LONDON – In a new report titled ‘Iraq: Angry Hearts and Angry Minds’, ICOS on Thursday called for a reengineering of the international community’s mechanisms for responding to global security crises. ICOS, a security and development policy group with research platforms in the three main War on Terror conflict theatres – Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia – has been undertaking a series of interviews looking at the root causes of the conflicts. The Council’s new research in Iraq demonstrates that current policies in the country are producing a generation of angry young men who are easy prey for recruitment to extremist insurgencies.

The new Iraq findings show one striking similarity with The Council’s previous research in Afghanistan and Somalia: the intense anger of the country’s young men. “This crescent of anger that runs through all three of the main theatres of the War on Terror conflict is not being effectively responded to,” said Norine MacDonald QC, President and Lead Field Researcher of ICOS. “We need to win over these young men’s hearts and minds in order to starve the insurgents of recruits and support.”
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PARIS – Donors at the International Conference in Support of Afghanistan must focus their attention on tackling Afghanistan’s burgeoning illegal opium economy instead of making generous but ineffective aid pledges that fail to address this major crisis, said ICOS on Thursday. Empty promises from previous donor conferences have done nothing to improve the everyday situation in the war-torn country, while the illicit opium economy continues to hamper Afghanistan’s reconstruction, development and stabilisation efforts.

Just three-fifths of international aid pledged to Afghanistan since 2001 has actually been delivered, and most of this has been to projects that have little positive impact on the basic needs of the Afghan population.
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OTTAWA – Raymond Kendall, Honorary Secretary General of Interpol, and ICOS’s President, Norine MacDonald QC, on Tuesday urged Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to keep Vancouver’s Insite safe injection centre open, citing in particular its significant positive impact on public security aside from its proven health benefits. In a piece published as the Globe and Mail’s exclusive commentary on its website on Tuesday, Kendall and MacDonald wrote that Insite and other sites like it ‘neither increase drug-related crimes, nor attract criminals to the site’.

“A public security paradigm that is community-based is more conducive to public order. Given that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has, quite rightly, named Canada's security as one of his main priorities, we have no doubt that he will understand Insite's positive contribution to public security,” wrote Kendall and MacDonald.
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LONDON – The current US-led War on Terror approach is creating a political space in which extremists such as Al-Shabab in Somalia and the Taliban in Afghanistan have become legitimate political actors, said ICOS at the release of its latest report on Wednesday.
In its report Chronic Failures of the War on Terror: From Afghanistan to Somalia, ICOS said that a number of abject policy failures of the Bush Administration in Somalia, such as aerial bombings, support of the Ethiopian troops in the country and the ill-timed designation of Al-Shabab as a terrorist organisation had been successfully exploited by the Somali insurgency to boost its support and recruitment bases.
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LONDON – The people of Afghanistan would like to see US Presidential Candidate Barack Obama take over at the White House, while Somalis would prefer to work with Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton, according to a series of interviews conducted over the past month by ICOS in Afghanistan and Somalia.

When asked which of the Presidential candidates they would back, 69% of those questioned in Afghanistan favoured Obama, with 26% in favour of Clinton. In Somalia, 47% of civilians surveyed supported Clinton, with 44% backing Obama.
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VIENNA – On the occasion of the 51st Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, ICOS on Wednesday presented The Australian Red Cross save-a-mate (SAM) program with the inaugural Award for Innovative Drug Policy. Initially launched in 1999, the save-a-mate program’s peer education comes in direct contact with more than 40,000 young people in Australia each year, and delivers training to more than 10,000. The initiative addresses the young in all communities, including vulnerable populations such as the Aboriginals, the prisoner population and sex workers...
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WASHINGTON D.C. – ICOS on Monday urged the United States Government to halt plans for forced poppy crop eradication in Afghanistan, citing the drastically deteriorating security situation in the country. With the US set to restart manual crop eradication any time now, ICOS said a continuation of this failing policy would undermine NATO’s efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
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LONDON – With the Taliban entrenched in the south and running parallel governments in several districts, the Afghan state has reached a decision point, ICOS said on Wednesday. According to the Council’s latest research, NATO’s failure to address Afghanistan’s security situation has made aspirations to hold Presidential elections in 2009 wholly unrealistic.
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OTTAWA – Prime Minister Harper should implement the Manley Panel’s recommendations to provide a much-needed road map for Canada’s future role in Afghanistan, said ICOS in an analysis of The Manley Panel Report released on Friday. The main conclusions of the Manley Report, presented to Prime Minister Harper on Tuesday, echoed ICOS’s call for Canada to adopt a new overall strategic approach in Afghanistan.
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LONDON – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown missed a golden opportunity to address Afghanistan’s opium crisis in his statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday, said ICOS. Despite opium production rising by a further 34% in 2007, Prime Minister Brown stated his intent to continue with partial crop eradication in Afghanistan.
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