Today, we released an issue brief on Mexico and the triple challenge of crime, terrorist tactics, and narco-insurgency. The issue brief is released in conjunction with a Homeland Security Policy Institute/U.S. Army War College event, “The Hybrid Threat: Crime, Terrorism and Insurgency in Mexico” to be held today at 2pm.
The Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) Preparedness, Response, and Resilience Task Force released its latest in a series of reports intended to inform policymakers on issues surrounding the achievement of national resilience. The report, entitled “Operationalizing Resilience,” recommends that policymakers use a systems-based approach to developing the integrated frameworks associated with the National Preparedness System called for in PPD-8. The Task Force also recommends that risk management practices be used as the underlying business case for preparedness efforts at all levels and across all sectors.
According to Reuters, President Obama was briefed on the Iranian bomb plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in June. The White House released its strategy to combat terrorism on June 28. While the White House knew the Iranians had active operations on-going in the United States, it intentionally side-stepped the issue of state-sponsored terrorism in its strategy. How can that make sense?
The Principal Federal Official (PFO) was a post-9/11 initiative designed to put a senior official on top of the operational response to major disasters. Apparently, the idea of a PFO has fallen on hard times. If the word on the street is right, the current thinking in DHS is that if there is a really big oh-my-God event, the secretary will be the PFO and we’ll leave it at that. That is frankly a really bad idea. Who runs the department while the secretary is acting as PFO, and what happens if there is more than one OMG event at a time?
Last week left us with more than enough object lessons about what is important when it comes to good counterterrorism. Getting Anwar al-Awlaki was important, and degrading transnational terrorist networks should always list as job number one. As a recent briefing at the National Institute Justice makes clear, attacks associated with organized networks result in higher deaths per attack. They are more dangerous than “lone-wolfs” and “self-radicalized” violent extremists.
Awlaki’s elimination marks another in a recent series of setbacks for al Qaeda globally. More specifically, it immediately degrades AQAP’s operational planning capacity — especially with respect to plots against the U.S. homeland. Yet, killing Awlaki by no means signals the death knell of al Qaeda generally or even of AQAP specifically.
Though the near-insolvency of FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) is top news today, the situation should hardly come as a surprise. For the past several months, NPR has been following the looming crisis, and I’ve been commenting along the way. The challenge that now confronts FEMA isn’t something that Administrator Fugate can fix: either he provides funding to disaster victims (and in doing so, violates federal law) or he watches those in need go without the assistance they require.
An al Qaeda-affiliated organization based in North Waziristan is now in the spotlight and crosshairs: the Haqqani Network. Yesterday evening, Defense Secretary Panetta and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker tagged the Haqqani Network with responsibility for this week’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, as well as a September 10 truck-bomb attack on a U.S. base there that injured 77 Americans. With the benefit of a safe haven in Pakistan in areas bordering Afghanistan, and a continuing relationship with Pakistan’s intelligence agency (ISI), the Haqqani network thrives and threatens the region as well as U.S. national security. The situation is, as Secretary Panetta stated categorically, “unacceptable.”
Some fifteen years after Congress first mandated the creation of an “entry-exit” system for foreign visitors, the government has finally come up with an effective solution. DHS told Congress yesterday that the administration had developed an “enhanced biographic” system that will go a long way to tackling the problem of visitors who overstay visas. The issue now is whether Congress will embrace a sensible approach or continue to insist on the utopian solution of a perfect biometric system.
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