Israel faces an unexpected and immensely dangerous strategic threat: climate change. This threat is shared with the rest of the world: it is the way climate change keeps getting stronger and how its effects are combining with pre-existing systems of vulnerabilities at country and regional level, the Middle East in the case of Israel (Dahr …
Continue reading “Israel and the Coming Long Threat – The Planetary Crisis Rules (4)”
On 9 May 2015 took place an impressive military parade in Moscow to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The parade was presided by the Russian President Vladimir Putin, and by its guests, dozens of heads of state and government. At his right hand were seated Xi Jinping, President of the Popular Republic of China, and Pranab Mukherjee, President of India (“Russia stages massive WW2 parade despite Western boycott”, BBC News, 9 May 2015). Western governments were not represented during the parade itself, because of the tensions about the situation in Ukraine. Two months later, President Xi Jinping, the Indian Prime Minister Rajendra Modi and President Putin held talks about the development of the relations …
Continue reading “China, Russia and the New Silk Road in Central Asia: the Great Co-Empowerment (1)”
When we started our series to better understand the Islamic State system, we identified the wilayat (“what is taken charge of”, “what is ruled”) as unit of analysis and as a system, which can then be monitored to foresee and warn about the overall developments of the Islamic State (see Understanding the Islamic State’s System – Structure and Wilayat, 4 May 2015). Since then, evolution has taken place on the ground, while the body of knowledge gathered by students of the Islamic State has grown. This is notably the case for Yemen. Back in May 2015, our understanding, grounded in the evidence available then, was that there was one wilayat in Yemen, wilayat Sanaa, loosely categorised as part of those wilayat where fighting was preeminent and only extremely …
Continue reading “Understanding the Islamic State’s System – Wilayat and Wali in Yemen”
This article is the fourth of our series focusing on scenarios depicting interventions in the Libyan war. In our previous article, we discussed an Egyptian intervention in Libya on the nationalist side. In this article, we shall detail a Qatari intervention on the side of the Islamists, as well as possible scenario outcomes for an intensified, protracted conflict that results from either an Egyptian or Qatari intervention. At this stage for our scenarios, external actors have decided to militarily intervene in Libya by taking a side with either the Islamists or nationalists that could emerge from a renewed split in the Government of National Accord (see previous article). Considering the future names of potential factions that would result from a new split …
In this series, which emphasises some of the major strategic dangers related to the war against the Islamic State, we focused first on geographical risks resulting potentially from a narrow understanding of the Islamic State’s implantation and outreach. We thus moved from a Mesopotamian theatre of war to a regional one (“From Syria to the Region“), then to the necessity to also incorporate all global operations of the Islamic State in the strategy, explaining how operations in one area could impact operations elsewhere as well as the overall war (“A Global Theatre of War“). We notably took as examples, beyond the obvious case of Libya, Somalia (“Facing a Strategic Trap in Somalia?“), Bangladesh, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia (“From the Philippines and Indonesia to Bangladesh“). The strategic challenges presented …
On 5 August 2010, the Russian authorities declared the state of emergency for the territory of the Ozersk, because raging giant wildfires had been devastating the country since July, and were now threatening the city and its strategic nuclear waste reprocessing plant specialized in the processing of nuclear waste. It was of strategic importance to …
Recently, announcements have been made regarding the acceptance of a UN-facilitated peace agreement with a framework to form a Government of National Accord (UN News Centre, January 2, 2016). However, only 88 lawmakers from the rival governments were in attendance at the signing, while the Deputy Speaker of the GNC stated on January 2nd that the GNC rejects the agreement, and the attending lawmakers represented “only themselves” – signifying difficulties and confusion regarding a fully-endorsed agreement by both sides (Abbas, Albawaba News, January 2, 2016; DePetris, Quartz, January 1, 2016). Furthermore, although the peace deal is supported by the international community and the UN has promised to support Libya in its transition (Ibid; Narayan and Robertson, CNN, December 17, 2015), …
As the noose seems to be slowly tightening around the Islamic State in Mesopotamia, it is even more important to consider the global dimension of the Khilafah. It is indeed likely that all geographical components will be used by the Islamic State in its will to counter-attack and survive. A strong indication confirming the global …
This article is the second of our series focusing on scenarios depicting interventions in the Libyan war. As detailed previously we have reached the following stage in our sub-scenarios: External actors have decided to militarily intervene in Libya by taking a side with either the GNC or COR (Sc 2.1.1). The League of Arab States (LAS) meets to decide about an intervention in Libya and to form the related Joint Arab Force. Considering the position of each country, the debates are very animated to say the least (Sc 2.1.1.1). As a result, the Arab League internally fragments over the decision to intervene. Nonetheless a Joint Arab Force is formed involving three countries, Egypt, the UAE, and Jordan. It is about …
After having examined the first scenarios – diplomatic negotiations between the Council of Representatives (COR) and General National Congress (GNC) towards peace – with this article we shall begin detailing a second set of scenarios focusing on external intervention and evaluating their likelihood. The organization of the whole series for the future of Libya can be found here. This scenario and its sub-scenarios are grounded in the premises that despite the advocacy of external actors to avoid foreign involvement in Libya’s civil war, consideration of intervention increases as Libya heads closer to a failed state, and as Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaida affiliates expand their areas of operation. In our first intervention scenarios category, external actors decide to intervene in …
