Terrorism Archive

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Iran has transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas’ military wing over recent months in an effort to revive ties. In an email interview, Nathan Thrall, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, discussed Hamas’ internal divisions. WPR: What are the key areas of dissension between Hamas’ Gaza-based leadership and its foreign-based leadership? Nathan Thrall: Hamas’ primary challenge over the past several years has been navigating a rapidly changing regional landscape characterized by growing Sunni-Shiite sectarianism, as well as by intra-Sunni fighting. Hamas is a Sunni organization connected to the […]

I carry a plastic chair over to sit with Pastor Samuel Tewogbola outside his house in the southern Nigerian town of Igarra. The family goat wanders past us, nosing the earth. It’s November 2014, and I am doing preliminary research for a future book. Tewogbola is a fire-and-brimstone preacher—43 years in a hard-line Pentecostal church. When I arrived with my friend Esther, his daughter, he made us all kneel in his doorway while he intoned thanks to Jesus for our safe journey. We’re philosophizing, talking about what makes up good human character, and about money—how money is used to buy […]

Most days in March, pairs of young men mounted Honda 125 motorbikes to ride out of a mud-walled compound in the town of Muslimbagh, in Pakistan’s province of Baluchistan. Turbans wrapped around their faces to ward off the dust, they headed for the Afghan border, 50 miles away. These young men, recruits from the marginalized Pashtun communities of the borderlands, were riding off to be fighters for the Taliban. Most of their peers who have not taken up arms toil as casual laborers for the meagerest of pay. By joining a dilgai, or Taliban armed group, the young Pashtun men […]

Earlier this month, Kenya suspended the licenses of 13 Somali money transfer agencies operating in Nairobi in a bid to limit funding to al-Shabab militants. In an email interview, Sarah Hearn, an associate director and senior fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, discussed the role of remittances in Somalia’s economy. WPR: How important are remittances for Somalia’s economy? Sarah Hearn: Remittances, described as Somalia’s lifeline, are the largest source of family support and development finance in the country. There are no official remittance figures, but NGOs have estimated that migrants send up to $1.3 billion per year […]

On March 30, Joan Kagezi, a senior Ugandan prosecutor, was assassinated in front of her children while on her way home from the grocery store in a Kampala suburb. Kagezi was one of the key prosecutors in the trial of 13 suspected members of the Somali militant group al-Shabab accused of perpetrating the July 2010 bombings in Kampala that killed 76 people watching a World Cup game. The start of the Kampala trial in the middle of March was a landmark in Uganda’s fight against terrorism. But now the Directorate of Public Prosecutions has lost one of its stars. With […]

Beginning in January and accelerating in the last week of March, senior State Department officials have been making high-profile speeches on U.S. interests and policies regarding Central Asia. The policy rollout culminated on March 31, when Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken delivered a speech at the Brookings Institution on Washington’s long-term vision for Central Asia. Combined, the speeches offer insight into Washington’s approach to the resource-rich and highly contested region. As some observers have pointed out, one novel element of that approach is an explicit U.S. attempt to praise China’s growing presence in Central Asia, while condemning that […]