Philosopher Georg Hegel declared the only lesson of history is that we do not learn from history. As the US prepares for the final pullout from Afghanistan and what will soon follow as the fall of the country to the Taliban an entire generation of us wonder if this is not Deja vu all over again and that what we thought we had learned from the Vietnam War proved to be a fleeting lesson.
L’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM) appelle les États à prendre des mesures urgentes. Selon les statistiques publiées par l’OIM dans un nouveau rapport, au moins 1 146 personnes sont mortes en mer en tentant de rejoindre l’Europe au cours du premier semestre 2021. En 2020, 513 avaient péri au cours de la même période, et 674 en 2019.
Dans l’est du Soudan, les jeunes Tigréens qui ont fui le nord de l’Éthiopie, en proie à une guerre civile, n’hésitent plus à prendre la route de la Libye.
Dans l’est du Soudan, sur la route qui mène au camp de réfugiés d’Um Rakuba, cinq jeunes garçons marchent. Ils ont un petit sac à la main et traversent à pied cette vaste étendue de brousse sous une chaleur écrasante. Le thermomètre affiche 40 °C. « Ils s’échappent », commente notre chauffeur. La loi soudanaise interdit aux réfugiés de se déplacer sans autorisation. Mais certains arrivent à se soustraire à la vigilance des forces de sécurité pour aller travailler dans les fermes voisines, se rendre en ville, ou prendre la route vers de nouvelles destinations.
The worsening security situation across Afghanistan in the wake of foreign troop withdrawal and Taliban advances, has forced an estimated 270,000 from their homes since January, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday, bringing the total internally displaced to more than 3.5 million.
The lightning speed with which the Taliban has overrun large swathes of rural territories in Afghanistan’s north has shocked locals and surprised foreign observers with some worrying whether the internationally recognized government in Kabul can weather the storm.
But the speed of the Taliban’s advances has everyone asking how a group composed of ragtag militants could overrun dozens of districts in eight strategic provinces that share borders with Afghanistan’s neighbors: Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran.
Hvis Afghanistan og Libanon skal undgå at eksplodere i nye borgerkrige, er Pakistan og Iran nødt til at indstille deres spekulation i Taleban-bevægelsen og Hizbollah-militsen.
ABD’nin kurulu düzenleri yıkabilecek askerî güce sahip olmasına rağmen yeni bir düzen inşâ etme gücünden yoksun bulunduğunun son göstergelerinden birisi, Afganistan. ABD 20 yıllık işgâlin ardından Afganistan’dan çekiliyor. ABD, Taliban rejimini yıkıp sözde ‘yeni ulus inşâsı’ iddiasıyla Afganistan’ı işgal etmişti. Irak’ta da görüldüğü üzere ABD sadece “kaos” inşâ edebiliyor. Orta halli Amerikan vergi mükelleflerinin cebinden çıkan paralarla oluşturulan kaostan istifa edenlerse “Askeri Endüstriyel-Kongre-Akademi-Medya Kompleksi’ oluyor.
Rwanda has rattled southern African governments by beating them to the frontline against insurgents in northern Mozambique. A standby force from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is meant to start deploying in Mozambique’s violent Cabo Delgado province on July 15, 2021. But as of July 9, 2021 Mozambique had still not given official clearance for the deployment. SADC’s deployment also seems to have been complicated by a dispute within SADC about which country should lead the SADC standby force. It was originally supposed to be South Africa, but this now seems to be in doubt, Peter Fabricius writes for Daily Maverick.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to end Operation Barkhane, the French mission to fight jihadism in the Sahel, bears some resemblance to the ongoing removal of American troops from Afghanistan.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced yesterday that Operation Barkhane, the French counterterrorism force fighting jihadis in the Sahel, will end in the first quarter of 2022. This follows a recent announcement that the French president plans to cut in half the French presence in the Sahel and reorganize what will remain as specialized regional forces, while also contributing to Task Force Takuba, the recently established EU force with a remit similar to that of Barkhane. These developments provide the occasion to look at the French military trajectory since 2013. So, too, does the fact that today is Bastille Day, the French national holiday.
The outgoing president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, said Wednesday in a meeting of his cabinet that Tehran could choose to enrich uranium to weapons-grade 90% purity, but that it still wanted to revive its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. “Even if one day there is a need for 90% enrichment for a reactor, we do not have any problem and we are able,” Rouhani said, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Rouhani also criticized the hard-line religious establishment in Iran for not letting his government reach a deal earlier. The new president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi, is a hard-liner who, when he takes office next month, could make the negotiation of a renewed deal more difficult. According to the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran could only enrich up to a limit of 3.67% purity, which is required to fuel a civilian nuclear power reactor. After the US, under the Trump administration, withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran cranked up its centrifuges, enriching small amounts of uranium to 60%, a short technical step from the 90% level required to build a bomb.