Brian Glyn Williams
Dr. Brian Glyn Williams is Associate Professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. His interactive web page can be found at: www.brianglynwilliams.com.
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Articles by Brian Glyn Williams
The Fall of a Jihadist Bastion: A History of the Battle of Mosul (October 2016 – July 2017)
Islamic State’s (IS) greatest conquest was its bold June 2014 seizure of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and home to approximately two million predominately Sunni inhabitants. For almost three years,...
A Review of Abubakar Siddique’s The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan
For decades, works on the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan were limited to an aging generation of Western academicians tucked away in ivory towers. These scholars carried out their field...
The ‘Martyrdom’ of Doku Umarov: A Post Mortem Analysis of the Amir of the Caucasian Emirate
There has been considerable speculation that the failure of the Caucasian Emirate to disrupt President Vladimir Putin’s pet project, the Sochi Winter Olympics in February, was due to the fact...
Jamestown Analyst Brian Glyn Williams Interviewed by CNN
On January 12, Brian Glyn Williams was interviewed by CNN about the heightened security situation in and around Sochi.
Analyst Brian Glyn Williams Discusses Volgograd Bombings on Huffington Post
In an article for the Huffington Post, Brian Glyn Williams provides insight into the motivations behind the recent twin Volgograd suicide bombings.
Jamestown Analyst Brian Glyn Williams Appears on CNN
Brian Glyn Williams gave an interview to CNN on the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.
A Post-Mortem Analysis of Pakistani Taliban Military Strategist Wali ur-Rehman
Wali ur-Rehman, the deputy commander of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP – the Pakistani Taliban) was killed in a drone strike on a compound in the village of Chasmepul (a.k.a Chashme),...
The Sultan’s Raiders: The Military Role of the Crimean Tatars in the Ottoman Empire
From the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the Christian nations of Europe and the Shiites of Persia were forced to defend their lands against the inroads of an ever expanding...
Jamestown Analyst Brian Glyn Williams Is Interviewed by the Atlantic
The Atlantic interviewed on April 26 Jamestown analyst Brian Glyn Williams about Chechens' attitudes toward the West.
Shattering the al-Qaeda-Chechen Myth
With last week’s revelation that the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Jokhar Tsarnaev, were in fact ethnic Chechens, US journalists, analysts, law enforcement and the authorities have been scrambling...
Jamestown Analyst Brian Glyn Williams Is Interviewed by PRI on Chechens and Jokhar Tsarnaev
Jamestown analyst Prof. Brian Glyn Williams was interviewed by PRI's The World on April 22 about Chechen History and his brief contact with alleged Boston Marathon bomber Jokhar Tsarnaev.
Private Approval, Public Condemnation: Drone Warfare’s Implications for Pakistani Sovereignty
The latest contribution to the debate over the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan came from Ben Emmerson, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights after three days...
A Post-Mortem Analysis of Mullah Nazir: The “Good Taliban” Killed in a CIA Drone Strike
A CIA Predator or Reaper drone killed the powerful South Waziristani Taliban leader Mullah Nazir and five to seven of his top deputies on the night of January 2 near...
A Post-Mortem Analysis of Afghanistan’s Second Most Powerful Uzbek Warlord Ahmed Khan “Samangani”
On July 14, a key Uzbek power broker in the plains of northern Afghanistan, Ahmed Khan Samangani, was killed by a suicide bomber who embraced him while accepting guests at...
From Pakistan to Yemen: Adapting the U.S. Drone Strategy
Perhaps one of the most important developments in the war on al-Qaeda in the last two years has been the gradual demise of al-Qaeda Central in Pakistan as a result...
Predators, Reapers and Ravens: The Drone Revolution in Tactics and Strategy
With very little discussion, the United States and as many as 50 other nations have inaugurated what amounts to a “drone revolution” that will profoundly change our very understanding of...
New Light on the Accuracy of the CIA’s Predator Drone Campaign in Pakistan
Widely-cited reports of the inaccuracy and disproportionality of civilian to militant deaths in the CIA’s ongoing Predator drone campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan are grossly misleading. The...
Pakistani Responses to the CIA’s Predator Drone Campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda
Conventional wisdom in the West seems to have coalesced around the notion that the CIA’s airborne assassination campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s remote FATA (Federally Administered Tribal...
Turkish Jihadis Respond to Ankara’s Anti-Al-Qaeda Operations
Turkish police units launched their largest anti al-Qaeda operation to date on the morning of January 22. The operation took place in a series of pre-dawn raids in towns throughout...
Death from the Skies: An Overview of the CIA’s Drone Campaign in Pakistan – Part Two
For all their tactical success, American drone strikes on terrorist targets in northwest Pakistan have taken a significant toll on U.S. public relations efforts in the region. Despite their popularity...
Death from the Skies: An Overview of the CIA’s Drone Campaign in Pakistan – Part One
In the spring of 2004 the CIA began its most extensive targeted assassination campaign since the Vietnam War by launching dozens of unmanned aerial drones into the inaccessible tribal regions...
The Return of the Kingmaker: Afghanistan’s General Dostum Ends his Exile
After seven months in exile in Turkey, General Rashid Dostum, the paramount leader of Afghanistan’s Uzbek and Turkmen communities, was given permission by the Karzai government to return to the...
Dostum: Afghanistan’s Embattled Warlord
While the resurgence of the Taliban is the focus of interest in the Pashtun south of Afghanistan, the year started with a different story in the north that many are...
The Taliban Fedayeen: The World’s Worst Suicide Bombers?
Suicide bombing statistics from Afghanistan alarmingly demonstrate that, if the current trend continues, 2007 will surpass last year in the number of overall attacks. While there were 47 bombings by...
A Report from the Field: Gauging the Impact of Taliban Suicide Bombing
The following study is based on field research carried out in the summers of 2003, 2005 and the spring of 2007 in 15 Afghan provinces including: Paktia, Nangarhar (Jalalabad), Panjshir,...
Cheney Attack Reveals Taliban Suicide Bombing Patterns
The information for this article came from a five-month study of suicide bombings from 2001 to 2007 in Afghanistan. No suicide bombing was listed in the study unless it was...
Turks Join the Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan
While it is a long held maxim that Turkey is "with" the West in the war on terrorism—especially after the 2003 Istanbul bombings—the invasion of Iraq has made anti-Americanism vogue...
Target Dostum: The Campaign Against Northern Alliance Warlords
As you enter the dusty plains city of Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan you are greeted by what has to be one of the most striking billboards in all of Eurasia....
Turkey’s Al-Qaeda Blowback
In the 1980's the CIA commenced a vast covert operation to arm the anti-Soviet Mujahideen factions in Afghanistan as a means of turning the Soviet Fortieth Expeditionary Army's invasion of...
El Kaide Turka: Tracing an al-Qaeda Splinter Cell
The terrorist attacks of November 2003 marked a milestone in Turkey’s struggle against the forces of radical Islam. As the Turkish police and intelligence services broaden their investigation into the...
The ‘Chechen Arabs’: An Introduction To The Real Al-Qaeda Terrorists From Chechnya
In November 2003, the FBI announced that it was launching an investigation into reputed links between the anti-Russian Chechen resistance and Al Qaeda as a result of the death of...
Turkish Volunteers in Chechnya
For several years Kremlin spokespersons have identified Turkey as the primary source of foreign jihadi volunteers (always referred to as naemniky, "mercenaries" in official proclamations) fighting alongside their Chechen adversaries....
Rashid Dostum: America’s Secular Ally In The War On Terror
Sheberghan, Northern Afghanistan. August 2003. On the windswept plains outside this gas-producing town on the steppes of northern Afghanistan is a graveyard containing the bodies of 114 commanders killed in...
TURKISH VOLUNTEERS IN CHECHNYA
For several years Kremlin spokespersons have identified Turkey as the primary source of foreign jihadi volunteers (always referred to as naemniky, "mercenaries" in official proclamations) fighting alongside their Chechen adversaries....
El Kaide Turka: Tracing an al-Qaeda Splinter Cell
The terrorist attacks of November 2003 marked a milestone in Turkey’s struggle against the forces of radical Islam. As the Turkish police and intelligence services broaden their investigation into the...
Turkey’s Al-qaeda Blowback
In the 1980's the CIA commenced a vast covert operation to arm the anti-Soviet Mujahideen factions in Afghanistan as a means of turning the Soviet Fortieth Expeditionary Army's invasion of...
The ‘chechen Arabs’: An Introduction To The Real Al Qaeda Terrorists From Chechnya
In November 2003, the FBI announced that it was launching an investigation into reputed links between the anti-Russian Chechen resistance and Al Qaeda as a result of the death of...
Rashid Dostum: America’s Secular Ally In The War On Terror
Sheberghan, Northern Afghanistan. August 2003. On the windswept plains outside this gas-producing town on the steppes of northern Afghanistan is a graveyard containing the bodies of 114 commanders killed in...
SHATTERING THE AL QAEDA-CHECHEN MYTH: PART I
by Brian Glyn Williams In 1999, U.S. presidential candidate George Bush spoke for much of the American right when he warned the Russians that they "need to resolve the dispute...
SHATTERING THE AL QAEDA-CHECHEN MYTH: PART I
by Brian Glyn Williams In 1999, U.S. presidential candidate George Bush spoke for much of the American right when he warned the Russians that they "need to resolve the...