Briefs
Egypt Indicts Yehia Moussa for Assassination of Egyptian Prosecutor General
An Egyptian court has indicted Yehia Elsayed Ibrahim Moussa—a.k.a. Yehia Moussa—for being the mastermind behind the murder of Egypt’s Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat on June 29, 2015. Moussa is a Muslim Brotherhood member who lives in exile in Turkey, and his indictment is the result... MORE
Prominent Iraqi Shia Militia Leader Arrested—The Rise and Fall of Aws al-Khafaji
Prominent Iraqi Shia militia leader Aws al-Khafaji was arrested by men from the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), the umbrella organization of the predominantly Shia armed groups. He was captured during a raid on his militia’s main office in Baghdad in early February. Several sources suggested... MORE
Latest Profiles
A Profile of Taliban Fundraiser Anas Haqqani
On February 12, the Taliban announced the 14-member team who would negotiate with U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Doha, Qatar later that month. Among the names in its list was Anas Haqqani, son of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder and leader of the... MORE
Post-Mortem Analysis: Key Kenyan al-Shabaab Commander Shaykh Iman Ali Killed in Airstrike
A military airstrike in southern Somalia on March 22 killed Shaykh Ahmed Iman Ali, a.k.a Zunira, a deadly and influential Kenyan-born al-Shabaab militant leader. Ali, who was a fast-rising militant leader within al-Shabaab, or Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, died alongside another 40 middle-level commanders. The strike is... MORE
Tracing the Roots of Boko Haram’s Early Financial Network: The Case of Muhammed Ilyas Bello Damagun
Although Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau publicly declared a jihad only as late as 2010, 2002 is widely recognized as the year the Nigerian jihadist group was founded. The group’s leader then was Shekau’s predecessor, the Salafist cleric Muhammed Yusuf, who himself was aligned with... MORE
Keeping the Civil War Alive: A Profile of South Sudan’s Rebel General, Thomas Cirilo Swaka
A little-known five-year civil war in South Sudan has left up to 400,000 dead and millions more displaced. After the young nation gained its hard-won independence in 2011, only two years of peace followed before latent rivalries between the Dinka and the Nuer (the two... MORE