The Balkans presents a crucial junction for Tehran as an access point to Western Europe and an avenue for advancing its regional political and economic interests.
The Balkan region is strategically important for western countries as a geographic bloc through which they can increase their influence in former Soviet Eastern European states, including Russia.
Abstract: Once allies in the same organization, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Islamic State have an interesting history that turned them into ‘frenemies’ from April 2013 to February 2014 and then outright enemies over the past nine years. This led to a broader global fight between al-Qaida and the Islamic State. Yet, HTS continued to tread its own path by breaking from al-Qaida in 2016. From the spring of 2014 to the summer of 2017, the main avenue by which HTS and its predecessor group, Jabhat al-Nusra, dealt with the Islamic State was insurgent infighting. Yet since the summer of 2017, as HTS consolidated control over areas in northwest Syria and developed a governance apparatus, HTS has favored a lawfare approach to dealing with Islamic State cells in the territory it controls. Surveying the data on its arrest campaign against the Islamic State over the past half decade suggests HTS has been successful in countering the Islamic State. Yet, even if its fight against the Islamic State is deemed a net positive, HTS’ continued support for terrorism abroad and the authoritarian nature of its governance make it difficult for the West to countenance removing the group from the list of designated terrorist groups or engage with it.
An ISIS leader was killed and another captured during joint helicopter raids in Syria, following deadly attacks on truffle hunters in the desert.
Helicopter-borne US troops working with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Saturday (February 18) captured an “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) provincial official in Syria, the US military said.
On September 3, the United Nations warned that war-torn Libya is at a “decisive turning point,” with weapons from foreign backers pouring into both sides of the conflict. The main foreign protagonists in the Libyan conflict are split into two camps. In one camp is Russia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt, who have been the principal financial and military backers of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA). In the opposing camp is Turkey and Qatar, who back the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA).
Ministrul libanez al economiei a declarat marți că nu se mai poate face nimic pentru a opri declinul financiar abrupt al țării. El a explicat că moneda națională continuă să scadă în valoare uneori cu fiecare minut care trece. Un dolar a ajuns să valoreze 87.000 de lire.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine hurt the region economically, as supply chain disruptions and food shortages topped respondents concerns in Turkey, Egypt, Yemen and Iraq
One year after its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s image has taken a hit in Turkey, Yemen and Iraq, according to the latest Al-Monitor and Premise Data poll released on Thursday.
For two decades, the entire world was under threat from an insidious group, which at its peak claimed the lives of thousands through a series of bombings and attacks, including the events of Sept. 11, 2001, which to this day remains the deadliest terror attack in history.
“As a result of coordinated investigative measures on the territory of Moscow as well as in the Kirov and Penza Regions, five people were detained on suspicion of providing assistance to terrorist formation Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham [formerly Jabhat al-Nusra], which operates in Syria,” the FSB’s press office said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the suspects were apprehended in three different regions of Russia.
Turkey is increasingly relying on airpower in its fight against the PKK. New parties have been drawn into the conflict as it spreads to new theatres in Iraq and Syria, which, for now at least, complicates potential efforts to settle things down.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
Near past:
The west supported the color revolution in the Middle East for their own gain of globalization and global hegemony, and unfortunately such reckless western foreign policy caused great divisions between the locals who had their own historical understanding of Middle Eastern society and its organic sustainability. Gradually the Middle East turned into a place for nursing racial and ideological hatred with violence and terror.