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

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is the Philippines’ largest Islamic secessionist and insurgent movement and is led by a man named al-Haj Murad Ebrahim. For the last eight years Ebrahim has been at the forefront of negotiating with the Philippine government for greater autonomy for... MORE

Background Muhammad Yasin Malik, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), has undergone a 15-year transformation from underground militant leader fomenting violence to an advocate for a non-violent solution to the festering crisis plaguing South Asia’s northernmost tier for decades. He describes... MORE

Over the months that followed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, most of the prominent figures of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime and his family members were killed, captured or fled the country. The most senior member of the regime who survived that critical period was... MORE

Khamis al-Qaddafi, son of Mu'ammar Qaddafi and leader of the Khamis Brigade Libya’s most important military commander has no combat experience and has achieved his rank through nepotism rather than merit. His first active command involved attacking unarmed civilians and ex-members of his own military,... MORE

Abdulaziz al-Omari, one of the five hijackers on board American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center on 9/11, devoted part of his final will and testament to the shaykhs (religious scholars) who provided him rigid religious... MORE