Conflicts

The Ecuadorian Security Crisis is an organized-crime and state-security emergency that escalated sharply in January 2024 when President Daniel Noboa declared an internal armed conflict against criminal groups. The crisis involves prison control, gang violence, assassinations, extortion, drug-trafficking routes, port logistics, judicial intimidation, emergency decrees, and military-police operations.

The Fano Insurgency is an armed conflict in Ethiopia's Amhara region between Fano militia networks and Ethiopian federal forces, escalating after federal moves to disarm regional and irregular armed formations. The conflict includes urban clashes, rural guerrilla activity, emergency rule, drone strikes, mass arrests, disrupted hospitals, local sieges, and attacks affecting civilians and health services. The conflict sits at the intersection of Ethiopia's post-Tigray security settlement, Amhara grievances, contested territorial claims, fragmented militia command, state consolidation, local autonomy debates, and human-rights abuses by multiple parties. Militia fragmentation, counterinsurgency tactics, and civilian access problems shape the conflict's staying power.

The Afghan Conflict after 2021 refers to the security environment that followed the Taliban's seizure of Kabul and the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Large-scale coalition war ended, but violence did not disappear. The Taliban became the de facto governing authority while facing ISIS-K attacks, anti-Taliban resistance activity, cross-border tension with Pakistan, sanctions pressure, humanitarian collapse, and deep restrictions on women and civil society.

The Islamic State insurgency in Syria is the post-territorial phase of ISIS activity after the loss of its last major enclave in 2019. The insurgency connects the Syrian civil war, SDF detention camps, U.S.-led coalition operations, regime-held desert zones, cross-border Iraq-Syria networks, prison-break attempts, and the long afterlife of the self-declared caliphate. ISIS did not disappear when it lost towns; it shifted toward cells, assassinations, extortion, desert mobility, prison networks, propaganda, and opportunistic attacks in the gaps between rival Syrian, Kurdish, Iraqi, Iranian-backed, Russian, and coalition security systems.

The Haitian Gang Conflict intensified from 2018 onward as armed groups expanded from chronic localized violence into a wider crisis of security, circulation, and governance. Gangs increasingly controlled neighborhoods, roads, ports, fuel routes, and commercial chokepoints while Haiti's political institutions, police capacity, and judicial systems struggled to contain or even map the changing balance of coercive power. The conflict connects territorial coercion, kidnappings, prison breaks, sanctions, international security missions, civilian displacement, and the transformation of gang networks into decisive political-security actors. Non-state armed groups acquired practical governing leverage over movement, markets, and public fear.

The Oromo Conflict is a continuing security and political conflict in Ethiopia centered on Oromia, the Oromo Liberation Army, federal and regional security forces, unresolved Oromo political grievances, and contested post-2018 reforms. The current phase intensified after parts of the Oromo Liberation Front's armed wing refused disarmament and continued fighting the Ethiopian state. The conflict connects Ethiopia's political transition, Oromia's strategic geography around Addis Ababa, failed settlement attempts, ethnic and regional tension, civilian attacks, and the overlap between local insurgency and national fragmentation. It remains one of Ethiopia's most persistent internal security crises.

The Iraqi Insurgency that followed the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2017 is a low-intensity security conflict involving ISIS cells, Iraqi security forces, Kurdish and local forces, Popular Mobilization networks, and international coalition support. It is not a return to the 2014-2017 territorial war, but a continuation of insurgent adaptation through ambushes, intimidation, rural hide sites, extortion, assassinations, and occasional mass-casualty attacks. The conflict persists because security gains have not fully resolved Iraq's local governance gaps. Disputed territories, militia politics, detention issues, and uneven intelligence sharing all shape whether small ISIS cells can survive and regenerate. The insurgency illustrates that a defeated proto-state can leave behind a durable clandestine threat.

The Mozambican Insurgency is an armed conflict centered on Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique, where local militants commonly associated with Ansar al-Sunna and Islamic State-linked networks have attacked civilians, state forces, towns, and infrastructure since 2017. The conflict connects local grievances, transnational jihadist branding, coastal and forest terrain, liquefied natural gas projects, regional military intervention, and a major displacement crisis. The insurgency has survived by combining local roots with external branding and cross-border mobility.

The Burkina Faso Insurgency is a Sahel conflict involving jihadist groups, state security forces, civilian auxiliaries, local communities, and a military-led government. Since the mid-2010s, violence has expanded from border areas into a national crisis marked by besieged towns, displacement, massacres, explosive devices, and severe limits on independent reporting. The conflict is now shaped by JNIM, IS Sahel, Burkinabe forces, Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, and communities caught between jihadist coercion and counterinsurgency reprisals. The conflict demonstrates how jihadist insurgency, coup politics, community self-defense, state abuses, and information control can combine in a rapidly deteriorating security environment.

The Niger Insurgency is a multi-front armed conflict shaped by Sahel jihadist expansion, Lake Chad Basin spillover, military counterinsurgency, border insecurity, and the political shock of Niger's 2023 coup. Armed groups linked to Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and ISWAP have attacked civilians, soldiers, villages, roads, aid corridors, markets, and border communities. Niger sits between Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Libya, and Algeria. The insurgency involves Tillaberi and Diffa regions, IS Sahel, JNIM-linked networks, Boko Haram, regional juntas, foreign military withdrawals, displacement, and civilian-protection failures.

The Sinai Insurgency that intensified after 2011 is the long-running militant conflict in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula involving jihadist organizations, Egyptian security forces, and affected local communities in a strategically sensitive border and chokepoint region. It grew in the aftermath of Egypt's 2011 upheaval and later became one of the most persistent insurgent-security crises in the eastern Arab world. The conflict links state-security vacuums, jihadist adaptation, Sinai's geography, Egypt-Israel strategic constraints, and the difficulty of crushing insurgency in a politically and economically marginalized region.

The Nigerian Bandit Conflict is an armed-security crisis centered mainly in northwestern Nigeria, involving loose armed gangs, cattle-rustling networks, kidnapping groups, vigilantes, local communities, and state security forces. What began around rural criminality, pastoralist grievances, and local self-defense has become a wider conflict marked by mass abductions, village raids, extortion, displacement, and occasional overlap with jihadist networks. The conflict demonstrates how criminal violence can become strategically significant, territorial, and politically destabilizing without fitting cleanly into either insurgency or organized crime categories. It is also central to understanding rural insecurity beyond Boko Haram.

The Boko Haram Insurgency began in northeastern Nigeria and expanded into a regional Lake Chad Basin conflict involving Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Boko Haram/JAS factions, ISWAP, local vigilantes, and multinational security forces. The conflict has combined terrorism, guerrilla warfare, mass abduction, displacement, factional jihadist rivalry, and difficult counterinsurgency terrain. Its violence has repeatedly moved across borders, while civilians face coercion from armed groups, suspicion from security forces, and disrupted access to farms, roads, schools, and markets. The insurgency links militant governance, state weakness, borderlands, humanitarian emergency, factional fragmentation, and the limits of military campaigns against mobile armed groups.

The Insurgency in the North Caucasus after 2009 was the dispersed militant violence that continued across Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and nearby republics after the formal end of Russia's 'counterterrorist operation' in Chechnya. It was less a single-front war than a regional network of insurgency, repression, radicalization, and local authoritarian security management. The conflict demonstrates how a supposedly ended separatist war can evolve into a broader insurgent-security system stretching across an entire region.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan Insurgency is Pakistan's long-running conflict with the Pakistani Taliban and related militant networks, centered on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, former FATA areas, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It combines terrorism, guerrilla warfare, sectarian violence, state counterinsurgency, border displacement, police insecurity, tribal politics, suicide attacks, and cross-border sanctuary disputes. The conflict links Pakistan's domestic security, the Afghan Taliban's return to power, the Durand Line, ISKP competition, Chinese project security, school and police attacks, drone-era counterterrorism legacies, and repeated cycles of military operations, ceasefires, and breakdowns. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has survived repeated setbacks by shifting geography and exploiting border politics.

The Mexican Drug War is the long-running conflict between the Mexican state, drug-trafficking organizations, local criminal groups, and communities caught between them. It intensified after the federal government's 2006 militarized campaign against cartels and evolved into a fragmented conflict involving homicide, disappearances, corruption, fentanyl supply chains, extortion, and attacks on officials and journalists. The conflict combines organized crime, counterinsurgency-like state operations, cross-border economics, U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, and a severe human-rights and governance crisis. Its effects vary by region but reshape national security.

The Balochistan Insurgency is a long-running conflict in Pakistan's largest province by area, involving Baloch separatist armed groups, Pakistani security forces, political grievances over autonomy and resources, and violence affecting civilians, infrastructure, state institutions, and Chinese-linked projects. The current phase is often traced to the mid-2000s, but the conflict draws on older cycles of rebellion and repression. The insurgency matters because it connects local marginalization, federal control, resource politics, counterterrorism, regional borders, and the security of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It is lower intensity than interstate war, but it imposes persistent costs on Pakistan's internal security, economic planning, and political cohesion. The conflict involves both an insurgent campaign and governance failures that perpetuate the insurgency.

Insurgencies in Pakistan refers to overlapping armed conflicts involving Islamist militants, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan factions, Baloch separatist groups, Islamic State Khorasan-linked violence, sectarian attacks, and Pakistani security operations. The conflict is concentrated most heavily in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, but it affects national politics, elections, infrastructure security, border diplomacy, and civilian life. The insurgency involves a complex interplay of TTP violence, the Baloch insurgency, spillover from Afghanistan, counterterrorism operations, and political instability, with the added challenge of distinguishing between insurgency, criminal violence, and sectarian violence. The conflict is multifaceted and cannot be oversimplified due to the presence of distinct actors.

The Insurgency in the Maghreb is the post-2002 jihadist conflict that grew from Algeria's civil-war aftermath and expanded through al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Sahara-Sahel smuggling routes, kidnapping networks, and attacks across North and West Africa. It links Algeria, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, and external counterterrorism support. The conflict demonstrates how a national insurgency can mutate into a transnational armed network shaped by desert mobility, weak border control, organized crime, and global jihadist branding.

The Kurdish-Turkish Conflict that began in 1984 is the long-running war between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), shaped by Kurdish political exclusion, insurgent warfare, counterinsurgency, and later regional spillover into Iraq and Syria. Over time it became one of the Middle East's most durable state-versus-insurgency conflicts. The conflict links nationalism, guerrilla warfare, mountain-border geography, repression, regional sanctuary, and the way domestic conflict can fuse with wider Middle Eastern instability.