A fresh disaster may be looming in Nagorny Karabakh, the majority-Armenian highland enclave within the borders of Azerbaijan.
On September 19, a lightning Azerbaijani offensive overwhelmed inferior Armenian forces, and Azerbaijan took possession of the province it had not controlled in thirty-five years. Locals reported at least 200 casualties, and there were credible reports of civilian deaths.
Le conflit chronique entre Arméniens et Azerbaïdjanais resurgit après une période d’accalmie, ou de guerre de basse intensité. Pour le contrôle du Haut-Karabakh. La guerre la plus stupide du monde, disait à l’époque un diplomate d’une autre ancienne république soviétique, bien plus grande. Parce que la région contestée est absolument dépourvue de ressources naturelles d’importance. Et de toute importance stratégique. De plus, le conflit qui dure depuis trente ans l’a presque dépeuplée. Bref, un désert. Mais un désert pour lequel des gens continuent de se battre et de mourir.
Prodigious rainfall and the failure of long-deteriorated earthen dams caused a rush of waters through Derna, in Libya, on September 11. Thousands of residents died, infrastructure was destroyed, and buildings ended up in the Mediterranean. Failure to protect residents, maintain the dams, and sustain the lives of all Libyans point to societal collapse.
In December 2022, Time magazine named the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky its Person of the Year. The reasons seemed obvious: When Russia invaded in February of that year, few thought that Ukraine would survive more than a week, or that its president would remain at his post in Kyiv. But Zelensky, who had been a comedian and actor before his unlikely landslide election victory in 2019, defied Russian airstrikes and mobilized his countrymen, rebuffing Western offers of evacuation: “I need ammunition, not a ride.” His unexpected courage helped to rally Ukrainian forces against Russia’s northern thrust. He also reminded many of the two-time Man of the Year—in 1940 and 1949—Winston Churchill. Also known for defending his country against the aggression of an authoritarian leader, Churchill was, as Time’s tribute noted, “the historical figure to whom [Zelensky] has most often been compared in recent months.”
The Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh on Wednesday agreed to lay down their weapons following Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in the Armenian-majority enclave. Between Moscow’s weakening position in the Caucasus and the West’s dependence on hydrocarbons, Azerbaijan has taken advantage of a favourable international context to complete a decades-long mission to control the disputed region.
Abstract: Since the emergence of the global jihad movement, global jihadis have expressed their enmity to “Zionists”—jihadi code for Israel and the Jewish community worldwide—through ideological declarations and operations on the ground. Examining the correlation between global jihadi rhetoric and operational activities against Israel and the Jewish community, the present study explores the degree to which the “Zionist cause” is important for global jihadis. In the process, it contributes to understanding why, how, and when extremist language is translated into violence.The study finds that the Palestinian issue and specific “trigger events” related to the Arab-Israeli conflict tend to generate favorable declarations on the part of both al-Qa`ida and the Islamic State, but that jihadi rhetoric is rarely translated into violent attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets. Of the two main jihadi organizations, the Islamic State has the better track recordof striking Jewish and Israeli targets, although the Islamic State’s “anti-Zionist” campaign can hardly be deemed a success. The relative dearth of successful operations, however, has not deterred global jihadi organizations from regularly leveraging the Palestinian issue for political gain, and in order to reinforce their stature as powerful actors in the Middle Eastern and global arenas. Despite jihadi lip service to the Palestinian cause, support for global jihad among Arab Israelis and Palestinians has remained relatively low. Physical and ideological barriers erected by Israel and the Jewish community have so far limited the capacity of global jihadi actors to operate against Israel and the Jewish community.
The EU does not know what to do with the Western Balkans
The 20th anniversary of the signing of the Thessaloniki Declaration[2] was recently celebrated in Thessaloniki, followed by the Bled Strategic Forum (BSF), and the summit of the Brdo-Brioni process in Skopje, while the summit of the Berlin process will be held in October in Tirana.
Les combattants du Cadre stratégique permanent, (CSP), une coalition de groupes armés du Nord malien, se sont retirés de la ville de Léré (Nord) par crainte d’éventuels bombardements de l’armée malienne, ont confirmé plusieurs sources civiles locales ainsi qu’un porte-parole de cette coalition.
Des milliers de migrants, en majorité des ressortissants subsahariens, campent au nord de Sfax, en Tunisie, dans l’attente d’une traversée vers l’Italie, après avoir été chassés par les forces de sécurité, selon des organisations humanitaires et des témoignages à l’AFP.
On Tuesday September 19, 2023, the Republic of Azerbaijan launched a military operation against terrorist Armenian forces in Karabakh region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan sovereign territory but has been ruled by an ethnic Armenian “so called government” since 1994.