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Azerbaijani and Turkish leaders hold talks, eye land corridor via Armenia

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted talks on Monday with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan at which he hinted at the prospect of creating a land corridor between their two countries via Armenia, which opposes the idea. Erdogan pointedly flew into Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, a strip of territory nestled between …

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Beijing And Kabul Sans Islamabad – Analysis

Right from the inception of Pakistan, it has had the insatiable desire to keep Afghanistan under its tacit control; anything and everything for Afghanistan should go through Pakistan. Pakistan, from the 1980s, increasingly meddled in the affairs of Afghanistan. From training and nurturing the Taliban in the early 1990s to …

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Intelligence Work Is Exciting. And Traumatizing

Many people grow up wanting to be secret agents. I fell into the field somewhat by chance—though it turned out I was good at it and advanced quickly. Less than a year into the job, I volunteered to deploy to Iraq, where the United States was hunting down terrorists like …

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Trauma Takes a Toll in the U.S. Intelligence Community

There was nothing that unusual about the day when Karen Sudkamp reached her breaking point. She had spent years as an intelligence analyst watching drone videos of terrorists and military operations in almost real time. She had never thought much about the toll it was taking, until that one day …

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Turkey’s Erdogan meets Azerbaijan’s Aliyev as Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh

Ankara is backing the oil-rich Turkic nation’s current drive to seize all of Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev in Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave bordering Turkey, as thousands of ethnic Armenians continued to flee Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia proper in the wake of a …

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US captures Islamic State official in Syria as fighting renews among allies

The US military said it captured a senior IS official in Syria on Saturday, as renewed fighting Monday between Kurdish-led forces and Arab tribes in Deir Ezzor raised new questions as to the open-ended nature of the US mission. US troops captured a senior Islamic State (IS) official during a …

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Erdogan says Turkey will keep promise on Sweden’s NATO bid if US approves F-16s

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his country’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO accession depends on Washington keeping its promises to Ankara. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey will keep its promise to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession if Washington keeps its pledges to Ankara, including on the sale …

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Malaysia’s Critical Choice Of China Dilemma – Analysis

Malaysia faces a tough crossroads of economic choice in choosing to end its reliance on China or to align more closely on the West for long term economic assurance, albeit in a slower term. Kuala Lumpur will need to have a strategic long term reorientation of its economic fundamentals, especially …

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A Long, Hot Summer For Eastern Mediterranean Gas Politics – Analysis

(FPRI) — In the past month, there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity between countries that, typically, don’t get along: Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time on September 19. Additionally, …

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Day of Mourning in Serbia: What are the rules for citizens and what for the media

On the occasion of the incident in the village of Banjska in the north of Kosovo, in which one policeman of the Kosovo Police and three attackers were killed, the Government of Serbia declared Wednesday, September 27, a Day of Mourning. In a statement, the government stated that it is …

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