In February 2017, ACLED released the second annual dataset of South and Southeast Asia political violence and protest data. This set covers events in 2016 across ten South and Southeast Asian states. Historical data from 2010 for each country are in the final stages of review, and Pakistan’s data from January 2010-present are available for…
The end of 2015 signalled a high note in India-Pakistan relations with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paying a historic visit on December 25 to his Pakistani counterpart, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (BBC News, 1 January 2016). This was the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Pakistan in over a decade. However, hopes for…
The Northeast and the Maoist insurgencies have posed major security threats to the Indian state since the 1950s and late 1960s. In 2012, the Home Minister of India declared the Maoist insurgency as the ‘most formidable security challenge facing the country’ (BBC News, 16 April 2012). In the last few years, however, levels of violence…
Pakistan’s five provinces contain very different conflict environments (see Figure 1). This piece reviews data collected on armed, organized violence, riots and protests from 2010-2016. It demonstrates the multifaceted nature of conflict across the country, and the difficulty in establishing peace across the state. Pakistan’s most populous provinces, Punjab and Sindh, generally see less armed,…
Operation Neptune Spear was a US offensive aimed at capturing Osama Bin Laden (OBL). It was launched out of Afghanistan and carried out in Abbotabad, Pakistan in the early hours of May 2, 2011. The operation was successful, and has had both short and long-term effects on the political, social, and military landscape of Pakistan.…
Conflict and political violence events in January 2017 dropped to their lowest recorded levels since September 2013 (see Figure 1). Conflict-related fatalities were subject to an artificial spike in December 2016 after UN-backed Government of National Accord forces in Sirte reported the discovery of over 250 militant bodies during clean-up operations following the announcement that…
Over the course of 2016, Nigeria witnessed a general downward trend in violence starting in March 2016. However, a significant spike of over 900 fatalities recorded in February preceded this downward trend, which was almost 550 more than the month before (see Figure 1). Out of the total fatalities recorded in February, 358 were reported…
The nearly 3,000 fatalities reported between November 2015 and January 2017 rocked Ethiopia and the international community. Unprecedented waves of popular mobilisation in the country mainly drove these trends. Since November 2016 however, the number of riots and protests significantly reduced, giving way to a political violence landscape now dominated by battles and violence against…
African states experienced high rates of both political violence and protest in 2016 (see Figure 2). The aggregated totals are remarkably similar to those of 2015, which indicates three important lessons going forward: The crisis points on the continent- Libya, South Sudan, Somalia, and Nigeria- continue to produce significant violence, with substantial harm to civilians…
Kenya Kenya saw a decrease in political violence and reported fatalities in 2016. The vast majority of fatalities in 2016 still came from Al Shabaab activity. The country also saw a spike in demonstrations in June over whether the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) should be reformed before the general elections of August 2017…