Insurgencies Archive

Perched on a hill above the tiny village of Carrizal in northern Colombia, the camp that was supposed to be housing 300 guerrilla fighters is nothing more than a wooden shack surrounded by a muddy field. Two weeks after the Dec. 31 deadline for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC, to demobilize, the only guerillas in sight are the 11 men that make up the camp’s construction crew. “There is no water. There is no electricity. There are no houses. None of the necessary things that the guerrillas need to arrive at those points […]

In his speech to the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev described the war in Afghanistan as the USSR’s “bleeding wound.” Gorbachev would order Soviet forces out of Afghanistan two years later. During the subsequent three decades, Soviet and subsequently Russian leaders sought to steer clear of the country that many likened to Moscow’s Vietnam. This history makes Russia’s re-engagement in Afghanistan in recent months all the more striking. A generation after its army invaded, occupied and then withdrew from the country, Moscow has again emerged as an important power broker […]

The liberation of the Libyan city of Sirte from the self-proclaimed Islamic State late last year seemed like a major step in stabilizing Libya and combating terrorism in North Africa. But Libya’s still-stalled political dialogue and internal rifts have tempered any gains. Despite—or perhaps because of—the terms of the U.N.-backed peace deal signed in Morocco in December 2015 to form a unity government, Libya remains plagued by strife between two main rival blocs in eastern and western Libya, which are unable to find common ground. The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, or GNA, that was set up 14 months ago […]

The conflict in Afghanistan played a surprisingly small role in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, possibly because none of the candidates had any new ideas on what to do about this long-festering problem. But there is an old aphorism sometimes attributed to Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary and communist theorist, that goes, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” While Trotsky probably never uttered the phrase, there is something to it. It certainly applies to the conflict in Afghanistan: While the war was not a major topic in Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid, he […]

After a spate of kidnappings and renewed clashes with the Philippines’ armed forces over the past year, the Islamist militants of Abu Sayyaf have forged a reputation as one of Southeast Asia’s most radical and brutal jihadi groups. The high-profile beheadings in 2016 of two Canadian hostages has focused global attention on the remote, impoverished and underdeveloped region of the southern Philippines where Abu Sayyaf operates. The violence has heightened the sense of urgency to find a solution to the long-running insurgency and placed an intense spotlight on President Rodrigo Duterte’s strategy. So far, Duterte’s comments on Abu Sayyaf have, […]