During the 1970s and 1980s, the Libyan regime of Muammar Qaddafi was Moscow’s ally in the Cold War against the West, and consequently it acquired many billions of dollars’ worth of Soviet weapons. In more recent years, President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Armed Forces and... MORE

Russian mercenaries have been intensifying their activities on the African continent since at least September 2019, though seemingly without much visible success. And it appears those slogging efforts are increasingly being hampered by serious challenges the likes of which Russia’s private military companies (PMC) had... MORE

The Russian political class suffered a massive shock from President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly last Wednesday (January 15) in which he delivered three unexpected bombshells (see EDM, January 16, 2020). The first was a set of vaguely formulated revisions to the Russian... MORE

Philippines Lifts Martial Law Amid Fragile Gains Brian M. Perkins On January 1, the government lifted martial law on the embattled Philippines island of Mindanao, which has long been plagued by Islamic State (IS)-linked violence and has grappled with a communist rebellion by the New... MORE

Ashraf al-Mayar is one of the most prominent militia field commanders fighting on the side of General Khalifa Haftar in the Libyan conflict. Mayar, a Salafist from eastern Libya, was a member of the 17 February Brigade, which was a coalition of militias that coexisted... MORE

The Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum, held on October 23–24, in the Russian resort city of Sochi, displayed Moscow’s renewed ambition to play a significant role in Africa (TASS, October 20; The Africa Report, August 19). Increasingly, the Kremlin perceives the African continent as a... MORE

Russia’s so-far ambiguous approach to Libya’s internal conflict, one of reassuring both sides of its continued support, has begun to shift with the deployment of Russian mercenaries backing “Field Marshal” Khalifa Haftar on the front lines of the battle for Tripoli. Despite Moscow’s search for... MORE

On July 11, 2019, Islamic State’s (IS) weekly publication al-Naba released a tribute to a “martyred” Sudanese fighter who had initially fought for IS’s West Africa wilaya (province) (ISWAP) and eventually was killed while fighting in Libya under the banner of the local wilaya there.... MORE

Almost six months into the conflict initiated in April by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) against the UN-backed Government of the National Accord (GNA) to win control of Tripoli, the military situation in western Libya remains in a stalemate (See Terrorism Monitor, April 5).... MORE

On August 6, an Ilyushin Il-76TD turbofan strategic airlifter owned by the Ukrainian airline SkyAviatrans LLC was destroyed at the Misrata International Airport, in northwestern Libya. The airport had been the site of an intense armed conflict between the Libyan National Army (LNA) loyal to... MORE