Non-State Actors

By Péter MARTON Because I need to speak at an event about the situation in Iraq/Syria tomorrow, here are some of the recent trends and developments related to ISIS -- my digest of these. These are research notes, effectively. For starters: Aaron Zelin notes how much the ISIS media presence diminished since the fall of Mosul: "In particular, after the fall of Mosul in July 2017, the IS distribution of governance-related media dropped precipitously (by 66 percent) until the complete end of such media activity (on September 12 in Syria; September 16 in Iraq). For reference, at its apex, between June and August 2015, IS released 3,762 pictures related to governance activities in Syria and 3,305 in Iraq. When Mosul fell, between May and July 2017, IS only released 315 pictures related to governance in Syria and 171 in Iraq. And the most recent count prior to the mid-September 2017 rupture was 142 in Syria and 113 in Iraq, between July and September 2017." And yet......

By Péter MARTON I am really no expert of the US militia movement but for an academic roundtable discussion I have to prepare a briefing about paramilitary-like groups in Hungary (as much as there are any that are active as well as, strictly speaking, paramilitary in nature, these days -- this is rather difficult to assess...). So I was interested to learn more of what similarities or differences one may observe between the two paramilitary scenes, and I was happy to come across a fresh video report from Vice News (related to this article ) about the III%er (Three Percenter*) movement. It offers some insight into the life of an associate group in Georgia, led by Chris Hill ("General Holy War"). I still have my homework to do -- only a couple of quick thoughts follow. The tendency of the far right to fracture is on display even in (and related to) this short video about a single group in Georgia. Their leader conceives of political identity in terms of a set of poli...