Muqtada al-Sadr is up to something. In 2004 occupied Iraq, the nationalist leader who later engineered the Sadrist movement was even demonized as America’s number one enemy – briefly dethroning Osama bin Laden. Now, he’s being painted – by the usual Wahhabi-coddling suspects – as some sort of Reconciliator. Last month, al-Sadr flew to Jeddah…
For years, the US has positioned its military on key spots along China’s One Belt-One Road (aka New Silk Road). Furthermore, the recent inflaming of the protracted disputes between Washington and Pyongyang along with American provocations against China in the South China Sea, all add up to American power trying to fully encircle not only…
Africa has been one of the integrally important regions regarding the successful implementation of China’s ambitious One Belt One Road (OBOR) project. Just as in Eurasia, China is planning to cover this continent with a network of railroads and highways which will stretch from the ports along the eastern coast of Africa all the way…
The “dueling ports” of Gwadar and Chabahar in Pakistani and Iranian Balochistan have come to symbolize the Great Power competition between China and India, respectively, but there are actually two more pairs of ports in the Bay of Bengal which are paid comparatively less attention to by most observers despite their high-level collective importance in…
Beware the dogs of war. The same intel “folks” who brought to you babies pulled from incubators by “evil” Iraqis as well as non-existent WMDs are now peddling the notion that North Korea has produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead able to fit its recently tested ICBM. That’s the core of an analysis completed in July…
The trade ministers of the five BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) met this week in Shanghai, ahead of the annual summit of heads of state in Xiamen next month. Trouble looms across the board. China and India are immersed in a silly, almost Monty Pythonesque face-off in the Tibet/Sikkim/Bhutan tri-junction, with…
