In April 2017, the foreign minister of Libya’s Tripoli-based Presidency Council estimated the number of Chadian mercenaries operating in Libya to be 18,000, with another 6,000 hailing from Sudan (Libya Herald, August 23). The numbers emphasized the growing problem of mercenary activity in Libya as... MORE

Often labeled as a firebrand female Islamist by the media outlets in India and Pakistan, Asiya Andrabi, the founding leader of the now proscribed Kashmiri separatist women’s organization Dukhtaran-e-Milat (DeM, Daughters of the Nation), has been waging a pro-Pakistan secessionist movement since the early 1980s... MORE

The involvement of Saudi women with jihadist militancy is rare, and there are few examples of female militants carving out a new role, one different from the kind of feminine behavior usually sanctioned in jihadist circles. Among those few women is Wafa al-Shihri (a.k.a. Um... MORE

Shaykh Mukhtar Robow (a.k.a. Abu Mansur), a former spokesman and top commander of al-Qaeda’s East Africa affiliate al-Shabaab, is the latest militant leader to defect to the Somali government. In a move that comes months after the United States quietly dropped the $5 million bounty... MORE

On July 11, just days after the Iraqi army recaptured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it had confirmed information regarding the fate of the Islamic State leader (IS) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was allegedly killed (al-Jazeera,... MORE

Few Islamist terrorist organizations in Pakistan are as resilient as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). The violent sectarian outfit surfaced in 1990, after the assassination of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, an anti-Shia, ultra-orthodox Deobandi cleric and founder of sectarian political party Sipah-e-Sahaba (Army of the Companions). And since the... MORE

On July 29, Iraqi Prime Minister Hadier al-‘Abadi revealed that the predominately Shia volunteer force known collectively as al-Hashed al-Sha’abi (PMU, Popular Mobilization Units) will take part in the imminent military operations to push out Islamic State (IS) from its stronghold in the city of... MORE

In 2015, three terror attacks carried out by Islamic State (IS) took place in Turkey, in the cities of Diyarbakır, Suruç, Ankara, on June 5, July 20 and October 10, respectively. All three attacks were primarily directed at Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP, Peoples’ Democratic Party)-affiliated... MORE