Radical Movements Archive

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ appeal in March for a global cease-fire amid the coronavirus pandemic made no impression on the Taliban. Through April, the militant group’s commanders seemed generally dismissive of the risks posed by COVID-19 as they ramped up their annual spring offensive. The disease had yet to make much inroads into Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time. Many Taliban members happily promoted the idea that true believers had nothing to fear, and that the pandemic was only a problem for the decadent West. Accordingly, Taliban officials continued meeting each other normally and, during Ramadan in May, many […]

France announced earlier this month that its armed forces had killed Abdelmalek Droukdel, the emir of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, during a June 3 military operation in northern Mali. The operation, carried out by French troops with the help of intelligence and surveillance aircraft provided by the United States, represents a rare, quantifiable victory for France and its counterterrorism partners in the region as they struggle to contain a bloody insurgency by jihadist groups. A veteran of Algeria’s brutal civil war in the 1990s, Droukdel’s rise and fall in many ways mirrors the fortunes of the organization […]

In the early weeks of 2020, the signs pointed to progress in Myanmar’s convoluted effort to finally end 70 years of ethnic strife in its border areas. On Jan. 8, representatives from the government and the 10 ethnic armies that are party to a 2015 cease-fire deal convened in the capital, Naypyidaw, where they reached an eight-point agreement on the next steps to continue implementing that cease-fire. They also vowed to meet for a fourth national peace conference by the end of April, to build on three earlier summits held between 2016 and 2018. That fourth summit would have signaled […]