SAUDI ARABIA'S SHIITES STAGE PRO-HEZBOLLAH PROTESTS As a result of the outbreak of hostilities in southern Lebanon, Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority has been staging protests in support of Hezbollah. The current conflict between Shiite Hezbollah and Israel has energized Shiites throughout the Middle East, especially... MORE

The latest crisis in the Middle East involving Hezbollah and Israel and ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq has focused attention on an emerging divide between Sunnis and Shiites. The positions of heads of state in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan, among others, who represent... MORE

Despite calls and fatwas by some Sunni groups forbidding the fight alongside Hezbollah, the Lebanese Sunni Islamic resistance has joined Hezbollah in fighting the Israeli intervention. The biggest Islamic Sunni movement in Lebanon, Jamaa Islamiya, is fighting alongside Hezbollah to fend off Israel's incursion into... MORE

NORTH KOREANS ASSISTED HEZBOLLAH WITH TUNNEL CONSTRUCTION Recent reports about Hezbollah's tunnel construction capabilities have received a new twist. In addition to receiving support from Iran and Syria, Hezbollah is also believed to be benefiting from assistance provided by North Korean advisers, according to a... MORE

Indonesian press reports suggest that the events in the Middle East are reverberating in Southeast Asia beyond the pro forma anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. demonstrations as two organizations announced that they were sending jihadis to Lebanon (Detik.com, July 19). Suaib Didu, the head of a radical... MORE

In Yemen's "war on terrorism," the legal merry-go-round continues. On July 12, a dozen officers from Yemen's Political Security Organization (PSO) received sentences between eight months and three years and indefinite suspensions from work for collusion in the sensational escape of 23 al-Qaeda suspects from... MORE

PAKISTANI MILITANTS HUNT AND KILL POLICE SERGEANT IN BAJAUR AGENCY In an incident that highlights the growing power of the local Taliban and other Islamists in Pakistan's tribal regions, militants recently tracked and gunned down a Pakistani police sergeant in Bajaur Agency. The significance of... MORE

In the midst of rising tensions between the Turkish and Iraqi governments over the presence of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in northern Iraq, the PKK has managed to expand to other parts of Iraq outside of their traditional strongholds in the northern mountains. It... MORE

TALIBAN TAKE CONTROL OF TWO AFGHAN VILLAGES As evidence of the Taliban's attempts to re-establish their control over southern Afghanistan, the Taliban managed to take control of two Afghan villages in the south of the country, near the border with Pakistan. Taliban militants drove police... MORE

There have been ongoing tensions between Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish authorities over Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorists operating out of the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) territory. In a recent trip to the United States after meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Turkish Foreign Minister... MORE