Iran: Between Illusion and Reality

As for voter turnout, we now know that the regime has set the stage for an “historic event”. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Gen. Hussein Salami says the “Supreme Guide” has ordered “an epoch-making turnout” that his force will help assemble.

[I]t is clear that the “Supreme Guide” will not tolerate the slightest deviation from the course he has set: a revolution that he claims is moving from strength to strength. “Today we are stronger and America is weaker,” he said recently. One of his ideological gurus, Dr. Hassan Abbasi, aka “Dr. Kissinger of Islam”, goes further: “America is the sunset power,” he says. “We are the sunrise power!”

What Makes Erdogan Tick?

At the end of the year, there was a Turkey in deep stages of cold-to-colder-war with the EU (in particular, with EU members Greece, Cyprus and France), Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, General Khalifa Haftar of Libya and the United States (over the S-400 dispute).

Not one of these state actors stepped back and appeased Erdoğan or changed policy in the face of Turkish hostilities.

France: Macron Gave Up Fighting Radicalism

There are also teachers who, possibly because they are scared, choose to bow their heads, give up teaching certain subjects and — when students shout anti-Semitic and anti-Western insults — to act as if they hear nothing. It has become almost impossible in most French high schools to talk about either Israel or the Holocaust.

Most journalists seem to prefer avoiding all discussion of the advance of radical Islam in France. They know that those who do so are immediately called “racists” or “Islamophobes” and are often threatened, prosecuted, sentenced to heavy fines or fired from their place of work.

Pakistan Army’s ‘Culture Of Entitlement’ – OpEd

If an outsider was to say that there’s rampant corruption in Pakistan army, especially within the top echelons, Pakistan army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations [ISPR] would label that person a “RAW agent” trying to malign the military and terming such assertions as “motivated”, outrightly dismiss the same. However, what explanation can ISPR offer when patriotic and well-meaning people in Pakistan level similar charges against Rawalpindi?

Tracing The Role Of Ideas And Tactics In The Kashmir Conflict – Analysis

The conflict in Kashmir has undergone several changes and has kept itself relevant by drawing upon ideas and tactics from elsewhere.

Since its outbreak in 1989, the conflict in Kashmir has survived by adopting or dubbing ideas and tactics from the events elsewhere. Conflicts in today’s globalised and digitalised world often feed on new ideas as monotonous strategies and tactics are easy targets for counterinsurgencies and conflict fatigue. Thus, non-state actors and agents of conflicts often implement and introduce novel tactics and ideas to cope with the changes and keep their movements alive, and the conflict in Kashmir is no exemption to it.

Commercial Trucks Refusing to Enter South Sudan Because of Insecurity

Hundreds of commercial trucks carrying goods bound for South Sudan have stopped at the borders this week, with drivers refusing to complete deliveries because of insecurity. A series of armed attacks on vehicles in South Sudan last month left at least 15 people dead. The truckers say they won’t leave Uganda and Kenya until their safety can be guaranteed.

Kenyan court ‘temporarily blocks’ closure of refugee camps

Case involving government plans to close Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps to return in the courtroom in a month, reports say.

Kenya’s high court has temporarily blocked the closure of two refugee camps hosting more than 400,000 people, according to media reports and activists.

UN chief: Sudan-South Sudan dispute will keep UN in Abyei

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has informed the Security Council that he couldn’t provide options to reduce and terminate the nearly 3,700-strong peacekeeping force in the disputed Abyei region on the Sudan-South Sudan border because of differences between the two countries.

The U.N. chief said in a letter obtained Thursday by The Associated Press that because of the different positions on the future of the force in Abyei, known as UNISFA, “no options that would be minimally acceptable to the parties could be formulated.”

Uganda, Egypt ink security deal amid strain over Nile dam

Uganda’s defence ministry said Thursday it had signed an intelligence-sharing agreement with its Egyptian counterparts, bolstering security ties amid regional tensions over a massive hydropower dam on the Nile.

The deal will facilitate regular exchange of intelligence between security agencies on transnational threats such as terrorism, Uganda’s deputy defence ministry spokesman, Deo Akiiki, told AFP.