More than four years after the start of the Syrian uprising, over a thousand armed groups are involved in fighting that has consumed the country. The groups range in size from small local units of a few hundred fighters to large movements with an international reach, and range along the political spectrum from secular groups to extremist groups with a transnational outlook.
A new online Dispatch, Foreign Jihadism in Syria: The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, by the Survey's Security Assessment in North Africa (SANA) project, offers a snapshot of foreign fighters in Syria at the end of 2013. Focusing on the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, the report examines the organization’s strengths, its weaknesses, and its operational impact.
A multitude of armed groups and smuggling networks with transnational reach are driving southern Libya’s integration into the Sahel–Sahara region.
Armed and Aimless: Armed Groups, Guns, and Human Security in the ECOWAS Region provides detailed information on more than 35 armed groups that have destabilized the 15 ECOWAS member states since 1998, and explores important related themes through 6 field-based case study chapters, including:
The militarization of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially in Africa, is causing growing alarm within the humanitarian and development communities. The planned and spontaneous arming of refugees and IDPs threatens access to asylum as well as protection. But while the policy debates rage over how to deal with armed refugees and how to prevent their spillover into neighbouring countries, surprisingly little research has been done to explain why displaced people arm themselves or how militarization affects the local and host populations.
This is the first book to provide a comprehensive assessment of small arms and security-related issues in post-9/11 Afghanistan. It includes case studies which reveal the findings of in-depth field research on hitherto neglected regions of the country, and provides a distinctive balance of thematic analysis, conceptual models and empirical research.
Between 1997 and 2006, the Central African Republic (CAR) hosted four international peacekeeping operations and witnessed conflicts in neighbouring states that have routinely made international headlines. Yet relatively little literature exists on the country. Central African Republic and Small Arms: A Regional Tinderbox has relevance far beyond the troubled, landlocked nation that is its subject.
This book provides critical analysis of the changing discourse and practice of post-conflict security-promoting interventions since the cold war, such as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), and security sector reform (SSR). Although the international aid and security sectors exhibit an expanding appetite for peace-support operations in the 21st Century, the effectiveness of such interventions are largely untested.
A joint publication of the South-South Network for Non-State Armed Group Engagement and the Small Arms Survey.
The Small Arms Survey 2001: Profiling the Problem (Yearbook 2001) is an authoritative guide to all aspects of the problem of small arms and light weapons. It focuses on both small arms themselves (production, transfers, stockpiles), and on the processes and impacts of their world-wide proliferation.