Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is an expert on international and internal conflicts and their management, including counterinsurgency, organized crime, and illicit economies. She focuses particularly on South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, and Somalia.

Felbab-Brown is the author of Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan (The Brookings Institution Press, 2012) and Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Brookings Institution Press, 2009) which examines military conflict and illegal economies in Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan, Burma, Northern Ireland, India, and Turkey. Felbab-Brown is also the author of numerous policy reports, academic articles, and opinion pieces. She has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan, Burma, Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Morocco, India, Nepal, and Sub-Saharan Africa. A frequent commentator in U.S. and international media, Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on these issues. She received her Ph.D. in political science from MIT and her B.A. from Harvard University.

Among her publications are: Nuclear and Radiological Attacks by Terrorist Groups (Brookings, forthcoming); Political Violence and the Illicit Economies of West Africa” (Terrorism and Political Violence, 2012); Fighting the Nexus of Organized Crime and Violent Conflict while Enhancing Human Security (US Army War College, 2012); Bringing the State to the Slum: Confronting Organized Crime and Urban Violence in Latin America (Brookings 2011); Calderón’s Caldron: Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Michoacán (Brookings, 2011); Afghanistan Ten Years after 9/11: Counterterrorism Accomplishments while a Civil War Is Lurking? (Brookings, 2011) Not as Easy as Falling off a Log: The Illegal Timber Trade in the Asia-Pacific Region and Possible Mitigation Strategies (Brookings, 2011); The Disappearing Act: The Illicit Trade in Wildlife in Asia (Brookings, 2011); Deterring Non-state Actors in U.S. Nuclear and Extended Deterrence: Consideration and Challenges (Brookings, 2010); Why Legalization in Mexico is not a Panacea for Reducing Violence and Suppressing Organized Crime (Brookings, 2010); Negotiations and Reconciliation with the Taliban: Key Policy Issues and Dilemmas (Brookings, 2010); The Political Economy of Illegal Domains in India and China (International Lawyer, Winter 2009); The Drug Economy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Security in the Region (The National Bureau of Asian Research, December 2009); It’s All or Nothing in Afghanistan (The Daily Beast, October 12, 2009); Narco-belligerents Across the Globe: Lessons from Colombia for Afghanistan? (Real Instituto Elcano, October 2009); The Obama Administration’s New Counternarcotics Policy in Afghanistan: Its Promises and Potential Pitfalls (Brookings, 2009); Afghanistan’s Elections and Accountable Governance (The Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2009); Assessment of the Implementation of the United States Government’s Support for Plan Colombia’s Illicit Crops Reduction Components (USAID, 2009) (co-authored); Strengthen Human Security, a chapter from The Fifth Summit of the Americas: Recommendations for Action (Brookings Institution Press, April 2009); and The Violent Drug Market in Mexico and Lessons from Colombia (Brookings, March 2009).

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