Search results for: Iran

Afghanistan at a New Crossroad: Resource Curse or Asian integration?

The first sentence of the 2006 US Quadrennial Defence Review is “The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war”. Any civilian, military or factious leader in Afghanistan, could have written almost exactly the same after thirty-five years of war. And this war still goes on, but it now faces a strange strategic, ecological and economic transition, that could be dominated by a new “Afghan resource and climate curse”. Failed state-building, climate and war From 1969 to 1972, Afghanistan went through a terrible drought and a harsh winter. A terrible famine followed, which ravaged the populations of central Afghanistan. The titanic scale of incompetence, mismanagement and corruption of the Kabul government aggravated it, and maybe …

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The Kurds and Rojava, State-Building in the Syrian War

During the Autumn 2013 and Winter 2014, we witnessed a major reconfiguration of forces in Syria, as seen previously, including with the rise of Salafi-Nationalists. This article looks at the evolution that took place in Western Kurdistan, notably the birth of novel political institutions, Rojava, and how and why the Kurds relate to the Geneva conference that took place in early 2014. Creating Rojava We recall that on 10 July 2013, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) declared starting making plans to move towards some degree of autonomy for Rojava or the Syrian part of Kurdistan (see for detail 4 Nov 2013 update, 2.1.). News about Rojava and its “project” can be followed on its own website, created in August 2013 and maintained until 2017. The PYD moved forward …

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Pakistan and the “Long Storm”

Events show that Pakistan is on the most advanced front lines of climate change. How thus should we re-read the already complex and interacting geopolitical, geostrategic and domestic situations of Pakistan and what does that mean strategically for the region and the world?

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How to Analyze Future Security Threats (5): Scenarios and Crises

This article is the fifth of a series looking for a methodology that would fulfil the challenging criteria demanded by our time, notably in terms of speed and resources. The previous article focused on how to build scenarios for war. Here we look at scenarios for situations qualified as non-violent crises, taking mainly as example the crisis between China and Japan in the East China Sea over the Diaoyu (China)/Senkaku (Japan) Islands. War or crisis? It is important, first, to note that the words used in political discourses to qualify a situation may create an element of confusion when we think about an issue such as crisis, conflict and war. Actors may have many reasons for using euphemisms rather than …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 19 December 2013 – Pivot, center and epicenter

Editorial – Pivot, center and epicenter – First of all, let me wish you all a Merry Christmas, and send this wish especially to those who are prey to war and disaster, whatever their faith. This week, the epicenter or the pivot for the turmoil of change seems very much to be located around the …

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The Persian Gulf, between Power and Collapse

A tale of two cities:  Warsaw, Teheran At the international United Nations conference on climate change in Warsaw, Poland, started on the 12th of November, the Philippine diplomat begged for the negotiators to find an international binding accord on climate, one day after a monster storm left a trail of mass destruction in his country. At the end of tense negotiations, it was established that each country should define national contributions for this global effort, which will be discussed during further negotiations. At the very same time, in Geneva, a historic deal was struck between Iran, the five permanent members of the UN security council and Germany, about Iran nuclear program: Teheran promised to suspend it, in exchange of a …

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Methodology to Analyze Future Security Threats (2): a Game of Chess

This article is the second of a series looking for a methodology that would fulfill the challenging criteria demanded by our time. Previously, we saw that a single “story” initially told at a general level, the political dynamics that are at the core of a polity, could be used to build the very specific model needed to answer a strategic foresight and warning (national security) question or a political risk interrogation. Very practically, how shall we do that? How are generic dynamics going to help us with our task? How can we proceed? This is what we shall see now. Related Towards an Operational Methodology to Analyze Future Security Threats and Political Risk (1) Methodology to Analyze Future Security Threats (2): a …

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Climate of Change on the Red Sea

Since the “Arab spring” in 2011, one has seen a series of old and entrenched dictatorships topple (Georges Corm, Le Proche-Orient éclaté, 2012), from Tunisia to Yemen, or, as in Syria, being replaced by a monstrous civil war. However, the very complex political forces thus unleashed, are not only rooted in the changing social, political and religious Middle-East context. New socio-environmental dynamics have also appeared, which reveal the dire vulnerability of some of these societies, about to lose the very resources upon which they depend. So, they struggle to find new resources, or new ways and means, in a very tense strategic context. These new trends are particularly impressive around the Red Sea, where Middle-East power relations are deeply transformed by …

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Surviving the Gulf of Aden: a New Strategic Paradigm for the Future of the Region

On 15th September 2013, saboteurs blew up the pipeline linking Yemeni oil fields in the North to the Hodeidah export terminal, on the Red Sea coast. It was the third time in two months. In the meantime, the Yemeni political life was also marked by a deluge of US drone strikes against militants of “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” (AQAP).  On 18th October, a militia of armed and well-organised Islamist militants attacked a Yemeni military base in the Southeast, preceded by a car bomb suicide attack, which killed five soldiers. The two following weeks saw endless attacks and manifestations, against the government as well as sectarian violence, leaving dozens dead. In the meantime, on the other side of the Gulf of …

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Facing the Fog of War in Syria: The Tragedy of Kurdistan

This post is an update for the State of Play: The Kurds in the Syrian civil war. It can be read independently, but readers will be able to refer to the initial post for background. A general call to arms to fight Jihadis – Since first clashes erupted on 12 July 2013, intensifying on 16 July, notably over and in the city of Ras al-Ain, the YPG (The People’s Defence Units – see updated mapping of actors below) has been fighting Jahbat-al Nosra (JAN) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL) (van Wilgenburg, Al-Monitor, July 16 2013). At the end of July, fighting was raging in the area of the oil fields of Rmeilan “around the …

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