Last July's arrest of two residents from Johannesburg and Pretoria suspected of having links to al-Qaeda has raised fears that the Republic of South Africa (RSA) is possibly being targeted as a new logistical and operational hub by pan-Islamic extremists. While it is difficult to... MORE

While the GIA may be out for the count, the larger of Algeria's insurgent groups, the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC) announced its continued presence with a deadly ambush on a military convoy at Biskra, 260 miles south of Algiers. According... MORE

"Le GIA est mort" ran the opening line of the Algerian daily Le Quotidien d'Oran on January 4. The headline came a day after media speculation on the fate of the GIA had been dramatically put to rest with the announcement by the Algerian Interior... MORE

Like many African countries, Ethiopia is impoverished and under-developed. With an ethnically diverse population numbering just over 70 million, it is also one of Africa's largest states. Despite being religiously split between Christian and Muslim, historically there has been little animosity between the two major... 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

News of a pending visit by Israeli Prime Minister Sharon to Tunis, invited by President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali to a conference in mid March, provoked demonstration on March 5, which were broken up violently by Tunisian police. Later a strong warning appeared on the... MORE

Ruled by an eccentric tyrant, Libya up until the middle of the 1990s was a prolific state sponsor of terrorism. While Qadhafi's gradual rehabilitation in the west may have alleviated fears of Libyan-sponsored terrorism, there is still much to understand about the threats posed by... 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

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

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