Jamestown’s Thirteenth Annual Terrorism Conference
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
The University Club
1135 16th St NW
Washington, DC 20036
About the Event:
The Jamestown Foundation is proud to announce its Thirteenth Annual Terrorism Conference, to be held Thursday, December 12th.
Jamestown is honored to host some of the world’s top terrorism experts at this year’s conference, which will feature discussion about the most pressing terrorism-related threats to U.S. national security.
Watch the Video:
AGENDA
Registration
8:15 A.M.–8:55 A.M.
* * *
Welcome
9:00 A.M.
Glen E. Howard
President, The Jamestown Foundation
* * *
Panel One:
9:00 A.M.–10:15 A.M.
“The Post-Baghdadi Terrorist Threat”
Bruce Hoffman
Professor, Georgetown University
Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, Council on Foreign Relations
Board Member, The Jamestown Foundation
“The Future of US Counter-Terrorism Policy After Baghdadi”
Michael Vickers
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence
Board Member, The Jamestown Foundation
“US Counter-Terrorism Policy Policy in Syria and Turkey’s Regional Role”
Michael Doran
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Claudia Rosett
Former Wall Street Journal Editor & Independent Journalist
Moderator
Q & A
* * *
Coffee Break
10:15 A.M.–10:45 A.M.
* * *
Panel Two: The Future of Afghanistan & the Looming US-Withdrawal
10:45 P.M.–12:15 P.M.
“The Future of the Taliban”
Abubakar Siddique
Senior Correspondent, RFE/RL
“Pakistan’s Role in Regional Security After the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan”
Hassan Abbas
Distinguished Professor of International Relations
Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University
“After the US Withdrawal: India’s Concerns”
Sudha Ramachandran
Independent Analyst
“Assessing the Future of Afghanistan”
Seth G. Jones
Harold Brown Chair; Director of the Transnational Threats Project; and Senior Adviser, International Security
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Commentator
Marvin G. Weinbaum
Director of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Program, Middle East Institute
Professor Emeritus
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Moderator
Q & A
* * *
Conference Luncheon
12:15 P.M.–1:00 P.M.
* * *
Panel Three: The Post-Baghdadi Counter-Terrorism Environment in the Middle East
1:00 P.M.–2:30 P.M.
“Iranian Strategy in Syria After the Fall of the Caliphate”
Alex Vatanka
Senior Fellow, Middle East Institute
“The Role of Sinai in the Future of Jihadist Strategy”
Michael W. S. Ryan
Senior Fellow, The Jamestown Foundation
“Instability in Iraq and it’s Effect on ISIS and Regional Security”
Rafid Jaboori
Fellow, The Jamestown Foundation
Jacob Zenn
Fellow of African and Eurasian Affairs, The Jamestown Foundation
Moderator
Q & A
* * *
Intermission
2:30 PM – 2:45 PM
* * *
Panel Four: The Changing Terrorism Environment in Africa
2:45 P.M.–4:00 P.M.
“Militant Movements in the Sahel and Nigeria”
Jacob Zenn
Fellow of African and Eurasian Affairs, The Jamestown Foundation
“The Libyan Chaos and North African Instability”
Dario Cristiani
IAI/GMF Fellow at the German Marshall Fund
“War by Other Means: Russian Mercenaries in Africa”
Sergey Sukhankin
Fellow, The Jamestown Foundation
“Militant Movements in East Africa – Islamic State in Mozambique”
Brian M. Perkins
Editor, Terrorism Monitor, The Jamestown Foundation
Theodore Karasik
Fellow, The Jamestown Foundation
Moderator
Q & A
* * *
Conclusion
4:00 P.M.
PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES
Hassan Abbas
Hassan Abbas is Distinguished Professor of International Relations at the Near East South Asia Strategic Studies Centre (NESA), National Defense University in Washington DC. He serves as a senior advisor at Project on Shi’ism and Global Affairs at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a senior fellow at the Centre of Global Policy, a think tank focusing on intersection of U.S. foreign policy and Muslim geopolitics. His current research work focuses on building narratives for countering political and religious extremism & rule of law reforms in developing states.
Earlier he served as professor and department chair at National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs (2011-2019) and as the Distinguished Quaid i Azam Professor at Columbia University (2009-2011). He held various fellowships including at Harvard Law School’s Islamic Legal Studies Program & Program on Negotiation (2002-04); the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (2005-09); Asia Society in New York as Bernard Schwartz fellow (2009-2011); and as a Carnegie fellow at the New America Foundation (2016-2018).
He appeared on various television news shows on CNN, Fox News, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose Show, MSNBC (Abrams Report and Hardball), C-Span (Washington Journal) and various programs on CBS, and NBC as an analyst on security related issues in South Asia and Middle East. He has been interviewed for many news stories and analyses for the New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Guardian, etc.
Dario Cristiani
Dario Cristiani is the IAI/GMF fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States based in Washington, D.C., working on Italian foreign policy, the Mediterranean, and global politics. A native of Naples, Italy, he has more than fifteen years of experience as a private political risk consultant, working on Mediterranean and emerging markets. He received his Ph.D. in Middle East and Mediteranean studies from King’s College London in 2015, and he got a BA and MA (with distinctions) from the University of Naples L’Orientale, where he also started his academic career as a teaching and e-learning assistant in political science and comparative politics. He has been the director of executive training in global risk analysis and crisis management and an adjunct professor in international affairs and conflict studies at Vesalius College in Brussels. He continues teaching as a guest lecturer in several institutions in Europe and the Maghreb (Koninklijke Militaire School, Istituto Alti Studi Difesa, Sit Tunis). He has lived in Tunisia, Turkey, Belgium, and the United Kingdom.
Michael Doran
Michael Doran is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, where he specializes in Middle East security issues. In the administration of President George W. Bush, Doran served in the White House as a senior director in the National Security Council with responsibility for the entire Middle East except Iraq. Before coming to Hudson, Doran was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and he has also held teaching positions at NYU, Princeton, and the University of Central Florida. He publishes frequently in major newspapers and magazines. His latest book, Ike’s Gamble, is a study in the evolution of President Eisenhower’s Middle East strategy. He received a B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton.
Bruce Hoffman
Professor Bruce Hoffman has been studying terrorism and insurgency for over four decades. He is a tenured professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Visiting Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Hoffman co-founded and was the first director of St Andrews University’s Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, where he is also visiting Professor of Terrorism Studies. He is currently the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Visiting Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Hoffman previously held the Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation and was appointed by the U.S. Congress as a commissioner on the 9/11 Review Commission. He has been Scholar-in-Residence for Counterterrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency; adviser on counterterrorism to the Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq; and, adviser on counterinsurgency to Multi-National Forces-Iraq Headquarters, Baghdad, Iraq. His most recent books include Inside Terrorism (3rdedition, 2017); Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 (2015), which was named Jewish Book of the Year for 2015 and also won the Washington Institute’s Gold Medal for the best book on Middle East politics, history, and culture published in 2015; and, The Evolution of the Global Terrorist Threat (2014).
Rafid Jaboori
Rafid Jaboori is a journalist, writer and researcher. He is a former BBC World Service Reporter. He covered The Iraq War and its aftermath, the conflict in Syria, and several other events. He is an expert in militant groups in the Middle East.
Seth G. Jones
Seth G. Jones holds the Harold Brown Chair, is director of the Transnational Threats Project, and is a senior adviser to the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Prior to joining CSIS, Dr. Jones was the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. He also served as representative for the commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Before that, he was a plans officer and adviser to the commanding general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan). In 2014, Dr. Jones served on a congressionally mandated panel that reviewed the FBI’s implementation of counterterrorism recommendations contained in the 9/11 Commission Report. Dr. Jones specializes in counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare, and covert action, including a focus on al Qaeda and ISIS. He is the author of A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland (W.W. Norton, 2018), Waging Insurgent Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2016), Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qa’ida after 9/11 (W.W. Norton, 2012), and In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (W.W. Norton, 2009). Dr. Jones has published articles in a range of journals, such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and International Security, as well as newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Dr. Jones is a graduate of Bowdoin College and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Theodore Karasik
Dr. Theodore Karasik is the Fellow on Russian and Middle Eastern Affairs at the Jamestown Foundation. He is also currently a Senior Advisor to Gulf State Analytics and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Lexington Institute, both located in Washington, DC. Dr. Karasik spent 2004 through 2016 in the GCC, the Middle East and Russia. For the past 30 years, Karasik worked for a number of US agencies involved in researching and analyzing defense acquisition, the use of military power, and religious-political issues across MENA and Eurasia, including the evolution of violent extremism and its financing.
Dr. Karasik was an Adjunct Lecturer at the Dubai School of Government, where he taught graduate-level international relations, and also an Adjunct Lecturer at University Wollongong Dubai, where he taught labor and migration. Karasik was a Senior Political Scientist in the International Policy and Security Group at RAND Corporation. From 2002 to 2003, he served as Director of Research for the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy. He is a specialist in geopolitics and geo-economics for the MENA and Eurasia regions and frequently conducts studies and assessments of future security trajectories and military requirements.
Dr. Karasik received his PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in four fields: Russia, Middle East, Caucasus and an outside field in cultural anthropology, focusing on tribes and clans from Central Asia to East Africa. He also holds a CPhil and MA in History and International Relations from UCLA and Monterey Institute of International Studies, respectively. He wrote his PhD dissertation on military and humanitarian operations in the northern port city of Arkhangel’sk and their impact on political institutions during the Russian civil war.
Brian Perkins
Brian M. Perkins is an Intelligence Manager at a large risk management consultancy and is a former Navy Signals Intelligence Analyst. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed journals and has been cited by the UNHCR, academic presses, and international media outlets. His research primarily focuses on Yemen, though he regularly writes about terrorism and political violence in the broader MENA region.
Sudha Ramachandran
Dr. Sudha Ramachandran is an independent analyst based in Bangalore, India. She has written extensively on South Asian peace and conflict, political and security issues for The Diplomat, Asia Times, World Politics Review and Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor, Militant Leadership Monitor and China Brief. She has also reported from several conflict zones, including Kashmir, India’s Maoist areas, Sri Lanka and Fiji. Ramachandran is adjunct faculty at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai. She has a doctoral degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Her thesis was on the Sri Lankan militant group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Claudia Rosett
Claudia Rosett is a foreign policy fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and an award-winning journalist who has reported over the past 37 years from Asia, the former Soviet Union, Latin America and the Middle East. She is widely credited with groundbreaking reporting on corruption at the United Nations. From 1984-2002 Ms. Rosett was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, serving as a member of the Editorial Board in New York (1997-2002); reporter, promoted to bureau chief, in Moscow (1993-96); editorial-page editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong (1986-93); and book review editor in New York (1984-86). From 2003-2015 she was journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Ms. Rosett has contributed to numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Weekly Standard, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Sun, Forbes.com and The Journal of International Security Affairs. She makes frequent appearances on TV and radio, and has appeared before six U.S. Senate and House committees and subcommittees to testify on such topics as U.N. corruption and reform, and the Iran-North Korea strategic alliance. Ms. Rosett is a winner of the Journalism Leadership Eagle Award of the New York Respect for Law Alliance (2013); and the Eric Breindel Award (2005) and Mightier Pen Award (2005) for her reporting on the United Nations Iraq Oil-for-Food program. For her on-site coverage of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Ms. Rosett won an Overseas Press Club Citation for Excellence. In 1994, writing for The Wall Street Journal, she broke the full story of North Korean labor camps in the Russian Far East, reporting from the camps. Ms. Rosett holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Columbia University, and an M.B.A. with a specialization in finance from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business.
Michael W. S. Ryan
Michael W. S. Ryan is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation in Washington, D.C. and an independent consultant. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President at The Middle East Institute (2008-2009). The White House appointed him as Vice President in The Millennium Challenge Corporation (2006-2008). Dr. Ryan also held senior positions in the Departments of State, Defense, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after joining the U.S. federal government in 1979 as a Middle East/North Africa analyst for the Department of Defense. He is author of Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle against America (Columbia University Press, 2013) and a U.S. Naval War College Case Study, “ISIS, The Terrorist Group That Would Be a State,” (available to the public online). Dr. Ryan is currently writing a book on the Heirs of Al-Qaeda and is engaged in research on countering radical extremism with a focus on ISIS ideology. Ryan received his doctorate from Harvard University in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Dr. Ryan is also the author of a recent case study for the U.S. Naval War College’s Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG) CIWAG, titled “Defeating ISIS on the Ideological Battlefield.”
Abubakar Siddique
Abubakar Siddique is a journalist specializing in coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the editor of RFE/RL’s “Gandhara” website. He has spent the two decades researching and writing about security, political, humanitarian, and cultural issues in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Pashtun heartland where he was born.
In addition to his reporting, Siddique speaks frequently at prominent think tanks in several countries and has contributed articles, chapters, and research papers to a range of publications. Siddique’s unique expertise is brought to bear in “The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan” book. (London: Hurst and Company, 2014). Abubakar Siddique has been cited by the international press, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York times, The Washington Post and the American Interest.
Sergey Sukhankin
Dr. Sergey Sukhankin is a Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and an advisor at the Gulf State Analytics. He received his PhD in Contemporary Political and Social History from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), with a special prize for excellence. His areas of scientific interest primarily concern Kaliningrad and the Baltic Sea region, Russian information and cyber security, A2/AD and its interpretation in Russia, as well as the development of Russia Private Military Companies (PMC) after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Dr. Sukhankin’s academic articles, expert opinions and commentaries, as well as policy-oriented analyses have appeared in leading international think tanks and research institutions, including The Jamestown Foundation, The Fair Observer, ECFR, CIDOB, Diplomaatia, RIAC, New Eastern Europe, Kyiv Post, The New Republic, Business Insider, Rzeczpospolita, El Mundo, El Periodico and El Confidencial. He is teaching a course entitled “Foreign and Security Policy of the Russian Federation” at the University of Alberta (Canada).
Alex Vatanka
Alex Vatanka is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute. He specializes in Middle Eastern regional security affairs with a particular focus on Iran. He was formerly a Senior Analyst at Jane’s Information Group in London. Alex is also a Senior Fellow in Middle East Studies at the US Air Force Special Operations School (USAFSOS) at Hurlburt Field and teaches as an Adjunct Professor at DISAS at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He has testified before the US Congress and lectured widely for both governmental and commercial audiences, including the US Departments of State and Defense, US intelligence agencies, and a list of international corporations. Born in Tehran, he holds a BA in Political Science (Sheffield University, UK), and an MA in International Relations (Essex University, UK), and is fluent in Farsi and Danish. He is the author of “Iran-Pakistan: Security, Diplomacy, and American Influence” (2015), and contributed chapters to other books, including “Authoritarianism Goes Global” (2016); “Handbook on Contemporary Pakistan” (2017); “Russia in the Middle East” (2018) and “Global, Regional and Local Dynamics in the Yemen Crisis.” (2020). He is presently working on his second book “The Making of Iranian Foreign Policy: Contested Ideology, Personal Rivalries and the Domestic Struggle to Define Iran’s Place in the World.” @AlexVatanka
Michael Vickers
Dr. Michael Vickers is widely recognized as one of the nation’s top national security professionals, with unprecedented senior tenure across Republican and Democratic administrations. He was a key operational strategist for the two great wars of our time: the operation in the 1980s to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan that helped bring an end to the Cold War – the largest and most successful covert action program in the history of the CIA – and the ongoing war with al-Qa’ida. He played a major policy and planning role in the operation that killed Usama bin Ladin.
From January 2011 to May 2015, Vickers served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Chief Executive Officer of the Defense Intelligence Enterprise, an $80 billion, 180,000-person, global operation that includes the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, Defense Security Service, and the intelligence components of the Military Services and Combatant Commands. As the USD(I), he conceived and led a comprehensive transformation of defense intelligence capabilities.
From 2007 to 2011, he served as the first and only Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities. As the ASD SO/LIC&IC, Vickers served as the “Service” Secretary for all Special Operations Forces – a 70,000-person, $10 billion enterprise with personnel deployed in 90 countries – and had policy oversight of all of DoD’s core operational capabilities – strategic forces (nuclear forces, missile defense, space, cyber), conventional forces (air, ground and maritime), and Special Operations Forces. He conceived and led the largest expansion of Special Operations Forces in our nation’s history.
Earlier, during the nearly decade and a half that spanned the operational phase of his career, he served as a Special Forces Non-Commissioned Officer, Special Forces Officer and CIA Operations Officer, and had operational and combat experience in Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia. As the principal strategist for the multi-billion-dollar effort that defeated the Red Army in Afghanistan, Vickers oversaw the policy, operations, training, and logistics of a covert enterprise that spanned several continents.
Dr. Vickers has received the nation’s highest awards in the fields of intelligence and defense, including the Presidential National Security Medal. He holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, an MBA from the Wharton School, and a B.A. from the University of Alabama.
Dr. Marvin G. Weinbaum
Dr. Marvin G. Weinbaum is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and served as analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2003. He is currently a scholar-in-residence and Director of Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. Professor Weinbaum has his doctorate from Columbia University in 1965, his MA from the University of Michigan in 1958, and his BA from Brooklyn College in 1957. In 1965 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At Illinois, Dr. Weinbaum served for fifteen years as the director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
He was awarded Fulbright Research Fellowships for Egypt in 1981–82 and Afghanistan in 1989–90, and was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in 1996–97. Additionally, Dr. Weinbaum has been the recipient of research awards from the Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, IREX, the American Political Science Association, and other granting agencies.
After retiring at Illinois, Professor Weinbaum has held adjunct professorships at Georgetown and George Washington universities, and has frequently lectured at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. At the State Department he was a recipient of its Superior Honors Award. While at the Middle East Institute, he has assumed numerous consultancies, both with government agencies and the private sector.
Dr. Weinbaum’s research, teaching, and consultancies have focused on the issues of national security, state building, democratization, and political economy. He is the author or editor of six books. Dr. Weinbaum has also written more than 100 book chapters and professional journal articles, mostly about Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, but also on Egypt and Turkey. He is author of numerous opinion pieces in leading American newspapers and magazines, and many think-tank reports.
Jacob Zenn
Jacob Zenn is author of the forthcoming book forthcoming in April 2020, Unmasking Boko Haram: Exploring Global Jihad in Nigeria, published by Lynne Rienner Publishers in association with the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), University of St Andrews. Mr. Zenn is also an adjunct assistant professor of the graduate-level course “Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics” at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and a senior fellow on African and Eurasian Affairs for The Jamestown Foundation. Mr. Zenn has also provided testimony on Islamist Militant Threats to Central Asia and the Threat of Boko Haram and Ansaru in Nigeria to the U.S. Congress.
