The stunning reports of oil tankers hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea have helped shift attention from the dramatic rise of Somali piracy to West Africa. The figures are not quite as eye-popping as in East Africa. The effects are. Lloyd’s of London... MORE

Over the past months, a series of high-profile assassinations in Aden and the capital of Sana’a signaled a strategic shift by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its local affiliate, Ansar al-Shari’a. Over 60 security officials were murdered, with the latest assassination occurring in... MORE

On November 8, the International Crisis Group presented two reports—titled “The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (I), Ethnicity and Conflict,” and “The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (II), Islam, the Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency”—at the Sakharov Center in Moscow. Apart from the conflict in... MORE

The Petersburg Politics Foundation along with the Regnum news agency recently produced a joint assessment of socio-political stability in Russia’s regions, using a ten-point scale, and identified three North Caucasian republics—Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan—as being among the worst (https://slon.ru/russia/top_15_neozhidannykh_sobytiy_v_rossiyskikh_regionakh-848640). According to the president of the... MORE

Once a renowned resort republic, Kabardino-Balkaria nowadays is more often mentioned in the news not as a resort region known across Russia, but as a territory in which counter-terrorism operations are regularly conducted.Drawing on the example of the neighboring republics of Chechnya and Dagestan, authorities... MORE

Kenya’s decision to launch a military intervention in Somalia to eliminate the threat posed by the Islamist al-Shabaab movement has resulted in battlefield successes but has also led to terrorist attacks and riots in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa and even the formation of... MORE

Recent reports of an increase in Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria’s civil war as combatants alongside the Syrian military represent a potentially sharp escalation in the regional impact of the ongoing conflict. Accusations concerning Hezbollah’s military support for the Assad government leveled by the party’s Lebanese... MORE

The recent arrests of Boko Haram members in the Niger town of Zinder come at a time when the Islamist movement’s fighters are taking advantage of the porosity of the Nigeria-Niger border region to avoid security crackdowns in Yobe, Borno and other states of northeastern... MORE

On the night of October 28, another special operation aimed at detecting potential militants was conducted in the mountainous Avar village of Gimry in Dagestan’s Untsukul district. Gimry is known as the birthplace of two famous Dagestani imams of the 19th century, Gazi-Magomed and Shamil.... MORE

David Rosales Guzmán, Alias “El Comandante Diablo”   David Rosales Guzmán (a.k.a El Comandante Diablo–the Devil Commander), was captured alive by Mexican authorities on September 1, 2012. He is accused of functioning as the Gulf Cartel’s leader in Monterrey, Mexico, and is held in connection with... MORE