“Changing of the Guard: Beijing Grooms Sixth-Generation Cadres for 2020s” details the major generational changes that will take place in the party-and-state leadership at the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress set for October 2012. While Fifth Generation leaders like Vice-President Xi Jinping remain poised... MORE

On February 24, 2006, the world’s largest oil refinery, the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia, fell victim to a major attack by al-Qaeda. The strategic attack on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery nearly succeeded in knocking out of production the seven million barrel per... MORE

On December 9, 2009, the Jamestown Foundation organized a special panel on "Islamist Movements in the Horn of Africa" as part of its annual conference, the latter appropriately titled "The Changing Strategic Gravity of al-Qaeda".  This report is comprised of the proceedings from this important... MORE

January 2010 marked the three-year anniversary of the merger between the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (or GSPC, as it is known by its French acronym) and al-Qaeda central.  The GSPC became the official wing of al-Qaeda in North Africa, under the title of... MORE

While the Arab Middle East is political Islam’s ideological and historical core, South Asia and Southeast Asia, concentrated in the Indonesian archipelago, make up the modern demographic core of the Muslim world. Advocates of political jihadism have been adept at exploiting pre-existing territorial and ethnic... MORE

The tribal areas of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) fully deserve President Barack Obama’s description as “the most dangerous place in the world”. This remote and inhospitable region is only nominally under Pakistan's administration and its Pashtun tribesmen have a long history of opposing outside... MORE

Tensions are on the rise in the South China Sea. Longstanding sovereignty disputes over the profusion of atolls, shoals and reefs that dot the 1.2 million square miles of sea, allied to extensive overlapping claims to maritime space, have been a source of serious interstate... MORE

The ongoing struggle for control of Somalia is one of the world’s most complicated. With the country already effectively split into three parts, it may be too late to speak of a Somali nation. While the popular conception of this conflict pits al-Qaeda associated Islamists... MORE

The year 2009 will go down in history as a watershed for the epochal expansion of China’s global influence. With its economy tipped to grow at 8 percent despite the world financial crisis, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is widely regarded as a prime... MORE

Russian authorities are extremely divided about the right position to take as Moscow increasingly concerns itself with the Afghan question. They have continually criticized NATO’s decisions though, at the same time, many Russian politicians recognize that the coalition’s failure to stabilize Afghanistan would place Russia... MORE