The role of jihadis in the Jordanian city of Irbid, the country’s third largest, has increased exponentially since their emergence in post-2003 Iraq. Owing to its proximity to the Jordanian-Syrian border, Irbid emerged as a transit point for Salafi-Jihadis heading to Iraq or Lebanon between... MORE

Tarkhan Gaziev is one of the most notable field commanders in Chechnya’s interminable rebellion against the Russian state. At various times during the second military campaign since 1999, he held a number of top military positions within the Chechen armed underground resistance. Gaziev commanded a... MORE

During a U.S. Senate hearing on March 29, 2011 on the composition of Libya’s revolutionary rebel movement, EUCOM commander and NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe Admiral James Stavridis commented that intelligence informed him that there were “flickers” of transnational al-Qaeda jihadis operating in the... MORE

Early Life and Education Maulana Fazlur Rehman was born into a religious family in 1953 in Dera Ismail Khan, one of the more underdeveloped areas in Pakistan. His ancestors came from Kandahar. Due to the severe and harsh winters in Kandahar, they would migrate to... MORE

The chasm between the Sunni ruling elite and the Shi’a majority has been always the driving factor shaping the modern political history of Bahrain. Although Shi’a Muslims form the majority of the population of the small nation, the Sunni al-Khalifa family has been ruling the island... MORE

The late Amir Muhannad, the North Caucasus’ recently killed Arab militant leader, hailed from the Medina area in Saudi Arabia’s western Hejaz region. Muhannad, born in 1969, was reportedly shot to death in a clash with security forces in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt on... MORE

Background Khalifa Haftar, a dissident Libyan Army colonel and long time foe of Colonel Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi, reappeared on March 14 in Benghazi, the opposition’s supposedly temporary de facto administrative center, to lead Libya’s chaotic rebellion (al-Jazeera, March 14). For many years Haftar has been the... MORE

For years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the city of Basrah saw the growing influence of various Shia militias. In addition to the better known and powerful Mahdi Army (Jaish al-Mahdi—JaM) of Moqtada al-Sadr and its rival Badr Corps, the military arm of... MORE

After decades of loyalty to Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s best known and most controversial Islamic scholar has called for the regime’s downfall and the creation of an Islamic Caliphate in the southern Arabian Peninsula. The defection of the influential Shaykh Abd al-Majid... MORE

Yemeni Major General Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar announced on March 21, 2011 that he was joining anti-government protesters in their calls for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down (Mareb Press, March 21, 2011). Ali Muhsin’s defection to the growing protest movement in his country... MORE