... security issues in the Middle East and North Africa took place.
High-level experts from Russia, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, China, and India took part in the discussion. The discussion focused on the attempts of the leadership of Iraq to mediate in negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as the potential impact of the change of power in Afghanistan on the balance of power in the region and the prospects for strengthening security in the Middle East.
Irina Zvyagelskaya, RIAC Member, Head of the Center for the Middle East Studies at RAS IMEMO, Professor of the Department of Oriental Studies ...
... system of tunnels, which the terrorists have been developing for years, help the remaining militants hole up near the Syria-Iraq border and conduct attacks on both governmental forces and the SDF Kurds. Suicide attacks against the Syrian Arab Army continue,... ... its strengthening has grown in other conflict regions of the world. ISIS cells firmly consolidated in Libya, Yemen, Sinai and Afghanistan as early as in 2014-2015. That experience now serves as the starting point for further development and implementation ...
... incentive to oppose the new Iraq rather than support it. In the ensuing struggle over leadership, a virtual civil war erupted between Sunnis and Shiites, with Kurds in the mix as well – not to mention al-Qaeda, which was rising in the Sunni community in Iraq. The unfinished war in Afghanistan and the unending, Vietnam-like quagmire in Iraq produced two growing insurgencies.
The Surge of Petraeus and his “Shipmate” Mattis
Before he became, in early February 2007, Commander of Multi-National Forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus ...
... threat for other states in the region is formidable. On the other side, the new Iraqi government shall be one of the major pieces of the puzzle since it has to become a better alternative for Iraqi Sunnites. Concentrating power in the hands of Shia Iraqis (sectarianism) has never been a good strategy. Finally, air strikes can halt or pull the IS back at best. At worst, one can fail as the U.S. did in Vietnam. You just cannot combat these guys from the sky!
3. Whither Afghanistan?
Well, it's pretty simple. A president of Kabul is not a president of Afghanistan. Almost entire south-east landstrip of the territory is facing considerable or high security threat, terror attacks have been carried out in the Afghan ...
... positions of his friends, and alienate all neutrals while he was gradually winning the war, and at a time when UN chemical inspectors were in Damascus? The sceptic observer cannot help but remember the false intelligence on which the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was founded; Saddam Hussein did not in fact possess weapons of mass destruction. The parallel is inescapable. In May, Carla Del Ponte, leading member of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, asserted that there ...
... national working for an American PMSC in Afghanistan as anything other than a mercenary. This example is neither fictitious, nor rare. As of July 2013, 83% of the private military and security contractors working for the US Department of Defense in Iraq, and 10% in Afghanistan, are third-country nationals, i.e. neither US citizens, nor local nationals. The fact that a corporate business entity – equally profit-seeking – intermediates between the individual pecuniary motives of its employees and the perhaps ...
... according to their own judgment. From representing only 1% of the military personnel operating in various conflict zones in the early 1990’s, it was roughly believed that their number had increased to 1 out of 4 soldiers in 2011 in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The growth of the private military/security industry demonstrates a gradual diffusion of the control over the use of force to a diversity of non-state actors. This departure from state monopoly involves a multiplicity of implications, ranging ...
... However, the Americans had already vigorously used economic, political and propagandist mechanisms before the policy change, with the key innovation being in the modified set of military and police arrangements.
Before the changes, occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq had been quite passive, spending most of the time at their bases to guard against terrorists, with occasional outside patrolling and roadblock operations.
Criticizing the strategy of his predecessors, ISAF Commander General Stanley McChrystal wrote ...
Unintended consequences of Iraq and Afghanistan
As international worries deepen over developments in Syria and Mali, the West must be cautious about leading the pack when it comes to saying what should be done. Because the events now playing out in Syria and Mali are, in no small part,...
