On the brink: The resurgence of militant Islam in Central Asia

Since Operation Enduring Freedom, Central Asian militants, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, have fled to Pakistan from their previous strongholds in Afghanistan. However, many militants have begun returning to Central Asia. Thus questions are raised as to what extent militancy has the potential to thrive with the pending North Atlantic Treaty Organization withdrawal from Afghanistan set for 2014? Is militancy a legitimate security threat to Central Asia? What strategies might militants implement? Thus, this article examines the current state of militancy, analyzes militant trends, introduces Afghanistan and Pakistan into the Central Asian equation, and determines the militants' capability and overall strategy. The article concludes that militant Islam, regardless of its current numbers, remains a viable threat to regional security, Afghanistan will be an essential factor for the future of Central Asian militancy, and the form this re-emergence will take becomes apparent.     

The ‘bomber gap’: British intelligence and an American delusion

For most of the 1950s, manned aircraft were the prime nuclear bomb delivery method, and were therefore a vital metric for British and American intelligence when calculating the Soviet threat. Each community reached very different conclusions from the same raw intelligence, generating the ‘bomber gap’ myth in the US but not in the UK. The information available was inconclusive, so in order to understand it estimators had to rely on their assumptions, which were different. Contrasting scopes for parochial capitalisation drew their conclusions further apart. Contrary to orthodox accounts of this episode, Soviet deception did not play a central role.     

The Bush War to Save the Rhino: Improving Counter-poaching Through Intelligence

The rhino is going extinct due to poaching at a rate which far outstrips current law enforcement or conservation efforts to halt their decline. A critical aspect of counter-poaching failures to date is an inaccurate view of the nature of poaching as a crime. Rather than demand-side efforts, attacking elusive smuggling networks or expensive technical solutions like drones, this article notes how a quasi-military tactical approach of ‘combat tracking’ offers the best way to protect the species. Based on wide ranging interviews and fieldwork across dozens of parks in southern Africa, it demonstrates how the current restricted range of the rhino, and the rarity of skilled poachers, makes a tactical solution the most effective to date.