The recent news that Venezuela will be providing Iran with 1 million hectares of arable land for farming draws further concern from the security circles concerned about the Islamic Republic’s growing influence in the Western Hemisphere. That follows a rapidly growing energy collaboration between Caracas and Tehran following the Biden administration’s decision to lift oil […]
Al-Shabab’s Enigmatic Invasion of Ethiopia In countries such as the U.S., there is an unwritten theory in police investigation that assumes whenever a neighborhood robbery occurs it was done by someone who not only had the motive to commit that crime, but the basic intelligence to help time it well and to get away with […]
Naturally broken nations like Somalia that require intervention from the international community require a safe area where diplomats and other officials representing key governments and organizations could be hosted. Hence Somalia’s heavily guarded “Green Zone”, or Halane as it is commonly known. As a compound dominated by African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) soldiers, mostly […]
In the moral version of human history – expressed in the Quran, Bible, and Torah – corruption is considered the worst reckless impulse that caused men to fall from grace. It was the betrayal of trust and loyalty for purely selfish gains. From that perspective, the root cause of corruption is individual moral shutdown, derailment […]
Imran Khan, elected on his good looks and apparent disagreement with the status quo, was going to bring with him sweeping change, transforming the country into what he called “Naya Pakistan,” or “New Pakistan”. His two-decade-long journey to the premier house in Pakistan has not gone unnoticed. After losing the last national elections in 2013, […]
The Trump team has been pushing false rhetoric regarding immigrants since the moment Trump announced his candidacy in 2015. Starting with his infamous “they’re rapists” comment at his candidacy announcement speech to his call for a “complete and total shutdown of all Muslims entering the United States,” Trump has made it abundantly clear that one […]
It can be disheartening when looking back on compromises in the past that gave way to peace when justice for victims is ignored for what was seen at the time as the greater good. The US Civil War itself is seen as a fight between good and evil in most American textbooks today, but the […]
Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, or “the base” as its known by locals of the surrounding township of Alice Springs in central Australia, was established in the late 1960s as a key site for US intelligence gathering. The largest part of its operations is to serve as a signals intelligence ground station for satellites in […]
With the demise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the fall of Marawi in the Philippines, how will Malaysia handle the prospect of returning fighters? Malaysia’s Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed recently expressed concerns over the threat of returning militants from the Middle East and the Philippines. The fall of Marawi, following the deaths of […]
In the past few weeks, forces fighting to completely liberate Syria and Iraq from ISIS have claimed that their mission is accomplished in ousting the fascist army from their countries.
There is a broad-based consensus that security in Somalia has been deteriorating at an alarming rate. In the past few weeks, hundreds of people have been killed by truck bombs at two prominent locations in Mogadishu. The lethal potency of the explosives and the scale of death and devastation resulting from the Oct 14th one […]
Human history is peppered with dreadful accounts of minority communities who were deliberately demonized before atrocities were committed against them.
Since the 1990’s Islamist groups have emerged in Algeria, but over the years their allegiances and identities have shifted according to geopolitical trends.
In 2015, Saudi Arabia announced the formation of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism. Will the alliance succeed in pooling its defense efforts?
While the diplomatic tension between Saudi Arabia and Qatar existed since the Arab Spring, the break up caught foreign policy experts by surprise.