Burton & Stewart on Terrorism

A recent fire aboard a bus in Shanghai illustrates China’s historical weakness with regard to the security of its transportation system and the prevalence of explosives used in the country as a weapon of choice by militants and other would-be attackers. [more]

The Taliban’s April 27 attack against a ceremony commemorating Afghanistan’s independence has gotten a lot of media attention but the Taliban has shown itself unable to capitalize on a golden opportunity. [more]

An attack against the food supply is unlikely to create a significant death toll, but the panic such an attack may evoke can cause repercussions that are far greater than the death toll itself. [more]

The San Francisco Olympic torch relay April 9 revealed the organizational capabilities of the Chinese government and its intelligence collection apparatus inside the United States. [more]

The trial of eight men accused in connection with the 2006 plot to bomb a series of airline flights originating from London’s Heathrow Airport is providing insight into the involvement of the core al Qaeda leadership. Most notably, however, the trial serves as a reminder that al Qaeda remains fixated on aircraft as targets and that, in spite of changes in security procedures since 9/11, aircraft remain vulnerable to attack. [more]

Russia has seen an upsurge in high-profile killings in recent years despite the reining in of organized crime by the Kremlin. [more]

Conventional wisdom holds that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, as an African-American, is under a greater threat than either his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate John McCain. But a close look at the rhetoric on many radical white racist Web sites suggests that all three candidates are at risk. [more]

The Chinese government’s March 18 report that a China Southern Airlines crew thwarted an attempted terrorist attack in mid-flight March 7 has been met with skepticism in some Western circles. Regardless of Beijing’s reasons to invent such a plot, we are not so quick to dismiss this incident. [more]

Several unsolved small-scale attacks in New York City since 1997 bear certain similarities. This could be coincidence, or it could be that the perpetrators are connected to the loosely organized black bloc movement. [more]

Although ricin can be a quite effective weapon in targeted assassinations and suicides, militants are much more apt to choose the weapons they know -- firearms and bombs. [more]

As grassroots operatives become increasingly important to the jihadist movement, local police departments will become an even more critical force in the effort to keep the United States safe from attacks. [more]

Hezbollah is under great pressure from its leaders and supporters to retaliate for the Feb. 12 assassination of Imad Mughniyah, one of its top commanders. If the organization is planning a response, it will need at least a month to dispatch operatives, conduct surveillance, gather materials, construct a bomb and then employ it. During this lag time, the precautions taken by potential targets could wane. [more]

As conflict rages between the government and drug cartels in Mexico, decision-makers on both sides of the border must grapple with how best to combat cartel activity. [more]

A lot of people are wondering whether the increasing crisis of governance in Pakistan will ultimately cause the state to implode. Although there are many, many reasons for concern in Pakistan, state breakdown is not one of them. [more]

With the road from desire to destruction fraught with obstacles, the "lone-wolf" terrorist capable of causing mass casualties is a rare individual indeed. [more]

The Tablighi Jamaat name has come up many times in connection with terrorism plots, including the 2006 scheme to bomb airliners en route from London to the United States. [more]

While the intellectual property rights issue grabs much media attention as it relates to China and the United States, there is a lesser-known source of contention among U.S. -- and other Western -- companies doing business in China and their local hires. [more]

London’s Scotland Yard has been called in to aid Pakistani investigators in the investigation of the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. [more]

The Jan. 1 assassination of U.S. Agency for International Development officer John Granville in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, does not appear to have been a premeditated attack. [more]

There are two battlegrounds in the war against jihadism: the physical and the ideological. As we head into 2008, however, there are signs that the ideological war is not going so well for the jihadists. [more]