Terrorism Archive

The bitter Arab rivalry in the Persian Gulf is reshaping traditional spheres of influence and exacerbating fault lines farther south, in the Horn of Africa, the continent’s most volatile region. The spat between fellow members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which began a year ago when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led an embargo of neighboring Qatar that shows no sign of ending, has sparked frantic diplomatic and economic activity across the Red Sea, with serious security consequences. Thrust center-stage into these changing political geographies is Somalia, among the world’s poorest and most conflict-prone countries. The fragile nation, […]

Last month, Pakistan made one of the most important political moves in its 70-year history. Parliament passed legislation, officially the 25th Constitutional Amendment Bill, which paves the way for the merger of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas with the neighboring province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. On May 31, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain signed the bill into law. Pakistan’s tribal belt will now come under the writ of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial government. North Waziristan, South Waziristan and the rest of Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies will become districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. No longer will they be loosely administered by national government representatives known as political […]

During a January talk in Israel, retired Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director, warned that the world had entered an age of the “weaponization of everything.” What he meant was that weapons are no longer simply the traditional tools of war—guns, missiles, warplanes, naval ships and so forth—but everyday objects that can be adapted to damage, destroy or kill. Think, for instance, of the hijacked airliners in the Sept. 11 attacks, the increasingly common use of trucks and cars for terrorism, and the kinds of aggressive information warfare conducted through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns that exploit “fake news” and […]