Radical Movements Archive

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein and host Peter Dörrie discuss ISIS and al-Qaida affiliates, El Salvador’s murder epidemic and the impact of the drop in global commodities prices. For the report, journalist James Bargent joins us to discuss illegal gold mining and violence in Colombia. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: ISIS vs. Al-Qaida: How Do Affiliates Choose?El Salvador’s Murder Epidemic and the Paradox of Peacebuilding SuccessWith Little International Support, Unrecognized States Turn to Each OtherWPR’s Global Insider Series on the Commodities CycleLengthy Oil Slump Could Force Saudi Arabia’s Hand on […]

Attacks earlier this month in Jakarta by Indonesia’s Islamic State affiliate and a claim of allegiance to the jihadi group from a militant collective in the Philippines seem to show the Islamic State’s ascendency in yet another region outside its core operating base in Syria and Iraq. Confounding efforts to contain its global expansion, the Islamic State appears to have an increasing number of territories, or wilayat, and organizations nominally under its authority, amid an uptick in attacks against Western interests carried out at its behest. On this basis, it’s tempting to conclude that the Islamic State’s reach and successful […]

Last week I spent two days in New Hampshire attending campaign events for five different presidential candidates: GOP hopefuls Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. John Kasich and Gov. Chris Christie, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination. At various points the meetings I attended were inspiring, amusing, frustrating, stupefying and boring. But it wasn’t until I traveled to Pittsfield, New Hampshire, that it became enraging. The event was a town hall meeting where Christie spoke to employees of a small manufacturing company. The topics ranged from drugs and immigration to the federal budget and the […]

The epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigeria’s conflict-wracked northeast, did not erupt in celebration following the Dec. 23 announcement by President Muhammadu Buhari that his country had “technically” defeated the jihadi group. On the streets of Yola, the capital of Adamawa State, security personnel were out in force the next day, presumably to prevent Boko Haram from carrying out attacks during the holiday season. Residents of nearby internally displaced persons camps, meanwhile, expressed apprehension at the prospect of returning to their homes, due to concerns over the ongoing armed conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian military along the […]

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made his first visit to Washington as prime minister this week, where he met with President Barack Obama and gave a national security speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In his speech at CSIS, Turnbull discussed the Syrian civil war and expressed confidence in the fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which he referred to as ISIL. The coalition against the Islamic State “will win,” he said, “by targeting ISIL militarily, using local ground forces supported by coalition air power, weapons and training; curbing ISIL finances; stopping foreign fighter flows; and […]

Syria diplomacy is back. International alarm over the self-proclaimed Islamic State has given new urgency to a political settlement that would bring some stability to Syria after nearly five years of civil war, as well as align the country’s warring parties and interested world powers against the jihadi group. The International Syria Support Group, which includes the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, has invested in a diplomatic process that made seeming progress in Vienna in November. In a joint statement subsequently endorsed by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254, the group called for U.N.-supervised negotiations later […]

On Dec. 17, dozens of delegates from Libya’s two rival parliaments, as well as from local municipalities and civil society, signed a United Nations-brokered deal to form a national unity government and hopefully halt the country’s long descent into unrest and civil war. Talks had been ongoing for almost a year, with plenty of obstacles along the way. But almost a month on, the agreement’s prospects are decidedly mixed. The nascent Government of National Accord has yet to be fully formed. A nine-member presidential council is up and running, although working mostly from Tunis. Overall, the power-sharing process outlined in […]

Is there a tipping point for the grim state of affairs in Egypt, where the fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that brought down former President Hosni Mubarak is less than two weeks away? On Jan. 7, supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood clashed with police outside a hotel in Giza; no one was injured, but the exchange of gunfire was another hit to Egypt’s tourism industry. It was also a rare sign of Brotherhood supporters taking to the streets, after being severely repressed over the past two and a half years. The next day, two men armed with knives […]

The shocking news that Saudi Arabia executed 47 people over the weekend, including Shiite cleric and opposition figure Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, got the new year off to a tense start in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. The executions have already caused a worsening of Saudi-Iran relations and foreshadow heightened sectarian-driven tensions across the region. But there are other consequences as well. Forty-seven convicted criminals, most of them charged with terrorism by a special court created in 2008, were executed by beheading and firing squad on Jan. 2 in multiple locations in the kingdom. Most were Sunni radicals, affiliated […]