Eurasia

As Iran’s ultimatum to Baghdad inches closer, the challenge of removing Kurdish separatist groups from their mutual border lies not in Baghdad’s will to cooperate, but in Iraqi Kurds’ secret collaboration with US/Israeli agents to keep them there. On 19 March, Iran signed a border security agreement with Iraq whereby …

Israeli continues striking Syria as part of its ‘war between wars’ with Damascus An Israeli air attack on the Syrian coastal city Tartous killed two Syrian soldiers and injured six more on 14 September, a Syrian military source told state media SANA. “[A]t 17:22 this afternoon, the Israeli enemy carried …

Having viciously smeared the Taliban for over two decades, Britain now faces a challenge in the global race to establish influence in resource-rich and geographically-critical Afghanistan. On July 18th, prominent UK lawmaker Tobias Ellwood posted a surreal video to Twitter. While roaming Helmand province – the site of one of …

The Ukraine conflict and the Black Sea grain deal have highlighted the ‘geopolitics of wheat’ and helped Russia gain leverage over Europe while expanding its influence in Africa and the Global South. In the complex fabric of international relations, the interaction between geopolitics and trade – particularly of vital commodities …

What began as a localized political pact to help fix relations between Baghdad and Erbil has spiraled into renewed ethnic turmoil in Kirkuk and a resurgence of Kurdish independence aspirations. An agreement reached between the governments of Baghdad and Erbil to relocate the Iraqi army from its headquarters in Kirkuk …

In a significant move to combat the financing of Hezbollah, the US Treasury Department last week imposed terrorism sanctions on a family network spanning seven individuals and several businesses with ties to Lebanon and South America. Among those targeted was Amer Mohammed Akil Rada, a Lebanese man alleged to have …

Debates about the US commitment to Gulf security are skewed by confusion, miscommunication, and contradictory policies. The skewing has fuelled uncertainty about US policy as well as Gulf attitudes in an evolving multi-polar world and fuelled misconceptions and misunderstandings. The confusion is all the more disconcerting given that the fundamentals …

Relations between Belarus and its NATO neighbours deteriorated further over the summer. Troops have been deployed on both sides of the Belarus–Poland border, and each country has accused the other of escalating tensions. Lithuania this month closed two of six border crossings with Belarus. Belarus’s defence minister, Viktor Khrenin, went …

Abstract: Much of the analysis of Russian war aims and motivations in Ukraine has pointed to the Russian ruling elite’s expansionism and nostalgic imperialism fueled by the ideology of Neo-Eurasianism. However, how this inherently expansionist Neo-Eurasian ideology extends beyond Ukraine has been given substantially less attention. Drawing on content and …

Abstract: The landscape of terrorist financing has transformed owing to the self-starter phenomenon, characteristics of terrorist organizations, self-funded terrorism, and weapons of choice. On a different note, nationally and internationally, financial institutions still rely on traditional counterterrorist financing policies. These policies against the financing of terrorism were drafted as a …