Raleigh Report - October 2025

“There is no place else to put her. She sets fire to things” — Irene in “A Lady of Letters”

Last month, I reflected on how the development/humanitarian/conflict field has abruptly changed and is unlikely to return to a recognizable form. That shift has left many of the dedicated people working in those areas without direction and without a base set of functions or beliefs. This has come at a time of huge concern about how much conflict is happening in the world, and where and why it is occurring. As I often say in these pages, violence is changing, and it isn’t waiting for us to catch up. Today, let’s chat about our individual role in rebuilding a core set of functions and assumptions about conflict across the world. In particular, what can we contribute to increasing awareness and knowledge about conflict? I think this must start with improving and refining our “violence vocabulary.” 

Two recent episodes have made me reflect on how and what we speak about in conflict. The first is the current United States context, and its well-kept echo chambers, which manage to obfuscate, deny, exaggerate, and generally impede a clear conversation about conflict; the second is an opportunity offered by the Tällberg Foundation to join a discussion about naming cartels as terrorist organizations. In this latter case, using one (highly emotive) conflict term to describe another might be justified, and even useful. 

First, the echo chamber problem is massive. In-group jargon within narrow sets of knowledge is common (e.g., academics who do quantitative research have a within-group known lexicon that specifies and clarifies what we are speaking about). Yet, an echo chamber is different: It hinders what and how you speak about something that is not necessarily an area of expertise. The promise of an echo chamber is that everyone will agree with you, and that any heretics will be hunted. It provides the opposite of a conversation; it only provides conditional approval that you are “on the right side.” Far too much public and private commentary on conflict is this way, and the result is weak, biased, and superficial perspectives that are predictable bad takes. The most common ones I come across are from an avidly anti-Trump stance (e.g., Blueskyism); or focused on the 2020-era progressive patrolling of which words people use; or holding a candle for global development paradigms and their role in it; or as lackeys with little to add but to the cacophony.  There is not an insignificant overlap between the unfortunately under-employed elite (often skewing to the left) and the rise of these ‘takes’. 

The main problem with these chambers is that they place your acquiescence and approval as central. That is insane. Whether we approve or disapprove of anything in conflict is not important. The only thing that matters is what is happening. And, right now,  our violence vocabulary isn’t up to the task of describing what, how, and why. In the past, we endlessly moralized, contextualized, and “verbalized” based on “workshopped,” “approved,” and “co-designed” development philosophies with “buy-in.” As we patrolled the vocabulary and opinions of others, conflict itself got much, much worse. 

It matters how we speak because we must engage with each other about shared risks rather than favorite conflicts. Different conflicts have a lot of PR (public relations), and that PR is used to motivate the public (almost solely in relation to Gaza); corral elites (how it is used in reference to Ukraine); keep opinion columnists very busy (i.e., the 2025 Autocracy Watch and Sudan — at a push); prove your progressive bonafides (i.e., where you stood on Tigray), and elevate one conflict over another. And this problem is intended because miscommunication is rife: I heard a Fox News story recently about the killing of Christians in “Africa’s middle belt,” and it contained all the same hallmarks of the worst blathering on about modern-day “colonizers.” 

People are using terms like “civil war,” “genocide,” “autocracy,” and “enemies”  to describe something they don’t like, and often don’t understand the true meaning of, or use them to exaggerate and mislabel the scope of the problem and assign blame. I cannot emphasize enough what a disservice this is to those affected by it. Words are important because differences are important. There are degrees and variations of cruelty in conflict: Some conflicts have a greater degree of impact than others on national and regional security, and states are obligated to use force against those violently challenging their authority. Words have an agreed meaning and significance, and if they are to matter, they must be heard by those outside your echo chamber. Using “genocide” only when your favored group is affected makes you an unreliable narrator  (i.e., some claim genocides without any deaths!). “Civil war” is not a term to be thrown about when you are struggling to describe a society disagreeing about the reach of commonly followed laws! So my plea is: Learn new words, and strive for neutrality — it is a lot more powerful than a screed. And I suggest getting much more comfortable with disorder and its moral ambiguity if you really want to analyze it. If you don’t, you risk making yourself irrelevant. 

Why does this matter? We speak about the same conflicts but with widely different interpretations of them. After a few decades in this, I think the problem is often that people don’t quite have a handle on what a conflict’s engine is, why it is occurring, and why it occurs as it does. Consider the cartel-terrorism issue. The big news here is that the Trump administration has designated some cartel organizations as terrorist organizations and, in doing so, created a military pathway (and a certain amount of impunity) and opened new legal and financial options to combat cartel actions. It involves some tortured logic to compare the legacy of mass drug smuggling to be similar to 9/11, but it isn’t impossible if “American deaths” is your metric of choice. Indeed, cartels are a much more significant threat by that metric. You might consider “youth recruitment into cartels,” “extortion,” “corruption of officials,” or “sheer volume of violence” as the central problem of cartels, and, if so, a terrorism argument is harder to make and largely ineffective in handling the problem. 

I would argue that the problem needing solving is the violence rate, scale, focus, geography, and impact of cartels (and that I worry that cartels themselves have recently set their sights on West African expansion). The violence characteristics between cartels and terrorist groups are largely similar; what distinguishes them is their respective conflict “engines” and agendas. This is clear when you look for a conflict’s level and pace: Is it predictable, regularized, fluid, orderly? Or unpredictable, volatile, static, and disorderly? Are the actors in the violence fussed about the outcome and timing, or are they efficient with a clear scope? What are the natural and imposed barriers and obstacles toward meeting their immediate goals?

These factors shape where, when, and how conflict will happen. “How” is largely based on external features, and cartels have more options than jihadis (i.e., cartels control or are vying for control where they operate; jihadis operate with the intention of gaining or sustaining movement, influence, and potential control). Their engines tell us about what is important to the group and what they will fight for.  

The question is: Do you understand a conflict’s engine and where it will go? 

A word of caution here: You can differ in what you think is the main problem of a conflict, the engine, and the metrics you choose. But you are only contributing when you have outlined what outcomes are possible. Don’t admire the problem! To have a trusted position in understanding violence requires being neutral and pragmatic. If you think that using terror terms is important to countering cartel violence, then make your case. If you don’t, make your case for not using them. If we can’t communicate why it matters to someone who doesn’t agree with us entirely, we lose a chance to make any progress. But you need to do that work to be taken seriously, in this very serious time. 

When we can start observing conflict on its own terms, we can address more interesting questions like “what value is peace?” “what are the advantages of some conflict forms over others?” “what are the respective benefits to both left and right-wing protest?” “what is the optimal size and reach of a security service?” and “what threats are they likely to face?”

Notes and notions

Good books alert: JK Rowling's great literary skill is keeping the reader frustrated and eager in equal measure; she has done it again with the latest in the Cormoran Strike series, “The Hallmarked Man” (nom de plume: Robert Galbraith).  

Mick Herron's “Clown Town.” I have to listen to Herron’s books twice, really almost three times if the playbacks count. If you are not paying total attention, you miss the subtle breadcrumbs in conversation — almost everything is thoughts and conversations. Herron is so great at grubbiness (for the best of it, “The Secret Hours”). He is a master at the bone-grawing frustrations of real life, so even when doing a “larger than life” job, most of it is just admin.

“Perfection” by Vincenzo Latronico is….perfect for a neighbourhood ladies short-book club. 

I have forced “Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel” by Tom Wainwright into many people’s hands recently- it is such a riveting, insightful read! Thank you to Jeremy from Insight Crime for the recommendation!

The incredible Patricia Routledge died in early October at 96. I have a real soft spot for “Hetty Wainthropp Investigates” because it presents the United Kingdom as it actually looked like in the mid-1990s: run-down kitchens, buses and streets, and carefully dressed people, with hats. I also liked how she took the oddest of cases (no violence, no marital breakdown), without any theme or reason to her choices. Routledge did a series of Alan Bennett monologues that I came upon in the deep of last winter. My favorites are  “A Woman of No Importance,” which is mesmerizing and quite uncomfortable to watch. People just want to matter to someone. Another is  “Lady of Letters,” which is poignant and oddly joyful.

The Munster rugby team won against Cardiff last week, which is great! The team then proceeded to talk about their “learnings,” and I threw something at the television. In more Irish news, “House of Guinness” on Netflix has subtitles an Gaeilge. Finally, I lived for a few years in this house in Dublin — it is now for sale! I highly recommend it if you are in the market!

Help out the (heretofore unknown to me) Indian camel population by drinking camel milk, which makes for a very rich, odd ice cream. Please inquire in any shop if they have Indian camel milk specifically, and please tell me the things they say to you in response. 

ACLED webinars

The battle for the borderlands: How the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan is challenging the state’s control 

On 9 October, ACLED hosted a webinar to unpack the increase in Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) activity since 2021, the Pakistani state response, and the civilian impact of their expanding operations. Just a decade since the Pakistani army announced “phenomenal success” in its fight to eradicate militancy in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, the TTP has once again emerged as one of the biggest national security threats to Pakistan. Through strategic civilian targeting and propaganda exploiting local grievances, the TTP is threatening the state’s control in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s tribal areas and positioning itself as an alternative center of power. Pearl Pandya, the author of our latest report on the TTP, was joined by independent journalist Zia Ur Rehman for a most interesting discussion. If you missed it, you can watch the recording here. 

ACLED in the media

• That’s not all: Pearl has been quoted in The New York Times. They also spoke to Hangyu Lee for an article published last month about the tensions along the Thai-Cambodia border.
• BBC Panorama made use of ACLED data in its documentary Gaza: Dying for Food, and also put out a news report on Israel’s restrictions on aid.
• Ahead of 7 October, we published an infographic tracking pro-Palestine protests, which was picked up by Dutch publication de Volkskrant. Other outlets that picked up on ACLED data surrounding the Gaza war are Al Jazeera, The Associated Press, two articles by The Guardian,  The Washington Post, and SBS News. Ameneh Mehvar was quoted in many of these articles, including this one by Reuters.
• Héni Nsaibia was quoted in The Washington Post — twice. He also spoke to The Conversation on the Nigerian News Central channel about Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger leaving the International Criminal Court.
• In light of the headlines covering Charlie Kirk’s killing, ACLED made it into Newsweek.
• On a different front, Newsweek also made use of Nichita Gurcov’s insights on the Russia-Ukraine war in this article.