Like a wounded animal, vicious but aimless, Israel is lashing out at Lebanon. But, as Emad Moussa writes, Hezbollah won’t be deterred by wider regional war.
The prospect of an all-out war between Israel and Lebanon reached new heights on July 3 after the Israeli army assassinated senior Hezbollah commander, Taleb Abdullah, outside Tyre.
In-depth: Over 20,000 children in Gaza are lost, detained, disappeared, or buried in mass graves or under rubble amid Israel’s relentless war.
A report published by British aid group Save the Children last week found that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in Gaza, with at least 17,000 thought to be unaccompanied or separated from their parents and some 4,000 likely trapped beneath the rubble of their homes, schools, and hospitals.
Why Labour’s Sweeping Victory May Not Reverse the Country’s Decline
Although the polls had been predicting it for many months, the result of the United Kingdom’s July 4 general election was nonetheless stunning. This was the worst performance in the 190-year history of the Conservative Party. It lost almost half its share of the vote and 250 parliamentary seats. One former prime minister (Liz Truss), nine cabinet ministers (including the secretaries of defense, education, and justice), and other prominent Conservative figureheads were unceremoniously ejected from the House of Commons by their constituents. This was a tidal wave of anger washing over not just outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak but also the last 14 years of Tory rule, and it made landfall with a deafening roar.
This report analyzes the operations and organizational structure of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat
al-Islam wal-Muslimin ( JNIM) in the Sahel region of Africa, focusing on the group’s engagement with illicit economies and tactical use of economic warfare. Specifically, the report emphasizes the central role of illicit economies in JNIM’s governance strategies, and in financing and resourcing the group’s armed struggle. It also tracks how JNIM has evolved organizationally, with these internal changes dictating shifts
in its involvement in regional illicit economies. These political and organizational changes, and the group’s highly strategic engagement with illicit economies, have underpinned JNIM’s expansion into new geographies, its retention of influence in areas of control, and its resilience to disruption.
The fireworks in America this Fourth of July will be fuelled by the country’s imminent election, in which a convicted felon faces off against a doddering old man who is too senile to know that he isn’t really the President. The country’s elite would be glad if this were hyperbole; unfortunately for them, it is not. But Joe Biden’s fitness for office is no longer the big question that the American press is afraid to ask. After three years of near-total silence, they suddenly can’t stop asking it.
Attitudes on the war paint a complex picture where existential security threats are twisted by domestic political dynamics, but a sense of weariness is becoming evident even in the region’s most pro-Ukrainian countries.
Nationalists in Serbia and Montenegro have manipulated memories of the Jasenovac concentration camp and the genocidal crimes committed by the World War II fascist Ustasa movement to stimulate hatred for Croats in general – but that’s no excuse for downplaying atrocities.
The recent revelations by Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC, detailing the covert expulsion of four Indian intelligence officers in 2020, have stirred significant concern within the international community. These officers, allegedly attempting to infiltrate sensitive defense technologies and monitor the Indian-Australian community, highlight a troubling dimension of India’s intelligence operations abroad under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Kazakhstan on Tuesday morning for the 24th annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group created by Beijing and Moscow to manage their shared – and competing – geopolitical interests in Central Asia.
Despite promises to support Ukraine for as long as necessary, many NATO Allies are starting to reach a tipping point in their military assistance to Ukraine. That reality, and the specter of Donald Trump’s reelection this November, has led some within the Alliance to call for the NATOization of the war in Ukraine. Absent consensus on extending Ukraine an invitation for NATO membership, NATO Allies have spent the last few months finalizing plans for alternative ways to show support for Ukraine at the upcoming Washington Summit. Intended to be a ‘bridge’ to NATO membership, the new measures—which will see NATO taking a larger role in coordination of allied training and security assistance—are unlikely to resolve the underlying dilemma the Alliance has faced since 2014: determining how far NATO should go in supporting Ukraine absent a formal collective defense security guarantee by the Alliance. Moreover, by fundamentally altering NATO’s role in the conflict, the new measures could actually increase ambiguity surrounding the Allies’ commitment to the defense of Ukraine, prompting Russian president Vladimir Putin to potentially test the Alliance’s resolve.