Two Eurocopter AS350 helicopters crashed in northern Iraq’s rural Duhok province on March 15, killing the nine heavily armed passengers on board. The deceased were initially identified as members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization by Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) counter-terrorism officials (Kurdistan... MORE

On May 11, Turkish opposition candidate Muharren Ince announced that he was dropping out of the upcoming presidential elections, allegedly due to, in his words, a “smear campaign” that is “the work of the Gülenist Terror Group” (Daily Sabah, May 11). As one of four... MORE

In late November 2022, Iraqi Shia militia leader Akram al-Kaabi visited Russia and met with the Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov and other Russian officials. During his visit, al-Kaabi, who is the leader of the Iranian-backed al-Nujabaa (“The Noble Ones”) Shia militia, condemned the... MORE

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) emir Abu Mohammed al-Joulani has for several years been actively rebranding himself and his group as an anti-Bashar al-Assad Syrian nationalist group and distancing the group from its al-Qaeda origins (Frontline, February 1, 2021). However, regardless of al-Joulani’s public disassociation from... MORE

On April 24, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, presiding over a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, delivered an important speech devoted mainly to accusations of the collective West in revising the principles and values of the UN Charter (Mid.ru, April 24). In this... MORE

Ansar al-Islam (AAI) is a jihadist group that formed in September 2001 in Iraqi Kurdistan from the merger of two small groups: Jund al-Islam, which was then led by Abu Abdullah al-Shafi’i, and a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, which was led... MORE

One Russian mercenary paramilitary force, the Wagner private military company (PMC), has long earned itself the grisly reputation as a vicious, brutal predatory armed force. It carries out operations in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Mali, Sudan, Mozambique and the Central African Republic, among others. Recently, Russian... MORE

*Read Part One. A February 7 press release from the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (GUR) revealed that one of Russia`s largest energy companies, Gazprom Neft, is now considering the creation of its own private military company (PMC)... MORE

In January 2023, Emory University professor Mikhail Epstein published his new book, Russian Anti-World: Politics on the Verge of Apocalypse (Lulu.com, January 26). This is perhaps the most profound philosophical study of the political, cultural and psychological transformations that have taken place in Russia in... MORE

Introduction January 16, 2023 marked ten years since the attack at In Amenas gas facility in Algeria, which has been—and perhaps will long remain—the last major “systematic” jihadist attack that the country suffered (Jeune Afrique, January 23, 2013). While jihadists belonging to both al-Qaeda and... MORE