The Idlib-based group’s decision to hand over several jihadis to Turkey, including two men affiliated with the Islamic State, come as part of HTS’s attempt to present itself as more moderate.
The Idlib-based group’s decision to hand over several jihadis to Turkey, including two men affiliated with the Islamic State, come as part of HTS’s attempt to present itself as more moderate.
The New Face of African Warfare
On August 1, 2018, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared an outbreak of Ebola in the country’s war-torn northeast. It was Congo’s tenth recorded outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic fever, but the first in an active conflict zone. Determined to avoid a repeat of the West African Ebola epidemic in 2014, when outside help was too little, too late, donors threw caution to the wind and pumped more than $700 million into northeastern Congo to fight the disease over the next 20 months. To protect their staff members, the World Health Organization and its partners put both Congolese security forces and local militia members on their payrolls. This created perverse incentives: although the combatants had reason to refrain from attacking aid workers, they also had an interest in prolonging the epidemic so they could keep profiting from it. Between August 2018 and June 2020, when the Ebola epidemic was finally declared over, some militiamen and members of the government security forces stoked violence and instability so that the disease would continue to spread and the international aid agencies would continue to pay them. A well-meaning effort to contain the disease ended up doing the exact opposite.
Depuis l’invasion de l’Ukraine le 24 février, les pays européens ont décidé de diversifier leurs sources d’approvisionnement en gaz en misant sur l’Afrique.
L’Afrique fournit en ce moment, 10% du gaz européen. Un chiffre qui devrait augmenter dans les trois prochaines années. L’Italie par exemple, très dépendante du gaz russe, multiplie les contacts en vue d’importer plus d’hydrocarbures africains.
The International Monetary Fund’s report also highlighted currency depreciation in Egypt, economic effects of the war in Yemen and Jordan’s fledgling tourism sector.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its economic outlook for the Middle East today. The report from the DC-based financial institution highlighted the economic effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the two regions. Global commodity prices have surged in response to the war, particularly those of oil and wheat.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has recently admitted that his government held security talks with the Syrian government amid plans for the “safe return” of Syrian refugees to their home country.
On April 20, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced the start of what he described as a new phase for the “voluntary and safe” return of Syrian refugees to their country, in cooperation with Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq.
There is speculation about a secret deal between Ankara and Baghdad eyeing a contiguous, 30-kilometer-deep buffer from Syria to Iraq.
Turkey’s fresh military operation against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, under way since April 18, has sparked debates in the Iraqi parliament over claims of a secret deal between the two countries, allowing Turkish troops to advance 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) inside Iraq.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told university students that there is a new multipolar world order emerging.
During a speech to Iranian university students Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke about a number of global developments.
In the afternoon of April 26, 2022, a burqa-clad woman blew herself up near a van close to the Confucius Institute, a Chinese language teaching center at Karachi University. According to Karachi counterterrorism police, four people, including three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver, were killed and four others, including two Chinese nationals, were injured in the attack. Among the dead were the director of the Confucius Institute Huang, teachers Guiping, Ding Mupeng, Chen Sai, and their Pakistani driver Khalid.[1]
On April 22, 2022, Hammam ‘Isa Al-Sheikh, a self-described “activist” based in Idlib, Syria and a supporter of the Syrian jihadi group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the most powerful in the Idlib area, posted an image on his Telegram channel showing a page from the sixth-grade English textbook used in the Dar Al-Wahy Al-Sharif (Home of the Noble Revelation) school system, which is affiliated with HTS. The textbook page, from a unit called “Muslim Heroes,” depicts Saudi-born Samer Al-Suwaylem aka Khattab Al-Shishani (the Chechen), who was a prominent commander in the Chechen jihad against Russia in the 1990s and 2000s, hailing him as “the greatest jihadist heroes [sic] in the modern era, the man who conquered the Russians at the height of their power, and through him God raised the banner of glory in Dagestan and Chechnya, [and] Afghanistan.”
Turkish military aircraft violated Greek airspace 90 times in one day, on April 15, and conducted three overflights of inhabited Greek islands, according to Greek media.
Turkish aircraft have, in fact, been violating Greek airspace almost non-stop since the beginning of the year. In fact, Turkey — both its government and political opposition — has for years openly been threatening to capture Greek islands in the Aegean Sea…. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seems to offer a convenient precedent for Turkey to increase its military aggression against Greece.