A German court sentenced on February 24 the alleged “Islamic State leader of Germany” to a lengthy prison sentence. The trial against Salafist preacher Ahmad Abdelaziz Abdullah Abdullah, better known as Abu Walaa, lasted three-and-a-half-years and provides insights into radicalization and Islamic State (IS) recruitment... MORE

Abdullah Yahya al-Hakim (a.k.a. Abu Ali al-Hakim) is one of the most prominent military leaders of the Yemeni Houthi movement. Since 2011, he led the group in decisive battles that expanded the Houthi’s control of the country. Over the past few years, the Shia group... MORE

On January 28, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced that the wali, or governor of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, Abu Yasser al-Issawi, was killed during a security operation. Issawi was assassinated in the Wadi al-Shay valley in southern Kirkuk, an area known for an... MORE

Turkey’s plan to build a canal bypassing the Bosporus Strait and potentially upsetting the Montreux Convention (see EDM, February 9) along with Russia’s movement of warships from the Caspian to the Sea of Azov via the Volga–Don Canal in order to threaten Ukraine (see EDM,... MORE

The next meeting of the Intergovernmental Council of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) will be held in the central Russian city of Kazan, on April 29–30 (TASS, March 17). A key agenda item for the EEU member states may reportedly be to discuss the... MORE

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced earlier this year that a number of large infrastructure projects had been launched in the territories liberated from Armenian occupation as a result of the 2020 Second Karabakh War. Importantly, he added that friendly countries and partners would be involved... MORE

A February 2017 airstrike in Idlib, Syria targeted and killed Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, a deputy to al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Masri was one of the first foreign terrorists to have been killed using the U.S. military’s newest counter-terrorism weapon: the AGM-114R9X (R9X) Hellfire missile, often... MORE

*To Read Part One, Please Click Here *To Read Part Two, Please Click Here The Zangezur corridor between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan across southern Armenia, if re-opened, will carry greater economic significance for the connected states than its geopolitical implications in the short to medium... MORE

On April 5, Ukraine’s acting minister of energy, Yuriy Vitrenko, and his Qatari counterpart, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, signed a bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) on enhancing energy cooperation between the two countries (Mpe.kmu.gov.ua, April 5). The document envisages, in particular, possible Qatari investments in the... MORE

Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, and Colonel General Sherali Mirzo, the defense minister of Tajikistan, met last week (April 6 and 8) in Tehran, where they inter alia signed an agreement on creating a joint military defense... MORE