On November 30, President Dmitry Medvedev will deliver his annual address to parliament in a highly ritualized ceremony solemnly demonstrating loyalty and obedience to the “boss.” The triple irony of this event is in the non-existent personal loyalty to the junior member of the ruling... MORE

Gunmen from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) took hostages in a Syriac Catholic church in central Baghdad on October 31. About 52 people were killed and 67 injured after Iraqi security forces stormed the church. The ISI claimed responsibility for the hostage-taking and... MORE

Somalia’s al-Shabaab Islamist militant movement is in the midst of a financial crisis that hit after losing protection fees from three Somalia World Food Program (WFP) sub-contractors and diminished contributions from the Somali diaspora. The radical group has been in a financial squeeze since the... MORE

On November 17, a controversial trial began in Bishkek over the ousted former Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and 28 members of his regime. Former defense minister Baktybek Kalyev is among the defendants. Bakiyev, however, along with six other defendants, is being tried in absentia (www.akipress.kg,... MORE

Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev had to admit recently that 454 terrorist acts and 510 offenses of extremist nature were committed in Russia in the first nine months of 2010. It would have been odd if the minister had blamed the Russian authorities for the... MORE

The recent attack on the Russian journalist and blogger Oleg Kashin left him severely injured. While he was still unconscious in a medically induced coma, an avalanche of speculation surrounded who might be responsible, with the so-called “liberal opposition” groups quarrelling with each other over... MORE

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the Russian defense reform initiated in October of 2008 was its aim to transform the Russian officer corps. Many reform critics and analysts focused upon the planned downsizing of the corps to 150,000 serving officers. However, downsizing alone does... MORE

Ingush settlers who come to Russia’s Sverdlovsk region, located in the Ural mountains, in search of work have found little employment and government support. “From the very beginning, this widely advertised [Ingush resettlement] program was doomed to failure,” the former representative of Ingushetia in Sverdlovsk... MORE

On November 9, the Kavkazsky Uzel (Caucasian Knot) website reported the Russian statistical service’s intention to double check the October 2010 census results for Chechnya and Ingushetia. The process will take place hundreds of miles away in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and is projected... MORE

Since a terrorist training camp was discovered in the northwestern Indonesian province of Aceh last February, Indonesia’s Densus-88 counterterrorism police have arrested over 100 people and killed 13, significantly damaging the efforts of Indonesian militants to regroup and stage a new round of attacks. Significantly,... MORE