Brookings Mountain West invites you to attend a lecture titled, Negotiating with Terrorists or Defeating Them: Counterinsurgency and Reconciliation Lessons from Colombia, Afghanistan, and Somalia, by Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow, Foreign Policy.

This lecture reviews the evolution in insurgency and terrorism in Colombia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Drawing on Dr. Felbab-Brown’s extensive fieldwork in the three countries over the past decade, it highlights the similarities and differences between the insurgent and terrorism groups and evaluates the effectiveness of policies adopted to end conflict. In all three countries, counterinsurgency and stabilization efforts were adopted, but with strikingly different designs and outcomes. Unlike in Somalia, the governments of Afghanistan and Colombia are currently involved in efforts to negotiate with “narcoterrorists,” a policy that would have been politically taboo only a few years ago. The process and even temporary outcomes have been strikingly different as well.