Latest Articles about Domestic/Social
China’s Draft Cybersecurity Law
In early December, China and the United States reached an agreement in their first round of high-level dialogue on fighting cybercrime and other malicious cyber activities (China Daily, December 2; Legal Daily, December 2). The meeting marked a significant step for both countries in establishing... MORE
Mapping China’s Small Arms Trade: China’s Illicit Domestic Gun Trade
This is part one of a two-part series examining China’s arms trade. China is one of the world’s top small arms producers, and the products of official arms companies such as Norinco (北方工业) make regular appearances in conflicts around the globe. In 2014, Chinese arms... MORE
Office of Largest Opposition Party in Georgia Comes Under Attack
On the night of December 9, unidentified assailants attacked an office of the most influential opposition party of Georgia, United National Movement (UNM), in the town of Dedoplistskaro, near the capital of Tbilisi (Civil Georgia, December 10). Former Georgian president (2008–2013) and the current governor... MORE
Young Islamic Radicals Carry out Arson Attacks on Sufi Tombs in Chechnya
Chechnya’s two-century-old Sufi tradition experienced its first crisis 30 years ago, when the first Salafists appeared in the republic. The Salafists did not simply proclaim the supremacy of their teachings, but aspired to take power in the republic. The Salafist aim of grabbing power sparked... MORE
Islamic State and West Africa
2015 marked the year when “Boko Haram” evolved from an ostensibly domestic-rooted and globally unaffiliated militant group into a “Province” in the Islamic State’s global structure. This transition was formalized on March 7, 2015, when “Boko Haram” leader Abubakr Shekau pledged baya’a, or allegiance, to... MORE
Europe’s Jihadist Pipeline to Syria
As previous papers have outlined, the Islamic State poses a range of different threats to different people. One is a more or less conventional threat to the state structure in the Middle East. The other is an unconventional threat to countries further afield, including in... MORE
ISIS and al-Qaeda: Tactical Twins, Strategic Enemies
How can “Daesh” and al-Qaeda be both tactical twins and strategic enemies? [1] Their tactics are very similar. Even their strategies have the same roots in classical guerrilla doctrine. In a short article, one cannot review all the points of convergence and difference between the... MORE
Caliphate at War: Islamic State Ideology, War Fighting and State Formation
A series of books that I remember from my teenage days when I was in school in France sought to provide a succinct explanation for a variety of phenomena. The series title was De Quoi S’Agit-Il? This roughly translates as “what does it mean or... MORE
The Kurdish Periphery
The Kurds play a key role in the war against the Islamic State as they are located on the periphery of the jihadist organization’s two de-facto capitals, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. As a result, both Western states and Russia are courting the... MORE
Growing Number of Russian Converts to Islam Joining Insurgents at Home and Abroad
With 28-year-old Anatoly Zemlyanka’s notorious killing of 23-year-old member Magomed Khasiev, ethnic-Russian Muslims are again in the spotlight. Khasiev (a. k. a. Yevgeny Yudin), an ethnic-Russian convert to Islam, came from the Ural region in Russia, while Zemlyanka came from the Siberian town of Noyabrsk.... MORE