President Joe Biden on Friday warned Iran that the United States would “act forcefully” to protect Americans, after the U.S. military carried out air strikes against Iran-backed forces in retaliation for an attack in Syria.
Visits to Oman and the UAE in recent weeks mark another step in the Syrian president’s rehabilitation within the region, and the weakening of Western influence.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad received red carpet treatment on his second official visit to Abu Dhabi on March 19, a week after he had visited Oman, showing that his isolation on the Arab stage may come to an end. Though the process began with humanitarian aid after the devastating February earthquakes that struck the northwest region, the Assad case is but a symptom of much deeper change in the Middle East.
The US military said it struck Iranian-affiliated targets in eastern Syria in response to an earlier drone attack.
The US military sustained a rocket attack on a compound in Syria on Friday following the airstrikes that Washington launched on Thursday in the war-ravaged country. The US strikes came in response to an “Iranian origin” drone assault that killed one US contractor.
The central Sahel — Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger — is buffeted by three main forms of armed conflict that overlap and fuel each other: communal conflict, banditry, and violent extremism. These conflicts are partly rooted in a crisis of governance in rural areas, and are exacerbated by climate change, demographics, and internal and cross-border migration. On the frontline of this unfolding security and humanitarian crisis are rural populations, a majority of whom bear the brunt of atrocities and abuse. A minority, however, has been used as cannon fodder for violent extremist groups and other disruptive and destabilizing armed actors. The fact that rural areas have become a ripe breeding ground for militancy and banditry is a manifestation of a profound dislocation of the rural socio-economic order, the biggest casualties of which have been nomadic pastoralists.
The two no-confidence votes tabled to topple French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s government were rejected on Monday (20 March), keeping her in power for the time being. Despite this, the political crisis is far from over, MPs and observers note.
What’s new? The Somali government has gained ground in its war with the Islamist insurgency Al-Shabaab, mainly in central Somalia. Most of the progress is due to Mogadishu’s leveraging of local discontent with Al-Shabaab to form alliances with clan militias.
The core lesson of the 2003 Iraq war is that ruptures in autocratic settings are inherently fraught with risk. Policymakers should approach proposed interventions in such settings with caution.
When President Barack Obama admonished his foreign policy team, “Don’t do stupid stuff” (he used an earthier phrase), there was no real question what he had in mind. In 2002, as an Illinois state senator, Obama had warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be “a dumb war … a rash war”. Six years later, this prescient opposition helped him win the Democratic presidential nomination and then the White House. By the time Obama’s pithy staff guidance became public in 2014, there was a growing Washington consensus that the Iraq invasion had been the biggest U.S. foreign policy blunder since the war in Vietnam. It was clear what he meant.
With its stockpile of Soviet-era weapons, Bulgaria, home to a thriving arms industry, could be a key ally of Ukraine, which is trained on and equipped with such arms, in its war against invading Russian forces.
But with parliament now dissolved ahead of elections on April 2, the fifth snap poll in two years amid political uncertainty, the caretaking government is in no mood to provide lethal aid to Kyiv, appointed as it was by President Rumen Radev, who is known for his pro-Kremlin leanings.
Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine has caused a proliferation in the “privatization of force” in Russia (see EDM, February 27; February 28), with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the sponsor and founder of the notorious Wagner Group, enjoying unprecedented publicity.
China’s mediation to normalise Saudi-Iranian diplomatic ties has been widely welcomed internationally, especially in the West Asian region. A clutch of unhappy states that do not want to see China stealing a march on any front, even if it advances the cause of world peace, mutely watched.