“Time will tell if that develops, and if it does, the counter-ISIS campaign will come under considerably more pressure than it is today,” one expert tells Al Arabiya English.
The US military said Friday that it had the right to self-defense any time it’s faced with threats and cautioned against distracting from the fight against ISIS after a Turkish drone came within close distance to its troops in Syria.
Mali’s northern Tuareg rebels said on Wednesday that they had seized another military base from the Malian army, bringing to five the number of conquered and pillaged camps in recent weeks.
Four Lebanese and Cypriot NGOs released a joint letter on Friday, 11 August, calling Cyprus to stop its pushbacks of asylum-seekers back to Lebanon, where they are unlawfully deported back to Syria.
The letter said that Cypriot authorities had forcibly returned at least 109 individuals from Cyprus to Lebanon since July, of which at least 73 “were subsequently deported to Syria and handed over to the Syrian regime.”
The Turkish Defense Ministry said 16 new targets, including caves, bunkers and warehouses in the northern Iraqi regions of Metina, Hakurk, Gara, Qandil and Assos, were destroyed in the strikes.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said 16 new targets, including caves, bunkers and warehouses in the northern Iraqi regions of Metina, Hakurk, Gara, Qandil and Assos, were destroyed in the strikes.
Turkey carried out on Tuesday fresh airstrikes in five northern Iraqi regions in retaliation for a suicide bombing in Ankara by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) over the weekend.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said 16 new targets, including caves, bunkers and warehouses in the northern Iraqi regions of Metina, Gara, Qandil, Hakurk and Assos, were destroyed in the strikes.
These airstrikes represented the second wave of attacks in northern Iraq that Turkey initiated following the assault on the main gate of Turkey’s national police headquarters in the capital on Sunday. The attack left two police officers injured and resulted in the death of two militants. Turkish forces previously hit 20 targets in Metina, Hakurk, Qandil and Gara late on Sunday. The PKK, claiming responsibility for the attack, maintains bases scattered across the mountainous region of northern Iraq. The militant group is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
Simultaneously, Turkish authorities conducted over 450 counterterrorism operations within the country on Tuesday, with Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announcing the rounding up of at least 90 individuals in raids across 18 different provinces, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu News Agency.
The Turkish Interior Ministry on Monday identified one of the assailants as PKK militant Hasan Oguz, adding that efforts to identify the others were still underway. Some Turkish media outlets claimed that the second assailant might be a foreigner; however, there was no official Turkish confirmation, and Al-Monitor could not verify this claim.
Still, in televised remarks on Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Western capitals over the attack. “Undoubtedly, the messages of condolences and condemnations you convey after every terrorist act are meaningful and valuable, but … they are never sufficient for our success in the fight against terrorism,” he said.
Adding that no national security threats to his country stemmed solely from local dynamics, Erdogan said, “The overt support provided to terrorists in northern Syria is the most concrete example of this.” He was referring to the US-allied Syrian Kurdish groups that Turkey equates with the PKK.
The United States, NATO and the majority of EU capitals issued swift condemnations following the attack.
Adding that had the assailants of the Ankara attack managed to escape abroad they would “have been protected as political refugees,” Erdogan said, “Unfortunately, in such a situation, some of our friends who condemned the terrorist act would most probably deny our extradition requests.”
Turkey’s extradition requests from Western capitals have taken on new prominence as part of Sweden’s pending NATO accession. Turkey’s requests from Sweden in return for greenlighting the Nordic nation’s accession include extradition or deportation of dozens of individuals over their alleged ties to the PKK.
Sweden also condemned the attack, with Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom saying his country “[is] standing firm in its long-term commitment and partnership with Turkey to fight all kinds of terrorism.”
In July, Erdogan pledged to send Sweden’s NATO accession protocol to the Turkish parliament after the legislative body returned from the summer recess, but Ankara’s messages over the past weeks airing grievances with Stockholm have raised question marks over the pending ratification.
Sunday’s attack, which took place nearly 300 meters (0.2 miles) from the Turkish parliament as it returned from summer recess, came at an uneasy time with Sweden. Two days prior to the attack, an anti-Erdogan protest took place near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm and drew harsh condemnations from the Turkish government.
Accusing Swedish authorities of being reckless and lax, Erdogan’s spokesman, Akif Cagatay Kilic, said, “All kinds of crimes and insults have become free in Sweden under the disguise of freedom.”
Hungary and Turkey are the sole holdouts to ratifying Sweden’s accession. NATO’s decision-making process requires consensus among all member states.
High-level and open threats by Turkey have ramped up fears of a fresh escalation in northern Syria between Turkish forces and Syrian Kurdish groups that Ankara deems terrorists.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Wednesday that Kurdish militants’ facilities and infrastructure in Syria and Iraq are “legitimate targets” for his government following a suicide bombing attack in Ankara over the weekend. He pledged an “extremely clear” retaliation.
The fall of the Nagorno-Karabakh government after 30 years could empower Turkey and weaken Iran.
The convoys snaked for miles along mountain passes as the mass exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority Armenian enclave that is formally part of Azerbaijan, continued to unfold. Western leaders wrung their hands but did nothing to stop it. With the few belongings they could retrieve — mattresses, refrigerators, pots and pans — piled precariously on their battered Soviet-era cars, over 100,000 people, almost triple the population of Lichtenstein, fled the contested region where Armenians dwelled for millennia until Azerbaijan first starved them under a nine-month-long blockade then attacked them on Sept. 19 in what it called an “anti-terror operation.”
Le Sahel est confronté depuis plusieurs années à une série de menaces dont les plus emblématiques sont le terrorisme islamiste, les trafics illicites et la criminalité organisée. Ces menaces ont contribué à déstabiliser cette région et dans certains pays accentué la fragilité de l’Etat. Souvent, la faiblesse des institutions démocratiques et le rôle partiellement dysfonctionnel des forces de sécurité, le manque de stratégies sécuritaires au niveau national, l’insuffisance des ressources financières, ainsi que les intérêts contradictoires des divers acteurs empêchent la mise en place de structures de sécurité modernisées. Cette situation aggrave le climat d’insécurité et accentue davantage les risques d’instabilité non propice
au développement socio-économique des pays de l’espace sahélien. C’est dans ce contexte que prospèrent également les réseaux de narco trafiquants, qui essaiment dans cette partie du continent à travers plusieurs axes transfrontaliers contribuant à déstabiliser la région du Sahel et à fragiliser la paix et la sécurité dans cette zone.
The Islamic State in the Great Sahara has sought to prioritize extending its scope, rather than sustainable entrenchment in its areas of action. This partly explains its rapid rise along the borders of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Composed of a mosaic of operational entities, the coalition of militant Islamist groups Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen seeks to hide behind an apparently united front the operations of its various constituents in the Sahel, so as to prevent any more robust response to its actions.
In 2021, Africa suffered a new record level of Islamist violence, driven by a 70% increase in violence linked to militant Islamist groups in the Sahel.
Strengths
