This is a guest post by ShannonWatch.

A brief war in Afghanistan is shortly to enter its second decade, seven years of war in Iraq have yet to bring a lasting peace, and Pakistan remains deeply unstable. Meanwhile, groups linked loosely with the al-Qaida movement make progress in Yemen, Nigeria, Algeria and the Horn of Africa.

This is one of the conclusions of a recent security briefing by Paul Rogers for the Oxford Research Group. The briefing says that it has become increasingly clear over the last decade that the United States and its partners must learn from the failure of the so-called 'war on terror'  by paying more attention to the underlying causes of conflicts, especially the factors motivating young paramilitaries to take extreme action.