International Security Archives - The World from PRX

Araya Phisutthiratanaphan sat in an idling Mercedes SUV. He was on a stakeout by the Thai-Myanmar border on a dirt path that had gone mushy with rain. A man in his 30s, he kept a pistol in his center console and a rifle in the floorboard. Outside his windshield, he could see cornstalks, droopy trees and a coffee-brown river. “It was like … [in the] middle of nowhere,” Araya said. On that dirt road, Araya and a teammate intended to intercept a van driven by human traffickers, whose destination loomed tall across that river — in Myanmar. A place that was a jungle just a few years ago, before the construction of a skyline of high-rise buildings, called KK Park. It’s an office park of sorts, only it’s run by crime syndicates. And instead of condos, the high rises are bare-bones dorms with barred windows. Shwe Koko, an upstart settlement in Myanmar, is notorious for scam operations. Authorities vow to shut it down but the skyline keeps growing.Patrick Winn/The World Araya was summoned to the location by a plea…

Lawmakers in Congress this week passed a bill to rein in the federal government’s sweeping surveillance program — both Democrats and Republicans found common ground in support of the USA Freedom Act, the first real reform of the Patriot Act since President George W. Bush signed the surveillance law 14 years ago. Though the law represents a marked step forward, New York City Congressman Jerry Nadler says more needs to be done to protect Americans from government overreach. "The bill, of which I’m a co-author, is a very good start — but it's only a start,” he says. “It does end most of the bulk collection of data, and it makes a number of very substantial and very positive changes. But it leaves a number of other things undone.” Congressman Nadler says that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, which authorizes the government to spy on the electronic communications of foreigners, also needs to be reformed. “If someone abroad communicates with an American and we pick up that…

I met Sonita Alizadeh when she flew into town to perform her first US concert. We were talking a walk when she suddenly stopped and stared at a man playing with his two daughters. “Here in America a dad sets aside time to take his daughters to the park,” she said. “Where I come from, you don’t see that.” Sonita comes from Afghanistan. She’s 18-years-old, has long black hair and a small frame. If things had gone according to her parent’s plan, she’d have been married by now. “I sometimes I think about the fact that I could have been a mother right now — with a few kids. It’s not a thought I like.” Sonita grew up in Tehran, Iran’s capital city. Her family fled Afghanistan when she was 8 years old because of war. She found a non-profit that taught undocumented Afghan kids. There she learned karate, photography, guitar, and she started singing and rapping. Her music quickly got recognition. Sonita met an Iranian director who helped her polish up her style and make music videos, and that led to a few awards.…

I first met Karam Al Hamad in May 2013 in the battered Syrian city of Deir al-Zor. He helped me out as a translator, guide and protector — and then as a friend. Hamad, who now lives in Turkey, called me up last Sunday with good news: He had been accepted for a fellowship at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Affairs as part of its Leaders for Democracy program, which is sponsored by the US Department of State. Hamad had picked up his visa and was booked on a flight to New York the next day. We met up at the airport on Monday morning and stood in line for the first security check. Hamad hadn't gotten any sleep the night before. He had plenty of reasons to be anxious: Turkey is the only foreign country he's ever been to; he's has barely been on a plane; he was asked to pack a couple of suits, though he’s never really dressed up before. But at that point, those were the least of his troubles. The US Consulate in Istanbul delivered his visa on a piece of paper from the State Department and told him…

Less than a year after a war in Gaza, and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent Congressional speech about Iran's nuclear program ringing in their ears, you might assume national security is dominating the minds of Israeli as they prepare to vote for a new government on Tuesday. But a recent poll by Israel's Channel 10 shows something very different: 53 percent of voters are most concerned with the cost of living in Israel and with other social issues. Only 24 percent named national security as their number one priority. That's true even in Sderot, a city near Israel's border with Gaza that's often bombarded by rockets. As one Sderot resident told Sheera Frenkel, a Middle East correspondent for BuzzFeed News, "I’m more in danger of losing my house because I can’t pay the mortgage than losing it to a rocket fired by Hamas." “It’s not necessarily that the Israeli economy is bad — for the very rich, it’s great,” Frenkel says. “They get tax benefits, and there’s monopolies on a lot of the big…

Like any successful activist group, ISIS understands its audience — its concerns, its frustrations, its motivations. "Today, they are running probably the most effective propaganda machine out there," says Nasser Weddady, an analyst who studies ISIS and its strategy. "This is designed for millennials, designed for a certain age category." “Feel out of place in the US or France or Germany?” ISIS asks in its promotional videos. Then join us. "What they in a sense have created is probably the most powerful global counter culture out there," Weddady says. It's sort like another counter-culture organization that shook Americans — in the 1960s, he says: the Weather Underground, which took credit for bombings at the US Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. Like the Weather Underground, Wedaddy argues, ISIS has created a cause so powerful that people would be willing to die — or kill — for it. "When you feel that you have right on your side, you can do some horrific things," said former Weather Underground…

Protester at anti-Maidan rally this weekend in Moscow sports a pro-Putin t-shirt.Charles Maynes If the Ukraine conflict has left relations between Russian and the West tainted with distrust, this weekend's "Anti-Maidan" demonstration in Moscow was a reminder why. The event marked one year since a pro-Western uprising in Kiev's Maidan Square toppled Ukraine's then-president, Viktor Yanukovich. Listening to speeches from the stage and conversations in the crowd, it was clear that Russians who attended the event have their own take on everything that's transpired since — and it often resembles a parallel universe to the one presented in the West. "Maidan is a festival of death," said Russian writer Nikolai Starikov, who clearly had a penchant for metaphor. "Maidan is a smile on the face of the American ambassador from his penthouse as he watches brother kill brother." It was left to Vika Tsiganova, a well-known singer and a co-host of the event, to up the ante. "Maidan is the concentration of everything…

Many governments around the world are in a tough situation these days: They want to discourage their citizens from joining Islamist groups like ISIS, but they're not sure how to handle people who go to places like Iraq and Syria and then decide they want to come back. Just look at Cherif and Said Kouachi, the brothers who carried out the massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing a dozen people. At least one of the two men had traveled overseas for training. "I think the French are right to be afraid," says John Horgan, who directs the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. "We are facing a problem we don't fully understand. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign fighters who will want to return [to their home countries]." But he says there is a way to figure out what those returnees are likely to do once they get home. It's definitely not mass incarceration. "It's done, typically, by a very resource-intensive, one-on-one risk…

Have you heard the one about a Jew and an Arab who walk into a comedy club? Just a week after the deadly attacks on the caricaturists at Charlie Hebdo and on Jews at a kosher supermarket, a French Muslim comic and a French Jewish comic took to the stage at Le Comedy Club in Paris — and made fun of each other. The duo is called Younes and Bambi. Younes Depardieuis, 27, is the Arab. Samuel Djian, 22, aka Bambi, is the Jew. They begin their act with a “shalom aleikum!” That’s a traditional Jewish greeting mashed together with a traditional Arabic greeting. I learned about Younes and Bambi when I was in a taxi in Paris. I looked out the window and saw a poster advertising L’Arabe et l’Juif. The Arab and the Jew. In the poster they’re butting heads with their mouths open, screaming. The comedians start off their routine like many comedians do: They ask if their peeps are in the house. Younes, of North African descent, screams out, “Algerians and Tunisians here?” “Yeah!” A part of the crowd shouts. “Are there…