If there is one thing we in the global combating-terrorism community have learned from our adversaries, it is the power of the network.  The global reach and collective knowledge a network affords are excellent force multipliers.  In keeping with this understanding, many of our alumni are reconnecting with us and their counterparts in other countries with requests for assistance or to share lessons learned...

On a moonless night, I crested a hill on my way to check out the valley below for enemy forces. Suddenly, I came upon three Taliban fighters approximately 10 meters in front of me; they were apparently as surprised as I was. “Dresh!” (Pashto for “stop,”), I yelled. They responded instantly with a spattering of automatic fire...

The year 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the horrendous terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.45 Al Qaeda’ s religiously motivated murder of almost 3,000 people on that sunny Tuesday morning led directly to military operations in Afghanistan and then Iraq, which together mark the longest-ever military engagement by America since 1776...

Not only has Algeria earned a distinct place in the annals of international terrorism, but terrorism is hardly only a matter of historic interest in the Maghreb.  It is an ongoing concern.  Movies, books, and articles offer numerous interpretations of how Algerians have responded to their country’s waves of violence.  One can hardly contemplate the use of torture, for instance, without recalling the movie, The Battle of Algiers.  Liberation struggles the world over have looked to the Algerian example for inspiration.  And Western counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency thinking have been indisputably shaped by French and Algerian lessons learned...

Islamism has a long history in Algeria, but it has been marred in the past 20 years by the deaths of 100,000 to 200,000 citizens killed in conflicts with religious roots.  The notions of Islamism, Islamic fundamentalists, radical Islamists, and Muslim extremists within Algeria—and the world—lamentably have been lumped into one category, which oversimplifies the complex ideologies involved...

There is a remarkable theme that runs through two movies set on different sides of the same insurgency:  torture works.  The insurgency is the Algerian Revolt, 1954–1962, that ended when France granted independence to its long-held North African colony.  The two movies are Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and nominated for three Academy Awards, and Lost Command, based on the novel Les Centurions by French war correspondent Jean Pierre Lucien Osty,who wrote under the pen name Jean Lartéguy...

Any discussion of torture in 500 words or less is bound to fail. This column will be no different. But for the sake of clarity, let me try. Within the past 10 years, newspaper columns, magazine articles, academic papers, and entire books have been written on the ethics of torture. Films such as the 1966 classic, The Battle of Algiers have been studied for the ethical questions they pose: were the tactics employed by the French military tantamount to torture, or were they, as the lieutenant colonel in the film suggests, merely a form of enhanced interrogation? ...