Terrorism Archive

The cycle of violence between the Turkish state and insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is reaching proportions not seen since the 1990s. The fighting has left approximately 11,000 homes destroyed, leading The Financial Times to declare Turkey “the most dangerous country in Europe” and others to begin speaking of the “Syrianization” of the country’s southeastern region, where the brunt of the conflict has taken place. The fighting in the provinces of Diyarbakir, Sirnak, Hakkari, Van and Bingol has taken a heavy toll on civilians. About 1.3 million people have been impacted, with tens of thousands forced to flee […]

To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, the United States may not be at the beginning of the end of its presidential campaign, but it is at the end of the beginning. After a long, tumultuous series of primaries and caucuses, the two major parties have settled on their presumptive nominees, to be confirmed at each party’s convention this summer. Now American voters must look “under the hood” of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, exploring both candidates’ policies and inclinations in detail, before making their choice in November. Thus far, foreign and security policy have received more attention than is […]

Last week, New York Times reporter Mark Landler compared the foreign policy statements of a candidate for president, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, with those of the actual U.S. president, Barack Obama, in regard to the Orlando terrorist attack. His conclusion, which unsurprisingly matches that of his most recent book on the allegedly contrasting foreign policy perspectives of Clinton and Obama, is that Clinton has shown herself to be the more hawkish of the two. Clinton, he argues, is more solicitous of military force and harsher in characterizing the terrorist threat facing America. It’s the kind of comparison that immediately […]

One of the secondary effects of the terrible shooting in Orlando, Florida, has been to relaunch the debate on whether public officials have misidentified the terrorist threat at home by failing to call it “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremism.” At another point along the spectrum of Islamic political activism is Tunisia’s Ennahda party. Often described as a “moderate Islamist” party, its leaders recently decided to separate Ennahda’s political and religious activities, going so far as to ban party leaders from preaching in mosques or holding positions in religious associations. That raises the question of whether a party whose followers would […]

A series of gruesome attacks on bloggers in Bangladesh has shocked the country and the world. But they are only one element in a years-long cycle of mounting violence. Large-scale political repression has created a climate of injustice that extremist groups have easily exploited in their war against secularists and liberal thinkers. Unfortunately, political violence is nothing new in Bangladesh. Much of it is the result of the unrelenting, intense rivalry between the country’s two major parties, the governing Awami League of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and […]

Against a broader backdrop of regional turmoil, Mauritania has remained surprisingly, if delicately stable. This feat is especially noteworthy given that just a few years ago the country was considered at significant risk of destabilization. Its politics and society have been perennially buffeted by the storms of racial tensions, ethnic cleavages and political volatility. Since its independence from France in 1960, Mauritania has wavered precariously between this state of fragile stability and state collapse. Its record of successive coups and attempted coups between 1978 and 2008; major ethnic clashes in 1989 and 1990; and terrorist attacks between 2005 and 2011 […]

In the immediate hours after Omar Mateen, an American citizen of Afghan descent, committed the worst mass shooting in American history in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the focus of media coverage turned to where it usually does when the killer is Muslim: terrorism. Certainly, Mateen gave plenty of reason to link his crime to the self-declared Islamic State and jihadi terrorism, in general. He literally called 911 while the massacre was underway to pledge his allegiance to the group and rail against U.S. bombing attacks in Iraq and Syria. Here was, seemingly, a clear-cut case of the so-called […]

Last month, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines agreed to begin coordinated patrols to improve maritime security after an increase in kidnappings at sea by the Filipino militant group Abu Sayyaf. In an email interview, Collin Koh, a research fellow at the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, discussed maritime security cooperation in Southeast Asia. WPR: How extensive is maritime security cooperation among Southeast Asian nations, and what efforts are underway to expand cooperation? Collin Koh: Maritime security cooperation among Southeast Asian countries remains primarily bilateral, which makes sense since countries in the region […]

Only hours after the chief representative of the Syrian rebels at the Geneva peace talks announced his resignation Sunday, citing the “stubbornness of the regime and its continued bombardments and aggression toward the Syrian people,” a new wave of air assaults battered the rebel-held city of Idlib, killing dozens of civilians. The respected Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian planes might have conducted the bombings, which struck close to a hospital. Moscow rejected the accusation, but the overwhelming evidence, regardless of the specifics in Idlib, underscores the fundamental deception at the core of Russia’s involvement in Syria, and the […]

Earlier this year, in Jeffrey Goldberg’s extended profile of President Barack Obama and his views on U.S. foreign policy, Pakistan was barely mentioned, except for one striking reference. Obama, Goldberg wrote, “privately questions why Pakistan, which he believes is a disastrously dysfunctional country, should be considered an ally of the U.S. at all.” Obama’s view is ironic, because he tried hard to strengthen Washington’s relations with Islamabad. The Obama administration came into office hoping to transform the relationship from a transactional, security-focused arrangement into a deeper, strategic partnership. His efforts, however, have largely proved unsuccessful. Obama’s Pakistan policy was doomed […]