Two high-ranking Russian security officials—General Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council of Russia, and General Nikolai Bordyuzha, secretary general of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)—recently paid official visits to Tajikistan within days of one another. Generals Patrushev and Bordyuzha met with... MORE

Hizb-e Islami Afghanistan (HIA), one of Afghanistan’s oldest jihadist factions and largest Islamic parties, concluded a comprehensive peace deal with the Afghan government on September 29. Speaker after speaker in the Afghan capital’s grand Arg presidential palace declared the deal “historic,” a milestone for restoring... MORE

The Nigerian government announced in August that it had resumed amnesty payments to former militants in the Niger Delta, many of them members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) (Naija Headlines, August 4). It had significantly reduced the amount of... MORE

During the nearly two years of the Yemeni civil war, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has gone from an organization that was under pressure and struggling financially, to an organization that is larger, more formidable and better armed than it has ever been. The... MORE

Following a month of lull in August, when the parliament was in recess and the majority of cabinet ministers took a short break from meetings and press briefings, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev opened the fall’s joint session of the Mazhilis and the Senate (lower and... MORE

Though Nigeria’s southern Delta region has abundant oil reserves that should provide amply for the future of both the region and the nation, the Delta has become consumed by environmental degradation, unrestrained oil theft, destruction of infrastructure and a new wave of anti-government militancy complicated... MORE

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), once a disgruntled breakaway faction of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has been behind a series of deadly attacks across Pakistan since March 2016, apparently contradicting the Pakistani Army’s claim to have eliminated terrorism from North Waziristan and the Khyber Agency through years of its... MORE

On August 24, Turkish armor, infantry, and air units crossed the Syrian border and, in conjunction with the Ankara-supported Free Syrian Army (FSA) Sunni-dominated rebel group, launched a full-scale assault on the Islamic State-controlled city of Jarabulus. Simultaneously, the Turkish-FSA force moved against the Kurdish... MORE

INDONESIA: LONE-WOLF ATTACKS SHOW NEED FOR GREATER DERADICALIZATION EFFORTS On August 28, an 18-year-old Indonesian man attempted to stab a Roman Catholic priest during a church service in Medan, in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, an attack reminiscent of one carried out by Islamic State (IS)... MORE

Starting in 2014, the jamaats of the armed Islamist underground movement in the North Caucasus began, one by one, to pledge allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS). Kabardino-Balkarian insurgents split into those who became part of the Islamic State and those who remained loyal... MORE