The Assessment Gap in U.S. Counter-Terrorism Strikes

For eight years I helped decide whether American counter-terrorism money was working.As a programs advisor in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism from 2018 to 2025, I oversaw about 20 projects in East Africa worth roughly $80 million a year. None of that money moved without a performance monitoring plan. We established baselines before work started and agreed on indicators in advance. When a project underperformed, or the reporting came late, we withheld funding. Reporting tracked activities against those metrics across the life of the program. Independent evaluations valid