Vol. 4, Issue 4 - Title

Volume 4, Issue 4


Winter 2010/2011

Vol. 4, Issue 4 - Content
In this issue we present excerpts from the latest edition of AQAP's Inspire magazine, as part of our ongoing effort to chronicle the information operation campaigns of our opponents in the War on Terror.

This newest edition of Inspire, AQAP's third edition thus far, looks in detail their recent Operation Hemorrhage which took aim at the global air cargo system, and—at least according to AQAP—successfully downed on UPS air cargo jet in Yemen earlier this year, and even more audaciously sought to down cargo jets over American soil, a plot that was thwarted at the final hour.

  • Inside Operation Hemorrhage: AQAP Releases Special Edition of Inspire by Barry S. Zellen

We are also pleased to share with you the following theses:

  • Lessons in Legitimacy: The LTTE End-Game of 2007-2009 by Stephen L. Battle (June 2010)

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were arguably one of the most feared, lethal and capable insurgent movements in the modern age. Yet despite their strength and wealth, the Sri Lankan armed forces destroyed the LTTE with a conventional army in a series of pitched battles from 2007–2009. This thesis argues that the destruction of the LTTE during the end-game of 2007–2009 was in part due to a loss of local legitimacy amongst the Sri Lankan Tamils that the movement purported to represent, a product of LTTE coercion, facilitated by the enormous funding structures of the global Tamil Diaspora. The loss of local legitimacy, and its importance to the LTTE during the end-game, is largely missing from most literature on the subject.

  • Effective and Efficient Training and Advising in Pakistan by Jason A. Johnston and Stephen C. Taylor (June 2010)

When we think of Foreign Internal Defense (FID), we most often think of conducting missions “by, with and through” a Partner Nation’s government and patrolling alongside partner nation security forces who are embroiled in yet another conflict in a “bad” region of the world. But, in some conflicts, this very direct method of training and advising is inadvisable at best, and foolhardy at worst. In Pakistan right now, “by, with, and through” represents just such a foolhardy approach. The more the Pakistani government is pressured to allow the United States to operate in Pakistan, the more militants will swarm to the fight; the only reasonable solution appears to be what has worked so well elsewhere, under similar circumstances: Americans need to stand back, train the right forces to move forward, and let them engage with the enemy—a method of training and advising that should not be as unfamiliar as it seems since the United States used it very effectively just thirty years ago, and in the same general vicinity.

 

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Material contained herein is made available for the purpose of peer review and discussion and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.  Most of the content available on this website was updated as of March 2017.