The explosion of contradictions between Qatar and Turkey on the one hand, and Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and their satellites on the other, is reflected in the military-political situation not only on the Arabian Peninsula, in Syria and Libya, but throughout Eastern Africa, associated with the crisis participants’ complicated system of relations. Despite their…
We’ve reached half-time in what has been a very eventful year. It’s revealing to compare the stories that have made the headlines in the western media in the first six months of 2017, with those that haven’t. There’s been saturation coverage of alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election — and Russian state “hacking” in general — even though…
Although in recent months, Libya has not been in the focus of attention of top-level politicians and the global media at large, nevertheless, several developments have occurred that are actually quite important, albeit hardly noticeable to the outside world. The gradual accumulation of these not-very-significant changes in the domestic political situation and on the foreign…
On June 20 the United States Treasury Department stated that economic sanctions against Russia «would not be lifted until Russia leaves Crimea». In that case, sanctions will remain forever, because ten days after the democratically elected Crimean parliament voted to accede to Russia on 6 March 2014, a referendum was held which confirmed its decision — and the citizens of Crimea…
Police investigations and media reports have confirmed that two of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Western Europe — the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 people, and the May 2017 bombing of the arena in Manchester, England, which killed 23 — trace back to an Islamic State unit based…
In 2001, all we ever heard about in the media was how America was going to “free Afghanistan for democracy.” Sixteen years and several trillion dollars later, Afghanistan should be as free as a bird now, right? So I went to Expedia.com and clicked on “flight + hotel” to Kabul. Nothing came up. Afghanistan is…
