South Asia

20 Items

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Marisa Porges' Journey from Naval Flight Officer to Counterterror Expert

    Author:
  • Wesley Nord
| Summer 2013

"Belfer Center Fellow Marisa Porges' career has already spanned the worlds of academia and policymaking, the government and the military. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Porges earned honors with a degree in geophysics and, during senior year, commanded her Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps unit. After graduation, she commissioned as a naval flight officer in the U.S. Navy and managed the weapons systems aboard EA-6B Prowlers, a carrier-based electronic warfare jet.... [now] as a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, she now combines scholarship and practice."

Dara Kay Cohen wades a river to reach her interview location in the Bonthe District in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone.

Dara Kay Cohen Photo

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Q&A with Dara Kay Cohen

| Spring 2013

Dara Kay Cohen is an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a core faculty member of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center. Her current research examines variations in the use of sexual violence during recent conflicts and draws from fieldwork in Sierra Leone, East Timor, and El Salvador, where she interviewed more than 200 ex-combatants and noncombatants. Here, she answers questions related to her research on the causes of wartime rape. She recently co-authored a policy report for the United States Institute of Peace titled "Wartime Sexual Violence: Misconceptions, Implications, and Ways Forward."

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Aisha Ahmad: Knowledge Without Action Is Injustice

    Author:
  • Dominic Contreras
| Spring 2012

As a child, Aisha Ahmad remembers vividly the arms bazaars in Peshawar and the throngs of bearded mujahedeen commanders as they passed through her grandfather’s smoke laden offices in the Pakistani frontier province.Though she was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, her family retained strong ties with their native community and during her youth Ahmad regularly traveled to the unruly Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

An unidentified Mujahideen rebel stands on guard on high ground over looking the rocky mountainous while on patrol in the area of Kunar Province near the Pakistan border, Feb., 1980, Afghanistan.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad

| Winter 2010/11

Why has transnational war volunteering increased so dramatically in the Muslim world since 1980? Standard explanations, which emphasize U.S.-Saudi support for the 1980s Afghan mujahideen, the growth of Islamism, or the spread of Wahhabism are insufficient. The increase in transnational war volunteering is better explained as the product of a pan-Islamic identity movement that grew strong in the 1970s Arab world from elite competition among exiled Islamists in international Islamic organizations and Muslim regimes.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Belfer Center Newsletter Summer 2010

| Summer 2010

The Summer 2010 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center's involvement with the Nuclear Security Summit, which was organized by Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate.

teaser image

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

International Security Journal Highlights

Spring 2010

Among the articles featured in the Winter 2009/10 Issue of the Belfer Center journal International Securityare "Same As It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War," by Francis J. Gavin, Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability," and Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan."  International Security is America's leading journal of security affairs.

The main gate of a compound run by the al-Qaida linked terror network Jaish-e-Mohammed, in southern Punjab, Pakistan, Mar. 20, 2009. Officials say Jaish and other groups in Punjab send fighters to Afghanistan and the frontier region.

AP Photo

Journal Article - CTC Sentinel

Defining the Punjabi Taliban Network

| April 2009

"The Punjabi Taliban network is a loose conglomeration of members of banned militant groups of Punjabi origin—sectarian as well as those focused on the conflict in Kashmir—that have developed strong connections with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Afghan Taliban and other militant groups based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). They shuttle between FATA and the rest of Pakistan, providing logistical support to FATA- and Afghan-based militants to conduct terrorist operations deep inside Pakistan. Between March 2005 and March 2007 alone, for example, about 2,000 militants from southern and northern Punjab Province reportedly moved to South Waziristan and started different businesses in an effort to create logistical support networks. Given their knowledge about Punjabi cities and security structure, they have proved to be valuable partners for the TTP as it targets cities in Punjab, such as Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad...."

Thomas Hegghammer, a joint ISP/RIIA research fellow, discusses the origins of global jihad at an ISP brownbag seminar.

Belfer Center

Policy Brief

The Origins of Global Jihad: Explaining the Arab Mobilization to 1980s Afghanistan

| January 22, 2009

The Arab involvement in Afghanistan was the result of two main factors: the entrepreneurship of the Palestinian preacher Abdallah Azzam, and the rise of a "soft pan-Islamism" promoted since the mid-1970s by non-violent international Islamic organizations such as the Muslim World League.

This policy memo is based on Thomas Hegghammer's ISP brownbag seminar presentation.

Traders from Pakistani Kashmir wave after crossing onto the Indian side of Kashmir's de facto border, the Line of Control (LoC), Oct. 9, 2008. A delegation of traders from Pakistani Kashmir arrived in Indian Kashmir to hold talks on cross-LoC trade.

AP Photo

Policy Brief - Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Slow but Steady on Kashmir

| January 2009

Instead of special envoys and summits, the U.S. should adopt a "quiet diplomacy" approach that offers incentives to India and Pakistan for making tangible, if small, progress on the ground in Kashmir. The U.S. should offer to help fund sustained local policy initiatives in both Indian and Pakistani-administered Kashmir aimed at improving governance and encouraging economic exchange and the movement of people across the Line of Control. An initiative focused on local government and civil society lacks the drama of shuttle diplomacy and grand bargains, but can actually improve the daily lives of Kashmiris while giving them more say over their own governance.