Western-backed efforts to counter terror groups across Africa are falling short, increasing the chances one or more affiliates of Islamic State or al-Qaida could try to carve out their own caliphate on the continent, according to the latest assessment by a top U.S. commander.
Last week’s dramatic fall in the value of global stock markets was prompted, in part, by Moscow’s decision at the end of last week to end its cooperation with the Saudis to agree to new oil production targets, a measure designed to maintain global oil prices at a sustainable level.
Governments in the Balkans are beefing up borders and readying soldiers in the event of a new influx of migrants and refugees, with Serbia reportedly ready to seal its southern frontier with North Macedonia after Turkey abandoned a 2016 migration pact with the European Union.
Dozens of Turkish troops have been killed in Syrian government air raids backed by Russia. Turkey has intensified its military operations, firing down two Syrian fighter jets as well as launching several ground attacks. It marks a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Turkey and Russian-backed forces in Syria.
Refugees, migrants, aid workers and journalists are facing an increasingly hostile environment in Greece since Turkey lifted restrictions late last month on Syrians, Afghans and others trying to reach Western Europe.
The number of new coronavirus cases in Europe has been doubling, on average, every 72 hours.
The Greek authorities have been discovered to be secretly detaining refugees and migrants in a black site where they beat them, steal their belongings and deport them back to Turkey without trial.
Even Germany is unwilling to take any of the migrants shuttled by Erdogan to the Greek-Turkish border.
Context: Turkey’s conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – recognised as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU – continues in south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. In northern Syria, Ankara and the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Forces (YPG), remain pitted against each other. On the home front, Turkey is pursuing its crackdown on the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
Nearly a million civilians, 81 per cnet of them women and children, have been displaced from their homes in 90 days in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, amid a brutal military campaign by Syria’s Assad regime, Russia and Iran-backed militias.