Understanding alliance and opposition among violent groups

In many parts of the world there are complex, violent interactions among groups with widely varying agendas. Situational awareness is difficult because there is rarely a clear distinction between good and bad actors, and there are constantly shifting alliances and oppositions between groups. This makes it difficult for analysts to understand the ecosystem of a country and region; still more to conceive of helpful interventions. We show how to use a newly developed spectral graph embedding technique that allows social networks with edge weights that are positive (alliance) and negative (opposition) to be modelled. We show the practical application by applying the technique to countries in North-West Africa, where civil wars are commonplace and complex islamist insurgencies have been active in the past few decades. A sense of the differences among these countries becomes visible, as well as a picture of the interactions among the key groups within each country.