Raleigh Report - July 2026

“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.” – Henry Kissinger 

Are we in an interregnum period with the Iran conflict? Perhaps it will be largely down to whether the “southern” strategy is able to change the balance of power in the Strait. The Lebanese agreement — long may it hold — is perhaps another way of undercutting Iranian influence to produce a “slow death” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-led government. In the meantime, let’s talk about what is going on outside of the Middle East.  

We looked at over a million protests and riots (violent demonstrations/mob violence) this week to determine what has happened in the past six years or so. In our data, riots accounted for 11.3% of events and protests for 88.7%. Both have had a steady rise, with protests often related to labor and student concerns, and riots more often occurring around electoral and political disputes. Such riots were concentrated in India (2024), the United States (2020 and 2026), South Korea (2024), Peru (2023, around the post-Castillo crisis), Brazil (2022), and Bangladesh (2025), and peaked around contested votes. Public service grievances (over electricity, water, fuel, and roads) were the second-most riot-prone theme: 14.7% of protests turned violent, typically via road blockades and confrontations over blackouts and shortages. These were heavily concentrated in India and Pakistan (together constituting over half of all events), Mexico, South Africa, Venezuela, and Iraq. The Gaza/Palestine/Israel riot rate (outside of Palestine and Israel) was quite low; Gaza-related protests occurred mainly in the US, Morocco, Yemen, and Europe (from around 7,000 events in 2022 to 29,418 in 2024).  

Ethnic, racial, religious, and communal tensions ran slightly above the violence average, as 12.3% of these events were riots. Between 2023 and 2025, India dominated (with nearly a third of all such events), followed by Pakistan, the US, Ecuador (Indigenous-led unrest), Mexico, and Colombia. Migrant- and “foreigner”-related unrest is rising fastest of any theme. This kind of unrest more than doubled — from around 2,800 events per year between 2020 and 2022 to 7,594 in 2025 and 4,961 in 2026 so far — driven overwhelmingly by immigration and deportation in the US, followed by Germany, France, Italy (European asylum debates), and South Africa (xenophobic violence). When violent, it was concentrated in South Africa (occurring recently) and southern Europe rather than the US. Suffice to conclude that the West has a growing concern about what race riots, migration protests, cost of living, and anti-government movements will bring about; there is a palpable sense of disorder that the governments cannot stem. 

Indeed, the riots in Belfast, South Africa, Ireland, elsewhere in the United Kingdom, etc., are underscoring a worrying development. There are many preconceptions about Western rioting and protesting that we can review here: First, public demonstrations in any form are not always “legitimate” acts. The London riots of 2011 and the 6 January Capitol riot in the US (should you consider it a riot) are all wanton acts of destruction, and were punished accordingly. Yet, there is a strong tendency recently to support and excuse the violence and damage from favored causes, while denigrating the violence and damage from less-supported causes. In many cases, rioters will be present within a protest. Whether you find the violence delegitimizing is closely associated with your support of the general theme. If I presented you with the multiple, massive protests in London that involve significant fights with police and counter-protestors, would you want to know under which banner they fell before you pass judgment? What is the lesson here? Protests and riots can be about many things simultaneously, and are not justified only when they connect to our own pet causes. 

There are worries that societal fractures, polarization, and fragmentation are being exaggerated and activated by social media and (extreme/populist) political parties. Of course, it was ever thus. It is certainly true that more people get news that supports and exaggerates their preconceptions about disorder and who is to blame. It is also true that political parties and positions across countries are trying to take advantage of the protests, public reaction, and even disorder that underlie these. A good example is the 2020-2021 social justice movement in the US, which captivated that country and beyond because there were clear and obvious differences between how racial and ethnic minorities were treated by US security forces. The underlying social forces that motivated people to protest were real, as was the public’s desire to change them. The political posturing followed by parties for and against the eventual social justice movement was also part opportunism, part cynical ploy to take advantage of this moment. 

It is also true that the protest experience and frequency across the West are starkly different. Issues rocking the public in the UK (government failure, identity politics, migration) are very different from the issues permeating in the US (government corruption, migration, democratic reversals). So too are the triggers, forms, and reactions to protests: In the UK, the two issues of migration and contested identities are becoming more entwined in part because the public is increasingly viewing both as “state failure” issues. As examples, whether the human rights of current asylum seekers (both approved and denied) should take precedence over public security, or whether the individual rights of dangerous individuals (British or otherwise) or the “equity” of outcomes should be prioritized over public security. In the first case, asylum seekers or illegally present persons committing terrible crimes generate increasingly dangerous public reactions against whole groups (e.g., the attacking of asylum hotels in the summer of 2025 or the recent attempted murder in Belfast led to gangs dragging immigrants from their homes on several nights of rioting). In a different example, a dangerous person recently released from state care killed three people soon afterward. Both recent cases  (and others) are feeding into a growing public sense that those committing the crimes had direct engagement with state services that did not raise alarms or use their authority to stop people and prioritize public safety. 

As a result, there is a strong revision planned of the UK’s asylum rules (modeled after Canada’s), very significant and more difficult refugee rules (modeled after Denmark’s), and a public call to remove the state from certain provisions of the Equality Act and  European Convention on Human Rights. Some are designed to make the problems of migration “manageable” by the state and stop the ability of the far-right parties to take advantage of growing public concerns around change rates, experienced as contests of nationality, race, religion, etc. Others are designed to prioritize public security over identity and equity. 

But these narratives are growing because of the combination of high levels of societal change, a widespread sense that public bodies are institutionally incompetent, and reflections on who bears the cost of those changes. Similar issues are occurring in Ireland, where the state has imposed on rural and urban communities a rate of change that is destabilizing without any sense of how to manage drastically altered demographics (e.g., doubling a small village population through asylum housing). 

In short, protests and riots can reflect widely or narrowly held beliefs of voters and citizens, but they are not reliable or consistent indicators of such. For all of the extremism on many sides and political opportunism, a lot of people (who won’t protest or riot but will vote) are concerned about the composition of their communities, the rate of change within their countries, and public provision. Calling those people racists isn’t winning the point; it is massively missing the point. 

In the US, this is quite a different situation: The level of protest has been very high since May 2020 (George Floyd’s murder as the trigger) and continues to take a mass shape, largely responding to more liberal causes. The protests in the US are often now public responses to government overreach, acts of dubious legality (and sometimes crimes against citizens), and corruption. Yet, many, many thousands of protests of just the last 18 months have had zero impact on those concerns. So much so that maybe they are less protest, more social gathering. Although the data center protests (rooted as they are in a locality, in an understandable and tangible narrative) are more successful. 

Riots and protests are not answers to real concerns, but they indicate that something is wrong; and in that way, they are both useless and useful to very different audiences. Like everything now, it is about the audience, and not the effort. I know that predicting the new “civil war” in the US and UK is in vogue, but rest assured, it won’t be from these protests. Generally, protests and riots are not the precursors to larger conflicts, as the participants are very unlikely recruits. Take heart that the vast majority of all people want these problems acknowledged and addressed, not ignored. 

Also – this quiz is fascinating for revealing where you stand on all sorts of positions! 

Notes and notions

So! The World Cup! I hope you are enjoying it — I love it, as it was how I found out that Zinedine Zidane exists, for which I am forever grateful. I am holding out for another Morocco-France contest, as it had such good vibes last time. Yet (yet!) the bloody hydration break nonsense, the Aramco ads, the late play!

On Aramco, they have a magazine! And many years ago, its digital version had this altogether helpful guide to camel straddling, which I stumbled upon. It is very informative. I missed out on camel news now for at least two months, so I apologize. 

When not watching matches, we have been watching “Dear England” in which a Fiennes brother plays Gareth Southgate, with his anxious twitches, impeccable manners, and thoughtful approaches to football and life. 

This is delightful, as is this.

There is quite the scandal brewing in Ireland over supplies to Russia’s war machine. I am from a town quite close to here, and it is rocking the place! As always, an ignoble response. 

I have been spending a lot of time in the US recently, as my father was gravely ill. He passed away last week, and so that chapter of our American story is over. He really took to the US, and eventually (in semi-retirement) replaced Wisconsin’s deep cold and wide fields with scorching weather, Trump support, excellent medical care, etc. in Florida. The US has changed a lot since we originally got there, and that was most evident in that the Fourth of July this year seems oddly suspended. People really are more atomized: 20 years ago, small towns would have had signs about parades and revelry for the country’s most important holiday. Yet this year, for the 250th anniversary of America, not one sign, not one event for communities to meet, and I looked in every place I went. It is a great country and needs its people to get together and celebrate it! I was young and dumb there, and no better country for that. 

In his last weeks, we had a little routine where we would watch a classic film together in the afternoon. I asked many people for their recommendations, and am very grateful for their excellent suggestions: “Jaws,” “The Godfather(s),” “Silence of the Lambs,” “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Braveheart” … you can see the theme. We never got to “The Secret in Their Eyes” and “The ABC Murders.” But word to the wise: Some films have really aged badly – e.g., “Gangs of New York.”

ACLED webinars

Webinar | Israel and the Gulf: How has the war affected regional security?

In our next webinar, ACLED’s experts will turn their attention to how the Iran-United States-Israel war has exposed the limits of regional strategies toward Iran. While the interim US-Iran memorandum of understanding offers a fragile window to pause hostilities and stabilize maritime traffic, it leaves Israel and the Gulf’s core strategic dilemmas unresolved. How should they deter Iran? How far should they rely on US guarantees? And, can diplomacy contain a conflict that has already spilled across the region? Register to secure your attendance. 

Webinar | How will Colombia’s election reshape security ties with Venezuela?

On 30 June, we hosted a webinar in which our resident expert on Venezuela, Tiziano Breda, was joined by Bram Ebus, Founder and Co-Director at Amazon Underworld, and Angela Olaya, Co-Founder and Director at Fundación CORE, to discuss the outcome of Colombia’s elections on its relationship with Venezuela. A big topic of discussion was whether the two countries can revive security cooperation and investment collaboration along the border. If you missed it, you can watch the recording. 

Webinar | Unveiling ACLED’s South China Sea conflict monitor

If you missed the webinar in which we unveiled ACLED’s new South China Sea Monitor, a dashboard designed to track gray zone tactics, maritime tensions, and key developments in the South China Sea, you can watch the recording here. Combining the capabilities of this new dashboard with the insights of regional experts, the webinar offered a data-driven perspective on how maritime tensions are evolving, what patterns are emerging, and what this means for stability in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

Select ACLED in the media!

• This past month, ACLED data were used by Reuters, the Associated Press, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Financial Times,  Foreign Policy, Save the Children, and the United Nations, to name some instances.
• Our Europe experts have been busy. Cristian Vlas’ comments on Ukrainian drone strikes in Russia were picked up by the BBC, Witold Stupnicki’s recent  report on Russia’s shadow fleet was mentioned in the Independent, and Olha Polishchuk spoke to Icarus Complex on Russia’s push into Ukraine.
• Ladd Serwat spoke to The Guardian about kidnappings in Nigeria.
• Tiziano Breda spoke to The Guardian about Colombia’s elections and France24 about those in Peru. The Latin Times also covered Colombia’s election using ACLED data, and Bloomberg picked up our latest report on cooperation between Colombia and Venezuela, which provides a few scenarios on the outcome of the elections.
• Newsweek picked Bassel Doueik’s brain for an article it ran on “100 Days of Iran War: Winners and Losers,” and The National quoted him about Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.
• Italian publication 24+ used some of Sherwan Ali’s insights about the Houthis and the Red Sea crisis.
• Bianca Ho spoke to CBS News for its article on antifa.
• Ali Mahmoud Ali shared insights with the Associated Press on the RSF’s operations in Sudan. 
• ACLED was even mentioned in some World Cup coverage!