The most successful Kurdish political experiment in West Asia is unravelling due to increasing divisions between the KDP and PUK, the two biggest political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iraq’s Kurds, as with other mainly Iranic populations across western and southern Asia, are busy preparing to celebrate Nowruz on March 21, the Persian new year which marks the beginning of Spring.
The move continues a trend reversing aspects of Kurdish autonomy gained since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq
For the first time since 2002, oil revenues from Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will be transferred to a bank account supervised by the Iraqi central government, state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported on 17 March, citing the prime minister’s media adviser Hisham al-Rekaby.
Tehran and Riyadh recently agreed to restore diplomatic relations under the auspices of China
Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said on 15 March that investments in Iran could happen “very quickly” following the signing of a normalization agreement.
At a time when conflicts are increasingly interconnected, and provide tactical levers to assert pressure elsewhere, the competition between Russia-Iran and Turkiye in Syria and the South Caucasus is destined to overlap.
Despite being in conflict with armed resistance factions in the West Bank, Palestinian Authority forces have also collaborated with them, posing a challenge to those who seek to divide Palestinians.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has reportedly agreed to implement a controversial US proposal aimed at restoring its control over northern West Bank areas that are currently dominated by newly formed Palestinian resistance groups. However, the plan, lacking an understanding of the realities on the ground, may have unintended consequences.
The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is becoming increasingly complicated, not just because of the intensification of the armed conflict in Ukraine, but also because of the process of establishment of the government after the general elections in October 2022.
Ever since his first term in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron has sought a broad reset of national strategy, relations and intervention in Africa owing to France’s complicated and chequered historical legacy in the continent.
Over the past two decades Iraq has been affected by several waves of intense conflict and violence. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition led by the United States and United Kingdom toppled the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein. It also ushered in years of chaos and civil war, as a variety of armed groups vied for power and territory and targeted coalition forces and the fledgling post-Ba’athist Iraqi Army. A period of relative calm in the early 2010s was broken by the rise of the extremist Islamic State group, which occupied large parts of the country from 2014 until it was largely defeated by Iraqi forces with the support of a US-led international coalition in 2017.
With negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme stalled, international monitoring abilities degraded, and China now mediating between Saudi Arabia and Iran, what options do the US and Europe have for containing Tehran?
On March 10, Chinese President and Communist Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping brokered a surprise agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries, effectively knocking the US off the Middle Eastern chessboard and showing himself as a power-broker on the world stage.