Traditional Matryoshka nesting dolls in a Moscow store It does not take much effort to plant a rumour in West Asia. There is no other region where, perhaps, rumours are the lifeblood of politics and politics is the stuff of rumours. A rumoured crisis in the Russia-Israel relationship is making waves lately. It all began …
Continue reading “Russia-Israel ties are like matryoshka dolls”
In many ways in their mindset, the US and Russia are similar. A “thaw” has appeared in the US-Russian relations. The unanimous vote by the United Nations Security Council last Friday extending a cross-border aid operation into Syria from Turkey must be regarded as an important moment. It stemmed out of a compromise in last …
Continue reading “US-Russia ties warming up. Is it for real?”
Hakha Town in Myanmar’s Chin State bordering Mizoram was the scene of attacks on the military by rebel fighters on May 5, 2021 How some animals get to sense when earthquakes are imminent remains a mystery. Just before the great Asian tsunami on December 26, 2004, elephants in Sri Lanka moved to high ground …
Continue reading “India will be front-line state in Myanmar civil war”
Exactly a decade after the United States sought a pioneering role by Turkey for launching the regime change project in Syria, it has solicited help from Ankara in regard of another political transition in the Greater Middle East — in Afghanistan. Analogies never hold one hundred percent in politics or diplomacy, but the similarities are …
Continue reading “US, Turkey, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban make one happy family”
“What happens in the Middle East has a way of making itself felt everywhere around the world,” Jordan’s King Abdullah II ibn Al-Hussein while addressing the European Parliament, Strasbourg, 15th January 2021 A coup attempt is an orphan unless it succeeds. Therefore, all we can say is that a coup was in the making in …
Libyan conflict set to intensify as NATO plans to intervene. The great game in Libya has begun surging with the United States shedding its strategic ambivalence and resorting to a proactive role. Earlier this week, the Pentagon marked a dramatic escalation by accusing Moscow of bolstering Kremlin-linked mercenaries who are allegedly helping Khalifa Haftar, the …
Continue reading “NATO returns to Libya to challenge Russia”
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad (L) at a meeting with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin (R), Damascus, January 7, 2020 Russia’s relationships with its client states have never been easy. Of course, managing client states is always a complicated exercise. The Kremlin’s cupboard is full of skeletons — Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Cuba (1962), Afghanistan (1980), Ukraine …
Continue reading “Russia makes a botch of its Syrian alliance”
The drawdown of US military presence in the Middle East, especially from Saudi Arabia, may not be an automatic open sesame — to borrow the magical phrase in the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”— leading to the hidden treasure of regional peace and stability, but it does open up a tantalising vista …
Afghan President Asraf Ghani (C) received Iran’s special envoy Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian at the presidential palace, Kabul, April 20, 2020 A tweet by the US President Donald Trump on April 22 said, “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at …
Continue reading “Trump’s threat to Iran has a hollow ring. It betrays angst.”
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L), UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (R) held a phone conversation, March 27, 2020 The phone call by the UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Friday signifies in many ways a major development in regional politics. The official UAE news …
Continue reading “Coronavirus hastens an Arab rapprochement”
