Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
The motives behind the rampage at Ohio State University, on Monday, by Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an eighteen-year-old Somali-born student, have yet to be determined, but the event could have come straight out of the Islamic State’s manual—and it appears to have inspired him.
The first world leader to telephone Trump after his victory was Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a former field marshal who orchestrated a military coup, in 2013, against a democratically elected President from the Muslim Brotherhood...
For the past two weeks, as Mosul has become the epicenter of a new U.S.-backed offensive to defeat isis—also known as isil—Mosul Eye has been posting dozens of times a day on its social-media outlets...
The loss of Dabiq, in Syria, and the launching of the largest offensive ever conducted against isis, in Iraq, led Obama Administration officials to predict that isis is finally being broken. “This is more than just the latest military result against this barbaric group,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement.
For fifteen years, the National Museum of Beirut was one of the most dangerous places in the world’s most violent city. It was in the middle of the deadly Green Line, which divided more than a dozen warring militias. It marked one of only five crossing points between the Muslim west and the Christian east.
No Iranian politician has been as controversial abroad or as polarizing at home as Ahmadinejad. After only two years as Tehran’s mayor, he won the Presidency in an upset victory, in 2005, against an array of better-known politicians.
Since the 2011 uprising in Syria devolved into a civil war, the country has disintegrated into four zones. One zone falls under the control of President Bashar al-Assad and his regime; it stretches along the Mediterranean coast in the west, from the southern border with Israel and Jordan to the northern one with Turkey.
Adnani’s demise, if confirmed, would be the biggest single setback to the leadership of isis since the group began its blitzkrieg across the Middle East, redrawing a century-old map in its wake.
To mark the anniversary in Tehran, President Rouhani pledged on state television Wednesday that Iran would keep its commitments. He added, however, that his government was “fully prepared and able” to resume its nuclear program—and capabilities—on very short notice, should the Western powers fail to meet their commitments.
Among the recent spate of terror attacks, the explosions that rocked Baghdad on Sunday were the deadliest by far -- the death toll stands at two hundred and fifty -- the highest number for a single attack there since 2003, when the US invaded.