Month: November 2015

At this time last year, a string of leaderless resistance-style attacks by grassroots jihadists in the West was making people very nervous. And their concern was understandable: In late October 2014, the tempo of attacks by grassroots jihadists in the West ...

A critical shift in the Kremlin’s budgetary planning is the flat growth in defense spending, which had risen steadily every year since 2011. The Kremlin had planned on expanding defense spending from the 2014 budget to 2015 by 20 percent ...

Nigerian state is now the largest economy in Africa, and global multinationals are queuing up to tap into its potential. Yet there are still major hurdles for the country to overcome before it can properly silence its critics. The clouds ...

Analysis Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group based in northeastern Nigeria, has aroused little attention in the West despite launching assaults on churches, police stations and government buildings that have killed an estimated 10,000 people since 2002. The group, however, has recently been in ...

Nov. 6 Syria Rebels from the Free Syrian Army and from various Islamist groups recently defeated an offensive conducted by loyalist forces backed by Iran and Russia in Hama province. Rebels have since launched a counteroffensive, during which they seized ...

Jordan: Military Officer Kills Americans, South African At Training Center A Jordanian military officer shot and killed two Americans and a South African before security forces shot and killed him at a police training center outside of Amman on Nov. ...

Analysis Though many mysteries still surround the recent crash of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula, some explanations of what happened are more likely to be true than others. On Oct. 31, Metrojet Flight 9268 broke into pieces shortly ...

Analysis The balance of economic power in Mozambique has undergone a major change, rekindling dissatisfaction with the country’s entrenched ruling elite. The change means the East African country’s longtime ruling party will have to make political and economic concessions to ...

Forecast A recent agreement to resolve some historical grievances will not seriously assuage deep anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea. South Korea will likely ignore U.S. and Japanese calls to send ships into the South China Sea, which risk antagonizing China. ...

Tanzania’s new president, John Magufuli, and the country’s first female vice president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, were sworn into office Nov. 5, News 24 reported.  Magufuli won the election in October with 58 percent of the vote. Elections were mostly peaceful, ...