Latest Terrorism Monitor Articles
The Islamist Movement in Morocco
Prior to the Casablanca attacks of May 2003, Morocco appeared to be relatively immune to the type of home grown Islamic militancy experienced by other North African countries. The Moroccan monarchy, which claims direct descent from the prophet, appeared to have successfully contained its political... MORE
A New Phase for Jihad in Egypt?
The Egyptian government fought a low-level war with Islamist radicals in the 1990s and claimed victory through the use of hard-nosed tactics and negotiations with the larger, known militant groups. Meanwhile, moderate Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Centrists attempted to enter politics by legitimate... MORE
Editor’s Note on Yemeni Special Issue
Dear Reader: Jamestown presents this special issue on Yemen as a part of our ongoing endeavor to focus on pivotal states involved in the War on Terror. An important US ally since 9/11, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih has performed a difficult balancing act in... MORE
Landscape of Shifting Alliances
There can be little doubt that Yemen plays a key role in the US-led war on al-Qaeda’s terrorist network, but it is a role that the Arab country would have preferred not to take on. Indeed, had it not been for al-Qaeda’s attack on the... MORE
The Soviet Roots of Islamic Militancy in Yemen
"Possibilities for the Third World War would have greatly increased if we had not taken South Yemen into our hands." These words of former Soviet Defense Minister Marshall Ustinov were repeated constantly throughout the 1970s by Soviet military consultants in Aden, underscoring the importance of... MORE
U.S.-Yemen Relations and the War on Terror: A Portrait of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih
Colonel Ali Abdullah Salih became president of North Yemen in 1978 and then of the Republic of Yemen after unification of the North with the former Marxist South in 1990. From 1978 through the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Salih sought to gain leverage for his... MORE
Shifting Sands: Al-Qaeda and Tribal Gun-Running Along the Yemeni Frontier
For centuries, tribal politics in Yemen have been driven by one simple concept: loyalty is sold to the highest bidder. While both Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government have used this principle to their advantage, it is al-Qaeda that has been the high bidder in... MORE
Pakistan’s Hunt for Al-Qaeda in South Waziristan
Pakistan’s month long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists, believed to be sheltered by a sub-clan of the powerful Wazir tribe that inhabits the area along Afghanistan’s border in South Waziristan, has reached a stalemate, and there has still been no public announcement indicating the capture of... MORE
Turkey’s Al-Qaeda Blowback
In the 1980's the CIA commenced a vast covert operation to arm the anti-Soviet Mujahideen factions in Afghanistan as a means of turning the Soviet Fortieth Expeditionary Army's invasion of this Central Asian country into a Vietnam-style quagmire. In forging this dangerous new transnational holy... MORE
Terrorism in Uzbekistan: A Self-Made Crisis
However paradoxical it may sound, the recent terrorist acts in Uzbekistan were not a complete surprise, either to average citizens in the republic or to political analysts. The horrific economic situation in the republic, the extreme level of corruption exhibited by the state apparatus, the... MORE