One of the smaller deployments of U.S. troops under the banner of the “global war on terrorism” was that of U.S. Special Forces to parts of the southern Philippines in 2002. This deployment was limited to advising the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in... MORE

Militant Leadership Monitor, Jamestown’s premier monthly publication, celebrated its two year anniversary. To commemorate a successful two years we rolled out a brand new website - mlm.jamestown.org. Over the past two years, subscribers to MLM have been receiving unique biographies and insightful analyses about key... MORE

In a recent interview with a French-language African news magazine, Djibouti's head of state, Ismail Omar Guelleh, was asked if “the great wind of the Arab Spring” had “blown as far as Djibouti?” Guelleh, leader of Djibouti since 1999, quickly dismissed the notion: “The Holy... MORE

Two months after Kenya launched a military intervention into Somalia in an effort to seize the al-Shabaab stronghold of Kismayu, the Kenyan military and the Somali militants have entered into a new campaign – a propaganda war through Twitter, a popular online social networking service... MORE

In spite of denials by the Pakistani military, evidence is emerging that elements within the Pakistani military harbored Osama bin Laden with the knowledge of former army chief General Pervez Musharraf and possibly current Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. Former Pakistani... MORE

Tensions in the Levant remain at a fever pitch as the uprising against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad presses ahead into its ninth month in the face of a relentless government crackdown and a rising body count  Occurring on the back of the... MORE

Almost a year after their arrests just before Christmas 2010, a group of young British Muslims denied charges of “conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life or damage property” (BBC, December 2, 2011). The men, described as being of South Asian origin, are alleged... MORE

Jund al-Khilafa (JaK) has carried out a string of deadly attacks within Kazakhstan since October. While JaK has come no closer to achieving its goal of bringing down the government of Nursultan Nazarbayev and creating an Islamic state, it has rattled Kazakhstan in a way... MORE

In the 1980s the Saudi Arabia-United States alliance supported the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in their battle against the Soviet Union. Hostility has since grown between al-Qaeda, which formed later and the Saudi regime. Hostilities started after the 1991 Gulf War when the Islamic opposition became... MORE