Orientul Mijlociu

Terrorism in the Hebron area: What’s the significance? – analysis

Terrorism has not been laid to rest in the West Bank, following continued violent attacks.

After around 18 months of deadly terrorist attacks in the West Bank focusing mainly on the Jenin and Nablus areas of the northern West Bank, terrorism abruptly returned to Hebron on Monday.
It’s not that there has been zero deadly terrorism in the Hebron area – and definitely not zero attempts at terrorist attacks or low-grade Palestinian violence.

Brief: New Islamic State Caliph Inherits Renewed Syrian Insurgency

Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Quraishi via @Visegrád24 on X (formerly known as Twitter)

On August 6, Islamic State (IS) announced its new caliph, Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Quraishi. He is now the organization’s fourth caliph since Abubakar al-Baghdadi declared the caliphate in 2014 (allarabnews.com, August 6). The announcement also dispelled the notion that the previous caliph was killed by Turkish security forces, as the Turkish government had claimed. Rather, IS blamed the formerly al-Qaeda-aligned Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) for killing the last caliph.

Why Turkey’s Erdogan sings the same tune with Russia’s Putin in Africa

Somalis celebrate the victory of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after he won the presidential run-off election during the celebrations organised by the government in Mogadishu, on May 29, 2023.

Turkey’s efforts to expand its influence in Africa often align with those of Russia, with both Ankara and Moscow holding back from condemning military coups and seeking to capitalize on post-colonial resentments.

A series of military takeovers in West Africa, the latest occurring in Niger last month, reveal the extent to which Turkish and Russian efforts converge in trying to leverage political shifts to the detriment of former colonial powers, chief among them France, and expand their own influence in the region.

US officials challenge Turkey’s claim to have killed Islamic State leader

RAMI AL SAYED/AFP via Getty Images

US officials suggest that the Syrian jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham really was behind the death of Islamic State leader Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Quraishi.

The Islamic State confirmed the death of its most recent leader, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Quraishi, on Aug. 3. The jihadist group said its self-styled “caliph” had been killed in clashes with the rival Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that is dominant in Syria’s Idlib province, and not by Turkey back in April, as Ankara previously claimed. IS said HTS, which it called “Turkey’s tail,” had handed his body over to Turkish intelligence in a recorded message posted on the Telegram messaging app.

Turkey Seeks Economic Stability – OpEd

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Turkey’s economy is in a bad way. In June the budget deficit, seven times higher than a year earlier, reached 219.6 billion lira ($8.37 billion). The forecast for July shows it widening still further.

On July 16 Turkey raised the tax on gasoline, adding to the recent two percent increase to VAT (value added tax) and five percent hike to corporation tax. Aimed at tackling the budget deficit, those tax hikes will have the deleterious side-effect of stoking inflation, which stood at 38 percent in June. Two days after the tax hike, the Turkish lira weakened to a record low of 26.6 against the dollar.

Iran Strengthens Its Palestinian Cards

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Ongoing fighting in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp may be part of a plan to weaken Fatah and undermine normalization with Israel.

In the past week, fighting erupted in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh near Sidon between Islamist factions and Fatah, after one of Fatah’s military commanders, Abou Ashraf al-Amroushi, was assassinated on July 30. While the fighting was hardly an anomaly, the fact that the head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, Majed Faraj, had visited Lebanon only days before fueled speculation that his visit might have triggered the fighting. Tensions between Hamas, which maintains good relations with Palestinian Islamists, and Fatah have surged in the West Bank and might have impacted the events in Ain al-Hilweh.

Taliban prepare hundreds of suicide bombers over water dispute with Iran

In this picture taken on February 21, 2023, Taliban security personnel watch horsemen compete in the traditional sport of Buzkashi in Fayzabad district of Badakhshan province. (AFP)

In mid-May, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi issued a warning to the Taliban: honor Afghanistan’s water-supply agreement or face the consequences.

A well-known Taliban figure offered a mocking gift of a 20-liter water container in response and told him to stop making terrifying ultimatums. About a week later, a skirmish erupted on the border, leaving two Iranian guards and one Taliban member dead.

Iran’s renewed Africa policy: Raisi’s ambition and the perception of Western decline

Over the past two years, as the United States and the European Union have invested in the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian leadership has opted to solidify its non-Western foreign policy approach. In line with this approach, President Ebrahim Raisi embarked on a three-country trip to Africa in mid-July, marking the first time an Iranian president has undertaken such a visit in over 11 years. Earlier in the month, Iranian officials reported that the Islamic Republic’s exports to the continent had increased by 100% over the past year. It is now clear that engagement with Africa will be a major foreign policy focus under the Raisi administration. However, this is not the first time that Iran has taken such an approach to the continent. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implemented a similar policy from 2005 to 2013, although it did not yield significant results. This raises the question of whether, a decade on, Raisi’s Africa policy will prove any more successful.

Two decades on, Iraq’s ongoing, if fragile, cultural revival

Photo by Khalil Dawood/Xinhua via Getty Images

The view across the Tigris River from the eighth floor of the Babylon Hotel reveals a telling mise-en-scène: As a giant neon billboard that adorns the gleaming 32-story Baghdad Mall flashes the Iraqi flag in between ads for Coca-Cola, the ghost of the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid looms large over her adjacent tower in progress. Commissioned in 2010 to be the headquarters for the Central Bank of Iraq and a symbol of a “new era,” it’s not yet finished, and the Australian engineer whose company helped build it is still languishing in Iraqi prison after a dispute about payment.