inside Armenia and significant damage to Armenian infrastructure.” Freedom House also called for Azerbaijani armed forces to stop their attacks on Armenia.  

On September 13, Armenian media reported that mobile providers had blocked access to TikTok, but the app remained accessible via cable internet. The DFRLab used OONI Explorer to reviewed the connectivity of TikTok’s website in Armenia; we found that DNS tampering/spoofing began on September 13 at 4:03pm local time. OONI Explorer also showed that DNS spoofing of TikTok’s website took place in Azerbaijan on September 14. Azerbaijan’s State Security Service announced that it had temporarily suspended TikTok in Azerbaijan due to the fact that information published on the platform “casts a shadow on the successes of our army, contains military secrets, and aims to create a wrong opinion in the society.” Samvel Martirosyan, co-founder of Armenian CyberHUB, said that in order to prevent people from using virtual private networks (VPNs), state-aligned Azerbaijani bloggers were spreading rumors that major VPN services were controlled by Armenia.  

On September 14, Pashinyan announced that he was willing to recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, as long as Armenia’s Soviet-era border was recognized. He added that he was willing to sign an agreement with Azerbaijan. “Many people will criticize us, curse us, call us traitors, the people may even decide to remove us from power, and we will be grateful if as a result of this,” he said. “Armenia will get lasting peace and security with an area of 2,800 square kilometers.” Following the release of the statement, Armenian citizens gathered in front of the National Assembly building to protest the comments, with some demanding Pashinyan’s resignation. Pashinyan later clarified that no such document had been signed as of yet, and any claims to the contrary were rumors propagated by “external unfriendly forces.

Armenia and Azerbaijan negotiated a ceasefire that took effect at 8pm local time on September 15.

—Givi Gigitashvili, Research Associate, Warsaw, Poland. 

Ukraine says hundreds of dead civilians unearthed in Izyum

Ukrainian officials said they had found 440 bodies in woodlands near the city of Izyum. They said most of the dead were civilians, and that the site proved war crimes had been committed by Russian occupiers. Video from Izyum showed a pine forest dotted with graves. Wooden crosses marked the locations. One handwritten sign read, “Ukraine armed forces, seventeen people, Izyum city, [taken] from the morgue.”  

If confirmed, this would be the largest mass grave identified in Europe since Tomašica, where the Bosnian authorities uncovered a mass grave in September 2013. It contained the remains of 435 people, mostly war victims, who were killed by the Bosnian Serb forces in various places around Prijedor from 1992 to 1995.  

Reports from Kupiansk also indicate potential Russian war crimes, including instances of torture. In jail cells at a local police station, Ukrainian forces found blood on the floor and stains on mattresses. Russian occupation forces hastily abandoned the police station after destroying records they had kept there.

—Ruslan Trad, Resident Fellow for Security Research, Sofia, Bulgaria 

Kremlin claims Russian troops are ‘regrouping’

After a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian troops to retreat from the vicinity of Kharkiv, Russian officials and pro-Kremlin sources rebranded the withdrawal as “regrouping.” 

As Ukraine regained territory, Igor Konashenkov, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defense, said the MoD decided to “regroup” Russian forces in the areas of Balakliia and Izyum “to build up prospects at the Donetsk level.” The MoD continued, “During this operation, a number of distraction and demonstration activities were carried out with the designation of the real actions of the troops.”  

Meanwhile, Kremlin-owned and pro-Kremlin media outlets attempted to justify Russia’s retreat as a strategic decision. Outlets such as iz.ru, vz.ru, crimea.ria.ru, topcor.ru, and rk-news.com published interviews with pro-Kremlin pundits who offered varying justifications for the Russian withdrawal. In one interview, a “military expert” claimed that Russia’s MoD “carried out a whole range of measures to mislead the Armed Forces of Ukraine, creating the illusion that we had a weak defense.” Another interview reinforced the claim that Russia retreated to “mislead the enemy.” A third interview alleged that the “regrouping” took place because there was a “need to concentrate forces and strengthen positions in the Donbas.”  

Online mentions of the word “Перегруппировка” (“regrouping”) skyrocketed on September 10 and 11, according to a query conducted using the social media monitoring tool Meltwater Explore.

In addition, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov claimed, “The regrouping of troops in the Kharkiv region is a forced measure, which is explained by military strategy and the goal of saving human lives.”

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Washington DC

Moscow police investigate journalist for disseminating ‘gay propaganda’

Moscow police are investigating TV personality Ksenia Sobchak for disseminating “gay propaganda,” Russian state-owned media outlet RIA reported on Monday. 

According to RIA, the investigation was initiated after a Russian citizen contacted police to “examine publications shared on the channel of journalist Ksenia Sobchak for LGBT propaganda among minors.” RIA reported that the case is being investigated under Article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses, which pertains to the “promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among juveniles.” Article 6.21 carries a fine of up to 100,000 rubles ($1,676) for individuals and up to one million rubles for legal entities, in addition to a possible 90-day work suspension. 

Ksenia Sobchak is the daughter of the late Anatoly Sobchak, the former mayor of St. Petersburg and mentor to Vladimir Putin. In 2018, she ran as a presidential candidate against Putin, but some argued that Sobchak was a decoy candidate who only ran to create the illusion of a democratic election.  

On her Telegram channel, Krovavaya Barynya (“Кровавая барыня,” “Bloody Lady”), Sobchak suggested that police might be investigating her YouTube channel after she published an interview with Russian tennis player Daria Kasatkina, who recently came out as gay. “Now even just a conversation with LGBT people about their lives might be considered LGBT propaganda,” Sobchak added. The police have not confirmed which of Sobchak’s platforms is being examined. Sobchak’s YouTube channel has more than three million subscribers, and the interview with Kasatkina garnered more than 1.5 million views.   

Earlier this month, Russian internet regulator Roskomnadzor announced its support for a draft law “on administrative responsibility for propaganda of LGBT people and pedophilia.” The bill was introduced by Alexander Khinshtein, the head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy.  

Last month, Russia revealed plans to construct an online surveillance system that could hunt down “homosexual propaganda,” among other “prohibited data.” In addition, Runiversalis – the Russian analog of the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia– announced that it will not cover “homosexual propaganda” on its platform.   

—Eto Buziashvili, Research Associate, Washington DC

Fake RAND Corporation document promoting US conspiracy to weaken Germany spreads online

On September 11, the Russian television program Vesti Nedeli reported on what it claimed was a “confidential document” from the RAND Corporation, a US think tank. The document claimed the US had planned the war in Ukraine in advance and had deliberately provoked Russia. Reporter Mikhail Antonov argued that the document, said to be dated January 25, 2022, outlined a US strategy to force Germany into applying sanctions against Russia, in an attempt to weaken Germany’s economy. Antonov cited the German outlet Weltexpress as the source of the document.

RAND Corporation denied the allegation. “A supposedly leaked RAND report about a bizarre U.S. conspiracy to ‘weaken Germany’ is fake,” it said in a statement.   

Weltexpress, the first German language outlet to publish about the document, titled their article, “The economic crisis in Germany is the result of a deliberate provocation by the USA. The Americans collapsed the German economy to destroy a competitor.” Two days later, Weltexpress published in English what they claimed to be an excerpt from the alleged RAND report.

—Sopo Gelava, Research Associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

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Washington, DC—September 12, 2022—The Atlantic Council announced today that Ambassador Marcy Grossman will serve as a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and N7 Initiative in the Middle East Programs.

A former Canadian Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Grossman will play a key role in building on the Atlantic Council’s growing body of work on Israeli-Arab normalization and regional conflict resolution initiatives through a dedicated gender lens.

“Ambassador Grossman brings creativity, skill, and an unparalleled network that will significantly strengthen the Atlantic Council’s work on normalization in the N7 program, including by ensuring the full inclusion of women in all the opportunities that accompany this trend,” said Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, Atlantic Council Distinguished Fellow. “We are fortunate to have this innovative, dynamic, and deeply experienced diplomat join our team.”

Grossman spent over twenty years abroad as a Canadian diplomat and has been on the leading edge of the Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, including as an advocate for the role of women in diplomacy and peacebuilding. Prior to being appointed ambassador, she was Canada’s consul general to Dubai and the Northern Emirates.  

Over the span of her career, Grossman has developed an expertise in geopolitical, security, and economic issues impacting North America and the Middle East. She spent fifteen years representing Canada in four distinct regions of the United States, including as consul general in Miami and Denver, and as the senior trade commissioner in Dallas and Los Angeles.  

During her tenure in the United States, she was responsible for a wide range of Canada’s business, political, academic, consular, immigration, and public-safety interests. She also closed several large-scale foreign investment deals in cities across Canada.  

She is an international business development expert and was notably responsible for the creation of Canada’s foreign direct investment agency, Invest in Canada. Grossman joined Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 2001 as a senior trade officer, developing a full spectrum of investment marketing campaigns for Canada, including the publication of the bestselling book Innovation Nation.

“We are thrilled to welcome Ambassador Grossman to the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. We are excited that the broader public will now have the opportunity to hear and read the Ambassador’s expert insights and analysis, stemming from her extensive diplomatic career,” said Jonathan Panikoff, Director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.”And we are thrilled that she will continue her distinguished leadership across a variety of spheres at the Atlantic Council—including her renowned efforts to encourage more women to take part in international security and diplomacy.”

Before joining Canada’s foreign service, Grossman held management positions in numerous federal government departments, including Industry Canada, Canada’s School of Public Service, and the Treasury Board. She launched her career in the criminal justice system, and between 1990 and 1998, served in various capacities within Correctional Services Canada. She is a graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, with a master’s degree in criminal psychology.  

For inquiries or to request an interview, please contact press@AtlanticCouncil.org

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Islamabad’s long-standing objective—to have a dependent government in Kabul—has finally burned to the ground with the presently ruling Taliban who, instead of providing any strategic advantage or contributing to Pakistan’s security, has become a worrisome thorn in Islamabad’s side. Not only does this have grave implications for Pakistan’s security (such as through Kabul’s support for the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), but it also necessitates a revised policy strategy to effectively deal with the situation in neighboring Afghanistan.

But first, how did we get here?

The Afghan Taliban have coddled the TTP since the Republic’s collapse

Since coming to power on August 15, 2022, the Afghan Taliban have taken four questionable steps in support of the TTP that are conspicuously against Pakistan’s interests and security. 

1. Operational support: The most significant of these steps is supporting the TTP and providing them a free field in Afghanistan. Soon after assuming power, the Afghan Taliban regime set free over two-thousand TTP members incarcerated in Afghan jails by previous Afghan presidents Ashraf Ghani and Hamid Karzai. After six years of relative stability in Pakistan when terrorist attacks actually decreased each year, attacks increased in 2021 by 56 percent. 294 attacks overall saw 395 people killed, and these attacks “coincided with the Afghan Taliban’s military offensive [which] started in May 2021 and reached the highest point in August 2021 when the Taliban took over Kabul” according to Islamabad-based think tank Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. 
2. Pushing for Pakistani accomodation: The Afghan Taliban’s strategy of supporting and facilitating Pakistani talks with the TTP—as opposed to fighting the group militarily—has multiple geostrategic angles. The ramifications of this are that Pakistan must now contend with the facilitator of its talks with the TTP using relations with one of its prime security threats to force negotiations on the latter’s terms. Not only does this benefit the TTP as the Afghan Taliban’s brethren-in-arms (since the two have a long history of ties), but it also allows the Afghan Taliban to build a favorable image for themselves as peacemakers, putting Pakistan on the defensive so as not to meddle into Afghan affairs. Finally, and perhaps most powerfully, it might help to scratch off the label of the Afghan Taliban being Pakistani stooges. 
3. Ongoing refusal to recognize the Durand Line: The third significant anti-Pakistan measure of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan is not to recognize as settled the 2,640 kilometer—otherwise internationally recognized—border between the two countries known as the Durand Line. In an interview in February 2022, Taliban Acting Information Minister Zabihullah Mujahid said, “the issue of the Durand Line is still an unresolved one, while the construction of fencing itself creates rifts within a nation spread across both sides of the border. It amounts to dividing a nation” (referring to the Pashtun ethnic-linguistic group). 
4. Openness to engaging India: The statement by Mullah Yaqoob, Taliban Defense Minister, desiring that Islamabad’s arch-rival India train Afghan troops, is of grave concern to Pakistan. Such an overture holds significant weight and represents a stark change in tone seeing as Yaqoob is the eldest son of the movement’s founder, Mullah Omar. It is thus a major blow to Pakistan’s decades-long policy in Afghanistan to have a dependent regime next door, precluding Islamabad’s long-term goal of using Afghanistan for its regional—and particularly its anti-India—agenda. If Delhi agrees to train Taliban troops, this would mark the beginning of the end of Taliban dependence on Pakistan, and a major foothold for Indian influence on Pakistan’s western border.

Major implications for Pakistan’s security and territorial integrity

These factors have profound implications for the security of Pakistan. Historically, the underlying concern of Islamabad regarding Afghanistan has been the latter’s irredentist claims on Pakistani territory (regarding the disputed Durand Line), which the Taliban are now spearheading. Championing this revanchist stand would pose a grave security challenge to Pakistan’s territorial integrity, particularly when the Afghan Taliban are already glove-in-hand with the TTP. 

The alignment of interests between these parties goes deeper: seeing as the Afghan Taliban and TTP are both Pashtun, it is thus concerning that—at the same time the Afghan Taliban continues to challenge Pakistani territorial integrity by rejecting the Durand Line—the TTP is concurrently pressing for a reversal to the merger of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Together, these efforts could mainstream the idea of a Pashtun-inhabited tribal borderland with a potential associated separatist movement. It also connects back to the Afghan Taliban’s double game in facilitating Islamabad-TTP talks while simultaneously enabling the TTP, with both angles designed to maintain leverage over Pakistan. 

Furthermore, the interest expressed to India by the Afghan Taliban to train its troops represents a major blow to Pakistan’s decades-long goal in Afghanistan to have a dependent regime next door. In case India takes up this offer, the latter could gradually become dependent upon the former and growing relations between the two militaries would undercut the very influence Pakistani strategists have worked years to develop over the Taliban. Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy thus has not provided it with a puppet regime next door as originally intended—what former US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson famously called Rawalpindi’s policy of “Strategic Depth.” 

That said, it is precisely because of this context that the Afghan Taliban—in conjunction with the TTP—are now similarly in search of influence, or “Reverse Strategic Depth,” in Pakistan.

How should Islamabad respond?

While the threat posed by the Afghan Taliban is severe, Pakistan must respond carefully, bearing in mind the evolving geopolitical landscape of the region. 

1. Fence the border. Pakistani state security and social cohesion have had already been lacerated by the proliferation of militancy, terrorism, weapons, and Pashtun separatism from the Afghan war-conflict theatre in the last forty years. Pakistan must therefore further strengthen border fencing and surveillance mechanisms so that the cross-border movement of terrorists—particularly the TTP—as well as the proliferation of leftover weapons in Afghanistan into Pakistani territory be stopped.
   
2. Negotiate with the TTP without the Afghan Taliban. Doing so would prevent Afghan Taliban leverage over Pakistan, which can currently enable the TTP and its operations in Pakistan depending on if Islamabad accedes to Kabul’s demands. As such, instead of appeasing them, Islamabad must straightforwardly present the TTP with an ultimatum: lay down their arms or otherwise face military action. In the meanwhile, Pakistan must use its influence to pressure the Afghan Taliban against having ties with the TTP, conveying to Kabul that the TTP poses a threat to its security and integrity. Once deprived of Afghan Taliban support, the TTP would have no other option but to negotiate with Pakistani authorities on the latter’s terms. 
   
3. Address the grievances of Pakistani Pashtuns. Pakistan’s war on terror has been entirely fought on Pashtun-inhabited regions, including KP, the former FATA region, and upper Balochistan, resulting in large-scale death, destruction, and displacement of millions of people. Incidents like the school attack in Peshawar which claimed the lives of at least 140 students is a case in point. It contributed to large-scale disaffection and anger among Pashtuns who consider themselves to have been victims of the war. Pakistan must put an end to discrimination and deprivation among its Pashtun population, dedicating funds for development, reviving livelihoods, and providing education.
   
   To do this, the government should begin by revoking the merger of the former FATA region with KP, making FATA a new province. Separation and localization of FATA and KP’s governance would be instrumental in establishing industries, extending loans to enable young people to set-up small businesses including privately run schools and workshops, and generally enable a better social-political-economic milieu.
   
   The difference, however, between this and the TTP’s push to reverse the merger is that the former would be an official, government-led policy serving the national interest, as opposed to an anti-state movement seeking to again have an unregulated territory from which to base terrorist operations in Pakistan (as it did prior to the merger). Revocation of the merger and making the region a province would enable inhabitants of the tribal borderlands to have their own elected legislative assembly that could formulate laws in accordance with local customs and traditions.
   
4. Open a dialogue with arch-rival India. That India and Pakistan have a long history of outsourcing their rivalry to regional conflicts is well documented. A mutual pledge between Islamabad and Delhi not to use the political vacuum and conflict in Afghanistan against each other could thus go a long way in addressing broader tensions in South Asia that foster proxy behavior. It is in the long-term interest of both countries to address issues directly as opposed to in roundabout ways. Here, India and Pakistan might find some common ground, despite the former being ruled by the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party and the latter being in the midst of its most serious political upheaval in decades. The security threat to the region emanating from Afghanistan could in time prove existential, and demonstrates the significance of Delhi-Islamabad cooperation insulated from domestic turbulence in both countries.
   
5. Push for regional economic integration. Islamabad must support a true free trade policy with Afghanistan and India so that economic interdependence among regional countries can be realized. This would be in line with Pakistan’s avowed paradigm shift in foreign policy focus from geostrategic to geoeconomic. Regional interdependence also would neutralize nonstate terrorist groups like the TTP and compel the Taliban to reform and focus on economic rehabilitation of their country instead of engaging in destructive and destabilizing activity for the broader region. In recent years, Pakistan’s mutual trade with Afghanistan due to Islamabad’s myopic policies has come down from three billion dollars to just $500 million.
   
   Both countries’ traders yearn to restore trade ties. Afghanistan, which does not have much export potential, has been dependent upon staple imports from Pakistan and other products due to their cheap prices and good quality. India—despite its political rivalry with Pakistan—has always been desirous of having open trade with Islamabad, demonstrated by its giving Most Favored Nation status to Pakistan in 1996 even though Islamabad never extended to India the same. Seeing as Pakistan is strategically situated between Afghanistan and India, it can use this goodwill and opportunities extended by its neighbors to serve as a bridge between the two countries and beyond with Central Asia.

Conclusion

Pakistan’s long-standing policy regarding Afghanistan has failed to achieve its core objective of having a pro-Islamabad regime in Kabul to counterbalance the threat from India. This policy failure has enabled and emboldened the Afghan Taliban to use Pakistan for the group’s own agenda: strengthen its stranglehold over Afghanistan via support from the TTP to the exclusion of all other Afghan political forces. This situation is against the interests of the people of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Pakistan must therefore revisit its Afghanistan policy and concentrate on strengthening security through measures like border fencing, talking to the TTP on its terms, addressing the genuine grievances of its Pashtun population, restoring purposeful dialogue with India, and pushing for intra-regional and cross-regional economic integration in which it could have an anchoring role.  

(The writer is a Pakistan-based academic, security, political and policy analyst. He holds a PhD degree in International Relations and master’s degrees in Political Science, IR and Media Studies. He is alumnus of U.S. State Department prestigious IVLP) razamzai@gmail.com

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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Earlier this year, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham introduced a bipartisan resolution calling on Blinken to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. The Committee on Foreign Relations reviewed the resolution, which was then unanimously approved by the Senate. While the resolution was non-binding, it sent a message that Congress may take matters into its own hands if the State Department is unwilling to designate Russia.

The House of Representatives went a step further. Representatives Ted Lieu, Joe Wilson, Jared Golden, Adam Kinzinger, and Tom Malinowski introduced a bipartisan bill in late July to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi backed the move, calling designation “long overdue.” The bill has bipartisan support in the House and there are strong indications it will be passed. It is also likely to receive Senate backing. It would then be up to US President Joe Biden to sign the bill into law.

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There are a number of reasons why the Biden administration is hesitating to apply the state sponsor of terrorism designation to Russia. These include fears that the designation would have a negative impact on US partners and allies who continue to maintain significant business interests in Russia. Meanwhile, Blinken has downplayed the issue by suggesting that many of the sanctions connected to designation would duplicate measures already in place.

Opponents also warn that applying the state sponsor of terrorism designation to Russia would dramatically reduce the scope for future diplomatic engagement with Moscow. Kremlin officials have echoed these concerns. Speaking in early August, Russian Foreign Ministry North American Department director Alexander Darchiev commented, “If this legislative initiative is passed, it would mean that Washington would cross the point of no return, with the most serious collateral damage to bilateral diplomatic relations, up to their lowering or even breaking off entirely. The US side has been warned.”

Designating countries as state sponsors of terrorism is the responsibility of the US State Department and depends on whether the actions of the country in question meet US definitions of international terrorism. At present, only four countries are officially labelled by the United States as state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria. Designation brings with it a series of new sanctions measures including bans on defense industry and dual use exports along with a range of financial and other restrictions.

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There is little doubt that Russia would technically qualify as a state sponsor of terrorism. Since the invasion began on February 24, the Russian military’s war crimes in Ukraine have been widely documented and are currently subject to a number of ongoing international investigations. To date, six countries have joined Ukraine in formally recognizing Russia’s invasion as an act of genocide. Individual atrocities including the mass murder of civilians in Bucha and the bombing of civilian targets such as shopping malls and hospitals have helped fuel calls for Russia to be recognized as a state sponsor of terrorism.  

Designation would have potentially painful consequences for Moscow and could create significant new barriers to Russian engagement with the outside world. As well as introducing additional restrictions on US economic interaction with Russia, it would also put pressure on international companies that are still conducting business in Russia. Additionally, individuals would be able to sue Russia in US courts.

The designation debate is clearly far from over. Critics insist the move risks damaging relationships with US allies and would further reduce the possibility of any constructive dialogue with Moscow. At the same time, there is also widespread awareness that current sanctions measures have failed to bring Russia to the negotiating table or end the slaughter in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian atrocities continue to mount with millions of Ukrainians in occupied regions of the country facing the threat of crimes against humanity on a daily basis.  

Supporters say the time has now come to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. They argue that this would send a necessarily powerful message to Moscow while also reducing the Kremlin’s ability to finance the invasion of Ukraine. If the State Department remains reluctant to take this step, Congress may attempt to do so.

Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eastern Europe and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He can be found on Twitter @MTemnycky.

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At this time last year, as the militant group swallowed up vast swaths of Afghanistan, the son of famous anti-Soviet resistance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud pledged during an exclusive Atlantic Council interview that he’d seek talks with the Taliban.

Now, however, Massoud says the group remains uninterested in either dialogue or reforming its backward ways. That’s why his fledgling military alliance, the National Resistance Front (NRF), is pressing on with armed resistance.

“There’s no other option but to resist until [Taliban members] understand and realize they need to also submit—as [do] all of us—to a legitimate process which brings a legitimate government which is accountable to the people of Afghanistan, and also to the world,” he told Kamal Alam, a nonresident senior fellow at the Council’s South Asia Center and a special adviser and representative of the Massoud Foundation (of which Massoud is the president).

Here are some key takeaways from their conversation:

No partner to negotiate with

• Immediately after the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, 2021, Massoud recalled, he and his allies—while stationed in the Panjshir Valley—tried to engage the Taliban and make the group understand that “legitimacy in Afghanistan… cannot come though the barrel of a gun” but through the voice of the people.

• That didn’t work. Massoud claims the group’s message was clear: “We expect nothing less than surrender” and a pledge of loyalty to the regime. That’s when Massoud and others formed the NRF, which has attacked Taliban forces and weathered counterattacks in recent months. The fight will continue, Massoud said, until “the Taliban realize that the military regime, or a militant group’s rule over a country, is not an option.”

• While Massoud said the NRF tried working with regional actors to hammer out some sort of peace with the Taliban, those efforts also failed. “Unfortunately,” he noted, Taliban leaders “have not changed. They are even more radical than before.”

Don’t be fooled

• Massoud urged world leaders to avoid considering the group a “Taliban 2.0” that somehow changed for the better after returning to power. “They failed in fighting international terrorism because they share the same ideology” as terrorist groups, he said. “They failed in creating inclusivity because they don’t believe in it.” 

• Massoud, whose father was assassinated by al-Qaeda just days before the September 11 attacks, pointed to the Taliban’s apparent sheltering of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was killed by a US airstrike last week. The fact that Zawahiri was living in central Kabul is “a clear indication that [Taliban leaders] have completely aligned with such terrorism entities and organizations,” Massoud said.

• Other extremist groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, are also finding safe haven in Afghanistan, he added—and by turning a blind eye to this trend, the international community would make “a catastrophic mistake” with wide-ranging consequences.

Help wanted

• While the NRF is determined to fight on for a democratic and decentralized government in Afghanistan, its struggle is a lonely one because “no country is supporting us,” Massoud said. 

• While the Taliban remains officially unrecognized since it seized control of the country last year, several countries in the region continue to station ambassadors in Kabul. Massoud said these diplomatic overtures are rooted in worries that the Taliban’s “incompetent” governance will produce bigger security challenges: “The countries’ engagement with the Taliban [is] solely based on this one factor, which is fear.”

• Invoking Western support for Ukraine and Taiwan in their struggles against Russia and China, respectively, he added that Afghans would see “hypocrisy” in the West’s failure to also help the Afghan people fight off their own tyrants. “We are working with our people for the values and for the livelihood which we truly deserve,” he explained.

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Among a multitude of arguments in favor of and against the strike, some supporters laud the move as a serious blow to al-Qaeda’s image and operational capability. Conversely, critics say that it doubled as a ploy by US President Joseph R. Biden to bolster sinking political support in the United States, arguing that the strike will have little effect in tangible terms for combating terrorism in Afghanistan and the region.

South Asia Center experts provide their analyses of the situation:

Javid Ahmad: Al-Qaeda’s new leadership will expectedly reassess its own ties with their various Taliban partners

Rabia Akhtar: The assassination provides Biden the facesaving he badly needed

Kamal Alam: Zawahiri was clearly living in Kabul with ease

James Cunningham: There can be no question that Taliban leadership welcomed Zawahiri in Kabul

Hameed Hakimi: The killing of Zawahiri bears a negligible accomplishment for the Biden administration in confronting any possible threats to the United States

Sahar Halaimzai: The people of Afghanistan must now live with the threat of violence not just by the Taliban but by drone strikes as well

Roya Rahmani: Afghanistan is at risk of once again becoming a breeding ground for militancy, fueled by extreme poverty and an oppressive regime

Omar Samad: A drone attack with consequences and choices

Harris Samad: Sanction, isolate, and occasionally rain fire from the sky cannot become the extent of US-Afghanistan relations

Al-Qaeda’s new leadership will expectedly reassess its own ties with their various Taliban partners

As the Taliban exploit various terror threats to blackmail regional and non-regional forces to extract recognition or normalization of relations, al-Qaeda’s new leadership will expectedly reassess its own ties with their various Taliban partners. While there are real risks of al-Qaeda severing its Taliban ties, the Taliban hardliners could potentially mitigate any al-Qaeda overreaction directed at the Taliban through certain concessions. Resetting this codependent partnership could include deepening the common intelligence and operational picture between the two groups, internal retaliatory killings to avenge the senior Sheikh, relocation of al-Qaeda camps, and tightening personnel for operational security. For the United States, Zawahiri’s killing in the Taliban’s capital has opened several opportunities to consider.  

First, Washington should declassify one of the two classified annexes of the 2020 Doha agreement to publicly scrutinize whether the Taliban are living up to their counterterrorism commitments.  

Second, while the Afghanistan debacle has now been largely regionalized, Washington should fix the limits of its over-the-horizon counterterrorism engagement–which, while significant, lulls into a false sense of security. Despite the current nature of limited militant targeting, the distance limits in the “horizon,” the absence of local partners and support teams, intelligence collection or ground-level verification, as well as early warning capabilities remain unclear. While some Afghan elements of paramilitary support teams are to my knowledge on the ground, their limited reach should be quietly expanded. What’s also missing from the debate is an urgent need for a redefined US regional counterterrorism strategy, paired with an on-the-ground monitoring mechanism perhaps based in Termez, Uzbekistan, to provide clarity about Washington’s new rules of engagement.  

Third, as the jihadist threat becomes more decentralized and the Taliban’s civilian bureaucracy becomes more militarized, the value of covert and targeted action should not be underestimated. Washington could consider expanding its roster of targets to include a basket of the Taliban/Haqqani operatives who play critical enabling roles in jihadist activities. This basket includes known senior- and mid-level Taliban intelligence operatives, couriers, financiers, logisticians, and recruiters.  

Finally, internally, the Taliban are undergoing an identity crisis, with the group split between the ideologues and the businessmen. The group’s cohesion depends on how well they manage power and patronage, a recurring challenge that has long troubled power dynamics in Afghanistan. For Washington, a critical blind spot in its Taliban policy has been its negligible engagement with the Taliban clerics, particularly in Kandahar. Because ideology is deeply entrenched in nearly all Taliban actions, there is a burning need for robust religious diplomacy that creatively (and directly) engages the Taliban’s clerics. While Washington has discouraged supporting armed opposition against the Taliban, it could consider cultivating an institutional counterweight within the Taliban ranks to shape the group’s choices and actions.  

Javid Ahmad is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. On Twitter: @ahmadjavid

The assassination provides Biden the facesaving he badly needed

“My fellow Americans….justice has been delivered,” Biden concluded during his statement while taking credit for eliminating Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, in Kabul, Afghanistan. While it is too early to even speculate about the details of the drone attack which killed Zawahiri, his elimination surely brings closure to the victims of the 9/11 attacks which Zawahiri planned as Osama bin Laden’s deputy. While the assassination takes the heat off Washington’s embarrassing and hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, more specifically, it provides Biden the facesaving he badly needed. Soon, the American public will forget the twenty-year defeat in Afghanistan, and remember Biden for finally avenging the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which were incomplete after bin Laden’s assassination since Zawahiri was still at large. 

While the world applauds the United States for damaging al-Qaeda, which has received the biggest blow since bin Laden’s elimination, Afghanistan’s Taliban government has termed it as a violation of the 2020 Doha accords it signed with the United States. While the Taliban gave guarantees that Afghanistan would not become a safe haven for terrorists, the United States too assured its support for counterterrorism against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K). Now, both parties are blaming each other for breaching the essence of the accords and the guarantees stipulated therein. It is too early to speculate whether the Taliban shared intel with Washington about Zawahiri’s location in Kabul leading to the precision drone attack in lieu of any guarantees on humanitarian assistance, economic, or development assistance by the United States. However, if the Taliban did strike a deal with Washington for any such assistance (which does not need to come to them directly through Washington for fear of the associated optics), then it is important for them to deny it to avoid public backlash.

It is also not clear at this point whether Pakistan’s airspace was used for this attack to take place and if it was, then under what terms and conditions is Pakistan working with the United States for over-the-horizon counterterrorism cooperation. While it will take some time for these details to be revealed, Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism is one area which should remain an important bilateral space even when no US boots are on the ground and in the region. Pakistan’s Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorism problem, as well as the TTP’s safe haven in Afghanistan, in due course can also be addressed through Pakistan-US joint counterterrorism engagement. 

–Dr. Rabia Akhtar is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

Zawahiri was clearly living in Kabul with ease

The biggest take away from the Kabul strike is that despite their public statement of distancing themselves from terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the IS-K, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was clearly living in Kabul with ease. The old guard of the Taliban leadership still have their networks and relationships in tact even if they don’t tacitly or tactically support the international terror organizations which were based in Afghanistan in the 1990s from Chechnya, Balkans, the Middle East, and East Asia. Whilst the Taliban are local and at best regional, they might still look the other way when it comes to old friendships they had. They have also begun to take a hit in the north east of the country in Panjshir and Andrab along with Badakhshan, so other groups can easily fill the vacuum. The Taliban were good fighters but are far from capable of any form of governance with increasing attacks by IS-K in Kabul. 

The other takeaway is the success of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in over-the-horizon operations in Afghanistan. The single biggest success of the United States in twenty years in Afghanistan is how SOCOM was able to project power and take out the majority of al-Qaeda leadership. This will be a fundamental component going forward, i.e., the right intelligence, how it is leveraged, and–without any need to deploy resources directly–hit the terrorists at will. For Pakistan and Iran, who could be most vulnerable given their links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda respectively (with Zawahiri’s family and successor based in Iran), things will get more heated as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence struggle to contain domestic security with either Israeli attacks on Iran or TTP and Balochistan Liberation Army attacks in Pakistan. All this makes Afghanistan a theater again that connects instability from South Asia to the Middle East as well as a nervous Central Asia. 

–Kamal Alam is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

There can be no question that Taliban leadership welcomed Zawahiri in Kabul

The killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri should serve to remind that the United States will pursue and bring to justice those who have and would harm Americans. We have both long memory and reach. The loss of Zawahiri is unlikely at this point to have a decisive impact on al-Qaeda itself, but the more important fact is that he was located at a villa in a wealthy section of downtown Kabul, with his family, apparently accustomed to taking his ease on the property. There can be no question that the Taliban leadership welcomed him in Kabul and that, as in the past, an al-Qaeda leader was enjoying Taliban hospitality and protection. Yes, the welcome demise of Zawahiri demonstrates that after its ill-advised withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States can conduct over the horizon attacks on terrorists there—if they remain in a fixed position for a long period of time and make mistakes, which is uncommon in the world of al-Qaeda jihadism with which the Taliban obviously remain associated.  And which I fear will come again to present a threat to the region, to the United States, and to our allies as the Taliban’s relationship with al-Qaeda endures.  

–Amb. James Cunningham is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

The killing of Zawahiri bears a negligible accomplishment for the Biden administration in confronting any possible threats to the United States

The US drone strike that killed Zawahiri is the first known successful over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation since August 2021. Over-the-horizon capabilities were mooted as a potential approach to addressing any future security threats as Biden announced the unconditional withdrawal of US (and by extension NATO) troops in April 2021. However, it is too early to speculate if the drone strike that killed Zawahiri is a potential game-changer in pressuring the Taliban from the skies, or indeed if it is the first of continued future attacks. Biden is likely to promote the incident as evidence of his decisiveness to pursue the United States’ enemies amidst his sinking approval ratings. Yet, al-Qaeda has become drastically weakened in its capability in a crowded marketplace of insurgents, non-state actors, and other violent extremists such as IS-K. Critically, however, the attack could force jihadist groups and violent extremist groups currently in Afghanistan to go underground. This will store longer-term counterterrorism challenges as Afghanistan is isolated, cut off diplomatically from the West, and ruled by an internationally unrecognised regime. 

The most immediate consequences of the attack confront the Taliban regime as the spokesmen are forced to provide explanations online and in front of the cameras. Despite the grand claims of establishing its writ over the entire geography of Afghanistan, the Taliban regime seems helpless in asserting control on Afghan airspace–a substantial weakness. This is also indicative of the difficulties the group faces in transforming from a violent insurgency into a governing party. Dealing with internationally significant incidents may not be a strength that Taliban leaders possess, exposing their inexperience and the complications of governance in a challenging environment.

Regionally, while Pakistan has been a key patron of the Taliban, any Pakistan-US collaboration on drone strikes that do not receive a tacit nod from Taliban leaders will severely restrict the Taliban’s ability to continually project itself as the victorious rulers of Afghanistan. Pakistan could also leverage a renewed cooperation with the United States to threaten TTP elements who are currently sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ultimately, the key outcomes from the killing of Zawahiri will manifest in Afghanistan and the region, forcing alignments and realignments. At present, it seems the killing of Zawahiri bears negligible accomplishment for the Biden administration in confronting any possible threats to the United States and its allies emanating from a weakened al-Qaeda.

–Hameed Hakimi is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

The people of Afghanistan must now live with the threat of violence not just by the Taliban but by drone strikes as well

While a major win for President Biden, what the strike against Zawahiri has demonstrated is not only what we have long known–that the Taliban are not abiding by the terms of the Doha deal but significantly that America’s war in Afghanistan continues. There are a number of potential consequences to the strike, but a major trend to watch is the deepening factionalism within the Taliban. 

My concern is that with the number of terror groups operating in Afghanistan, this strike is a sign of things to come and while this time there was no civilian casualties, next time there may well be. The people of Afghanistan, betrayed time and again, are having to contend with hunger, poverty and repression and must also live with the threat of violence not just by the Taliban but by drone strikes as well.

–Sahar Halaimzai is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

Afghanistan is at risk of once again becoming a breeding ground for militancy, fueled by extreme poverty and an oppressive regime

The killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in a US drone strike this past weekend was a decisive moment for Afghanistan, the region, and the United States. Not only did it demonstrate Washington’s yet-unproven over-the-horizon counterterrorism strategy, but it also raised key questions about the broader politico-security context in which the strike occurred. However, the continued use of over-the-horizon tactics has its limitations, chiefly due to it requiring one of two imperfect scenarios to be the case. 

• The first is akin to Sunday’s drone strike, where a high-profile individual or group grows in strength to such a degree that irrefutable evidence exists confirming its priority as a counterterrorism target. The issue here is that such a strategy is reactive, allowing militant leaders to grow along with their respective support networks before they become sufficiently visible to warrant targeting by counterterrorism forces. 
• The second option is a proactive strike, targeting individuals, groups, and networks of potential concern before they become as influential as someone like Zawahiri. The issue here is that, since the United States and allies lack eyes and ears on the ground in Afghanistan, to a degree this policy is akin to “going in blind” with less intelligence and reduced chance of clear confirmation that someone or something in fact should be targeted. The chance of civilian casualties–due to less accurate intelligence and, therefore, poorer targeting–is thus high.

While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the Taliban has “grossly” violated the 2020 Doha agreement by sheltering Zawahiri, there remains a narrow set of options for translating this hard-hitting rhetoric into policy. The United States could end current and future cooperation with the Taliban. Alternatively, it could double down on emergency aid efforts to prevent a collapse, focus discussion with the Taliban specifically on counterterrorism, and let go of all other areas (such as girls education). Given that the United States has no eyes or ears on the ground in Afghanistan, it is difficult to believe that the drone strike which killed Zawahiri was not undergirded by some measure of local participation. Furthermore, neighboring Pakistan must be noted in this equation. Its evolving role in the region–branded by Islamabad as a transition from security to geoeconomics–will be further complicated by the fluid landscape next door that Sunday’s events were quick to demonstrate. 

As Afghanistan enters this new phase of uncertainty, the country is at risk of once again becoming a breeding ground for militancy, fueled by extreme poverty and an oppressive regime that has little regard for human rights. 

–Amb. Roya Rahmani is a senior advisor with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

A drone attack with consequences and choices

While many sensitive questions will most likely remain unanswered about the early Sunday morning drone attack in Kabul’s green zone that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the titular head of the notorious al-Qaeda central, it is becoming more obvious now that the timing and circumstances surrounding this attack were not only not coincidental but could also be fateful, especially for Kabul’s de facto rulers. 

For some in the United States, it resonates as a success story that carries political advantage for a presidential administration struggling in the polls weeks before midterm elections. For others in South Asia, though, it might pave the way for a 1.2 billion dollar financial bonanza from the IMF to shore up Pakistan’s struggling economy–that is, if the latest reports that Pakistan gave a helping hand to the United States are confirmed. Reports indicate that RX9 Hellfire missiles were allowed to cross Pakistani airspace and enter Afghanistan before homing in on their intended target in downtown Kabul. Whether Pakistan also provided critical intelligence to Washington confirming Zawahiri’s whereabouts remains a secret thus far.

Although the Egyptian jihadist veteran, rumored on several occasions to have died of bad health in the past, was known as an ineffective Osama bin Laden successor who lacked charisma, the killing (not yet confirmed by the Taliban rulers in Kabul) is also seen as redemption for those advocating an over-the-horizon counterterrorism solution instead of boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

The ball is now, once again, in the Taliban’s court as both Washington and Kabul accuse each other of having violated the counterterrorism terms of the controversial 2020 Doha agreement. Questions will also be raised about why, who knew, who was involved, and what was gained or lost at a time when Afghanistan is reeling under economic sanctions and the de facto regime is struggling to gain international recognition despite accusations of political monopoly and an abysmal record on human and gender rights.

While it is inconceivable that at least some within the Taliban did not know about Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul, there will be a lot of hand wringing and Taliban style questioning regarding the consequences and aftermath of a major public relations setback. There is, however, an opportunity to reassess and a choice between further hardening–leading to more isolation–or taking the pragmatic stance of course correction and relaxation of measures that have hurt the Afghan population and the country’s interests.

–Amb. Omar Samad is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. 

Sanction, isolate, and occasionally rain fire from the sky cannot alone become the extent of US-Afghanistan relations

US policy towards Afghanistan following the withdrawal of last August was defined by the quiet isolation and sanctioning of the Taliban regime. That this uncomfortable silence, however, was broken nearly one year later–with something as bloody and detached as a drone strike, no less–is telling of how low Afghanistan sits among US foreign policy priorities. 

One might be quick to blame Biden, and there is certainly responsibility to be laid with his administration. That said, the situation is not without nuance. Biden spearheaded the chaotic US withdrawal, yes, but this was in response to a challenging card dealt by former US President Donald J. Trump and former US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, who led the US-Taliban deal signed in February 2020 that set in motion the events leading us to today. Seeking a quick off-ramp from the stalemate US, NATO, and former Republic forces had reached with the Taliban’s insurgency, the deal quite questionably trusted the Taliban to disavow ties to other terrorist groups, notably al-Qaeda. 

It is difficult to believe, however, that the Taliban could not have known Zawahiri was hiding in Afghanistan, let alone in the capital, though Trump at the time of the 2020 Doha deal publicly endorsed the group’s commitment to that stipulation. 

The long-term ramifications of this push to extract the United States from Afghanistan at any cost (even trusting the Taliban under dubious circumstances) are now coming into focus. First, the subsequent sanction-and-isolate policy created a narrow field of engagement between Kabul and Washington. This reduced Biden’s options to high-risk/high-reward moves (such as over-the-horizon drone strikes) with neither a long-term plan nor clarity on whether the infrastructure exists for their continued “success.” Second and most concerningly, we now run the possibility of a counterterrorism lens asserting more than its fair weight in US policy towards Afghanistan. This focus would serve neither the interests of Afghans, the region, nor the United States.

Sunday’s events set a new precedent. Though the elimination of al-Qaeda’s figurehead should be considered a win in the immediate, “sanction, isolate, and occasionally rain fire from the sky” cannot alone be the extent of US-Afghanistan relations.

–Harris Samad is assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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For answers about what this strike means for al-Qaeda, the US approach to counterterrorism, and Afghanistan’s future, we turned to experts across our network of Atlantic Council fellows and members of our Counterterrorism Study Group. This post will be updated with fresh analysis as this story develops and our expert reactions roll in.

William F. Wechsler: A sense of vindication for Biden and a moment of truth for the Taliban

Christopher P. Costa: To build on the success of the Zawahiri strike, expand spy networks in Afghanistan 

Nathan Sales: Three critical counterterrorism concerns raised by the strike

Norman Roule: What to expect next from a withered al-Qaeda

Thomas S. Warrick: Beware premature lessons from Sunday’s success

Javed Ali: Counterterrorism operations have dealt a big blow to the original al-Qaeda—but not all affiliates

Mike Nagata: A bittersweet triumph

Christopher K. Harnisch: Terrorists should take note: The US remains undeterred

Marc Polymeropoulos: ‘This is an incredibly personal moment’

Seth Stodder: Zawahiri’s killing raises more questions than it resolves

Bernard Hudson: Zawahiri’s last moments were spent only blocks from the former US Embassy in Afghanistan

A sense of vindication for Biden and a moment of truth for the Taliban

The death of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a triumph first and foremost for the thousands of professionals in the US special operations and intelligence communities whose quiet, steadfast work over the last two decades culminated in today’s news. It appears that the strike was taken in such a way as to finish the target without inflicting any collateral damage, a factor that was critical for President Biden and an example of tactical expertise that is matched by no other country today.

While strikes against high-value targets are generally not a substitute for comprehensive counter-network operations, exceptions to that rule are made for the highest of high-value targets, and such strikes merit presidential announcements. So it was fitting that President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, President Trump announced the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and now President Biden has announced the death of Zawahiri, a man who like the others has the blood of untold innocents on his hands.  

While he was not an operational leader like bin Laden, Zawahiri provided strategic guidance to the widely dispersed al-Qaeda network of organizations—consistently urging them to attack the US homeland—and he was one of the few remaining people who could serve as the “glue” to hold the network together. Now that he is dead we should expect al-Qaeda to go through a period of internal tumult that will serve the US strategic objective of fracturing the organization.  

This is a particularly notable accomplishment for President Biden, who decided to withdraw remaining US forces and leave Afghanistan to the Taliban, relying only on “over the horizon” counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda. This decision was criticized by many counterterrorism experts at the time, myself included. But with today’s news, Biden and his team, ably led by Liz Sherwood-Randall at the White House, will go to sleep tonight with a deep sense of vindication and take a well-deserved victory lap.

The leaders of the Taliban, however, should not sleep so soundly. Senior Biden administration officials have made clear that senior leaders in the Haqqani network—a US-designated terrorist group and a key element of the Taliban—supported Zawahiri’s move to Kabul and helped spirit away his family after the strike. It appears unclear at the moment whether other Taliban leaders were similarly intimately involved in providing sanctuary to the leader of al-Qaeda in their capital. If they did provide sanctuary, then the commitments they signed in Doha were meaningless. If they didn’t, then they should take action against the Haqqanis. In either case, the Taliban suddenly now has a lot more to prove to the outside world. A good place to start would be to hand over Mark Frerichs, the innocent American hostage taken by the Haqqanis over two years ago.  

—William F. Wechsler is the director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs and a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism

To build on the success of the Zawahiri strike, expand spy networks in Afghanistan 

The Biden administration’s counterterrorism enterprise notched a significant success with the targeting and killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s spiritual leader, in a drone strike in Afghanistan.

But the US government’s next counterterrorism steps should build on this success. The United States must reinvest in and redouble new ways of developing human intelligence in order to counter resurgent jihadists in Afghanistan. Importantly, that is precisely what the United States is signaling it might do next. And it’s what is necessary, given worries of a rising jihadist threat left behind to metastasize in Afghanistan—notwithstanding the death of Zawahiri.   

It’s worth recalling that when the Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy was unveiled in August 2017, it reflected an approach that was very much seen through a counterterrorism lens. The key theme for counterterrorism options at the time necessitated a strategic framework to protect the US homeland by attacking terrorist groups like al-Qaeda in their safe havens. In policy circles, it was viewed as an article of faith that the overarching driver of US counterterrorism policy was preventing mass terror attacks against Americans prior to the emergence of those attacks.

While the Biden administration should be rightfully pleased with its drone strike, a key policy option for the United States opportunistically springs from an ongoing shadow war playing out in the backdrop of this successful strike. There are anti-Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan where mujahideen fighters known as the National Resistance Front (NRF) are based. These opposition fighters are combating the Taliban. The United States must throw its weight behind a partnership with insurgents like the NRF because the Taliban cannot be trusted, and the United States is going to need to increase its intelligence-collection capabilities in Afghanistan. Without US troops on the ground to collect human intelligence, the operation against Zawahiri validated that an “over the horizon capability” can be effective. But a long-term intelligence partnership with anti-Taliban insurgents like the NRF is an additional insurance policy.

The United States cannot rest even with the success of this drone strike, but must instead be relentless in its pursuit of intelligence that can provide insights on al-Qaeda safe havens— like Zawahiri’s sanctuary in Kabul.

—Christopher P. Costa is the executive director of the International Spy Museum and an adjunct associate professor with Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is a former career intelligence officer, and was special assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the US National Security Council from 2017 to 2018.

Three critical counterterrorism concerns raised by the strike

​​The killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a huge blow for al-Qaeda, which has spent the past year working to rebuild its capabilities in Afghanistan after the chaotic US withdrawal. Zawahiri may not have been as charismatic a leader as his predecessor Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIS. But the fact that he has now met the same fate will demoralize al-Qaeda’s rank and file, demonstrating that no terrorist is beyond the United States’ reach.

While this is a day to celebrate, Zawahiri’s death raises a number of critical questions about the future of American counterterrorism.

First, Zawahiri’s presence in post-withdrawal Afghanistan suggests that, as feared, the Taliban is once more granting safe haven to the leaders of al-Qaeda—a group with which it has never broken. Zawahiri was living in a safe house in the heart of Kabul, which only happens with the Taliban’s approval.

Second, it’s not clear if Sunday’s success can be replicated against other terrorist targets. This was the first US drone strike in Afghanistan in almost a year, and it remains to be seen whether the administration has the capability or intent to systematically dismantle the terror networks in the country that threaten us. Until we know more, we should resist the urge to see the strike as a vindication of “over the horizon” counterterrorism.

Third, the next man on al Qaeda’s depth chart is Saif al-Adel—who has long been a guest of the Iranian regime. Tehran and al-Qaeda have made common cause against their shared enemies in recent years. We’ll need to keep a close eye on what their relationship looks like if, as expected, Saif ascends to al-Qaeda’s top role.

—Nathan Sales is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and Middle East Programs and a former US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism

What to expect next from a withered al-Qaeda

The killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is an important national success. We all owe a debt of thanks to those who brought this terrorist to justice. 

In the twenty years in which Zawahiri fled justice, al-Qaeda withered. It is no longer capable of global influence and its offshoots now focus on country-specific or regional domination, much as we see in Africa or Yemen. 

Zawahiri’s death raises important questions: Was his killing the result of the decades-long search for him? Was he betrayed by Taliban officials seeking the reward for such information or US support for the return of frozen Afghan assets? Did Zawahiri authorize operations that created ripples that allowed his location to become known? Initial reporting also puts his killing in Kabul. How long had he been there, and who was with him when he died? What does this operation tell us about US drone capabilities? Some of these answers will never be known to the public. 

Zawahiri’s longtime presence in Afghanistan underscores the need to maintain robust intelligence coverage of that broken country and similar environments, and we should be careful about overstating over-the-horizon capabilities. 

Regarding what happens next, the mantle of al-Qaeda’s leadership may fall on Saif al-Adel, who is reportedly in loose custody in Iran. Tehran’s refusal to turn over al-Qaeda operatives to international authorities—and indeed to allow al-Qaeda to maintain a facilitation cell within Iran—underscores that Iran remains the world’s leading sponsor and enabler of terrorism.

—Norman Roule is a former national intelligence manager for Iran in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Beware premature lessons from Sunday’s success

Sunday’s successful strike, which ended Ayman al-Zawahiri’s leadership of al-Qaeda, is a welcome success. But both officials and the public need to be careful not to leap too far in drawing conclusions about what’s needed to secure the American people from future terrorist threats. Sunday’s success was the result of twenty-plus years of hard work, much of it necessarily done in the shadows, compartmentalized, in the strictest secrecy. But as with the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden—also planned and carried out in the strictest secrecy—the details will soon come out, and we should wait until more is known before drawing the truly important and lasting lessons from Sunday’s strike.

Even people inside government benefit from waiting until details emerge on the ground after a successful strike. We have learned this lesson many times over, at a cost to US credibility that should be avoided this time and in the future.

Thus, we should be cautious about making lasting judgments about whether this strike vindicates “over the horizon” counterterrorism efforts, or proves Taliban perfidy, or determines whether anything will ever satisfy President Biden’s conservative critics. Lessons learned will be possible, but in weeks, not hours.

One conclusion we can safely make now: It is dangerous to believe that the death of Zawahiri ends the threat of terrorism. The death of bin Laden gave many Americans the sense that the war on terror had been won. The death of Zawahiri will confirm this view to many. Both judgments are wrong. We cannot relax our vigilance. Today’s most dangerous al-Qaeda franchise is al-Shabaab in Somalia, far from where Zawahiri was living in Afghanistan. Their plots, we can predict, will continue uninterrupted by Sunday’s successful strike.

—Thomas S. Warrick is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, director of the Future of DHS Project, and co-director of the Future of Counterterrorism Project. He is also a former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security.

Counterterrorism operations have dealt a big blow to the original al-Qaeda—but not all affiliates

President Biden’s remarks about the US operation to kill former al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri marks another significant blow against the group that was responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and others before and after that killed and injured thousands of innocent civilians.  

Zawahiri had been the deputy of the original al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, for almost fifteen years prior to bin Laden’s death in 2011. Now, more than a decade after bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri has finally been removed as the leader of the group. Other counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda figures over the past twenty years have significantly damaged the group’s ability to maintain a robust collection of senior figures who could lead it into the future, and it is unknown who will emerge as that new person.  

Al-Qaeda also lost its status as the leading group in the global jihadist movement with the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in the mid-2010s, although there are still five groups scattered across the world in Syria, Yemen, Africa, and South Asia that consider themselves al-Qaeda affiliates and have varying degrees of capability or intentions to launch attacks against Western or US interests locally.

In summary, Zawahiri’s death probably signals a new and perhaps final chapter for what remains of the legacy al-Qaida that started in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. But his death also does not eliminate the threat overall from al-Qaeda’s affiliated groups abroad. 

—Javed Ali is a former senior director for counterterrorism at the US National Security Council and an associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

A bittersweet triumph

The killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri arouses a welter of thoughts, emotions, and memories, just as the demise of Osama bin Laden did over a decade ago. Yet for those who have served in the counterterrorism community, and those who serve today, these sentiments are tinged by this descriptor: “bittersweet.” We should certainly savor this operational triumph and relish the fulfillment of our pledge to bring him to justice, but it should not—and cannot—be unblemished satisfaction.

First of all, it is no secret that the most powerful nation on earth has been hunting for Zawahiri since well before 9/11 and for varied reasons, such as his complicity in the USS Cole bombing. The mere fact that it has taken so long for the United States to successfully end his terrorist career should give us pause.

Second, if the reports that Zawahiri was killed while living inside the Afghan capital of Kabul are accurate, our ability to savor this operational success is at least partially diminished by the confirmation that the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan restored significant freedom of action to him and al-Qaeda—the terrorist group we went there to destroy.

Third, as welcome as the removal of another al-Qaeda leader may be, it cannot mask the strategic reality that al-Qaeda has nonetheless been able to expand and metastasize globally despite our best efforts. Today, it operates dangerous, and in many cases growing, franchises and networks across South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Zawahiri’s death does little to change that.

Zawahiri’s demise is worth celebrating. It reflects well on the skill, dedication, professionalism, and heroism of those who serve our nation. And it delivers another measure of justice to the victims of his terrorist movement. But the war is far from over.

—Mike Nagata (US Army LTG Ret.) is a former director in the Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning at the National Counterterrorism Center, and a strategic advisor and senior vice president at CACI International

Terrorists should take note: The US remains undeterred

The killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri delivers long-sought justice to one of the most wanted terrorists on the planet and strikes a powerful blow to a resurgent al-Qaeda. Removing a primary architect of the 9/11 attacks also helps close a final chapter in one of the most defining and tragic moments in American history. 

Al-Zawahiri had been an instrumental figure in the Salafi jihadi movement since the 1970s, when he joined the group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He later co-founded al-Qaeda alongside bin Laden, orchestrated multiple terrorist attacks against the United States, and served as the ideological leader for the global Salafi Islamist jihadi movement. His elimination is, unequivocally, good for America’s security and that of the free world.

Questions may arise over the operational efficacy and overall impact of killing al-Zawahiri; after all, at the time of his death, he was little more than a figurehead for the organization, whose public statements in recent years seemed aimed more at proving he still had a pulse than providing strategic guidance to the group or inspiring jihadists. 

The short answer to such questions is that the death of al-Zawahiri still carries the potential to have a significant impact. Terrorist organizations of all ideologies—but especially Salafi Islamist terrorist organizations—are steeped in traditions of symbolism, figureheads, and lore, and the elimination of one of the terrorist movement’s forefathers will undoubtedly strike a blow to the morale of al-Qaeda’s rank-and-file, as well as affect its ability to recruit. Moreover, the killing will cultivate mistrust within al-Qaeda’s senior leadership ranks as they wonder who sold out al-Zawahiri, or what operational security slip-up may have led to his death. It will force them to take more drastic measures to evade detection. 

All of these considerations will further inhibit the group’s ability to plan.  

The death of al-Zawahiri is also likely to have an impact on Islamist power dynamics in Afghanistan. He had an enduring and close bond with many of the Taliban’s senior leaders, who fought alongside al-Zawahiri in the 1980s and provided him shelter in the subsequent decades. His elimination comes at a time of tension and competition within the Taliban’s ranks: Just one month ago, the Taliban’s Supreme Leader, Habitullah Akhundzada, convened a gathering of Taliban-aligned religious leaders and demanded pledges of obedience in an effort to consolidate power. The death of al-Zawahiri under the watch of Akhundzada’s—a man to whom al-Zawahiri pledged allegiance on behalf of al-Qaeda in 2016—is likely to only exacerbate whatever fissures already exist within the Taliban, and thus weaken its ability to govern.   

Still, despite the strategic success of the strike, counterterrorism practitioners know all too well that the elimination of one man will not eliminate the threat in its entirety. Seif al-Adel, a hardened terrorist with American blood on his hands and decades of operational experience, is poised to take over the group and will likely play a more prominent (and operational) role than al-Zawahiri. But al-Adel, and terrorists the world over, should take note from this strike that even as Washington completes its pivot to great-power competition, and while domestic challenges dominate the headlines, the resilience and determination of the US military and intelligence community remain undeterred.  

—Christopher K. Harnisch is a former deputy coordinator for counterterrorism at the US State Department.

‘This is an incredibly personal moment’

The successful strike on al-Zawahiri brings out deep emotions for US intelligence personnel who for decades worked in the shadows to get to this very day. Many of us buried friends along the way; I personally did. The 2009 Camp Chapman attack in Khost, Afghanistan—during which seven of my colleagues died when a double agent-turned-suicide bomber dangled intel on the notorious leader to get in—is the most stark example of the tragic costs from the fight against terrorism. The stars on CIA’s memorial wall that honor those killed in action—a sacred place for CIA personnel—is a reflection of the organization’s decades-long sacrifice and commitment to the fight. It is impossible not to stop and reflect each time you walk past it. So this is an incredibly personal moment; we mourn those lost, and celebrate our intelligence community colleagues still in the fight—whose incredible tenacity and drive culminated in removing a truly evil man from the battlefield.  

The United States has been worried about the resurgence of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan since the US withdrawal from that country. The presence of Zawahiri in Kabul demonstrated the serious danger that a Taliban-led government poses to US interests. Press reports indicate that Taliban officials were aware of his presence in Kabul, and that Zawahiri was residing in a house belonging to the family of Interior Minister Siraj Haqqani. Overall, Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul makes a mockery of the Doha agreements; negotiated by the Trump administration—and surprisingly agreed to by the Biden White House—it was centered around the promise that the Taliban would renounce al-Qaeda and not allow it to reconstitute in Afghanistan. That certainly did not happen.

Separately, the strike reinforces the fact that the US government has perfected the art of manhunting—fusing human intelligence, signals intercepts, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—to track down and eliminate terrorist targets. We are simply the best on the planet at doing this. Many of us worried this capability would be degraded after the withdrawal, but it’s clear from the Zawahiri strike that we can still track and eliminate high-value targets in South Asia.

Finally, with the likely ascension of the Iran-based Sayf al-Adel to the role of Emir of al-Qaeda , it will be yet another thorn in the US-Iran relationship and highlight Tehran’s leading role as a state sponsor of terrorism.

—Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow at Forward Defense and served multiple tours in the Middle East and South Asia as a CIA operations officer.

Zawahiri’s killing raises more questions than it resolves

On September 11, 2001, I was in New York City, having flown in that morning to argue a case in federal court. I was in a taxi heading into Manhattan when I first saw smoke coming from the North Tower of the World Trade Center—and then, as the cab turned into downtown and headed to the courthouse, I saw flames bursting out of the South Tower. It was an unforgettable sight. The rest of my day was similar to that of so many others: a stunned journey north from the ruins of lower Manhattan, followed by years of reflection on the cold-blooded murder of nearly three-thousand Americans. I left my law practice a week later and was privileged to serve in what would eventually become the Department of Homeland Security, working to keep our country safe from terrorism.

But over the two decades since 9/11, our focus has broadened and evolved. Here in the West, we haven’t heard much from al-Qaeda in a while. Meanwhile, other concerns have moved to center stage: the economy, climate change, and the challenges presented by China and Russia, among others. Indeed, even our conception of terrorism has changed—especially with the threat presented by right-wing and white-nationalist extremism.

But the US killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the masterminds of 9/11, snaps us back to that tragic day, and reminds us of the enduring threat that al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their followers still present. It is, of course, a victory for President Joe Biden and the counterterrorism professionals who finally delivered justice to this murderer. The strike on Zawahiri should serve as a reminder to all enemies of the American people that they can never truly be safe.

But Zawahiri’s killing also raises more questions than it resolves. Why was he in Kabul, living in a house owned by a senior Taliban leader? Has the Taliban granted al-Qaeda new sanctuary in Afghanistan, from where it can rebuild and eventually launch new attacks against the West? With US troops out of the country, will the Biden administration’s “over-the-horizon” strategy be sufficient to deal with this threat? How stable is Pakistan, and how secure are its nuclear weapons? What’s the relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda? Does Zawahiri’s death matter— given the growing operational strength of al-Qaeda affiliates such as al-Shabaab in Somalia?  

All these questions can only be answered by the passage of time, by the vigilance of the United States and our allies, and by the continued bravery and commitment of the counterterrorism professionals, intelligence operatives, law enforcement officers, and soldiers who keep us safe. In the meantime, our world is better place with Ayman al-Zawahiri no longer among us.

—Seth Stodder is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and served as assistant secretary of homeland security in the Obama Administration and as director of policy for US Customs and Border Protection in the Bush Administration.

Zawahiri’s last moments: Spent only blocks from the former US Embassy in Afghanistan

While long-delayed, finding Ayman al-Zawahiri and killing him was important to balance the scales of justice and to communicate to potential future enemies that America’s memory is long and its reach vast. The operation is also another interesting example that Washington’s tactical capabilities are often far more sophisticated and effective than its geostrategic ones.   

It should not be forgotten that Zawahiri’s last moments were spent only blocks from the former US Embassy in Afghanistan, and with him looking out on a country now dominated by a group the United States, its allies, and Afghan partners spent two decades fighting and dying to defeat, or at least minimize. With what we know of the man, it’s highly likely Zawahiri would count his own death as an acceptable price to pay to achieve that victory.

—Bernard Hudson served for twenty-eight years as a Central Intelligence Agency operations officer, including as chief of counterterrorism, where he directed all aspects of the agency’s global war on terrorism. He is president of Looking Glass Limited.

The post Experts react: Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead. What’s next for US counterterrorism? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Sakhi in The Hill: The Taliban has failed to gain legitimacy — what can be done? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

I wrote my new book “Killer In The Kremlin” in an attempt to somehow make sense of the man behind the snuffing out of so many innocent lives. There is no doubt in my mind that the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999 were a black flag operation by the Russian security services to make Vladimir Putin, an insipid spy, look strong. Three hundred people died in Moscow and cities in southern Russia. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists and launched the Second Chechen War in which around 80,000 died.

Putin subsequently invaded Georgia and hundreds more lives were lost. He helped Assad in Syria kill around half a million. In 2014, he invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine leading to 15,000 deaths. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine this February has added to the butcher’s bill: maybe 40,000 Russian soldiers, 15,000 Ukrainian troops and many thousands of Ukrainian civilians have died so far. Leaving aside Syria, the master of the Kremlin is directly responsible for the deaths of some 150,000 people.

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Widely suspected of having blown up the Moscow apartments in 1999, Putin is also closely linked to at least two more suspected black flag operations, the Moscow Theatre Siege of 2002 where around 170 people were killed, and the Beslan siege of 2004, which claimed 333 lives, many of them children. Common to all three mass killings inside Russia was a total lack of transparency about the investigations into what took place. Numerous journalists and politicians who asked difficult questions were poisoned or shot.

Yuri Shchekochikhin was a Russian MP and journalist investigating these mass killings. He had courage, tremendous energy, a nose for a story and, I’ve been told, a fondness for Armenian brandy. In January 2003, he told a friend, “For the first time in my life I feel frightened.”

In an interview in early 2003 he described Putin’s Russia in a nutshell: “The mafia has put on uniform. The gangsters are boy scouts compared to our security services. Today it is precisely the people who are supposed to be fighting crime who are corrupt. This has not bypassed the secret police. The protection that they provide, the enormous amounts of money that they receive, the control that they exercise.”

Such an independent spirit could not be allowed to exist. In 2003, Shchekochikhin was still asking questions about the Moscow apartment bombings on behalf of a Russian-American woman whose mother had been killed in one of the blasts. But then he started feeling unwell. He went ahead anyway with his trip to Ryazan but grew feverish and felt as though his head was on fire. When he returned to Moscow, he became dizzy and his throat burned. His blood pressure dropped, his skin turned red. The next day his skin began to peel off and his hair started to fall out. He was rushed to the Central Clinical Hospital, known by its nickname “the Kremlinka” because it looks after the power elite and, sometimes, those who cross them. The doctors diagnosed “toxic agents of an unknown origin.”

Shchekochikhin’s girlfriend Alyona Gromova recalled: “On the day he was taken to hospital, he felt very weak. After he had a shower, his hair was a mess. I went to stroke it and great handfuls of hair came out in my hand. The symptoms were confusing. First, it seemed like a cold but his face was very red, as if he had sunburn, then lumps of his skin started to flake off.”

A friend wrote: “Yuri’s condition worsened by the hour. His temperature rose continuously. His mucous membranes were swollen and his kidneys were failing. Then the worst began. His skin began to peel off as though he had suffered severe burns. Even a layman could see what was happening: it was either due to radiation or to some unknown poisons.”

The official verdict was Lyell’s Syndrome or a severe allergic reaction. Shchekochikhin died on June 3, 2003. By then, he had practically no skin left on his body. A friend wrote: “The word poison was never pronounced, although everyone took it for granted. Fear kept people quiet.”

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Alyona went to say goodbye to her lover in the morgue. “It was a big place, a huge hall. There were bodies on slabs due to be buried the next day. I looked around. There were about 20 people but I couldn’t find Yuri. I went up to the supervisor and explained that I might be in the wrong place as I couldn’t find him. Through the corner of my eye I saw a dear old lady lying on a slab. The strangest thing, she reminded me of my grandma who passed away a long time ago. The curious resemblance of the two old ladies hit me. In my worst nightmares, I could never, ever have imagined that the dear old lady was in fact Yuri.”

Her lover was so unrecognisable that Alyona could not find him in the morgue until the supervisor pointed out his name tag to her. This was in 2003. The poisonings and the shootings had only just begun. Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya? Poisoned, later shot. Human rights activist Natasha Estemirova? Shot. Politician Boris Nemtsov? Shot. Opposition leader Alexey Navalny? Poisoned, now in jail.

Navalny is still alive. Why so? Because Putin fears an uprising if he has him killed. The master of the Kremlin is far weaker than his propaganda suggests. For similar reasons, he dare not call his war a war. The phrase “special military operation” is a signal that he is afraid of telling Russians the truth about the war in Ukraine. The lack of universal conscription shows this fear; the lack of soldiers from Moscow and Saint Petersburg underlines it. I do not believe that Putin would dare press the nuclear button. He is morbidly afraid of his own death. If he tries, I believe the Kremlin’s machinery would not function. 

If you study Putin’s career, you realise that we are dealing with a hyper-aggressive psychopath whose word cannot be relied upon. He is a man who identifies compromise as weakness; who sows dissent and mistrust in the West; who likes killing. The idea that we can negotiate with Putin is foolish. Nobody in the West will be safe until he and his killing machine are stopped. Period.

John Sweeney is a British investigative journalist and writer. His new book “Killer In The Kremlin” is published by Transworld Books on July 21.

Further reading

UkraineAlert May 24, 2022

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The Russian destruction of Mariupol ranks among the gravest crimes against humanity of the twenty-first century and sends a clear message to the international community that can be no compromise peace with Putin.

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Goodwill gestures and de-Nazification: Decoding Putin’s Ukraine War lexicon

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From “goodwill gestures” to “de-Nazification” and “reclaiming Russian lands,” the Atlantic Council’s Peter Dickinson decodes some of the key phrases from the lexicon of Putin’s Ukraine War into plain English.

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Odesa rejects Russia: Putin’s Ukraine War turns old allies into bitter enemies

By Oleksiy Goncharenko

Putin has long claimed to be the champion of pro-Russian Ukrainians. However, the Ukrainian regions most closely associated with pro-Kremlin sentiment have also been hardest hit by the current invasion.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Killer in the Kremlin: New book explores Vladimir Putin’s bloody reign appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The compulsion argument, however, is far from convincing. 

Pakistan has a penchant for outreach and negotiations with terrorist groups–especially over the last two decades–with less-than-stellar results.

As early as 2004, before the TTP conglomerate emerged, Pakistan signed a pact—the Shakai Peace Agreement—with South Waziristan Taliban Commander Nek Muhammad Wazir. As part of the agreement, Nek Muhammad agreed not to shelter terrorists and give them up to Pakistani authorities, while pledging not to harm government officials or property. The Pakistani government, meanwhile, agreed to release Taliban prisoners, pay compensation for property damage from the military operation in March of that year, and provide money to militants so that they could repay their debts to al-Qaeda. The Shakai Agreement is one of many examples in which Pakistan has given up and given in so much to terrorists’ demands while receiving the bare minimum in return. 

Similarly, the government signed the Sararogha peace agreement with Baitullah Mehsud in February 2005. It failed soon after it was signed, however, as clashes between security forces and Baitullah’s men escalated. Not only did the peace pact result in more violence, but it also provided Baitullah with the spotlight and starpower he needed to emerge as a political and militant leader. Soon after, Baitullah succeeded in unifying militants under the TTP umbrella while consolidating power as their chief, creating an existential threat to Pakistan.

These are just two examples of how deals between the government and non-state groups have a propensity to fail. The reason for this is wholly unsurprising–terrorist groups simply do not abide by negotiated agreements. Furthermore, the negotiating process lent (and continues to lend) them legitimacy while undermining the power and credibility of local tribes. Mariam Abou Zahab argues that in tribal tradition, “surrender means that you approach the rival group and meet them on their territory… In Shakai, the army came to meet Nek Mohammad.”

Ever since the TTP emerged, Pakistan has manufactured or geared up political consensus to negotiate with its central and factional leadership, striking written or unwritten deals. Yet again, most of the deals did not hold up–either the negotiation process failed or terrorists violated the terms soon after the agreement was signed. 

This has resulted in a cycle where–regardless of the immediate outcome of talks–the TTP has always walked away with a big-picture win. They have had militants released from prison and/or pardoned, gained legitimacy and publicity (since the Pakistani government offhandedly acknowledges their strength every time it quickly defaults to negotiations), stalled military action, and projected influence and authority in an otherwise asymmetrical power dynamic. In return, Pakistan walks away with shoddy and short-lived ceasefires.

The TTP leadership has always sat at the negotiating table in bad faith, but Pakistan continues to put a square peg in a round hole. This time, however, Pakistan has upped the ante by putting political mainstreaming on the table. In meetings reported over the last several months, a Pakistani delegation led by Peshawar Corps Commander and former spymaster Lieutenant General Faiz Hamid was apparently open to political reconciliation and inclusion of the TTP within Pakistan’s constitutional framework. Moreover, the delegation also agreed to pardon two convicted TTP leaders, one guilty of killing security personnel and civilians in terror attacks, and the other convicted for kidnapping Chinese officials. 

Relatedly, it must be noted that China’s concerns about attacks on China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects and personnel are rising, with Beijing even suggesting that its own security may need to protect assets in Pakistan. Despite this–and the massive economic lifeline which China provides Pakistan–it continues to make concessions to groups such as the TTP. That CPEC’s security is also under threat demonstrates the shortsightedness of the government’s “default to negotiations” policy.

Pakistan should instead have negotiated with a position of strength and victory after its huge offensive in North Waziristan, Operation Zarb-e-Azb. When TTP militants began regrouping and returning to the former tribal areas, Pakistan, as part of its Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad, should have taken advantage of vulnerable TTP commanders, offered them carrots and sticks, exploited TTP infighting, and empowered the local population and institutions. 

Pakistan and its military establishment made a grave error by turning a blind eye to the TTP’s regrouping over the last four years. Had the state maintained relations with and prioritized empowering locals–as opposed to striking quick-burn deals with non-state groups while targeting peaceful dissenters against human rights violations, such as the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement–it would not be negotiating with terrorists from a such weak position. 

Even now, Pakistan has other options. It can urge the Afghan Taliban and especially Punjabi Taliban groups to squeeze Noor Wali and his financial resources. It can threaten surgical strikes until the TTP disarms. It can also expand intelligence-gathering to exploit infighting and fragmentation among TTP factions.

However, given recent trends, it is more likely that Pakistan will offer to include the TTP in the country’s political landscape—their candidates could one day participate in elections and even hold office. The question is, will the TTP disarm and disband its myriad of affiliated groups? Will they disavow al-Qaeda and other foreign entities? How will Pakistan and the TTP rein in and counter splinter groups? Will mainstreaming the TTP guarantee an end to terrorist attacks? Pakistan’s political and military leadership need to have transparent deliberations regarding these concerns. 

These rounds of talks may not end in a deadlock the way previous negotiations have, because the Afghan Taliban, particularly its interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, are quite invested in the success of the current round of negotiations. That said, regardless of the outcome, Pakistan will have further provided legitimacy to a group responsible for killing and traumatizing thousands of Pakistani civilians and soldiers—all while being unable to guarantee an end to terror in the country. Even if these talks succeed, Pakistan will lose. 

Dr. Neha Ansari is postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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From June 15 through June 17, 2022, India hosted a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to discuss regional border management and security. We reached out to our experts for their thoughts on this pivotal meeting and its implications for regional security.

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Negotiating with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan is a bad idea

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Pakistan’s information minister confirmed ongoing peace talks between the government and the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). However, it is important to stress that this dialogue is not advantageous for Pakistan.

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The post Pakistan must stop accommodating the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

All of these events are examples of what Middle Eastern leaders view as a bipartisan progression of US disengagement across the region politically, economically, and militarily. Looming prominently in the background of these frustrations is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal that the United States and world powers struck with Iran in 2015, and that Trump withdrew from in 2018. Regardless of whether the United States reenters the JCPOA or not, the narrative in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Jerusalem—and more quietly in Manama, Cairo, and other regional capitals—is that the United States’ singular focus on Iran’s nuclear program has enabled Tehran to advance its missile capabilities, Middle East adventurism, and support to regional proxies and partners, most prominently Shia militants in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. At the core of the issue is that Arab states and Israel view US policy toward the region as having made the Middle East less secure.

The alternative narrative, however, which is coming out of Washington, espouses that for the United States and its policy makers, the Middle East remains a priority and Washington recognizes the criticality of the region. US national security officials insist that the now decade-old shift of focus to Asia, primarily to China, does not mean a disregard for the Middle East, but simply a need to better balance US economic and security efforts. To many US policy makers, the region is exhausting and intractable, beset by problems that reflect leaders’ inability to make the hard and necessary choices to advance their economies and provide opportunities to the youth bulges that dominate most Arab states’ populations.

In the 1990s, it did not cost US policy makers much to pay extra attention to the Middle East. Russia was a vanquished foe desperately trying to find its way in the post-Cold War era. China had potential but was relatively nascent in its growth and still very much finding its place on the world stage. The first Gulf War put the United States in excellent stead to many in the region and the signing of the Oslo Accords provided hope across the Middle East, and the world, that this oft-troubled region would soon be at peace. By the early aughts, however, there was reason to be concerned about the over-the-horizon challenges China and Russia might pose. The passage in 2000 of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and Beijing’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 were supposed to usher in a new era of economic openness that would compel Beijing to also moderate its politics on human rights, in a manner that would bring it ideologically closer to the United States and its Western allies. When it came to Russia, then US president George W. Bush in June 2001 implied that Russian President Vladimir Putin was someone whom the United States could work well with when he infamously said that he found Putin to be “very straightforward and trustworthy” and was “able to get a sense of [Putin’s] soul.” But any concerns about China and Russia were simply not prioritized, and the Middle East, especially after September 11 and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, remained the dominant region of US foreign policy efforts.

A decade later, the challenges posed to Washington from Moscow and Beijing should have been abundantly clear. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was, in hindsight, an explicit declaration that Putin was not prepared to simply accept Russia’s diminished post-Cold War stature. For China, the deliberate trade-off by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang to create slower but more stable economic expansion than existed during the aughts was a harbinger of the slow but steady rise Beijing would pursue to take, what it believes to be, its rightful place as the world’s dominant superpower.

This is not to say no one raised concerns about Russia or China as potential threats to the United States’ role as the world’s singular superpower. But the Arab Spring, efforts to draw down the US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2011–13 Iraq insurgency, the Syrian war, confronting the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and reaching a deal with Tehran on its nuclear program dominated Obama’s foreign policy agenda. In the Trump administration, the view was that much closer ties with Middle Eastern states were needed, but that requirement was ultimately about undoing the JCPOA, and that meant closer relations not with the region as a whole but with specific leaders such as then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then Emirati crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

When Biden came into office his foreign policy objectives were clear: end the war in Afghanistan, confront the bevy of challenges associated with China, and restore the United States’ prominence and stature with European and other historic allies, such as Japan and South Korea. The Middle East was nowhere on that list of priorities, and few issues in the region garnered the administration’s attention except for Iran, where the question is meaningfully narrow: Does the United States reenter the JCPOA, or not?

Despite a multitude of important developments in the Middle East over the last eighteen months, none of them strike most followers of the region as particularly novel. Iran’s election of a hardline president; the myriad concerns that go along with an unstable Israeli government; Kurdish and federal Iraqi leaders in conflict with each other over oil and energy production; the continuation of Lebanon’s economic collapse; the lack of a resolution to the conflict in Libya; Gulf states facing continued threats from the Houthis; the list goes on. The reality is that since Biden came into office, none of these particular regional geopolitical machinations have been sufficient to compel the administration to alter its strategy toward the region and increase US involvement in it.

The Biden administration is probably frustrated, however, that the dominant narrative of US involvement in the region is the one coming from Middle Eastern capitals, despite Washington not viewing itself as seeking to permanently disengage from it. Arab capitals contend it is the lack of actionable US support and engagement in the region that are the problem, not the rhetoric; but the rhetoric coming from Washington has not been helpful. US leaders over the last decade on multiple occasions have made unnecessarily loud and public statements that China is Washington’s focus going forward, not the Middle East. Had the same policy of rebalancing priorities been effectuated quietly, Arab leaders would still be frustrated and seeking technology and military equipment from China that the United States was unwilling to transfer and sell. However, Arab leaders probably would not be inclined to be as forward leaning, as they are today, in stridently announcing their intentions to hedge between the United States and China; self-fulfilling statements that induce Arab leaders to advance their country’s relationship with Beijing more than they might have otherwise, ultimately undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East.

The irony is that for much of the last two decades, Middle Eastern leaders were extremely critical of how the United States engaged with the region. They complained that the United States was waging a war against Islam; held the United States at least partially responsible for sparking sectarian conflicts in the region that killed hundreds of thousands; and during the Arab Spring, Arab leaders and those offering themselves as alternatives to existing regimes lambasted US leaders for being insufficiently supportive. Now that Washington’s focus is elsewhere, Middle Eastern leaders are complaining that the United States is abandoning the region.  It is the foreign policy equivalent of the classic Woody Allen joke about two elderly women eating at a restaurant. “[O]ne of them says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’” Washington’s view is that most Arab capitals have, over the last decade, held themselves out as being, at best, reluctant and skeptical over US efforts and strategy in the Middle East, only to now complain that the United States is disengaging from the region.

In Washington’s view, not prioritizing the Middle East over other regions is not the same as declining to prioritize it. The Biden administration views itself as striving to undertake meaningful efforts against challenges in the region by expanding the Abraham Accords; working to permanently end the war in Yemen; and seeking to potentially mediate between Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt on various energy development and production efforts. What is different now, however, is that the decades of Middle East primacy in US foreign policy decision-making are over. The geoeconomic and political tides have shifted immensely over the last thirty years and in the future—regardless of whether the president is a Republican or Democrat—the United States views itself as no longer having the flexibility to prioritize the Middle East over the rest of the world. To US policy makers, the long-term challenges from Beijing are acute and, in many ways, as existential to US global leadership as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE view Iran as being to them.

The future of the United States’ relationship with the Middle East is going to be about how to permanently balance giving Arab state allies enough attention while keeping the focus on China. It is not a static calibration but will require yearly, monthly, and occasionally weekly adjustments. Any US administration will need to recognize that for Middle Eastern leaders, personal relationships are the bedrock of how to make progress on priorities. After decades of Arab leaders knowing that their region was a bigger priority than any other in the world for the United States, the fact that this is no longer the case is a meaningful hurdle to overcome. To do so requires the development of better engagement, trust, and reassurance between US and Arab counterparts, backed up not just in words but in deeds, to include, when appropriate, the tangible provision of US economic, political, security, and technological support.

Jonathan Panikoff is the Director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and the former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East.

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US President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s upcoming visit to the Middle East provides an opportunity to assess what role the United States will play in the Middle East and North Africa in the future. With the war in Ukraine further diverting US attention from the region, the big question is whether the region is entering a ‘post-US’ era.

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The post Shifting priorities: The US and the Middle East in a multipolar world appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Atlantic Council IN TURKEY asked experts for their take on the implications of the summit and the trilateral declaration.

Jump to an expert reaction

Mehmet Fatih Ceylan: A victory for NATO unity and cohesion

Ian Brzezinski: Erdogan recognizes NATO brings far more geopolitical value than Russia

Rich Outzen: The summit brings Turkey’s security concerns to the fore

A victory for NATO unity and cohesion

The ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014 has entirely changed the security landscape, not only in the Euro-Atlantic area, but globally. It has fundamentally altered threat perceptions beyond the Alliance, leading Finland and Sweden to officially apply for membership in NATO. These two countries have indeed crossed the Rubicon and deserted their neutrality in response to persistent Russian belligerence in the middle of Europe. Their decision to combine their efforts and assets with the Alliance against Russian aggression is natural and legitimate. Hence the need to incorporate Finland and Sweden into the Alliance family.

The trilateral memorandum signed among Turkey, Finland, and Sweden on June 28 is a welcome development designed to demonstrate NATO’s solidarity and unity, and further strengthen the Alliance.

It is commonplace in NATO to consult on and negotiate over any dispute among allies and would-be allies to find a common ground. That is how NATO plays its role, and at the end a solution accommodating such concerns is found by consensus.

It is also true that once new members accede to NATO, they are bound by the decisions previously taken by the Alliance on a wide range of subjects. In NATO there exists a robust set of decisions and practices in fighting terrorism, beginning with the intervention in Afghanistan. Therefore, there is already an agreement comprising all sorts of conceptual work and practices in different geographical theaters on combatting terrorism, developed within NATO and binding on all members.

The newly adopted Strategic Concept (SC) clearly identifies Russia and “terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations” as the primary sources of threats in a 360-degree manner and across all three core tasks of NATO: collective deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security. Given that terrorism is “the most direct asymmetric threat to the security of our citizens and to international peace and prosperity,” as defined in the SC, it makes sense both for Finland and Sweden to cooperate with Turkey in combatting terrorism as one of the primary sources of threats against Alliance interests.

In a nutshell, collective deterrence and defense against actual and potential adversaries, nipping crises in the bud, and expanding the web of networks with partners under challenging circumstances are the main tasks of NATO in the next decade.

The main center of gravity for NATO is its solidarity, unity, and cohesion, including all allies and those set to become allies.

The summit decisions in their entirety will help NATO to navigate the troubled waters ahead over the long term.

—Mehmet Fatih Ceylan is the president of Ankara Policy Center and previously served as permanent representative of Turkey to NATO.

Erdogan recognizes NATO brings far more geopolitical value than Russia

At their summit in Madrid, NATO leaders decided to “invite Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO, and agreed to sign the accession protocols.” This was an important breakthrough. Until now, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had held up the protocols on the grounds that the two Nordic nations had embargoed his nation from defense sales and refused to extradite alleged Kurdish terrorists.

Consensus was facilitated by a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Erdogan—a bilateral long sought by the Turkish leader—and memorialized via a trilateral Turkey-Sweden-Finland memorandum in which the latter two agreed to lift the embargoes, condemn the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist organization, “address” Turkey’s pending extradition requests, and support Turkey’s involvement in European Union defense initiatives.

The breakthrough underscored the influence and leadership of the United States in NATO. There is no way Erdogan would have lifted his veto solely due to European pressure.  It also reflects Erdogan’s recognition that NATO brings Turkey far more geopolitical value than Russia, which would savor seeing this Nordic bid for NATO membership fail.  

Consensus on Finland and Sweden’s applications also demonstrated the Alliance’s unity in the face of Russia’s aggression and the difficulty Moscow still has when it comes to fully peeling Erdogan away from the transatlantic community. Once again, Putin’s strongest relationship in the Black Sea region has proven to be far more transactional than strategic.

With that said, Turkey, like all the other NATO allies, still has to ratify these accession protocols. There remains ample opportunity for Erdogan to introduce additional negotiations with the rest of NATO. I am optimistic that Sweden and Finland will become NATO members, but it is still too early to say this round of NATO enlargement is a done deal.

—Ian Brzezinski is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and previously served as US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy.

The summit brings Turkey’s security concerns to the fore

The summit was a great success for Ankara for three distinct reasons. The first is the content of the trilateral memorandum signed with Sweden and Finland: No arms embargo on Turkey, an affirmed commitment to address Turkish security concerns, no aid to the PKK or (significantly) the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), the Gulen movement mentioned as a terror concern, collaboration on the defense industry, working groups to follow—it’s hard to see what they missed. Of course, these are statements of principle, and execution or a final commitment will play out over time. But that is as true for Ankara approving accession as it is for the specified cooperation. 

The second reason is the ringing endorsement from the White House not only for the trilateral memorandum, but for the strengthening of Turkish air power and specifically a commitment to press Congress to approve F-16 fighter jet sales and upgrades. Notably, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has already weighed in with a strong endorsement of the deal. The in-person meeting of presidents Biden and Erdogan was notable, too.

The third reason is more subtle: the inclusion in the new, slimmed-down Strategic Concept of language on countering terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations.” This language, and the prominence given both terror concerns and the Russian military threat, address Turkish concerns and highlight the value Turkey adds to the Alliance. 

—Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY with thirty-two years of US government service both in uniform and as a civilian.

The views expressed in TURKEYSource are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Further reading

New Atlanticist Jun 24, 2022

Turkey and NATO are stronger with each other. They must de-thorn their relationship.

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Experts react: After Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul, is an end to war imminent?

By Atlantic Council IN TURKEY

Atlantic Council IN TURKEY asks experts for their perspectives on the talks and what they mean for Turkey.

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Experts react: What does the Russia-Ukraine conflict mean for Turkey?

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Putin’s invasion of Ukraine marks an inflection point in global affairs. Among the countries most affected, strategically, diplomatically and economically, is Turkey to the South across the Black Sea. We asked experts for their take on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its implications for Turkey.

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Ankara wants Helsinki and Stockholm to stop harboring and supporting individuals affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it considers to be a terrorist organization (and is recognized as such by both the United States and the European Union). It also demands an end to the arms embargoes imposed by these countries after Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria in 2019. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made it clear that nothing short of concrete steps will be enough to reverse Turkey’s stance. 

Turkey’s concerns are serious and, as stated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, they are “legitimate.” Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the belated manner in which Ankara has publicly raised its concerns have muddled that important reality, tainting Turkey and its role in the Alliance. 

Frustrations with Ankara are leading to all types of reactions, ranging from scathing criticism of its policies to nonsensical suggestions like kicking Turkey out of NATO. A reciprocal, equally loaded debate is taking place in Turkey, where grudges against allies deemed to be insensitive to the country’s security concerns have been aggravated. Some influential political actors have even voiced similarly misguided suggestions like leaving NATO.

The noise emerging from this mutual sense of disenchantment is considerable and could drown out sober thinking about the true value of Turkey’s presence in NATO. The reality is simple: Both Turkey and NATO are stronger together. Irritants that have weighed down this relationship must be addressed sooner than later.

Going both ways 

With seventy years under its belt, Turkey is among NATO’s older members. It boasts a strong legacy, having been a bulwark against communism during the Cold War and a frontline player in many regional crises that erupted later, including in the South Caucasus, Balkans, Iraq, and, most recently, Syria. In contrast to most other Alliance members, this incessant state of conflict around its borders has denied Turkey any peace dividend. 

Turkey’s formidable military capacity and growing expeditionary capabilities, together with its expanding defense industry (particularly in drone technologies) are all critical enablers for NATO. Even as priorities change and global attention shifts to the east, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has proven that building sustainable security in the Euro-Atlantic area is unfinished business. Much to the delight of Turkish officials, this has corroborated Ankara’s continuing geopolitical relevance—something it is betting on, maybe excessively so, in making its demands of Finland and Sweden. 

But Turkey has also benefitted immensely from its membership in NATO, a reality that is often lost on (or conveniently disregarded) by ideologically driven Turkish critics of the Alliance. The country’s influence as a regional actor, both during and after the Cold War, has always been augmented by its NATO identity. Meanwhile, being embedded in the Alliance’s security network has made Turkey safer by bolstering its deterrence and defense, thereby contributing to its sense of security. 

The strategic value of being a member of the world’s strongest military alliance cannot be overstated, and anyone who has doubts need not look any further than Ukraine. Finland and Sweden get it, which is why they have taken the historic decision of trashing age-old policies of non-alignment in favor of becoming NATO members. 

Restoring the balance