Libya: Islamic State Still Holding Out Fighters with Islamic State (IS) are clinging on in Libya despite the loss of their stronghold in Sirte last year. The country’s continuing political crisis has given the extremists time and space to regroup. In the last few months,... MORE

As the operations against Islamic State (IS) in al-Raqqa and Deir al-Zour remain the focus of attention in Syria, a group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has quietly and quickly consolidated near-total dominance over Idlib — the last remaining opposition-held province in the country.... MORE

Recent months have seen the sudden emergence in Pakistan of an organization calling itself Jamaat ul Ansar al-Sharia Pakistan. The new entity has been reported to be behind a series of five terror attacks in Karachi and Baluchistan province (Geo News, July 22). Information about... MORE

Egypt’s Hasm Movement has released a review of its activities over the course of the first year of its operations. From July 16, 2016 to July 16, 2017, Hasm claims to have killed 27 members of Egypt’s “interior military militias” and wounded 56 more. In... MORE

Afghanistan: The Need for New Ideas With the commitment of thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, Kabul is also eager for a shift in Washington’s attitude toward Pakistan. Meanwhile, plans for a new Afghan militia that can be deployed to troubled areas in support of... MORE

  During the Russian war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and later the conflicts in Chechnya in the North Caucasus in the 1990s and 2000s, the Russian military went into battle without unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and apparently saw no necessity to acquire them. Instead,... MORE

The first known targeted assassination using a drone took place in Yemen on November 3, 2002. The drone launched a hellfire missile that struck a Land Cruiser carrying six suspected members of al-Qaeda, including Sinan al-Harithi, thought to have been involved in the bombing of... MORE

Non-state actors have long been subject to surveillance and even attack by armed drones flown by states they threaten. In recent months, however, there has been growing evidence of non-state actors turning the tables and using armed drones to conduct attacks against the forces of... MORE

Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) program has made headlines in recent months, after several of its drones were shot down outside the country’s borders, over Pakistan and Syria (Dawn, June 20). These incidents come as the country is beefing up its counterterrorism efforts, following the... MORE

The U.S. drone program has proved to be an efficient tool for targeting terrorist bases and eliminating militant leaders within the ranks of groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda. After years of relative success, however, the use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is... MORE