With the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crash dominating the headlines, the civil war in Syria has faded into media obscurity. But there is more bad news there that warrants the world’s attention.
Is Russia’s lucky streak in Syria and Libya finally running out? The Kremlin has gambled big on proxy warfare in both countries, deploying thousands of private military contractors with the so-called Wagner Group to back its favorite strongmen. But after a recent run of misfortunes for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the head of the breakaway Libyan National Army, it is starting to look like Russia may not be able to cash in real wins in the Middle East and North Africa anytime soon.
Even with its physical “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in tatters, the Islamic State is still managing to wage a global insurgency, maintaining an operational presence in at least 20 separate countries. The organization’s global diffusion recently led a group of leading terrorism experts to describe ISIS as an “adhocracy,” better understood as a group of “structurally fluid organizations in which ‘interacting project teams’ work towards a shared purpose and/or identity.” By maintaining this structure, the group’s leaders seek to harness the benefits of a transnational network spanning multiple regions and continents.
“All politics is local,” as the famous saying goes. But in the 21st century, all conflict is global, and organizations like ISIS are well-positioned to leverage the capabilities of its affiliates worldwide.
Abstract: Following a sustained buildup in attacks throughout 2019 and into first half of 2020, the Islamic State’s insurgency in Iraq underwent a steep decline over the last 20 months. A comprehensive analysis of attack metrics shows an insurgency that has deteriorated in both the quality of its operations and overall volume of attack activity, which has fallen to its lowest point since 2003. The Islamic State is increasingly isolated from the population, confined to remote rural backwaters controlled by Iraq’s less effective armed forces and militias, and lacks reach into urban centers. The downtrend in Iraq is likely attributable to stepped-up security operations, pressure on mid- and upper-tier leadership cadres, and the Islamic State’s refocusing on Syria—graphically illustrated by the January 20, 2022, attempted mass breakout by the Islamic State at Syria’s Ghweran prison. The key analytical quandary that emerges from this picture is whether the downtrend marks the onset of an enduring decline for the group, or if the Islamic State is merely lying low while laying the groundwork for its survival as a generational insurgency.
Obsessed with reviving Turks’ imperial days of glory, Erdoğan is turning to Turkey’s east to create a pan-Turkic/Islamist strategic alliance consisting of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan, with part-time, tactical alliances with Iran, Qatar and Bangladesh.
The idea is to bring together three Muslim nations: NATO member Turkey; Azerbaijan with its rich hydrocarbon resources and growing military capabilities; and Pakistan with its nuclear weapons.
The US became increasingly Zionist subverted after Apartheid Israel gained nuclear weapons by 1967. Support for Apartheid Israel (and hence of Apartheid) is now a pillar of US politics, with anti-racist critics of Israeli Apartheid ferociously attacked, side-lined, and falsely defamed as anti-Semitic. However Zionist control and hubris are now blatant: 32 percent or about one third of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists and the remainder are moderate Christian Zionists.
The United States has emerged as a major architect of the new map of the Middle East while continuing its military disengagement. This aims to extricate itself from a military quagmire as much as to recover forces and concentrate them towards a new objective: The Indo-Pacific zone and China. Washington intends to leave the keys of regional security exclusively to local actors.
The EAEU-Iran preferential trade agreement (PTA) implemented on October 27, 2019, offers lower tariffs on 862 commodity types, of which 502 are Iranian exports to the Eurasian Economic Union. This agreement significantly increased the trade volume between Iran and the member countries of the Union. In the period between October 2019 and October 2020, the trade volume grew by more than 84%. Indeed, the trade flows gradually gathered pace and the value of trade between Iran and the members of the EAEU exceeded $1.957 billion in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21 – August 22, 2021), marking 96 per cent growth compared to the same period of the previous year. As the agreement was designed to be in effect for 3 years, it is to expire on October 5, 2022. For this reason, the parties have recently begun technical and expert negotiations to upgrade the PTA to a free trade agreement (FTA). If this happens, the number of items of the agreement will rise to at least 8000, which is sure to set off a massive increase in the volume of trade between Iran and the Union. Although there are various capacities and advantages between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union, there are also problems that need to be taken seriously in the process of upgrading the EAEU-Iran PTA to an FTA. These include:
The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest and hugely influential group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, does not believe that the conflict with Israel is over Jerusalem, settlements, borders, checkpoints or Palestinian prisoners.
Qattati’s article shows that PIJ and its masters in Tehran consider not only Israel as the “enemy,” but the US too. This is the same Iran whose representatives are currently negotiating with the US and other world powers about reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
‘Cubs of Caliphate’ are among 700 boys held in Islamic State prison, as Syrian Kurdish forces keep up the battle to retake control
Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria battled for a fifth day to regain full control of the country’s largest prison for Islamic State (IS) detainees, as coalition aircraft bombed jihadi targets in support of the effort to contain the deadliest violence since the territorial defeat of their so-called “caliphate” in 2019.