The rising tension and provocative rhetoric surrounding Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons are a matter of public record. Yet, are there other agendas being played out amidst the larger confrontation between Iran and the West? One such agenda may be found in the mountainous... MORE

On August 12, an apparent arson attack in Khuchada, a village in Dagestan’s Shamilsky district, sparked a fire in the home of the imam of the local mosque, killing him, his wife and their three children (www.newsru.com, August 12). On August 11, the first day... MORE

This past week brought little clarity as to whether Doku Umarov in fact resigned or not from his position as the leader of the North Caucasus rebels. It still remains unclear who suggested to Umarov that he cancel the announcement he himself had made earlier... MORE

Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, gave a speech on August 7 at the Civil Services Institute in Kabul in which he discussed his government’s reliance on foreign consultants and the role of private security firms. He proposed cuts to the former, and in the case of... MORE

A senior al-Qaeda ideologue has issued a booklet addressing two of the most important issues for the jihadi community – the practice of takfir (labeling a group or individual as apostate or infidel) and the question of whether jihad is an individual obligation. Entitled Ajwibaton... MORE

On August 1, police in Tajikistan detained Mavlavi Abduqahor, the leader of an unregistered Islamic school in the Rudaki district south of Dushanbe, along with about 70 of his students. According to Tajikistan’s Islamic Revival Party (IRPT), the religious leader and some of his students... MORE

Nobody in the Punjab security establishment was aware of how deep the Taliban had penetrated local society when the police and law enforcement agencies started a half-hearted operation against the Punjabi Taliban in the last days of June. The operation came in response to simultaneous... MORE

After barely two months of calm in the Thai capital following a bloody end to the April-May protests, a pair of explosions in Bangkok threaten to mark a new wave of political violence in the confrontation between the “Red Shirts” (supporters of the United Front... MORE

President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, by defining a goal of “disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda,” on the one hand gives direction to this otherwise directionless war, and on the other emphasizes targeting al-Qaeda over all other anti-terrorism efforts (Associated Press of Pakistan, August 2). Al-Qaeda, as... MORE