Recently a new wave of deadly acts of terrorism in Afghanistan, and from Afghanistan into Pakistan, has erupted again. To understand its raison d’être in general and the focus of its violence on Pakistan and Afghanistan a critical review of the major political upheaval in Pakistan continuing since about a year now is essential.
The outbreak of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 attracted a great deal of attention from the international community, as well as from the public in the Muslim world. This was not surprising since it was the bloodiest war in Europe after World War II.
Pakistan witnessed a gruesome suicide bombing in a mosque on 30 January 2023 in Peshawar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Over 100 people were killed and more than 220 wounded.
Omar Mukaram Khorasani, the head of the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a splinter group of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.1 The TTP denied the claim and insisted that it does not attack “mosques, madrasas (religious schools), funeral places, and other such places.”2 The statement, however, does not hold much water, given the TTP’s organizational structure, ideology and its past attacks.
Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to
offer the United States Intelligence Community’s 2019 assessment of threats to US national security.
My statement reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community’s extraordinary women
and men, whom I am privileged and honored to lead. We in the Intelligence Community are
committed every day to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that
policymakers, warfighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives
and America’s interests anywhere in the world.
The order of the topics presented in this statement does not necessarily indicate the relative
importance or magnitude of the threat in the view of the Intelligence Community.
Information available as of 17 January 2019 was used in the preparation of this assessment.
More than six months after the United States killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in an airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan, leadership of the terror group appears to have quietly passed to his heir apparent in Iran.
Russia needs Novorossiya and Malorossiya – at least the part of Malorossiya that is east of the Dnepr river. These parts are not “ukrainian”, they never were and they never will be! These parts are as genuinely russian as Moscow or St Peterburg but because of a historical mistake – the break-up of the Soviet Union in stead of the modernisation of it – these parts are now outside of mother Russia. That would not be a catastrophe if these lands were part of a democratic, pro-russian “Ukraine” or if they were a sovreign and pro-russian country like Belarus or Kazahstan. Then they would still be a part of the Russian World with very close ties to the Motherland. But now these lands are occupied by a nazi junta in Kiev, placed there by the USA after an armed coup against the legal governmment and president Yanukovich!
The socio-cultural and political clarifications shared in this analysis are essential to accept if one wants to truly understand the strategic dynamics of the New Cold War. This worldwide struggle over the direction of the global systemic transition is just as much about socio-cultural issues and states’ rights (or lack thereof) to determine/protect them as it is about geopolitics.
As early as 2023, Poland is has contracted to buy 50 Javelin LWCLU launchers, as well as about 500 FGM-148F Javelin missiles, as well as an additional training and logistics package.
Other U.S. partners are also receiving weapons. Poland also bought K2 tanks and K9A1 howitzers from South Korea. According to the contract signed in July 2022, a total of 1,000 K2 and K2PL tanks and 672 K9A1/K9PL howitzers will be delivered to Poland. Some of the equipment has already begun to be delivered.
In recent years, the Eastern European countries that have become members of NATO have shown excessive zeal in promoting Atlanticism, becoming more pro-American than the old guard from Western Europe. The logic can be explained not only by the desire to please the patron from Washington, but also by Halford Mackinder’s famous geopolitical imperative – whoever controls Eastern Europe controls Eurasia, and whoever controls Eurasia controls the world.
Seymour Hersh, the famous investigative journalist, has slammed U.S.’s alleged involvement in bombing the Nord Stream gas lines as one of the “dumbest” decisions taken in years, warning that the move will have “horrific” consequences for Europeans and further undercut the already “supremely useless” NATO alliance.