Iraq’s Grim Prospects Post ISIL
Co-written by Sterling Jensen. In the coming months, and possibly weeks, the Iraqi Security Forces, with the help of a diverse group of fighters spanning the Iraqi politic...
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
Maggie Hassan says ISIS advertises lax U.S. gun laws
As gun policy takes a central role in New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate race, Democrat Maggie Hassan is warning that terrorists are trying to exploit federal laws to obtain firearms. ......
Op-eds
Underestimating al Qaeda
The United States and its allies are consumed by their battle with ISIS, but to many terrorism experts, al Qaeda remains a serious force to be reckoned with, one that is actually increasing i...
Op-eds
Limited Options
The Cipher Brief: What is your assessment of al Shabaab’s current capabilities? Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: Al Shabaab’s current cap...
Op-eds
A grim anniversary: 15 years after 9/11, the war against radical Islamist terrorism is not good
Imagine it's 15 years ago, immediately after the 9/11 attacks. You are told that in September 2016, a couple of major counterterrorism victories would be just around the corner. These impend...
Op-eds
No Panacea for Radicalization
The case of Aaron Driver, the 24-year-old Muslim convert killed by police before he could carry out a terrorist attack against a major urban centre, has again focused public attention on Canada&r...
Op-eds
Zawahiri’s Revenge
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham — which has now rebranded itself "the Islamic State" (IS) — is trying to position itself as the new leader of the global...
Op-eds
Rebranding Terror
On July 28, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, heretofore the emir of al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, ...
Op-eds
Boko Haram’s Doomed Marriage To The Islamic State
Co-written by Jacob Zenn. When the Nigerian jihadist group popularly known as Boko Haram publicly pl...
Op-eds
The Myth of Lone-Wolf Terrorism
Co-written with Nathaniel Barr This month, Europe has again been rocked by a series of shocking terrorist attacks perpetrated by lone individuals and claimed in the name of the...
Op-eds
Playing yesterday’s game: India’s real foreign policy challenges lie in its neighbourhood
The South China Sea is several seas away from us. The NSG membership will happen some time after we (the people and the government) have stopped hyperventilating about it. Instea...
Op-eds
U.S.-Backed ‘Moderate’ Rebels Behead a Child Near Aleppo
Members of an American-backed rebel group in Syria beheaded a young child in a grisly execution video. The footage surfaced early Tuesday of members of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki and a...
Op-eds
Computer hack helped feed an Islamic State death list
The attack seemed like a garden-variety digital holdup. A computer intruder, calling himself the “Albanian hacker,” left a message for the administrator of a website for an I...
Op-eds
Bloody Ramadan: How The Islamic State Coordinated A Global Terrorist Campaign
In late May 2016, the Islamic State (ISIL) ...
Op-eds
Bloomberg
Jamil Jaffer, former senior adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, react to the Turkish co...
Op-eds
ISIS may be on the decline — but beware al Qaeda
Recent attacks inspired or executed by ISIS show how dangerous a militant organization in decline can be. But make no mistake: The group is in a state of decline. ISIS, which is so profi...
Op-eds
Boko Haram’s Buyer’s Remorse
When Boko Haram pledged loyalty to the Islamic State in March 2015, it seemed to signal that the jihadi world was bending in the direction of the self-proclaimed caliphate. At the time, Boko Hara...
Op-eds
The FBI director painted a bizarre picture of the man behind the worst mass shooting in US history
The director of the FBI, James Comey, said Monday that Omar Mateen, the man who carried out the worst shooting in US history at a gay nightclub in Orlando, mentioned links to al-Qaida, Hezbollah,...
Op-eds
Uncovering if Pulse club massacre in Orlando was an ‘ISIS Attack’
Omar Mateen wanted the world to associate his attack at an Orlando nightclub, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, with ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Mateen took a few...
Op-eds
The Buck Sexton Show
FDD senior fellow Daveed Gartenstein-Ross discusses the death of Bin Laden and the state of al-Qaeda five years later. ...