Latest Articles about Terrorism

Eight Policemen Killed in Rebel Attacks in Dagestan
Insurgency-related violence was reported across the North Caucasus this past week. On April 14, three suspected militants were detained in Kabardino-Balkaria after police stopped a car in which four people were traveling along the Kavkaz federal highway between the villages of Chegem and Shalushka. The... MORE

Conflict Between Somali Leaders Halts Military Operations against Islamist Insurgents
A new disagreement between Somali president Shaykh Sharif Shaykh Ahmad and parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden over extending the mandate of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is disrupting a successful offensive by TFG and African Union troops against the radical Islamist al-Shabaab movement.Under an... MORE

Armed Attacks Reported in Dagestan
Violence continued in parts of the North Caucasus - particularly in Dagestan – this past week despite the major blow dealt to the North Caucasus rebels by a counter-insurgency operation in which 17 militants were killed. There were reports that Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel... MORE

Picking Up Where the Red Army Faction Left Off: Tales from the German Jihad
The shooting deaths in early March of two American servicemen at Frankfurt airport as they awaited a plane taking them to Afghanistan was an event that seemed to hearken back to the 1970s, when left-wing groups like the Red Army Faction (RAF) targeted American soldiers... MORE

Trial of Indonesia’s Abu Bakr Ba’asyir a Test of Indonesia’s Counterterrorism Resolve
Reputed Jema’ah Islamiya leader Abu Bakr Ba’asyir told the Jamestown Foundation in 2005 that “the highest deed in Islam is jihad” (see Spotlight on Terror, December 16, 2005). After being arrested in August 2010, the Indonesian cleric is now on trial, facing charges under Indonesia’s... MORE

Death of Umarov’s Successor Is a Major Setback to Rebel Movement
Following reports that Russian air and ground forces had killed 17 militants in an operation targeting a rebel base near the village of Upper Alkun in Ingushetia, Moscow waited with trepidation for the official identification of the body of Doku Umarov, the leader of the... MORE

Kabardino-Balkaria’s government blamed for allowing region’s destabilization
On April 1, the head of Kabardino-Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov, and Moscow’s envoy to the North Caucasus, Aleksandr Khloponin, jointly announced that the resignation of the republic’s government was imminent, probably due on April 4. Kanokov held his government responsible for Kabardino-Balkaria’s instability over the previous... MORE

The Specter of Shahids Continues to Haunt Russia
The Russian security services is now asserting that the massive terrorist attack at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on January 24, in which 37 people were killed and 120 more injured, will not be the last action carried out by a shahid (martyr) – meaning a suicide... MORE

New Tensions in Kirkuk as Kurdish Peshmerga Surround City
The demonstrations occurring in several countries in the Middle East are now also taking place in Iraq. The violence and public protests that erupted in Kirkuk province and elsewhere in Iraq on February 25 have the dangerous potential to escalate into a civil war between... MORE

The Khurasan Mujahideen Seek to Eliminate Espionage in Waziristan
Although Pakistani Taliban militants have killed hundreds of people accused of spying for the United States or Pakistan’s intelligence agencies over the past few years in the lawless tribal areas of North and South Waziristan, the incidents of such execution are on rise since the... MORE