Recent Posts

Tensions in Lebanon Boil Over in the Streets of Beirut

Late last week, deadly clashes erupted in Lebanon, resulting in at least seven dead and thirty wounded. Lebanon is in the throes of what some experts have labeled “state collapse,” as the economy bottoms out and images evoking the country’s fifteen-year civil war play out on television and social media. …

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What Can the United Nations Do About Counterterrorism?

In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United Nations Security Council moved swiftly and laid the keystone of an international framework of counterterrorism efforts. Twenty years later, it’s past time to rethink all of them. Back then, the Security Council obliged states to deny terrorists safe …

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Keep Your Eyes on Afghanistan’s ISIS-K

The terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, provided one of the last searing images of the United States’ 20-year counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan when two of its suicide bombers killed thirteen U.S. troops at Kabul’s international airport, the deadliest day for U.S. armed forces …

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Taliban is the winner at Moscow conference

The Moscow meeting of ten regional states and the Taliban officials on Wednesday has produced an outcome that by far exceeds expectations. The salience of the consensus opinion is four-fold, as reflected in the joint statement issued after the event: regional recognition that Taliban government is a compelling “reality”; it …

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Ethiopian Government Airstrike Hits Tigray Regional Capital

Ethiopian forces carried out an airstrike Friday on the city of Mekelle, their fifth on the Tigray regional capital since Monday. There were no immediate reports of casualties following Friday’s airstrike, which witnesses say hit a farmer’s field near a fenced off area on the eastern side of Mekelle University. …

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Lingering Topics: Ukraine And Russiagate – OpEd

A loose analogy considers the wait and see approach concerning cancer. In a number of instances, the old school method is to do surgery before or after chemoradiation. Why do surgery, if the chemoradiation (by all accounts) has eliminated the cancer? Cancer related surgery can often lead to some quality …

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