France has watched warily as Mali has descended into chaos after the March 22 coup d’état overthrew Amadou Toumani Touré’s government and the Islamist rebellion took control of northern Mali. [1] France threw the weight of its diplomacy behind regional efforts to restore the constitutional... MORE

The November 21 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been credited primarily to President Muhammad Mursi of Egypt, who, with the encouragement of the White House, brokered a peace deal between the two sides to halt eight days of military conflict (al-Jazeera, November 20; al-Arabiya,... MORE

The seizure last week by mutinous Congolese soldiers of the city of Goma in the midst of the mineral rich Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has brought the deaths of hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others.... MORE

Chinese security officials informed reporters in late October that members of the East Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIM, a name used frequently by Chinese officials to refer to the Turkistan Islamic Party - TIP) and the East Turkistan Educational and Solidarity Association (ETESA) had slipped into... MORE

The jihadists that began to emerge in Syria several months after peaceful protests against the Bashar al-Assad regime began in March 2011 can be broadly categorized into two groups: al-Qaeda-style groups and local jihadist groups. The latter type is represented by locally-formed jihadist groups, the... MORE

The Islamic Republic of Iran sits in the crosshairs of the United States, Israel, and the Gulf Arab monarchies led by Saudi Arabia. The array of geopolitical threats that face Iran is daunting; Iran is surrounded by states that are threatened by the revolutionary Islamist... MORE

The stunning reports of oil tankers hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea have helped shift attention from the dramatic rise of Somali piracy to West Africa. The figures are not quite as eye-popping as in East Africa. The effects are. Lloyd’s of London... MORE

Over the past months, a series of high-profile assassinations in Aden and the capital of Sana’a signaled a strategic shift by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its local affiliate, Ansar al-Shari’a. Over 60 security officials were murdered, with the latest assassination occurring in... MORE

Kenya’s decision to launch a military intervention in Somalia to eliminate the threat posed by the Islamist al-Shabaab movement has resulted in battlefield successes but has also led to terrorist attacks and riots in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa and even the formation of... MORE

Recent reports of an increase in Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria’s civil war as combatants alongside the Syrian military represent a potentially sharp escalation in the regional impact of the ongoing conflict. Accusations concerning Hezbollah’s military support for the Assad government leveled by the party’s Lebanese... MORE