The United States, until recently, had a tendency to see Libya's Muammar Qadhafi and Osama bin Laden as ideological soul mates. While bin Laden aspired to cleanse Arabia and the Middle East of the infidel Christian and Jewish influence, Qadhafi aspired to be seen as... MORE

Colonel Muammar Qadhafi's decades-long confrontation with the West has never given him much purchase among militant Islamists in Libya. In fact, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG – Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah fi-Libya) has waged a violent insurgency for ten years – with a hostility toward... MORE

Libya is an orthodox Sunni Muslim country that broadly follows the Maliki school. Like all the countries of North Africa, Libya experienced an Islamist revival from the late 1970s onwards that expressed itself predominantly through the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan Muslimeen) as well as through a... MORE

For decades, the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi maintained a well documented history of extensive state sponsorship of terrorism. Tacit support, close cooperation, and moral encouragement for a number of terrorist movements and organizations throughout the years have often times served a number of... MORE

Half-heartedly trumpeted as a potential breakthrough against the insurgency, the Iraqi elections – in the short-term at least – seem to have made the security difficulties even more intractable. Indeed, any wishful thinking by American military and political planners in Iraq and their local allies... MORE

Last December, the departing Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, used his farewell address to highlight the vulnerability of the U.S. agricultural sector to a biological terrorist strike, remarking: "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not [targeted]... MORE

The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) is currently engaged in a violent jihadist insurgency against the Algerian government with the goal of replacing the secular regime with an Islamic state. The GSPC splintered from a rival Algerian organization, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA)... MORE

In early February, the emir of the Taliban in South Waziristan reached a peace deal with the central authorities in Islamabad. Baitullah Mehsud promised not to shelter or support foreign militants nor attack government installations and forces. If the agreement holds, it will help pacify... MORE

Investigations by the Italian security services since 2001 indicate that Italy has become a platform for al-Qaeda associated terrorist operations in Europe and Iraq. Italy's Muslim population is concentrated in Milan, with an estimated 100,000 Muslims residing in the northern city. Not surprisingly Milan appears... MORE

Mauritania, the vast desert refuge of the Arab/Berber Moors in northwest Africa, may seem a distant front in the war on terrorism. Yet the pro-Israel/U.S. policies of its President, Maaouya Ould Taya, have sparked an Islamic revival in this traditionally moderate nation, a country that... MORE