The United States’ top ally in Syria warned that unless Washington and the Kremlin push back more firmly Turkey will launch a ground offensive against his forces that will further undermine the battle against the Islamic State.
Syrian Kurdish commander’s plans to defend Kobani and Manbij have US military officials worried about security at prisons holding some 10,000 former IS fighters.
Concerns are running high in the Pentagon over Turkey’s threats to launch yet another military incursion against Syria’s Kurdish-led forces, officials said Tuesday, after warning last week that such a move would threaten the safety of American troops and efforts to contain the Islamic State.
In the hunger map of present day world, Somalia is probably the most seriously affected country of the 21st century. Somalia is reported by the UN to have lost 260,000 lives in and around 2011 to hunger and famine deaths, one of the very few countries in the world to have such a high number of recorded hunger deaths in recent times, despite having a population of only around 17 million or so. Today, just a decade or so later, the country is probably in an even worse situation.
On November 21, 2022, Mali’s interim Prime Minister Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga posted a statement on social media to say that Mali has decided “to ban, with immediate effect, all activities carried out by NGOs operating in Mali with funding or material or technical support from France.” A few days before this statement, the French government cut official development assistance (ODA) to Mali because it believed that Mali’s government is “allied to Wagner’s Russian mercenaries.” Colonel Maïga responded by saying that these are “fanciful allegations” and a “subterfuge intended to deceive and manipulate national and international public opinion.”
NATO foreign ministers met in Bucharest, Romania, on Tuesday, along with representatives of the prospective NATO members Ukraine, Finland, and Sweden to discuss a further expansion of the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine and the stationing of more troops on Russia’s Western borders.
The leader of the Islamic State blew himself up last month in an operation carried out by the rebel Free Syrian Army in Daraa province in southwest Syria. Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, who had led the Islamist ISIS since March, killed himself and his aides using a suicide belt after they were discovered in a secret hideout in a house in the town of Jasem.
A recent blast hit the center of Istanbul resulting in several casualties. The Turkish authorities were very quick to announce the identity of the suicide person: A Kurdish woman in close relation with the Kurdistan Workers Party. Nevertheless, this terror act in Istanbul, followed by a new Turkish military intervention (aggression) in North Syria, once again opened the “Kurdish Question” which is in direct connection with the question of Kurdistan’s independence and terrorism as the political instrument in the realization of the national projects and ultimate goals.
As the war in Ukraine has dragged on for nine months and a cold winter is setting in, people all over the world are calling for a Christmas truce, harkening back to the inspirational Christmas Truce of 1914. In the midst of World War I, warring soldiers put down their guns and celebrated the holiday together in the no-man’s land between their trenches.This spontaneous reconciliation and fraternization has been, over the years, a symbol of hope and courage.
Damascus’ low-key reaction to Turkey’s recent strikes on Syrian Kurdish targets suggests it might acquiesce to Turkish military moves that would contribute to ending the US military presence in the north.
Ankara demands “concrete steps” from Sweden and Finland before giving the nod to NATO’s Nordic enlargement, including an “asset freeze,” a demand that hasn’t been expressed publicly before.
Turkey will wait for more concrete steps — including a freeze of “terror assets” in Sweden and Finland — before giving a nod to the Nordic enlargement of NATO, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday while speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Bucharest.