According to numerous analyses published by think tanks and journals in the United States and Europe, Russia lost its African adventure before it even started. Purportedly, Russia lacks the resources with which to compete in Africa against the United States and China, acts there in... MORE

In recent weeks, international attention has focused on the consequences of heightened U.S.-Iranian tensions in the Middle East, and more recently, on an attempted jihadist attack on the streets of South London on February 2. Away from the gaze of most international media, the latest... MORE

Introduction Since the outbreak of the Libyan civil war in 2011, Moscow has been trying to demonstrate a balanced and pragmatic approach — considered in Russian conservative circles to be “excessively conformist” and even “defeatist” (YouTube.com, January 30, 2013). Director General of the Russian International... MORE

Over the past few months, diplomatic activism around the Libyan civil war has intensified sharply. Two dynamics drove this process. First, the visible presence of Russian mercenaries fighting alongside the forces of Khalifa Haftar, the eastern-based leader of the Libyan National Army (literal Arabic translation... MORE

Abdullahi Banati, an al-Shabaab commander, is known to straddle the Kenya-Somali border, killing civilians and security personnel. A member of Amniyat, the intelligence wing of al-Shabaab, Banati has been deployed near Kenya’s northeastern region with special instructions to strike and disrupt the work of security... MORE

At a summit in Istanbul, on January 8, 2020—an event officially earmarked to celebrate the beginning of exploitation of the TurkStream natural gas pipeline—Russian President Vladimir Putin and his host, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, sat down together to work out ceasefire agreements regarding Libya... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   During a joint press-conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Moscow, on January 11, Vladimir Putin was asked about Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group private military company (PMC) who are reportedly operating in Libya. In response,... MORE

On January 19, a female suicide bomber detonated explosives at Kaiga Kindjiria village near Lake Chad in Chad, killing nine civilians (Actucameroun, January 20). The attack occurred at a time of heightened sensitivity in the Lake Chad subregion, as only two weeks earlier Chad had... MORE

Over the past several years, Tanzania has served as an origin and transit point for radicalized individuals fighting alongside terrorist groups operating in nearby countries, particularly al-Shabaab in Somalia and Ansar al-Sunna in Mozambique. Tanzania has not been as internally affected by jihadist groups as... MORE

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