Data sources and method

Method

The tracker counts dated, sourced events. It assigns no ratings, scores or trends. Each event row carries a date, a place, coordinates, an event type, one or more groups, a one-line summary written by MEF staff and a link to the source record.

Coverage

7,438 events from 1989 to 2026. Armed clashes come from UCDP GED version 26.1, which covers 1989 to 2025. Attacks on US forces, diplomats and shipping from 2023 to 2026 come from US government statements. Money and logistics events come from Treasury press releases and Justice Department cases; counteractions come from State Department designations, Federal Register notices and officially announced US strikes.

Event Types

• Attacks and clashes. UCDP GED events in which a tracked group is a coded side (state-based conflict, non-state conflict, or one-sided violence), plus attacks on US forces, US diplomats, US citizens and commercial shipping described in official US statements.
• Money and logistics. Treasury (OFAC) sanctions actions whose press release names a tracked group in its title or at least twice in its text, and Justice Department cases that name a tracked group.
• Counteractions. State Department terrorist designations and their Federal Register notices, FTO reviews and revocations, and US strikes announced by the Defense Department or CENTCOM.

UCDP Actor Matching

UCDP GED rows were selected where either side exactly equals one of these UCDP actor strings:

• Ansarallah: 310 rows
• Government of Yemen (North Yemen) [from 2015-03-07]: 4,291 rows
• Hezbollah: 2,310 rows
• al-Mahdi Army: 327 rows

UCDP defines a conflict's government side as the party controlling the capital. GED records Ansarallah as a rebel side until 2015-01-19; from 2015-03-07, when its first row against the "Forces of the Presidential Leadership Council" appears, Houthi-side fighting is coded under the actor "Government of Yemen (North Yemen)". We read rows with that actor from 2015-03-07 onward as events of the Houthi-led Sanaa authorities and label them so. This reading is our inference from the coding pattern. The Iraqi militias tracked here are not coded as separate actors in GED 26.1, so their attack records come from US statements only.

UCDP GED is published under CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Sundberg, Ralph and Erik Melander (2013), "Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset," Journal of Peace Research 50(4); Davies, Shawn, Therese Pettersson and Magnus Öberg, UCDP GED version 26.1, Uppsala University. Event summaries on this site are generated from GED fields; fatality figures are UCDP's "best" estimates.

Places and Coordinates

UCDP events use UCDP's own coordinates and precision code. Every other event is geocoded from the place its source names, using Natural Earth (public domain): populated places 1:10m for towns and cities, marine polygons for seas, and admin-0 label points where the source names only a country. Where a source names no town (for example "Houthi-held areas of Yemen"), the row says where it is plotted and why. Treasury actions are plotted at the country outside the United States that the release names most often. Federal Register notices are plotted at Washington, D.C.

Groups

The group list covers Lebanese Hezbollah; the Iraqi groups Kata'ib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Badr Organization, Kata'ib al-Imam Ali and Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya; the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claim banner; Yemen's Ansar Allah (a Zaydi Shia movement); the Afghan Liwa Fatemiyoun and Pakistani Liwa Zainabiyoun; Bahrain's Saraya al-Ashtar and Saraya al-Mukhtar; and the al-Mahdi Army, which UCDP codes for 2004 to 2009. Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya is included because State designated it in 2024 and 2025. A separate entry holds events where a US source blames Iran-aligned militias without naming one. The IRGC Qods Force appears only as quoted from an official US document.

Leaders and Designations

Leaders are only people named in designation documents: OFAC SDN entries tied to a group by an OFAC "Leader or official of" relationship or an OFAC title, and secretaries general named in State Department releases. Designation status comes from the OFAC SDN List fetched at source for this build (enhanced XML, data as of 2026-10-02) and from Federal Register notices. All sanctions data on this site comes from US government primary records.

MEF Coverage and Context

MEF coverage lists come from a full-text search of the local meforum.org archive (lists show pieces written by MEF authors and staff). Context quotes on profile pages are verbatim from MEF articles and are checked against the archive at build time; "[...]" marks an omission.

Limits

• Counts reflect what sources record, not everything that happened. US statements from 2023 to 2026 are a selection of official releases whose full text we read and checked; CENTCOM issued many more.
• Each US statement used here was read in full on 2026-10-04: Treasury, Justice and Federal Register pages by direct download, and state.gov, centcom.mil, defense.gov and war.gov pages through the Exa search API or a headless browser, because those sites refuse scripted downloads. The stored text of every page is checked against a key phrase at build time.
• Treasury group tags rest on name matches: a release is tagged with a group when the group appears in its title or at least twice in its text.
• Country and place assignments for sanctions actions are a convenience for mapping, not a finding about where money moved.
• Dates of State statements are used where the statement does not date the attack; such rows carry a note.

Sources and Snapshots

Licences

• UCDP GED: CC BY 4.0, attribution above.
• US government documents (Treasury, State, Defense, CENTCOM, Justice, Federal Register): public domain works of the US government.
• Natural Earth: public domain.
• D3 7.9.0: ISC license (text).
• Fonts Inter and Newsreader: SIL Open Font License 1.1, self-hosted.

Updates

The site is rebuilt by hand from local snapshots. UCDP GED is released once a year; OFAC, State, Treasury and Justice records are refetched at each rebuild. This build: 2026-10-06 15:59 UTC.

Questions and corrections: info@meforum.org.