EASTERN SYRIAN MILITANT LEADER ANNOUNCES CHANGE OF ALLEGIANCE FROM FSA TO AL-QAEDA  Nicholas A. Heras  Saddam al-Jamal, the former leader of the Liwa Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest Brigade) announced his defection from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to join the Islamic State of Iraq... MORE

An unattended car was found near the Syrian town of Dayr Hafir in eastern Aleppo province in late September containing an explosive belt usually worn by Abu Sa’id al-Hadrami (a.k.a. Muhammad Sa’id al-Abdullah), the amir of Jabhat al-Nusra (JN). Al-Hadrami was on his way to... MORE

Bashar al-Zoubi (a.k.a. Abu Fadi) is the leader of the powerful Syrian armed opposition group Liwa al-Yarmuk (Yarmuk Brigade) and the military commander of the Free Syrian Army-Supreme Military Council’s (FSA-SMC) Southern Front. He is a member of the Arab al-Zoubi tribe, one of the... MORE

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the CIA conducted a joint operation on February 12, 2010 in which they captured senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in the Pakistani city of Karachi. The ruthless commander was once the nightmare of the United States and the... MORE

Afghan Taliban insurgents received a huge setback on September 6 when one of their top operational commanders, Mullah Sangeen Zadran, was killed by a U.S. drone strike on a compound in Ghulam Khan area of North Waziristan Agency (NWA). Zadran was a senior leader of... MORE

When a U.S. Navy SEAL team raided a compound in the Somali port town of Barawe on October 5, there was initial confusion over the target of the raid, with one Somali intelligence official even offering the absurd suggestion that the target of the SEALs... MORE

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mahsud was killed by a predator strike on November 1 in Pakistan's North Waziristan region. After a brief tug of war for leadership, the Pakistani Taliban central shura (consultative council) elected Maulana Fazlullah as the new amir of the TTP... MORE

The designation of Boko Haram and its splinter faction Ansaru as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) in November 2013 came just over 50 months after Boko Haram’s transformation into a jihadist group. At the time of its founding in 2002 under Muhammad Yusuf, Boko Haram was... MORE

Somali-Swedish militant Fu’ad Muhammad Khalaf (a.k.a. Shongole, the “Scandinavian fighter”) is one of the leaders of al-Shabaab. Apart from being a key figure of the movement, Khalaf is known for openly challenging the authority of Ahmad Abdi Godane.  Background  Khalaf was reportedly born in 1965... MORE