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

For decades, the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi maintained a well documented history of extensive state sponsorship of terrorism. Tacit support, close cooperation, and moral encouragement for a number of terrorist movements and organizations throughout the years have often times served a number of... MORE

To what extent can we ascribe realistic veracity to the general Western fear that Tanzania could be emerging as a new hub for transnational Islamic extremism in East Africa? Undoubtedly there are reasons for concern. The country clearly offers a conducive theater in which to... MORE

Introduction Western security interests in East Africa have been cast in a new light during the past two years, with policy makers in both Britain and the United States expressing increased concern over the region's potential to emerge as a new front for jihadist extremism... MORE