Some Rays of Hope in Recent Operations

By Douglas Farah

I have been rightly described as extremely pessimistic about the way our intelligence and law enforcement communities-with the exception of isolated pockets-are facing (or not) the challenges I see as most pressing for the 21st century.

These include the growing and spreading threat of non-state armed actors, the criminal-terrorist nexus, the spreading narco mini-states across Central and northern South America, and the world of shadow facilitators that tie disparate networks together.

In my experience, most of the problems center on a lack of understanding of how the world really operates, and a distinct inability to see things beyond how we have experienced them for ourselves, meaning the world is often viewed as operating according to our cultural and political experience, rather than operating as it operates.

But a string of recent successes (two by the Drug Enforcement Administration and one by the Colombian army with U.S. military support) show rays of hope. Some of the risk-aversion is being overcome, creative thinking is being more welcomed and human intelligence is again the key.

The cases are the arrest of Viktor Bout; the successful arrest and extradition of Monzar al Kassar; and the freeing of the FARC hostages.

What these cases have in common is the creativity with which the operations were conceived, the flexibility in the implementation of them, the correct identification of high-value targets, and the extensive use of human intelligence to develop the operations and carry them out successfully. My full blog is here.

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