Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Madhu

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I seem to be the odd one out in that I agree with carl's diagnosis to some extent but disagree with his cure....

What I mean is that safe havens are not "inert" lumps of soil, simply spaces on a map, and are not necessarily interchangeable. Safe havens have a meaning to the people that use them --emotional and personal and ideological -- and some safe havens have access to militaries, especially retired military well trained in certain activies and arts. These safe havens have well-developed networks that reach back to other parts of the world, whether it be Europe, Africa, or simply back into cyberspace.

I no longer trust assessments on intelligence from, well, pretty much anybody (that is not directed at anyone here : ) ) I mean, who knows, you know?

All that being said, I agree that conventional forces and occupying forces are the wrong way to go, they infuriate the local people (naturally so) and the results do not justify the expenditures in blood and treasure. In short: it don't work.

But on the "one safe haven is the same as the other" stuff, I'm not so cavalier....I look at it as nodes within a network that have a certain prominence to them, which may change over time, but then again, the node may have a meaning outside of our mirroring look at them; seeing what we want to see.

Thoughtful comments, but I think safe haven is an over used term that is too often used to justify throwing a lot of money and troops at an area to "fix it", or more accurately establish something that looks like the West. All too often this simply makes the problem worse. Safe haven in simple terms implies a degree of safety, we can take that away in a number of ways that will create many sleepless nights for our foes without throwing substantial amounts at money at the problem.

Addressing your other points, the trainers and training bases are enabling locations that may or may not be safe havens. The only safety may in fact due to our adversaries' to remain under the radar. There were few places in Iraq that were safe havens, we could reach out and strike anywhere, but needed the intelligence to facilitate the strike. Even without a safe haven terrorists/insurgents were able to train and launch sophisticated attacks.

I would like to hear David's and others opinions on how essential safe havens were for the IRA.

The bottom line is terrorists will adapt, ultimately you have to kill or detain them, and then hope the prison doesn't become a new incubator for the next generation of Jihadists (Egypt, Indonesia, Libya, etc.)

Lots of nuances, but right now my position is we need to disrupt safe havens, not attempt to fix them. We can do that now, we had our awakening on 9/11, we were asleep or denial prior to then. In some places where the host nation is willing to work with us by all means we can and should assist them improve their capacity to more effectively govern their areas, but how we do it is critical, we have to be smart enough to adapt our approach based on each country's uniqueness or risk pushing that government into failure.