A vigil for the victims of last week’s attack outside Britain’s Parliament, London, U.K., March 29, 2017 (Rex Features via AP Images).

Last week, Khalid Masood, a British-born convert to Islam with a long criminal record, plowed a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge and then stabbed a policeman before being killed by other police. Unsurprisingly, the self-styled Islamic State claimed responsibility. Whether the group actually had any involvement with Masood was irrelevant, since his religious-tinged violence fit its narrative. As usual the America media was flooded with commentators asserting that the London attack once again demonstrated that violent jihadism is not a distortion of Islam but its true essence. The Westminster attack, they claimed, was just one […]

Iraqi Army soldiers celebrate with residents of liberated neighborhoods as they hold upside down a flag of the Islamic State, eastern Mosul, Iraq, Jan. 24, 2017 (AP Photo by Khalid Mohammed).

As the forces of the U.S.-led coalition continue to push the so-called Islamic State out of its heartland in Syria and Iraq, the group isn’t exactly disappearing. Rather, it has sought out new footholds across the region and beyond, stepping up transnational terror attacks to keep its brand from fading. World Politics Review has compiled 11 articles tracing the Islamic State’s evolution, and what its changing outlook means for the international battle to combat it. Purchase this special report as a Kindle e-book. A Complex Battlefield As the Islamic State Disperses, the United States Must Adapt Though it has been […]

A Pakistani police officer on guard outside the Barri Imam shrine in Islamabad, following a suicide attack at a Sufi shrine in Sindh province, Feb. 17, 2017 (AP photo by B.K. Bangash).

During one week in mid-February, Pakistan suffered a series of terrorist attacks in all four of its provinces: Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In all, 200 people were killed across the country in just seven days. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, or JuA—a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP—claimed responsibility for the majority of the attacks, while the TTP and the self-proclaimed Islamic State claimed separate responsibility for others, including the Feb. 16 suicide bombing of a Sufi shrine in Sehwan that killed 90 people. The multiple assaults perpetrated by different militants have raised concerns about […]

President Donald Trump greets Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, March 17, 2017 (AP photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais).

It’s no secret that President Donald Trump, like all of his recent predecessors, thinks America’s NATO allies have been free-riding on Washington’s largesse and should contribute more to their own security. In the familiar terms of NATO alliance management, that is understood to mean meeting the target of budgeting 2 percent of GDP for national defense. Set in 2006, that benchmark is currently met by only four other alliance members—one of them being tiny Estonia—with a fifth, France, falling just short. But last week, at a news conference following his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump went further than […]

People stand for a moment of silence during the one-year anniversary of the Brussels attacks, Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2017 (AP photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert).

One year ago, a series of terrorist attacks struck the Brussels international airport and a metro station, killing 35 and injuring hundreds. The incident occurred just months after Belgium was thrust into the center of discussions about the terror threat facing Europe, when it was revealed that a Belgian national had coordinated attacks on a concert hall and other sites in Paris, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds more. That man, 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was among the many Belgian citizens who had gone to Syria and Iraq to fight with the so-called Islamic State, making Belgium Europe’s largest per capita […]

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah during a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, China, May 16, 2016 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).

Recent reports of Chinese security forces operating in Afghanistan have prompted speculation about whether China has crossed another important threshold in its policy and posture on overseas military activity. Claims of sightings of Chinese military vehicles in the Wakhan Corridor, the narrow strip of territory in northeastern Afghanistan that extends to the Chinese border, have been circulating since late last year. But it was only after a People’s Liberation Army press briefing in February that any activities were officially confirmed. The PLA spokesperson denied the involvement of the Chinese military proper, stating that it was “the law enforcement departments in […]

People stand behind burnt out cars after a suicide bombing in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, Feb. 17, 2017 (AP photo by Hamza Suleiman).

Boko Haram, the Nigeria-based jihadi movement affiliated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State, has been in decline for more than two years, since it began to lose territory around Lake Chad under joint military pressure from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. After retreating from major towns in northeastern Nigeria such as Bama and Mubi, Boko Haram now controls only certain remote rural areas in that corner of the country. But even though its strength peaked back in 2015, Boko Haram is still a major threat to Nigeria and its neighbors, as the group’s decline has been uneven and frequently punctuated by […]

Malian troops join with former rebels during a joint patrol, Gao, Mali, Feb. 23, 2017 (AP photo by Baba Ahmed).

The arrival of interim authorities in northern Mali combined with the launch of joint security patrols involving soldiers and former rebels underline the government’s determination to make significant headway this year toward implementing a stagnating 2015 peace accord with separatist insurgents in the region. But both efforts have run into trouble, and the recently announced alliance of three jihadi groups is a reminder that the threat of disruptive extremist violence isn’t going away. Beginning in late February, interim authorities have been sent to the northern cities of Gao, Kidal and Menaka. Their arrival marks an attempt by the government, based […]

Iraqi special forces arrest a fighter with Islamic State militia, Mosul, Iraq, Feb. 25. 2017 (AP photo by Khalid Mohammed).

As most security experts expected, driving the self-styled Islamic State out of its “caliphate” in northern Iraq and eastern Syria has been tough, bloody work. Nevertheless, the Iraqi military and local militias, backed by U.S. airpower, special operations forces and military advisers, are making progress. Eventually the international coalition will, as Hal Brands and Peter Feaver write in Foreign Affairs, militarily defeat the Islamic State “by destroying its core in Syria.” Unfortunately, though, this will not kill the group—its ideology cannot be destroyed on the battlefield—but simply drive it to other locations. As FBI Director James Comey said, “At some […]

People demonstrate outside the Tunisian parliament with a banner reading "No to Terrorism," Tunis, Dec. 24, 2016 (AP photo by Ons Abid).

Within the span of a week, Tunisia’s government was lauded abroad for passing a comprehensive anti-corruption law and lambasted at home for its muddled response to the growing number of its nationals returning from fighting among the ranks of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It should come as no surprise that Tunisia made headlines, on one hand, for progress on democratic reform and, on the other, for lackluster security policies. Relative to its neighbors, the country emerged relatively unscathed by the popular uprising that ousted former dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, and it has been […]

A soldier outside the Splendid Hotel, in the wake of a terrorist attack there that killed more than 30 people, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Jan. 18 , 2016 (AP photo by Sunday Alamba).

Late last year, in the early morning hours of Dec. 16, 40 heavily armed fighters stormed a military post in Nassoumbou, in northern Burkina Faso, about 18 miles from the border with Mali. Many observers assumed the attack was conducted by one of the extremist groups that are active across the Sahel and that find a safe haven in parts of Mali. Burkina Faso had already suffered several attacks at the hands of foreign insurgents, most often in its remote northern provinces, but also when operatives of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb infiltrated Ouagadougou, the capital, in January 2016, killing […]