At its founding in 1947, the culturally and religiously diverse state of Pakistan lacked a unifying force and was soon plunged into political turmoil. Successive governments crumbled as corruption and ...

The Taliban, a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist and predominantly Pashtun movement, controlled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. In October 2001, U.S. and allied forces invaded the country and ...

In early 2025, fighting between Congolese security forces and militant groups led by M23 escalated rapidly, culminating in M23’s capture of Goma, the regional hub of the Eastern Democratic Republic of ...

Armed conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in early 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The previous year, protests in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s ...

Al-Shabaab in Somalia remains one of al-Qaeda’s strongest and most successful affiliates. The terrorist organization continues to exploit the Somalian government’s limited state capacity and the ...

As the civil war enters its third year, Sudan’s two warring factions remain locked in a deadly power struggle. Death toll estimates vary widely, with the former U.S. envoy for Sudan suggesting as many ...

Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, publisher, and educational institution dedicated to informing the public ...

North Korea (officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is isolated, impoverished, and a proclaimed enemy of its southern neighbor, South Korea (officially called the Republic of ...

Between 2020 and 2022, Ethiopia fought a war with militants from its northernmost region of Tigray, then under the control of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The conflict was one of the ...