Somalia: The Gulf Crisis Spills Into the Horn of Africa Somalia is officially neutral in the Gulf split with Qatar, but it has become a political battleground for the dispute that, if allowed to fester, threatens to undermine Somalia’s battle against al-Shabaab. The United Arab... MORE

A series of attacks by Muslim youth targeting villages in northern Mozambique has raised fears that a new Islamist militant group is gaining a foothold in East Africa. The group goes by the name Ansar al-Sunna, although locals refer to it as al-Shabaab after Somalia’s... MORE

Shortly after 7 AM, on Sunday May 13, a woman on a motorcycle, Puji Kuswait, with two young girls also riding on the vehicle, approached Santa Maria Catholic Church, a prominent building in Surabaya, in eastern Java. A church volunteer tried to prevent the trio... MORE

On May 16, the Indian government announced a unilateral ceasefire in the restive northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the security forces will not launch operations in Kashmir during the Islamic holy month of... MORE

The Taliban’s notorious spring offensive, an annual war ritual launched this year on April 25, has resulted in a series of violent strikes across Afghanistan, demonstrating once again the resilience of the group. The Taliban claims to have carried out as many as 300 attacks... MORE

Iraq: What to Expect From Muqtada al-Sadr Iraq’s parliamentary elections have left Muqtada al-Sadr politically ascendant, a development that will sit uneasily with both the United States and Iran and marks something of a transformation for the populist Shia cleric. As the dust settled after... MORE

Libya: Foreign Fighters and Trouble in the South Clashes between rival tribes in Libya’s southern Fezzan region re-escalated on May 11. However, the situation reflects more than just tribal rivalries, and the involvement of foreign fighters has troubling implications for regional security. Recent clashes between... MORE

The secretive head of al-Shabaab is reportedly critically ill, giving rise to speculation that the Somali Islamist group is re-organizing itself ahead of his possible demise.  Ahmed Umar has been emir of the al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa for nearly four years, but now reportedly... MORE

Having once held domain over some eight million people and controlled territory reaching nearly to Baghdad, Islamic State (IS) has undergone a monumental decline. Where the group was once in control of massive swathes of northeastern Syria and western Iraq, its so-called caliphate has since... MORE

Over the years, the nations of the Western Balkans have seen about 1,000 of their citizens join al-Qaeda’s Syria wing, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra), and move on to join so-called Islamic State (IS). [1] They have hailed from majority-Muslim communities in... MORE