Terrorist Finance (merged thread)

[Rex Brynen]

Let me move the discussion away from Napoleoni for a moment, and towards a broader issue that has increasingly troubled me. It may seem like a bit of a tangent to begin with, but you'll see by the end how it connects.

Since 9/11, there has been--for obvious reasons--a dramatic expansion in the number in the number of (government) analysts addressing CT and Middle Eastern issues. Many of these have been newly-minted graduate (or even undergraduate) students with some topic or area expertise. Some of this group are already very good, some may be good one day, and some are far from impressive. A key issue here will be mentoring, and whether organizations have the seasoned, skilled, mid-level analysts who can nurture a new generation. A second key issue will be human resource management, and whether the system recognizes and appropriately deals with the gifted, the promising, and the flawed among the new recruits.

In addition, there are a number of organizations with traditionally little CT or ME analytical responsibility, where they've felt the need to develop it, whether by new hires or by reassigning mid-level professionals with very different previous responsibilities. I've found that, at times, this group seeks an overarching framework of analysis, a theme or motif as it were, to make sense of the complex new world and responsibilities into which they've been thrust. As a result, they buy into catchy (sometimes rather politicized) explanations that reduce issues to near sound-bites, and hence make the complex world around them more intellectually manageable.

A case in point: I was at a conference of security and intelligence professionals and scholars a few weeks ago in which a great number of the participants fell into this later category. One of the speakers was Melanie Philips, British author of the book Londonistan.

Now, I recognize that immigration, refugee policy, diasporas, and multiculturalism all have security implications. However, Philips presentation (and the book) was a thinly-veiled rant against all of these things in the name of preserving a narrow, even racist, vision of British identity. As her website notes:

Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of British self-confidence and national identity and its resulting paralysis by multiculturalism and appeasement. The result is an ugly climate in Britain of irrationality and defeatism, which now threatens to undermine the alliance with America and imperil the defence of the free world.

The actual presentation was far more strident.

As I listened to her, I was certain that everyone in the room would see her simplistic, narrow-minded, highly ideological "analysis" for what it was. Much to my surprise, however, a great many people found it attractive: the problem of terrorism could be simply understood by recognizing that we had departed from our classic 1950s values, that we had contaminated Western culture with foreign imports, that we had become defeatists inappropriately ashamed of the grand colonial past, that the vast majority of Muslims were jihadist sympathizers, and that consequently immigration and refugee policies were little more than fifth columns. Typically those that found the call most seductive were middle-aged professionals recently thrust within their departments into some sort of security and intelligence role, and much less so younger analysts (and almost no one with any extensive analytical background in the issues). Clearly there was a real danger that this simple (and simplistic), nicely-packaged drivel
could drive out much more nuanced, messy, and less easily digested diagnosis. As someone who spends his analytical time with well-informed, experienced area and issue professionals, it was frankly quite a shock.

My reaction to Napoleoni is, in some ways, fueled by the concern that although she offers a very different analysis (and clearly knows her issues infinitely better than Philips, who is a political columnist and not a scholar), it offers the same kind of seductive appeal and suffers from some of the same shoehorning of data to fit a preconceived analytical frame.

I've also become intrinsically suspicious of scholars and analysts with flashy self-promoting websites that use their own name as the domain URL

Jedburgh (and anyone else): I would be interested if you've observed any of the same issues arising from the expansion of CT and analytical capabilities within organizations, especially those with less prior experience in these areas. Or did I just have an unlucky experience?...