Africa Fears Turkish Arms Smuggled through Libya May Fall in Wrong Hands

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari recently warned that the chaos and spread of arms in Libya may negatively impact security in Africa as a whole.

His remarks raised concerns among experts that the weapons smuggled into Libya, namely from Turkey, may fall in the wrong hands in Africa, especially terrorist groups.

Will Somalia Be Collateral Damage of Ethiopia’s Tigray Conflict?

In November, as the Ethiopian government escalated its military campaign against the northern Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed quietly ordered a drawdown of Ethiopian peacekeepers from neighboring Somalia. The scale of the move is still unconfirmed, but as many as 3,000 Ethiopian troops were reportedly redeployed to fight against the regional ruling party in Tigray, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF. Around 200 to 300 ethnic Tigrayan soldiers in Somalia were also disarmed, and some may have even been purged from the ranks.

Conflict trends update

ETHIOPIA-SUDAN

Ethiopia accused Sudan of advancing further into the disputed border region between Sudan’s Al-Qadarif state and Ethiopia’s Amhara region. Government-backed Ethiopian militias last month battled Sudanese regular forces, causing civilian casualties on both sides and leaving four Sudanese soldiers dead.

Afghanistan is not a Dar-ul-Harb (House of War), but Taliban continue killing Afghans

Despite the Taliban and religious scholars insist that under Islamic law Afghanistan is not a Dar-ul-Harb (house of war), Taliban continue fighting Afghan government and killing civilians. They vehemently reject as baseless claims that the country is a Dar-ul-Harb. Simultaneously, the Taliban also say: “No one has announced that Afghanistan is a Dar-ul Harb.”

2020 Trends in Terrorism: From ISIS Fragmentation to Lone-Actor Attacks

The Global Terrorism Index points to the need for better data and local insights to inform policy to counter extremism.

In the past five years, terrorist attacks have declined notably around the globe. While this is certainly good news—particularly in the 20th year of the so-called global war on terror—terrorism remains a pervasive threat. Despite declines in its prevalence, the scale of the challenge posed by terrorism and the violent ideologies that underpin it is still immense and the mechanisms by which to address it remain complex and in need of further coordination on a global scale. What trends did we see in 2020? And how can those trends inform policy to counter violent extremism?

Ethiopia’s Worsening Crisis Threatens Regional, Middle East Security

The Horn of Africa is increasingly an integral part of the Middle East’s security landscape.

The Gulf Arabs recognize a strategic reality that has eluded the stove-piped U.S. foreign and security policy bureaucracy for too long: The Horn of Africa is an integral part of the Middle East’s security landscape, and increasingly so. No country demonstrates this more clearly than Ethiopia. That country’s escalating internal crises pose an increasingly grave threat not only to the country’s citizens but to international peace and security and to the interests of the United States and its partners in the Middle East, principally Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).