For the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate CTED) of the United Nations, CGA has collaborated on 16 projects over the last 8 years, on a range of terrorism and counter terrorism topics. They include ISIS use of social media to recruit and incite; how UN member states deal with terrorist fighters returning from Iraq and Syria; how the UN can work with the private sector and academic institutions to track emerging terrorist threats; the role of technology in countering terrorist threats; and currently, the rise of right-wing terrorism and member state responses.
Deliverables are shaped by our UN client needs. We have written papers, held workshops and conferences, delivered briefings, and built processes for collaborating with non-UN experts, firms and state political actors. These deliverables have shaped UN Security Council resolutions, made their way into CTED briefings for member states and other UN bodies, and helped CTED keep abreast of emerging trends and disseminate these trend reports to their global network of experts.
Our project for the spring 2022 semester, a continuation of the fall 2021 project, was to construct alternate scenarios for the future of Afghanistan. The scenarios were structured around internal, regional and global drivers of change, and depicted three distinct futures ranging from a consolidation of Taliban governance, to a fragmentation of the state, to state failure. Each scenario described a different terrorism landscape, and the types of counter-terrorism challenges CTED and UN members would face in each scenario. The research was based on a thorough search of the literature, including an examination of Afghan social media, and a half day workshop of twenty experts from around the world.