Islamic State
Moscow attacks: Why Putin was quick to blame Ukraine
As details of the recent terrorist attack in Moscow gradually emerged, the whirlwind of speculations surrounding culpability intensified. Theories ranged wildly from accusations…
Islamic State terror attack in Moscow a grim acknowledgement of global power status Russia seeks
President Vladimir Putin has long sought to restore Russia’s global status after the personally and nationally humiliating defeat of the Cold War. One of the ways he has done so…
Non-state actors and the phantom of asymmetry
The sunny days of free-riding are receding. In some form or another, most countries have leeched off American power for the last three decades. The preponderance of US military…
Misogyny is often the connection between overlapping far-right ideologies
On the afternoon of 6 May, a gunman opened fire in a mall carpark in Allen, Texas, killing eight and wounding seven others before he was shot dead by a police officer. Despite…
Is a stable Afghanistan where China, Russia and the US cooperate?
There is little that the United States can concur with China and Russia at a time regularly described as a “Second (or New) Cold War”. Yet amid all the ideological differences,…
Why outsourcing counter-terrorism online won’t work in future
The past five years have seen the creation of a latticework of overlapping methodologies to identify and remove online terrorist content and hate speech. Most notably, a…
The militarisation of motherhood: repatriating ISIS’s Western women
The Australian government’s decision to repatriate more than 20 women and 40 children from camps in Syria is an overdue policy change, representing a stark rhetorical shift. In…
Risks and responses repatriating foreign terrorist fighters and families
Last weekend, the first of about 60 Australian women and children planned to be repatriated from detention camps in Syria arrived home. As has been the case in most Western…
Maldives: the legacy of Islamic State
From 2014 to 2018, more people departed the Maldives to join with Islamic State than from any other country. In total, this figure is estimated at 250 men and women from a…
Islamic State: women, justice, and a complex impasse
Reporting that the government will repatriate Australian women and children from Kurdish-run detention camps in Syria is recognition that the current state of affairs could not…