After each death of a Chechen in Syria or Iraq, the involvement of Chechens in Middle Eastern conflicts becomes a hot topic of discussion in the Russian media. The recent death of a high-profile Chechens from the Northern Front of the Islamic State (IS) organization,... MORE

The government of Tajikistan has long sustained a shaky narrative purporting that Central Asia is in imminent danger of being overrun by militant forces. Long menaced by the specter of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the government has more recently added a new group... MORE

After Ramzan Kadyrov’s statements authorizing Chechen police to shoot to kill police officers from outside Chechnya who appear there without notifying the republican authorities (see EDM, April 27), the governor of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, came out in support of his colleague, saying that special operations... MORE

The Shi’a Houthi rebels’ advance on Yemen’s capital Sana’a from late 2014 was a slow burning conflict that led to the resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansur Hadi on January 22, which prompted chaos in Sana’a and has since spread to much of the rest... MORE

On February 17, three British teenagers left their East London homes and boarded a plane for Turkey. Soon afterwards, they crossed into Syria, where they are believed to have joined the Islamic State militant group (al-Jazeera, February 21). This event has put female radicalization in... MORE

Observers who have followed the evolution of Russia’s campaign against the Islamic armed resistance in the North Caucasus over the past 16 years probably noticed that Moscow has no strategy in the region, but only a set of chaotic reactions. Apart from special operations, the... MORE

Against the backdrop of the simmering conflict in Kabardino-Balkaria, President Vladimir Putin replaced the interior minister of the republic, Sergei Vasiliev, with a police major-general, Igor Romashkin. Vasiliev had been in office since 2010. The new Kabardino-Balkarian interior minister served as deputy director of the... MORE

The increasing presence of Islamic State (IS) militants in Afghanistan has raised fears in neighboring Uzbekistan. It is no longer a question of whether IS has a presence in Afghanistan, only its scope and intentions. Addressing a joint session of the United States Congress, on... MORE

Emotions ran high in the Chechen community once again with the news that two school children from Pankisi, Georgia, went to Syria to fight, presumably alongside the Islamic State organization (see EDM, April 16). Earlier in April, 16-year-old Muslim Kushtanashvili and 18-year-old Ramzan Bagakashvili went... MORE

Al-Shabaab’s April 2 attack on Kenya’s Garissa University College that killed 147 non-Muslim students was the latest installment in al-Shabaab’s campaign to force Nairobi to order a withdrawal of the Kenyan Defense Force (KDF) from the Jubaland region of southern Somalia. So far, the Kenyan... MORE