The Memorandum of Understanding signed recently by Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine on enhanced cooperation toward European Union (EU) membership highlights both progress and overall shortcomings of the EU’s Eastern policy. Despite the Union enlarging to the East in 2004 and 2007 – and the fact that Russian aggression has long been felt on EU territory – the bloc’s Eastern policy still does not reflect realities on the ground. However, the recent buildup of Russian military in Ukraine, as well as the deployment of Russian ‘peacekeepers’ in Nagorno-Karabakh, has created momentum for an urgently needed rethink of the Union’s Eastern neighborhood policy. This in turn could pave the way for membership for Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.
The scene was a familiar one, even if the scale was not. On May 17 and 18, thousands of migrants entered Ceuta, one of two Spanish enclaves in North Africa that border Morocco. The record flow of irregular migrants surpassed 12,000 people — including whole families and hundreds of children — over the course of two days. The Spanish authorities quickly understood that this surge in migration was about more than the usual human desperation that has driven large numbers of people over fences and across water in an effort to enter Europe in recent years. Morocco, troubled over Madrid’s stance on its territorial claims over the Western Sahara, decided to retaliate.
The US President Joe Biden’s op-ed in Washington Post My trip to Europe is about America rallying the world’s democracies will draw wide attention in world capitals from Brussels to Beijing.
He says right at the outset that this weeklong trip to Europe, the first overseas trip of his presidency, is “about realising America’s renewed commitment to our allies and partners, and demonstrating the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age.”
Series Note: We are in the middle of an unprecedented crisis as the Covid-19 pandemic, and the lockdowns implemented in response, continue to deliver a series of economic, social and psychological shocks to the world. In this time of chaos, some of the world’s most powerful interest groups have stepped forward claiming that this crisis presents an opportunity to ‘reset’ the world’s systems.
Le président français a annoncé la fin de l’opération Barkhane « sous sa forme actuelle » et la « transformation profonde » de la présence militaire française au Sahel.
C’était attendu, c’est désormais confirmé. Jeudi 10 juin, Emmanuel Macron a annoncé la fin de l’opération Barkhane « sous sa forme actuelle » et une « transformation profonde » de l’engagement militaire français au Sahel, dont « les modalités précises et le calendrier seront précisés dans les jours à venir » – probablement fin juin, lors du sommet de la Coalition pour le Sahel prévu à Bruxelles.
ISWAP has killed Boko Haram leader and longtime nemesis, Abubakar Shekau, and seeks to take over his faction’s bases in Nigeria.
With the potential collapse of Shekau’s Boko Haram faction, ISWAP will be less distracted from implementing its civilian-centric insurgency strategy.
Some portion of Shekau’s remaining faction could defect to ISWAP, making the group more dangerous and strengthening the insurgency.
The Nigerian military is yet to indicate any change in its strategy as a result of Shekau’s death.
Abubakar Shekau was Boko Haram’s first leader after the group launched an insurgency that started in Nigeria and subsequently spread to Niger, Cameroon, and Chad, beginning in approximately 2010. Shekau soon gained a reputation as one of the world’s most brutal terrorist leaders, killing sub-commanders for frivolous infractions and slaughtering Muslim civilians who steadfastly refused to join his interpretation of “jihad.” As a result, a faction called Ansaru broke away from him in 2012, with the approval of al-Qaeda. However, the Chibok kidnapping of almost 300 schoolgirls in 2014 – in which Shekau claimed to “enslave” the mostly Christian girls – garnered Shekau the international notoriety he retained until his recent death. By that time, Shekau had also ordered the killings of Ansaru members, which led to that faction’s diminishment.
The Nigerian government announced multiple times since 2010 that Shekau was dead only to see him boast that he was still alive in online videos. However, last month, Nigerian publication HumAngle, which has insider sources to Shekau’s rivals in Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), also reported his death. As the source of Shekau’s death was for the first time not the Nigerian government, but a credible independent news source, it appeared plausible that Shekau was indeed deceased. Subsequent audiotapes from ISWAP’s leadership confirmed that ISWAP killed Shekau on orders from the so-called Islamic State. Back in August 2016, ISIS’ former “caliph” Abubakar al-Baghdadi personally ordered Shekau’s ejection from ISWAP due to Shekau’s excesses, including sending hundreds of girls on suicide bombing operations that killed Muslim civilians.
According to ISWAP, after its fighters invaded Shekau’s bases in Sambisa, Borno State with support from some Shekau faction collaborators, in May, Shekau detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself, rather than being captured by ISWAP. ISWAP had hoped Shekau would instead surrender, pledge loyalty to the Islamic State, and volunteer to bring his fighters under ISWAP’s authority. In his final audiotape before his death, Shekau reiterated that he was in fact loyal to Islamic State but was unwilling to submit to ISWAP leadership. Up until his death, Shekau believed that ISWAP leaders had deceived core Islamic State into recognizing their leadership of the group, bypassing his authority. ISWAP audio releases since Shekau’s death also indicate some of Shekau’s fighters in Sambisa have now joined ISWAP and are relieved to be free from the whims of his capricious command, and especially his brutality. However, Shekau’s highest ranking commander in the Lake Chad region is now fighting against ISWAP, including abducting the group’s family members, in order to avenge Shekau’s death. What remains unclear is what Shekau’s Cameroon-based fighters, who are infamous for their raids of border communities, will choose to do.
At least one of Boko Haram founder Muhammed Yusuf’s sons was believed to be with Shekau in Sambisa. It is unclear whether any of Yusuf’s sons or another Shekau loyalist will step forward to lead the faction after his death. If Shekau’s faction is unable to put forth a strong successor, the group will likely dissolve. The result could be hundreds of roving and marauding fighters who prey on and pillage from civilians without any organizational coherence or strategy, although some members would likely join ISWAP. While Shekau’s faction attempts to sort out its next step, ISWAP is seeking to consolidate in Sambisa. This provides ISWAP a dominant position throughout Borno, with only Lake Chad remaining as a contested region with the remnants of Shekau’s faction. After a lull in ISWAP attacks following Shekau’s death, the group has also restarted attacks, focusing on Diffa, Niger, Damboa, Borno, and most recently, Dikwa, Borno. Shekau’s death will allow ISWAP to continue focusing on attacks against Nigeria’s army while distinguishing ISWAP from Shekau’s methods among civilians through its civilian-centric insurgent strategy. This strategy’s main proponent, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, who is also a son of Muhammed Yusuf, was reconfirmed as ISWAP’s leader only days before Shekau’s death.
The Nigerian military does not appear to have changed its counterinsurgency strategy as a result of the confrontations between ISWAP and Shekau’s faction following his death. The government was also caught somewhat flatfooted, watching ISWAP kill Shekau even though the government had proclaimed incorrectly multiple times to have done so. Nevertheless, the key challenge for the Nigerian military is that ISWAP is not only more militarily capable than Shekau’s faction, but it is also more focused on garnering civilian support than Shekau was. ISWAP’s ability to win recruits and gain local support is what ultimately makes it a greater challenge to Nigeria’s army than Shekau’s faction ever could have been with him alive and leading the group.
Attacks by Iraqi militia, backed by Iran, on protesters and activists are destabilizing Iraq in the run-up to October 2021 national elections.
The government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi is attempting to marginalize the Iran-backed militias, but only enjoying mixed success.
The militias suppress any challenge to their autonomy, their linkages to Iran, or their control over economic assets and patronage networks.
Iran supports Iraqi Shia militias in order to exert influence in Iraq and achieve leverage over the United States.
Eighteen years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is still struggling to achieve stability and consolidate the authority of its national government. The overthrow of the Sunni Arab-led Ba’athist regime empowered Shia politicians, many of whom had been long allied with the Islamic Republic of Iran. These political leaders fostered the formation of several Shia-dominated militias nominally under state command, but which are armed and advised by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The militias have become spearheads for Iranian influence in Iraq, acting as leverage against U.S. personnel in Iraq, and for supporting Iran’s efforts to dominate Iraq’s economy. The commanders of several of the militias have become major political actors that influence decision-making and provide patronage to their supporters in the form of government jobs and contracts, control of enterprises and import-export channels, and social benefits.
The militias have also sought to suppress a popular protest movement that began in October 2019, in part as a backlash against the stranglehold that Iran and its Iraqi proxies maintain over large parts of Iraq’s economy. The protests eventually forced then-Prime Minister Hayder Al Abadi to resign. His successor, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who faces a national election battle in October 2021, has sought to hold militias accountable for abuses of activists as part of his efforts to marginalize them outright. However, the militias, and their backers in Tehran, have not bowed to the will of either Kadhimi or the protest movement. The militias allegedly have targeted – including through killings, kidnappings, and other forms of intimidation—more than 70 activists since the protest movement began.
In the latest power struggle between Kadhimi and the militias, the Iraqi government arrested pro-Iranian militia commander Qasem Muslih for the May 9 killing of activist Ihab al-Wazni in the southern city of Karbala. Wazni, a vocal critic of Iraqi armed groups and of Iranian influence in Iraq, led protests in his home city, where pro-Tehran armed groups hold considerable sway. His death sparked day-long protests in Karbala that saw demonstrators block roads and bridges and set fire to Iran’s consulate in the city. In an effort to intimidate the government to release Muslih, Shia militia fighters encircled Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, where foreign embassies and the government’s top headquarters are located. In contrast to a similar incident in July 2020, in which Shia militias succeeded in obtaining the release of an accused militia commander, the government has held Muslih in a facility partially secured by U.S. and NATO forces and has refused to release him. Still, amid tepid backing from senior Iraqi political leaders reluctant to risk a rift with Tehran or its armed Iraqi proxies, in early June Kadhimi threatened to resign unless the government gives him a free hand to confront the militias and bring them under his authority.
The confrontations between Kadhimi and the Iran-backed militias underscore the degree to which Iran seeks to use Iraq to carry out its national security policies. Iran has armed its Iraqi militia allies with sophisticated rockets, short-range ballistic missiles, and drones with which they continue to attack not only bases where U.S. forces operate, but also the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and reportedly a facility for the Central Intelligence Agency, and installations of U.S. companies. The attacks are central to Iran’s efforts to drive the remaining 2,500 U.S. military personnel out of Iraq and to avenge the Trump administration’s strike that killed IRGC-Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.
By providing financial and political support to pro-Iranian candidates in Iraq’s October 10 election, Iran is also likely to try to engineer the replacement of Kadhimi with a more pliant and less pro-American Prime Minister. It remains an open question whether the Biden administration will devote the resources needed to help Kadhimi challenge Tehran’s influence. Senior U.S. officials, eyeing a deal with Tehran on a mutual return to the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear agreement, reportedly have overruled those U.S. officials who have sought U.S. retaliation against the Iran-backed militias for some of their recent attacks on U.S. installations in Iraq. Not only does the Biden administration want to reorient U.S. policy broadly away from the Middle East, but it also is intent on discontinuing the previous administration’s proxy war against Iran on Iraqi soil.
“Anywhere which was connected with these people or with these prophets who were all Muslims becomes a Muslim territory…. So any place like this [Israel] had to be freed…. had to be liberated. So, Islam appeared… from their point of view — as a liberator. And therefore, there is no Islamic occupation…. So, there is no Islamic occupation. There is only Islamic liberation.” — Moshe Sharon, Professor Emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, YouTube, September 10, 2015.
The improvement in Iran’s technical ability to develop nuclear weapons is the result of a number of steps Tehran has taken during the past year to increase its nuclear activity, all of which constitute clear violations of the terms Tehran agreed under the JCPOA.
Consequently, if the predictions are correct and Raisi emerges triumphant in the presidential elections [June 18], the prospects of the hardliners making any tangible concessions over the country’s nuclear programme will be negligible…. [Raisi] made his name during as a prominent member of Iran’s notorious Death Commissions, when opposition activists were either executed or sent to clear minefields during the Iran-Iraq war.
