A senior United States senator, known for his ties to the U.S.’ Greek and Armenian lobbies, has proposed measures that target Turkey’s defense sector exports and aid to Azerbaijan.
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Thursday recommended measures to put Turkey’s drone program under harsh scrutiny and deny any further aid to Azerbaijan.
Existing and emerging democratic nations around the world—particularly the Black Sea countries bordering Russia—face expanding threats that transcend traditional forms of warfare. Authoritarian regimes such as those of the current Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China increasingly rely on creative measures short of war to undermine, stall, or outright resist the spread of democratic principles around the world—principles that remain anathema to their tenuous grip on power.
Transnational organised crime (TOC) is becoming an increasingly global problem that will require international and interagency coordination, network analysis and information sharing. Drug trafficking accounts for 30 per cent of the proceeds of TOC. It also includes a wide-range of other criminal activities such as human trafficking, arms trafficking, migrant smuggling, counterfeit goods, environmental crime, cybercrime, illegal unreported and unregulated fishing and money laundering. TOC groups seldom constrain themselves to just one criminal activity, instead maximising profit while minimising risk.
Turkish security personnel have arrested nearly 150 Afghan migrants on the border with Iran, media reports said on Saturday.
The Afghan citizens were detained on Thursday in the eastern city of Bitlis after the country boosted border security to block entry from Afghanistan via Iran.
The Haqqani network has long been the most lethal and vicious element of the Taliban.
Afghanistan’s newly appointed minister of interior and acting minister of refugees each have $5 million bounties on their head for their involvement with international terrorism. Sirajuddin Haqqani and his uncle, Khalil, are members of the Haqqani network, an Afghan Sunni Islamist militant organization that is functionally part of the Taliban and which the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2012.
As the Taliban shift their focus from insurgency to government, their most formidable rival is the Islamic State’s regional chapter, which has staged a string of bloody attacks in recent weeks.
The latest atrocity claimed by Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) killed at least 19 people Tuesday, including a senior Taliban commander at a military hospital in Kabul, with dozens more wounded.
China’s establishment of military bases in Tajikistan reflects a shared concern with Central Asian countries about the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan.
Tajikistan is pivotal to China and other actors because it borders areas of Afghanistan where there is a small, but active, armed opposition to the Taliban.
ISIS is slowly regrouping in both Iraq and Syria, forming sleeper cells to launch attacks, while maintaining an effective command-and-control to wage a low-level guerrilla insurgency and mobilize new support.
The Islamic State is able to conduct asymmetric attacks on civilians and security forces, but can also marshal the resources to launch spectacular attacks intended to destabilize the Iraqi government.
For months, critics have accused Russia of withholding additional natural-gas shipments to Europe via Ukraine in order to pressure Brussels to fast-track its new Baltic Sea export pipeline, Nord Stream 2.
Once it receives final approvals, the pipeline to Germany will enable Russia to reroute gas exports to Europe around Ukraine, depriving the cash-strapped country of billions of dollars a year in transit fees.
Amid numerous discussions about the future of Ukraine – a country that has been unable to form a single nation in 30 years of independence, and is torn apart by interethnic, linguistic and economic contradictions, Europe should ask itself just what Ukraine really means to it. And the answer will be the same – a buffer zone, because this clearly reflects Ukraine’s geopolitical role in relations with NATO and the EU. The Alliance needs Ukraine as a buffer zone, and even not all of it at that.