Turkish police units launched their largest anti al-Qaeda operation to date on the morning of January 22. The operation took place in a series of pre-dawn raids in towns throughout Turkey. It led to the arrest of as many as 140 people allegedly involved in... MORE

Web forums associated with jihad and al-Qaeda sympathizers have become a major source of information about militant Islamist groups, as well as a platform for the dissemination of the audio, visual and textual literature of the Salafi-Jihadis. According to the U.S. State Department, only 15... MORE

It appears that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is currently following a new version of a classic al-Qaeda strategy.  Developed by al-Qaeda’s strategic thinkers, the strategy behind AQAP’s latest operations is to draw American military forces into Yemen. If successful, AQAP would strengthen its... MORE

Three Spanish aid workers of the Catalan NGO Barcelona Acció Solidària, Albert Vilalta, Alicia Gámez and Roque Pascual, were kidnapped somewhere between Nouadibou and Nouakchott in Mauritania on November 29 (El Paìs, November 30, 2009). Four days earlier, a French citizen, Pierre Camatte, was kidnapped... MORE

In his Friday sermon on January 15, the well-known Yemeni Islamist and U.S. designated terrorism supporter Shaykh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani called for jihad to defend Yemen in the event of a foreign military intervention. Al-Zindani noted that some American media reports said the “Yemeni regime... MORE

Following a series of urban terror attacks in 2008, including the three-day long Mumbai siege, terrorist groups maintained a low profile throughout 2009. Jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) and the homegrown Indian Mujahideen (IM) remained surprisingly inactive as they regrouped in the face... MORE

Iraqis will head to the polls on March 7 in the second parliamentary election since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraqi politics are in a state of flux that is reflected in the run-up to the vote. The election law was held up... MORE

The British Home Office finally proscribed the radical Islamist organization al-Muhajiroun (The Emigrants) and a number of its successor organizations on January 14. The ban included the best-known offshoot of al-Muhajiroun, Islam4UK. Described by the Home Office as a sort of “cleaning up” following the... MORE

The January 12 Tehran assassination by bomb blast of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a professor of physics at the University of Tehran, invites the prospect of new tensions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program (Islamic Republic News Agency [IRNA], January 12).  The assassination comes as Tehran faces the... MORE

Three students from Karachi’s Jamia Uloom al-Islamia left their Islamic studies half way to completion and took a train to Peshawar on February 18, 1980 to take part in the nascent anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. Anti-Russian passion was their only weapon, but they wanted to... MORE