The current image of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to take a hit. Earlier this month was the one year anniversary of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The situation in Yemen continues to fester and earlier this summer a series of UAV strikes targeted the country including the Petroleum Industry.
The Greek government has said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan personally controls the migration flows to Greece and turns them on and off to extract more money and other political concessions from the European Union. In recent months, the Turkish government has repeatedly threatened to open the floodgates of mass migration to Greece, and, by extension, to the rest of Europe.
On October 9, Turkey launched a cross-border offensive into northern Syria using airstrikes, artillery bombardments, and a ground invasion against Kurdish positions.
Turkey’s Erdoğan government will be invading northern Syria to slaughter the Kurds, America’s loyal allies against ISIS; release captured ISIS fighters, and doubtless seek to stay permanently in control of the area. The horror is that it will be doing all this with the tacit blessing of the US.
In other words, Islamic Jihad’s promise is one of unending toxicity: to go on poisoning the hearts and minds of generation after generation of Palestinians – as well as to continue investing millions of dollars in building tunnels and amassing weapons to ensure that the fight against Israel continues forever.
This essay series explores the human costs and policy challenges associated with the displacement crises in the Middle East and Asia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his speech at the annual gathering of the UN General Assembly to advocate for a plan that would see the return of over one million Syrian refugees from Turkey to a strip along the Turkish border in northeastern Syria. While Turkey should not have to indefinitely host its 3.6 million Syrian refugees, the plan proposed by Erdogan would entail large-scale deportations of refugees, demographic re-engineering, and the destabilization of northeastern Syria, an area enjoying relative calm. A better path forward would be to facilitate the return of refugees from northeastern and eastern Syria to their homes by investing in reconstruction of the area and encouraging political reforms that would remove obstacles to their return.
Faycal* aura passé plus d’un an et demi en Syrie. Responsable de la distribution de la nourriture au sein de groupes rebelles, son témoignage inédit éclaire le fonctionnement interne des factions de combattants ainsi que le quotidien et la désillusion de nombreu·ses·x Tunisien·nes.
Pour raconter son histoire, Fayçal prend ses précautions. Il n’accepte de parler qu’en-dehors de son quartier, dans un café discret. Le jeune homme n’a pas encore 30 ans. De forte corpulence, il a un visage doux et arbore un sourire gêné. Méfiant, il regarde constamment autour de lui. Après avoir passé plus d’un an en Syrie, il est retourné chez ses parents. Depuis, il ne sort presque plus de chez lui et se sent surveillé en permanence.
Cairo: Qatar has continued to support terrorist and militant groups despite a pledge to stop doing this, a Saudi minister has said, amid a bitter diplomatic row between the two neighbours.
Counterpoint host Daniel Schwammenthal is joined by Geoffrey Van Orden, British Member of the European Parliament, and Tommaso Virgili, Visiting Fellow at the Martens Centre for European Studies, to discuss the UK’s decision to ban Hezbollah in its entirety and the prospects for the EU to follow suit. Will Brussels end the artificial distinction between the “military” and “political” arms of Iran’s terror proxy?