“Molenbeek would love to be forgotten, because it is the very example of the failure of the multicultural society, which remains an untouchable dogma in Belgium”. — Alain Destexhe, honorary Senator in Belgium and former Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders, Le Figaro, May 3, 2022.
The infighting between the US volunteers who went to Ukraine to fight Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, when President Volodymyr Zelensky called for help, is undermining the war effort.
Justin Scheck, an international investigative reporter, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, the Ukraine correspondent, in an article in The New York Times (NYT) said that after a year of combat, many of these homespun groups of volunteers are fighting with themselves and undermining the war effort.
These posters reportedly contain threats of murder against men and women, including accusations of failing to pay “zakat” (Islamic tax) and other charges.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) war monitor on Tuesday reported that ISIS cells in the Arab-majority Deir ez-Zor province are spreading fear among civilians by hanging posters on walls, mosques, and electricity poles.
Emboldened by the victory of its ideological counterparts in Afghanistan, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has resurged in a deadly fashion. In January, the banned group carried out its deadliest attack on a mosque in Peshawar since the Army Public School (APS) attack in 2014.
“The truth is awful things are now happening. Last year there were race riots in Oldham in the old industrial revolution heartland of England. This year it is the burning of Jewish synagogues in Marseilles by Muslim youths angry at the Israeli response to the Intifada. All over Europe, it is the undoubted rise of crime among immigrant youth.”
Known as Africa’s “last colony” Western Sahara is a stretch of desert territory along part of Africa’s Atlantic coast, bordering Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania. The tragic story of Western Sahara is one of a decolonization crisis rooted in the Cold War that remains unresolved.
The Dismal Track Record of U.S. Military Interventions
American soldiers have been deployed abroad almost continuously since the end of World War II. The best-known foreign interventions—in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq—were large, long, and costly. But there have been dozens of other such deployments, many smaller or shorter, for purposes ranging from deterrence to training. Taken as a whole, these operations have had a decidedly mixed record. Some, such as Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which swept the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait, largely succeeded. But others—such as those in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere—were disappointments or outright failures. It is these unsuccessful post–Cold War interventions that have engendered serious doubts among policymakers and the public about the role of force in U.S. foreign policy.
Heightened tensions between the U.S. and China have many observers likening their strategic competition to a geopolitical struggle reminiscent of the Cold War. While the focus of that competition is in Asia, it extends to all the world’s regions, particularly where China has made inroads into what were historically regarded as U.S. spheres of influence, like Latin America.
The Senate voted on Wednesday to advance a bill that would repeal the authorizations for combat operations in Iraq.
The measure to repeal the authorizations from 1991 and 2002 passed the Senate in a 66–30 vote with 18 Republicans and all present Democrats supporting the measure. It now heads to the GOP-controlled House where its future is uncertain. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has said he is open to supporting a repeal after previously opposing it, according to the Associated Press.