Yemen’s Fractured South: Aden, Abyan, and Lahij
In Yemen, more than five years of conflict have contributed to an extreme fragmentation of central power and authority and have eroded local political orders. Local structures of authority have emerged, along with a plethora of para-state agents and militias at the behest of local elites and international patrons.…
Last Man Standing: An Analysis of South Sudan’s Elongated Peace Process
On 12 November, the government of South Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – In Opposition (SPLM-IO) rebellion, and a raft of smaller armed and unarmed groups are expected to form a Transitional Government of National Unity, under the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS, signed in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in September 2018).…
Assessing Political Violence & Demonstrations in the United States: ACLED Pilot Data & Preliminary Findings
For three months from July through September 2019, ACLED conducted a pilot project to collect data on political violence and protest across the United States, setting out to identify the most prevalent forms of disorder and to establish comprehensive and consistent source lists for gathering relevant information.…
Central Asia and the Caucasus Data Release
New ACLED data on Central Asia and the Caucasus span eight countries — Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan — and add nearly 17,000 political violence and protest events to the dataset.…
This Time It’s Different: The Implications of Recent Demonstration Events in Iraq
While demonstrations are not uncommon in Iraq, the most recent wave of riots and protests – which has been ongoing since 1 October 2019 – has been unusually violent. Despite some concessions, the high reported fatality count from these demonstrations, and the clear evidence they provide of citizens’ ongoing disenchantment with the government, will continue to pose a serious threat to Iraq’s stability in the near future.…
Global Conflict and Disorder Patterns: 2019
In the past ten years, the world has witnessed a decline in global cooperation and a severe downturn in security. This is manifest through several internationalized wars and massive humanitarian crises across the Middle and Near East, rising nationalism from significant global powers, transnational terror organizations using vicious violence and sophisticated recruitment techniques, cyber-attacks orchestrated by marginalized states, sustained levels of violence in nominally ‘post-conflict’ countries, and a drastic rise in both the number of non-state violent agents and repression by increasingly autocratic governments.…
The (Re)Conquest of Northern Syria
Turkey’s recent assault in northeastern Syria, which follows months of regime consolidation in the northwest, has the potential to even further advance regime gains across Syria. In the third quarter of 2019, the Syrian regime and its allies finally made substantial territorial gains against rebel and Islamist groups in northern Hama and southern Idleb provinces in Syria’s northwest.…
The State of Syria: Q3 2019
In this edition of ACLED’s State of Syria infographic series, Syria Research Manager Muaz A. and Researcher Nick Grinstead map key developments in the Syrian conflict through the third quarter of 2019.…