Today’s Featured Podcast: The Security Studies Podcast: Episode 41 – Bruce Hoffman on ISIS and al Qaeda in 2019 and Beyond

The featured podcast for this evening is from The Security Studies Podcast at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University. Even though this podcast was released on Dec. 16, 2019 it is very good at detailing the current conditions of both al Qaeda and ISIS. The most interesting part for me is how right they were on the current conditions and the threat posed by both organizations.  I highly recommend it as a primer for our weekly terror update that will be posted soon.

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Today’s featured podcast is from The Security Studies Podcast titled: Episode 41 – Bruce Hoffman on ISIS and al Qaeda in 2019 and Beyond. This is a very deep dive with some folks that live and breathe security studies and is supremely important to the policy makes in D.C.

You can follow that link to the podcast or go here for more information. From their website:

For Episode 41 I had my fourth annual discussion with Professor Bruce Hoffman on the Islamic State and al Qaeda in 2019 and Beyond.

We open up reviewing 2018 to frame the discussion before going into some significant events of 2019. We talk about the deaths of al-Baghdadi and Hamza bin Laden, the impact their deaths may have on their respective organizations, and the pros and cons of a decapitation strategy.

We talk about IS’ inability to re-establish a presence in Sirte, Libya, three years after its expulsion from its North African enclave. Going digital, we also covered the notion of “deplatforming” IS from social media platforms and the outlook on its propaganda machine.

While IS/AQ suffered some significant setbacks in 2019, I asked Professor Hoffman about their successes over the year. We covered:
– their continued ability to conduct hundreds of simple and sophisticated attacks across the region;
– the prison breaks occurring in Northern Syria as US military withdraws from the area – allowing other actors such as Russia and Turkey to create more chaos upon which terrorist organizations thrive;
– and their spread deeper into new areas of the sub-Saharan African region; and
– Turkey has begun deporting foreign fighters back to their home countries…and the international community doesn’t seem sure what to do about it.

The Security Studies Podcast is produced by Jeffrey Palmer.
Music: www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

Why is this important to you? Because this is a great summary on the successes of the past couple years and the challenges that we still face in the fight against terrorism. They foreshadowed the current fight in Africa (especially Egypt) and the not so good news of the al Baghdadi replacement for ISIS (they may have upgraded). If you are still in the fight or are even marginally interested in the deeper interworking’s of either of these groups, you should check it out.

Click on the link below to give it a listen:

Episode 41 – Bruce Hoffman on ISIS and al Qaeda in 2019 and Beyond.