Via Terrorism Unveiled – Apparently “only 10 of 34,000 [State Department] employees are rated fully fluent in Arabic.”
That is to say the lead agency in the GWOT, the one charged with reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan only has 10 fully fluent Arabic speakers.
You can not make this stuff up.
A discussion on Robb’s site touches on something I give a great deal of thought to – why has al Qaeda not transitioned into a Global Guerrilla entity – my answer is based on an understanding of innovation.
The very basic but very easy to read Innovation – Getting Out of Your Box (PDF)
Theory of Constraints (Wiki)
A Fresh Look at Incremental and Radical Innovation in the Entrepreneurial Firm (PDF)
INCREMENTAL INNOVATION
This type of innovation is a step forward along a trajectory in an attempt to garner more output for less input, or in other words, to become more efficient at a given task set to achieve a given goal.
The perception or reality of the US possessing moral/technical superiority in Iraq provided constraints for the insurgency. This led to rapid innovation cycles on the part of anti globalization forces and eventually led to the adoption of open source warfare.
Our efforts to secure the homeland have been sub par to say the least. Lucky for us however, our target rich environment in conjunction with our inability to effectively attack the enemy is not conducive to innovation.
al Qaeda has shown itself to be extraordinarily creative within the confines of their 4GW framework. It has not yet achieved the potential of its current tactics. Incremental increases in ability are enough to achieve goals. For now.
RADICAL INNOVATION
This type of innovation on the other hand is an attempt to completely revamp an organization in order to achieve given goals with new task sets rather than the same old same old.
As the frequency and intensity of terror attacks increase our efforts to quell terrorism will increase in severity.
Theoretically al Qaeda will lose the ability to exploit our societal structure (which may involve losing the freedoms we so proudly display) and this will cause the potential of the current tactics to decrease.
When potential is achieved, or the point of efficiency reached, the innovation cycle will complete. Constraints will drive innovation. al Qaeda will evolve into a GG network and focus on attacking global connectivity.
Larry Johnson discusses the prolonged innovation cycle/rule set shift lag time
Specifically his discusses the inability for a Beltway bound bureaucracy to instill a “field mentality” in its young case officers. Something the State department just got around to fixing with its foreign service officers in January when Rice announced a geopolitical shift of these officers from Cold War Europe to current “hot spots”.
Johnson cites the removal of Grenier (now former head of the CTC – Counter Terrorism Center) as evidence Goss may get around to reforming the CIA at some point; but makes sure to point out the future is bleak without a focused effort at dealing with this core problem.
The current turmoil at CIA will put this nation at risk if we do not get serious about training, supporting, and retaining a new generation of case officers who are willing and comfortable in working overseas for extended periods.
TigerHawk touches on what I discuss here. He just does not go deep enough to get the universals.
As globalization continues its march the nation state faces a divergent path. On one hand it can progress to become a more interconnected global government (in this particular case the EU) – but faces significant obstacles in its inherintly bereaucratic structure which causes the interim step to be perpetuated – which is why Robb says the state will fall apart when attacked by Global Guerrillas.
They’re just much more efficient than the adapting nation state.
Which presents the other option the nation state faces – it’s decline and fall.
This piece by Donald Steinberg highlights the reasons why failed states are prime breeding grounds for non state actors – Fourth Generation warriors or Global Guerrilas.
There are at least 1 million internally displaced persons in Sudan, Colombia, Congo, Uganda, Iraq, Algeria, and Turkey, and the numbers are growing every day. Because internally displaced persons – IDPs in humanitarian lingo – don’t cross international borders, they don’t automatically receive the rights, protection, and assistance that come to refugees. They have no patron among international agencies or donors, and no formal system of legal rights.
These people are the embodiment of the disconnectedness Barnett talks about.
Who are the internally displaced? They are 6 million Sudanese driven from their homes in the south and in Darfur by brutal civil war. They are 3 million Colombians who have suffered from a half-century of civil strife. They are women and children of northern Uganda, crowded into squalid and ill- protected camps to prevent murder, kidnapping, and forced recruitment by the Lord’s Resistance Army. They are Congolese civilians caught in the crossfire of ethnic militias, foreign troops, and insurgency groups. Most recently, they are hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans driven from their shacks outside Harare by Robert Mugabe’s latest atrocity.
Sounds like a map of the Gap to me.
Beyond the moral and humanitarian imperatives, mass internal displacement brings chaos that may serve as breeding grounds for terrorism; trafficking in drugs, arms, and persons; pandemic diseases; and other threats to international order. The failure to rapidly return IDPs to their homes can doom peace agreements and reconstruction.
Absolutely. I fear that returning to them to their homes will not be good enough however. Governments in the area are still too weak; social mobility will still be around 0. They will have to join the organizations providing support and sustanance (drug, smuggling, terror networks) and dismantle false units we call nation states that have done little or none for them. Or move to the Core.