Introduction On November 23, 2018, insurgents of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) attacked the PRC Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. The assault resulted in the deaths of seven people, including two police officers and three of the attackers (Dawn, November 23 2018). One month after this... MORE

Background The Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) is considered one of the oldest Baluch nationalist-separatist terrorist groups operating in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan. The ongoing insurgency started in 2006. The BLA is led by Harbayar Marri, whose father, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, founded the BLA... MORE

Russia has opposed the United States’ policy in Afghanistan for years. Indeed, Moscow’s own support for the Taliban, in the form of intelligence sharing and arms transfers, goes back to about 2014 (see EDM, January 6, 2016). Therefore, President Donald Trump’s stated intention to withdraw... MORE

On November 23, three militants of the Balochistan Liberation Army attacked the PRC consulate in Karachi, the latest in a series of assaults by Baloch militants on PRC projects and personnel in Pakistan (Global Times, November 24). Baloch opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)... MORE

On June 9, the Taliban announced a three-day ceasefire with Afghan forces (Pajhwok, June 9).  This was the first time since the group was ousted from power in November 2001 that the Taliban has called for a ceasefire.  Since then, although violence on the ground... MORE

The recent Battle of Darzab saw the Afghan Taliban inflict a crushing defeat on Islamic State-Khurasan, at least in Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province. Clashes between the two militant groups started in mid-July and concluded in the first week of August. The Central Asian faction of IS-K... MORE

The recent wave of terrorist attacks on girls’ schools in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan has once again highlighted the fact that no region of Pakistan is safe from terrorism and militancy. The mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan region previously remained sheltered from terrorism in mainland Pakistan.... MORE

The sudden rise of Islamic State’s Khurasan Chapter (IS-K, or Waliyat-e-Khurasan) in September 2014 took the security policymakers of Pakistan and Afghanistan by surprise. The global Islamist terrorist organization was able to find immediate support from local and regional Islamist terrorist groups operating in the... MORE

Iraq: Basra Protests Protests that first began in July and intensified in early September have wreaked havoc on Iraq’s port city of Basra. The unrest—motivated by protesting government corruption, and shortages of electricity, jobs and clean water—began shortly after the country’s inconclusive parliamentary elections produced... MORE

With the fall of Mosul in July 2014, the Islamic State (IS) started to spread its tentacles, luring in Islamist terrorist groups all over the world. This includes many groups previously aligned with al-Qaeda. The IS spokesperson, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, called upon all Islamist groups... MORE