Prior to the formation of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - or AQAP - in 2009, al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia had been engaged in attempts to lay the basis for a wider insurrection against the Saudi royal family. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 coincided with a sudden rise…
Beginning in October 2015 and ending in September 2017, Amaq News Agency (the unofficial IS 'state media') regularly summarised all IS-claimed "martyrdom operations" (suicide bombings) in Syria, Iraq and Libya in infographics released on a monthly basis. Though these infographics looked different and didn't include the same level of detail…
This is the second part of a series of articles covering the IS development and innovation of SVBIEDs from the battle of Mosul to the current situation. The first part covered the similarities between the battles of Mosul and Raqqah, while this part will cover the Islamic State's use of…
An SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device) is usually a very high-value asset for the group using it, meaning that they're typically deployed in quite a reserved fashion. Even for IS, it's not often that you see them use more than two SVBIEDs at the same time. Large collections of…
This is the first part of a series of articles covering the IS development and innovation of SVBIEDs from the battle of Mosul to the current situation. The first part will cover the battle of Raqqah, while the second part will cover the battle of Deir ez-Zor and the concurrent…