October, 2021

• 8 October

  Who has been named in the Pandora Papers?

  

  Some of those named after secret files were leaked to a consortium of journalists that revealed offshore deals. A massive global investigation has exposed the ties between world leaders to the hidden world of offshore wealth collectively worth trillions of dollars. Dubbed the Pandora Papers, the landmark probe, published on …

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• 8 October

  Oil or Nothing: Dealing with South Sudan’s Bleeding Finances

  

  What’s new? South Sudan’s rulers keep a tight grip on its oil wealth, blocking outside scrutiny and obstructing reforms urgently needed to ease both popular hardships and political tensions. Along with International Monetary Fund support, a peace deal has kickstarted new efforts to fix the country’s broken finances. Why does it …

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• 8 October

  French senators arrive in Taiwan amid tensions with China

  

  A group of French senators arrived in Taiwan for a five-day visit Wednesday following a large Chinese show of force with fighter jets near the self-ruled island, and Beijing warned the trip will hurt its ties with France. The group, led by senator Alain Richard, will meet with President Tsai …

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• 8 October

  Russian Commentators Believe That Erdogan Met Putin At The Sochi Summit With A Weak Hand

  

  If Russia has recently regarded Turkey warily as a result of Turkey’s successful backing of Azerbaijan in its recent war with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh, being on opposite sides in Syria and Libya, Turkey’s supply of arms to Ukraine, and Turkey’s refusal to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, in the …

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• 8 October

  The Taliban Are Added To The List Of Russia’s Notorious Allies

  

  The seemingly warm relations between the Russian leadership and the Taliban, an extremist Islamic movement that many in the West consider a terrorist organization, have been a kind of mystery for a rather long time. In 2003, Russia declared the Taliban an “extremist organization,” and banned the movement by a …

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• 8 October

  After Afghanistan, EU Crisis Intervention Should Go Big, Not Go Home

  

  It is difficult to speak of European ambitions for international crisis management against the backdrop of the images from Kabul over the past few weeks, which seem to tell a story of the failure of Western interventionist policies. But that discussion is urgently needed. Yes, it will be necessary to …

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• 8 October

  The Venture Capitalists of Terrorism

  

  Even with its physical “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in tatters, the Islamic State is still managing to wage a global insurgency, maintaining an operational presence in at least 20 separate countries. The organization’s global diffusion recently led a group of leading terrorism experts to describe ISIS as an “adhocracy,” …

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• 8 October

  Assad Shores Up Control in Syria’s Symbolically Important South

  

  For much of the Syrian civil war, the southern city of Deraa and the surrounding Houran Plains, an agricultural region near the Jordanian border, were divided between government forces and armed rebels. Fighting raged back and forth, killing thousands. It was not until Russia backed a government offensive in 2018 …

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• 8 October

  Getting Boko Haram Fighters to Defect

  

  Around the world, states locked in conflict with jihadists are trying to devise policies to reintegrate disillusioned militants into society. In Nigeria, a program targeting defectors from the violent extremist group Boko Haram offers a window into the promise and pitfalls of such efforts. For the past 12 years, Nigeria …

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• 8 October

  Fixating on the ISIS Connection in Eastern Congo Will Make Things Worse

  

  In early May, in a televised address, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, declared martial law in North Kivu and Ituri, two provinces on the country’s eastern border with Uganda and Rwanda, and placed them under military rule. In justifying this draconian measure, Tshisekedi invoked the regular mass …

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