Are 'Ungoverned Spaces' a Threat?
The attempted Christmas attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253--traced to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen--has brought renewed attention to the dangers posed by the world's "ungoverned spaces." Yemen now joins Pakistan's tribal belt, stateless Somalia, and Africa's trackless Sahel as a perceived haven for the world's most dangerous terror network.
A concern about anarchic zones outside formal state authority is understandable. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda launched its devastating attacks from one of the world's most war-torn and poverty-stricken nations, convincing the Bush administration that the United States was "now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones." Two years later, CIA Director George Tenet identified fifty lawless zones around the world where terrorists and criminals might set up shop with impunity. The Pentagon soon launched an Ungoverned Areas Project (PDF) and directed its Combatant Commands to build the capacity of fragile states to control their borders and territories.
President Barack Obama shares this threat assessment. The world's "impoverished, weak, and ungoverned" states, he declared during the presidential campaign, have become "the most fertile breeding grounds for transnational threats." Since he took office, senior officials from the State and Defense Departments have reinforced (PDF) this message. As Daniel Benjamin, State's counterterrorism coordinator, recently remarked, "Quite frankly, the problem of un- and under-governed spaces is one of the toughest ones this and future administrations will face."
And yet the concept of "ungoverned spaces" can be misleading, even unhelpful, in the global struggle against al-Qaeda. It oversimplifies the links between state weakness and transnational terrorism, which are uneven and highly contingent (PDF). And it can encourage short-sighted policy responses that focus on the symptoms of state weakness instead of its underlying causes.
One limitation of the concept is its focus on remote locations. This ignores the obvious attraction of teeming, chaotic cities, which can offer terrorist cells welcome anonymity. In Pakistan, many jihadis squeezed out of the tribal areas have now relocated to Karachi and other urban havens (WashPost). It also ignores the power of the Internet, which provides terrorists with an ungoverned, albeit "virtual" haven to recruit, organize, plan, and raise funds. While debate (TNR) continues (WashPost) over whether terrorists need actual physical havens, the web presence (WashPost) of Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab underlines the growing role of cyberspace in the decentralized al-Qaeda network.
For the full text of this article on the Council on Foreign Relations website, click here.
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