October 1st began what could be one of the more interesting Chairships of the United Nations Security Council, with Russia taking over and being charged with a rather delicate balancing act: between conducting the numerous ... ... relationship have been exhibited within the UNSC itself. On the general business front, Russia will see issues dominating the Middle East and Africa at the top of the schedule: · developments in Syria; · settlements and their legality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; · implementation of resolution 1559 ...
Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria and Iraq with the Islamic State arises. While acquiring data and calculating accurate numbers wildly diverges from source ... ... century, making its reach and scope far beyond anything the West could ever think plausible.
Against this backdrop, it is inexcusable that American agents find themselves at a loss to understand the appeal of that small percentage willing to abandon the ...
... absence of diligence on the part of Western analysts covering the Middle East than by any miraculous strength of force on the part ... ... bolstered by the hardened fighters located largely in eastern Syria, where there has always been a heavy population of Sunni ... ... Iraq over the last decade, most of us that deal in academia with international relations have long known that it is a tricky and ... ... region but also perhaps as a direct threat to its own national security goals, given the open declarations from ISIS that it wants ...