Violence and Security

Women & Children Potential Nucleus of Jihadists Renewal in Syria

August 02, 2022

International security experts and aid agencies warn that the large Al-Hawl displacement camp in northeastern Syria that holds mainly female fighters and children of IS militants is becoming the nucleus of a renewed jihadist threat.
State Governance & Security Failures Enable Spread of Jihadism Across Africa

July 27, 2022

According to Development and Cooperation, the steady spread of violent jihadist operations from the African Sahel region across most of the Continent has been a measurable correlate of corrupt, authoritarian states that fail to provide good governance, a stable security environment, and a predictable economic marketplace for citizens, thereby creating permissive conditions for Islamist extremist groups.
AQ Extremists Active in East African Attack

July 27, 2022

Extremists from the local Al-Qaeda (AQ) affiliate, Al-Shabaab, staged a recent assault on four towns at the Somalia-Ethiopia border, signaling the ongoing resilience of the Islamist extremist group in the region of East Africa.
Togo Is Latest West African Country to Confront Spread of Islamist Extremism

July 20, 2022

State policymakers in the small West African country of Togo are confronting the creeping influence of Islamist extremist groups active in the region, developing inter-agency policies to prevent repetition of violent terror attacks and youth radicalization and recruitment, through collaboration with international faith-based, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Western security partner institutions and states.
Violence Spike at Af-Pak Border Reveals Global Security Threat from Islamists in South Asia

July 12, 2022

Since the Taliban resurgence and eventual establishment of an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan, the North Waziristan provincial border between Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af-Pak) has become a renewed global security threat from Islamist extremist groups using the proofs space to launch attacks against both Pakistani military forces and civilian targets.
Afghan Citizens Suffer Widespread Human Return Rights Abuses Due to Taliban-IS Extremist War

July 12, 2022

Human Rights Watch reports that the Islamist civil war between Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime and competitor Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) have produced comprehensive human rights violations in the form of widespread extrajudicial killings by Taliban forces accusing residents of pro-ISKP orientations and by ISKP militants targeting non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslim minorities.
Hezbollah’s Islamist Agenda Shapes Lebanon-Israel East Med Energy Dispute

July 11, 2022

Iran-friendly, Shiite extenuating group Hezbollah continues to exert determinant influence within the Lebanese state and, by extension, in the volatile geopolitics if the Eastern Mediterranean, most recently using drone attacks against Israel‘s offshore natural gas rigs to pressure Washington and Jerusalem into a maritime borders agreement that favors Lebanon and that gives Hezbollah leverage over East Med energy security assets.
IS Prison Attack in Nigeria Highlights Resilience & Adaptation of Islamist Threat to State Security

July 11, 2022

IS militants in Nigeria claimed responsibility for a prison break that saw almost all the inmates escape into the capital city coming on the heels of an armed assault on a presidential convoy demonstrating the expanding cooperation between jihadists and other non-state groups as well as pointing to the resilience and adaptation of violent Islamist groups committed to the overthrow of the international order based in sovereign states.
Turkey’s Islamo-Nationalists Threaten NATO Allies in

July 06, 2022

Turkey’s Islamist President and his nationalist cohort are threatening NATO Allies Greece and America with military action in the Eastern Mediterranean, rejecting the former’s sovereignty and condemning US military bases in Greece as a “direct threat” to Turkey, with Ankara’s Islamo-nationalist saber rattling articulated as Turkey’s push-back against the “infidel West.”
French Court Convictions of 2015 IS Terrorists Highlights Europe’s Islamist Radicalization Problem

July 01, 2022

The conviction by a French special court this week of 20 individuals associated with executing the Islamic State’s (IS) multi-site, high-casualty terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 brought the trial to a close, but reminded Europe of the complexities of understanding the origins and security risks of Islamist radicalization and transnationalism, given that almost all of the IS perpetrators were born in either Belgium or France and not in IS caliphate territories of Iraq and Syria.