Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said Wednesday its fighters seized a strategic zone on the border with Egypt and Libya, as the regular army announced its withdrawal from the region.
The announcements came a day after the army accused forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar of launching a cross-border attack alongside the RSF, the first allegation of direct Libyan involvement in the Sudanese war.
Saila Heinikoski
Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs
The Schengen area has not been borderless since autumn 2015. Indeed, the reintroduction of internal border controls has been the first reaction in crisis situations, be it immigration or the coronavirus pandemic. Closing borders sounds like a drastic measure attempting to create a feeling of security, but the political costs of doing so are small, as criticism often comes from abroad.
In Sarajevo’s old town, local guides find navigating the dense network of old streets a lot easier than charting a path through an even denser tangle of overlapping laws.
While Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo, was still waking up, a group of tourists from Hong Kong disembarked from their bus near the iconic City Hall.
A draft statute obtained by BIRN suggests Kosovo’s president will press ahead with a ‘presidential’ commission on Kosovo’s 1998-99 war, ignoring experts who say it risks being seen as ‘highly political’.
Kosovo’s president is poised to launch a ‘transitional justice’ commission with a three-year mandate and the possibility of survivors addressing public hearings, according a draft statute seen by BIRN, the terms of which risk fuelling concern about the initiative’s independence and fairness.
In February, Europe witnessed a string of terrorist acts, committed by both legal and illegal immigrants. These included a car-ramming attack in Munich by a 24-year-old Afghan resident; a knife attack in Villach, Austria, by a 23-year-old Syrian refugee; and a stabbing attack in Mulhouse, France, by an Algerian irregular immigrant under an expulsion order. These incidents, particularly as they occurred over a short time span, raise legitimate questions about the security risks related to immigration.
Since its brutal subjugation in the early 2000s, Russia has simultaneously succeeded and failed in establishing a stable Chechnya. It succeeded in crushing most of the armed resistance in the country, and it expelled many of those who were left to Turkey and the Middle East. But it also created a regime in Grozny that is troubled under the weight of its own contradictions and lack of vision.
President Donald Trump’s point person for Syria says the administration is concerned that Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa’s efforts to promote inclusive governance and engage with the West could make him a target for assassination by disaffected militants.
“We need to coordinate a protection system around [Sharaa],” Ambassador Tom Barrack told Al-Monitor in an interview.
Bienvenue dans la folle conspiration géopolitique !
L’exécution implacable de ce que certains appellent désormais le «Nouvel Ordre Mondial Technocratique» avançant avec une froideur chirurgicale est un plan mûrement orchestré. Rien, dans les récents soubresauts géopolitiques, qu’il s’agisse de tensions commerciales, de conflits armés ou de ces sinistres jeux d’alliances mouvantes, ne relève du hasard ou du caprice du destin. Il s’agit au contraire de rouages d’une mécanique implacable, mue par une réinitialisation mondiale savamment programmée, visant à remodeler les équilibres de pouvoir, à déposséder les peuples sous couvert de progrès, et à transférer les leviers de décision vers une élite technocratique dont la légitimité n’a jamais été soumise au jugement populaire. Cette dynamique, qui n’a rien de spontané, est en réalité l’expression brutale d’un basculement autoritaire, maquillé en modernité mais dont les racines ont déjà cinquante ans.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Islamist movement dedicated to the remaking of society and government according to the dictates of Islamic law, or sharia. Founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher who famously asserted that “Islam is the solution,” the Brotherhood quickly became influential among Egypt’s poor by providing educational and health services alongside a steady diet of Islamist teachings. By the middle of the 20th century, it had established branches and affiliates across the Arab world. While not formally functioning as either a political party or an international organization, the Brotherhood has shaped Muslim communities across the Islamic world and beyond by matching its rigid Islamist ideology with tactical flexibility. In some contexts, it engages in violence and terrorism. In others, it participates in the political process, even competing in elections, although its dedication to democratic government remains suspect.
The leader of al-Qaida’s Yemen branch has threatened both U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in his first video message since taking over the group last year.
The half-hour video message by Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, which spread online early Saturday via supporters of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, also included calls for lone-wolf militants to assassinate leaders in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states over the war, which has decimated Gaza.