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Africa’s Expanding Gray Zone
In January 2026, fighters affiliated with the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) struck the international airport in Niamey, Niger’s capital, marking the group’s first major attack on a hardened target near a Sahelian seat of government. Weeks later, Russia’s Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov arrived in Niamey to discuss expanding Africa Corps operations, the latest chapter…
Easter Rising
On Easter Sunday 2026, thousands gathered outside Dublin’s General Post Office (GPO) as President Catherine Connolly laid a wreath marking the 110th anniversary of the Easter Rising. An officer of the Defence Forces read the 1916 Proclamation from the same steps where Pádraig Pearse first declared an Irish republic, and military aircraft traced overhead paths…
Insurgent Governance and Civil Affairs: The Karen National Union
The Karen National Union (KNU) is an ethnic political and insurgent organization operating in southeastern Myanmar that has been engaged in a protracted conflict with the central government since 1949. As the political leadership of the Karen nationalist movement and the governing authority associated with the Karen National Liberation Army, the KNU has historically exercised…
Strait of Hormuz Irregular Warfare Analysis
The 2026 closure of the world’s most important energy chokepoint is the clearest case study yet in Strait of Hormuz irregular warfare: a campaign that halted a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil without Iran having to sink a single tanker. The instrument was not the mine or the anti-ship missile. It was the war…
What is Hybrid Warfare? A Comprehensive Guide
Hybrid warfare is the coordinated use of military and non-military tools, including cyber attacks, disinformation, economic coercion, sabotage, proxy forces, and covert action, to achieve strategic objectives while remaining below the threshold of conventional armed conflict. The defining feature is not any single method, but the deliberate integration of multiple domains simultaneously, designed to exploit…
Karen National Union (KNU) Case Study
This case study applies the War Marketplace Framework (WMF) across three analytical levels — competition, structure, and strategy — to one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies: the conflict between the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Myanmar state. Rather than treating the Karen war as an ethnic rebellion, a counterinsurgency campaign, or a peripheral civil…
State-Insurgent Strategic Competition Part III
Contributor MOE GYO Moe Gyo is a writer and consultant working with ethnic organizations in Myanmar. Writing from the Thai–Myanmar borderlands, he draws on years of direct engagement with communities shaped by conflict and disrupted health systems. His work captures firsthand how resilience and informal support networks develop under prolonged irregular warfare. His writing has…
State—Insurgent Strategic Competition for Governance: PART II: The Market Forces of War
Contributor MOE GYO Moe Gyo is a writer and consultant working with ethnic organizations in Myanmar. Writing from the Thai–Myanmar borderlands, he draws on years of direct engagement with communities shaped by conflict and disrupted health systems. His work captures firsthand how resilience and informal support networks develop under prolonged irregular warfare. His writing has…