Few terrorist commanders in the Pakistani militant landscape are as ruthless, or notorious, as Omar Khalid Khorasani, the Emir of Jamaat ul Ahrar (JuA). JuA is part of the al-Qaeda-linked Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) network, which is made up of over 42 different Islamist militant groups.... MORE

Uzbekistan’s leadership has been increasingly focused on its southern neighbor Afghanistan since Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power in late 2016 (see EDM, June 27). As President Mirziyoyev attested on December 5, he and his Afghan counterpart met five times already in the past year (Kun.uz,... MORE

Al-Qaeda and Islamic State have adopted divergent strategies in their competition for dominance in Bangladesh. Al-Qaeda has sought to build popular support by exploiting the grievances of the country’s political Islamists, and by employing targeted violence against secularists, atheists and those who are perceived to... MORE

Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey signed a new agreement dedicated to launching the Lapis Lazuli transit corridor during a pentalateral meeting at the seventh Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA), held on November 15, in Ashgabat (Azernews, November 15). The finalized document was... MORE

Militancy in Kashmir took on another complicating dimension on July 26, when al-Qaeda announced its entry into the strife-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. In a statement issued by the Global Islamic Media Front, al-Qaeda’s propaganda wing, Zakir Rashid Bhat (a.k.a. Zakir Musa) was... MORE

During his visits to Dhaka, Bangladesh and Naypyitaw, Myanmar on November 18 and 19, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi put forward a three-phase plan to resolve the Rohingya crisis. First, Wang called for a ceasefire in Myanmar’s devastated Rakhine state, which is at the center... MORE

A number of Pakistan’s Islamist organizations that agitate for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate but profess to be non-violent are finding renewed prominence, a concerning result of the surfacing of Islamic State’s (IS) local chapter, Wilayat-e-Khurasan. Islamist organizations such as Hizb ut Tahrir, Jamaat... MORE

China’s international rivers are becoming a focal point for contests over control of natural resources. China, in its powerful position as headwater nation, continues to actively promote hydropower development domestically and internationally. When downstream nations rely on un-dammed rivers for fisheries and irrigation, this puts... MORE