Terrorism

As of May 7, 2013, 603 Guantanamo prisoners have been released or transferred abroad. Of those 603 we have identified 53 who are either confirmed to be or suspected of engaging in militant activities against either the U.S. or non-U.S. targets. We have placed them in the following categories:

Category 1: GTMO detainees confirmed to be engaging in militant activities against U.S. targets.

TOTAL: 17, 2.8%

Category 2: GTMO detainees suspected of engaging in militant activities against U.S. targets

The CIA drone program began quietly under President George W. Bush with one strike in Yemen in 2002, and then a smattering of strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and 2007 before a more sustained campaign in 2008. During his two terms in office, Bush authorized a total of 48 strikes in Pakistan.

This past Saturday, March 16, 2013 marked an extraordinary moment in Pakistan’s history, as this is the first time that a civilian government has served its entire five-year term (from 2008 to 2013). And, for the first time in its history, the Pakistani military appears both unwilling and unable to mount a coup against any civilian government. The military has mounted four coups since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

More than 11 years after the attacks of 9/11 and nearly a decade since the rise of popular online jihadi Internet forums, there is strikingly little empirical research on the manner in which jihadi activists use the Web to propagate their cause. Whereas researchers and policy analysts have systematically collected and analyzed the primary source material produced by al-Qaeda and its allies, very little work has been done on the conduits through which that information is distributed—and even to what extent anyone is accessing that propaganda other than counterterrorism analysts.

We have seen this story of bloodthirsty extremist violence before. In Somalia, in Yemen, in Iraq, and now in Algeria. A militant group moves into an ungoverned space where government lacks will or capability, where the group purports to represent the will of the people by instituting some strict version of Islam and imposing this vision with abhorrent ruthlessness. More broadly, in more than a decade of this global counterterror campaign, we have seen this battlefield shift from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Europe, and now Africa’s Sahel.

First, the bad news. That debonair, whip-smart, multilingual, trained-in-martial-arts, computer-code-writing Ivy League grad who works around the clock to hunt down terrorists and defuse bombs just seconds before they explode? He doesn’t really exist. He’s a Hollywood invention. Most of the “spies” devoted to protecting the United States from an array of outside threats are harried, middle-class office workers struggling, like millions of other Americans, to keep the weight off, pay the mortgage, and figure out how to work their gadgets.

It is not unusual for filmmakers to try to inject authenticity into a movie’s first frames by flashing onscreen words such as “based on real events.” Yet the language chosen by the makers of Zero Dark Thirty to preface their film about events leading to the death of Osama bin Laden is distinctively journalistic: “Based on Firsthand Accounts of Actual Events.” As those words fade, “September 11, 2001” appears against a black screen and we hear genuine emergency calls made by victims of al-Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center.

Peter Bergen discusses how the new movie "Zero Dark Thirty" stacks up to the real account of how Osama bin Laden was captured and killed. Rebecca MacKinnon provides post-game analysis of the Internet governance summit in Dubai that wrapped up this week. Elizabeth Weingarten hosts.

"Zero Dark Thirty" is a likely shoo-in, deservedly, for Oscar nominations for best director (Kathryn Bigelow) and best screenplay (Mark Boal) and perhaps a slew of other categories.

Jessica Chastain, who plays Maya, a CIA analyst who in the film is the key player in finding Osama bin Laden, is reminiscent of Cate Blanchett in both looks and talent. The movie is beautifully filmed, and the propulsive score moves the action forward effectively.

In September 2012, the trailer for the film The Innocence of Muslims shot to infamy after spending the summer as a mercifully obscure video in one of YouTube’s more putrid backwaters.