Insurgencies Archive

After a period of relative calm, the two recent attacks in the Russian city of Volgograd serve as a reminder that, despite the government’s pre-Olympic crackdown, Russia’s heartland remains vulnerable to militants from the Muslim-majority North Caucasus region. Although no one has claimed responsibility for the bombings of the city’s main train station and a crowded trolleybus, which together killed at least 30 people, Volgograd has suffered from years of bombings, typically carried out by Islamist terrorists from the nearby North Caucasus. Russia’s Muslim militants are especially irritated by President Vladimir Putin’s decision to hold the February Winter Olympics in […]

For months the most debated issue in Central Asia has been the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the many destabilizing forces it might unleash on the region—among them trafficking in drugs, arms and humans, but also Islamic radicalism. Local leaders and many analysts predict that a severe deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan after the U.S. departs would encourage Central Asian jihadists who had fled their home countries to return and destabilize local regimes. But assessing the current role of Islam and Islamism in Central Asia, and the evolution of Central Asian jihadist groups themselves, reveals that the threat has […]

Over the past few decades, the shifting dynamics of the nature of war, combined with a maturing field of peace process support, have led to parallel shifts in the nature of mediation in peace processes. There has been a significant increase in the number of ongoing civil wars, as opposed to interstate wars, and the field of conflict transformation has changed accordingly. Under the leadership of Kofi Annan, the United Nations began the process of mainstreaming the inclusion of civil society and other actors into the fields of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Now, more actors, using more-advanced support mechanisms, are […]

United Nations peacekeepers have repeatedly been in the headlines through 2013, grappling with crises across Africa. But the year’s single greatest challenge to the U.N.’s strategic credibility—the Syrian military’s large-scale use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in August—took place with no peacekeepers in sight. The best the organization could do in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity was to dispatch chemical weapons inspectors to the scene, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pleaded for time for them to investigate. Yet at the beginning of this year, it appeared quite possible that international peacekeepers would deploy to Syria in the course of […]

The Middle East has played such a pivotal role in U.S. national security over the past few decades that it’s easy to forget this is a recent phenomenon. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that America’s growing dependence on Middle Eastern oil, concern about expanding Soviet military power and an intensification of the U.S. relationship with Israel elevated the region to the first tier of American security concerns. With the end of the Cold War, the Middle East became paramount in America’s global strategy. Now, in a shift of potentially historic impact, that may be coming to an end. The coming […]

During his recent visit to South Asia, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel focused on securing a formal agreement to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan beyond 2014 and an informal accord to continue drone strikes in Pakistan. These are both important topics, but U.S. policymakers need to devote more attention to other issues that could have an even greater impact on U.S. interests in the South Asian region in coming years. While in Kabul, Hagel did not even try to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been adding new conditions for a renewal of the Afghan-U.S. status of forces agreement […]

Is there a lonelier or more poorly understood warrior than Francois Hollande? Last week, as French troops prepared to intervene in the Central African Republic (CAR) to stem pervasive disorder, there was praise from abroad for the domestically unpopular French president. The Economist characterized Hollande as a “strident neocon” and “decisive war leader” whose willingness to send soldiers to Mali and the CAR this year has been in contrast to his “shaky” performance at home. Noting that France’s recent interventions have enjoyed widespread African support, the Guardian announced the emergence of a “Hollande doctrine” involving a “benign form of armed […]

This week, the Nigerian insurgent group Boko Haram carried out a large-scale attack on a military air base in the northeastern city of Maiduguri in which 24 attackers were killed, two air force personnel wounded and several military aircraft damaged. In an email interview, Jennifer Giroux, a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich who specializes in conflict in energy-producing and transit regions, explained Nigeria’s counterterrorism approach and Boko Haram’s resilience. WPR: Does Boko Haram’s attack on the Maiduguri air base indicate an evolution in the group’s military capabilities? Jennifer Giroux: This attack is not so […]

Hamid Karzai is playing a dangerous game with the security of both Afghanistan and the United States. With NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan ending soon, the Afghan president negotiated a bilateral security agreement with Washington to leave a small U.S. counterterrorism and advisory force in his country. But after convening a national assembly of elders known as the Loya Jirga and gaining their endorsement, Karzai announced that he would not sign the agreement, leaving that to the winner of April’s presidential election. When U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice explained to Karzai that the United States needs the agreement in […]

This year has been one of fluctuating fortunes for South Africa as it seeks to shape Africa’s emerging security architecture and to cement its position as the leading player in continental peace operations. In March, South African troops were withdrawn from the Central African Republic (CAR) after rebel forces overran the capital and ousted the regime of Francois Bozize, which South Africa was defending. The spectacle of South Africa’s humiliating withdrawal, and the deaths of 13 South African troops, jarred with the rather self-congratulatory notions of South African leadership and of South African exceptionalism that had previously informed debates on […]