Tag: Great Game

Syria

Syria: Russia denies bombing Kurdish forces

With Russian-backed Assad regime forces advancing on the ISIS-held city of Deir ez-Zor from the west and Kurdish forces advancing from the east, a breaking point appears to be approaching in the Kurds’ own tactical alliance with Moscow. Now, with reports that Russian warplanes bombed Kurdish positions outside the city, this breaking point may have arrived. And US advisors are embedded in the Kurdish units, holding the risk of escalation to a global conflict.

East Asia

Hokkaido: flashpoint for world war?

Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido seems, unfortunately, poised to jump into the headlines as East Asia's next flashpoint for Great Power confrontation. When North Korea fired a missile over the island last month, it was during unprecedented joint US-Japan military exercises on Hokkaido. Now Russia is conducting its own exercises in the Kuril Islands immediately to the north—including territory that Japan has claimed since the end of World War II.

Syria

Syria: Rojava flashpoint for Russo-Turkish war?

Days after again vowing that Ankara will not tolerate a Kurdish state in Syria, Turkey beefed up artillery and tanks along the border, signaling an imminent offensive to take the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin. This could be the start of a wider Turkish offensive—reportedly to be dubbed “Euphrates Sword”—to reduce or expunge the Kuridsh autonomous zone of Rojava and establish a Turkish “buffer zone” in Syria’s north. Ominously, Russia has meanwhile mobilized troops to Afrin, to back up the Kurdish militia that controls the enclave.

Syria

US tilt to Assad: now it’s official

Washington has now made it official that its enemy in Syria is just ISIS and al-Qaeda—and explicitly not the Bashar Assad dictatorship. A US Army representative told CNN that the Coalition has issued a directive to rebel forces operating out if its base in southern Syria that they must be exclusively focused on fighting ISIS and not the Damascus regime. One rebel faction, Shohada al-Quartyan, has refused to accept this ultimatum, and left the base.

Syria

Raqqa endgame heightens Kurdish contradictions

Among international volunteer brigades drawn by the anarchist-influenced politics of the Rojava Kurds is now the first explicitly LGBT military unit in the Syrian war—the Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army (TQILA). But these international brigades are attached to the Kurdish militia force being backed by the Pentagon to take Raqqa from ISIS. Mounting civilian casualties of US air-strikes on Raqqa, as well as charges of abuses by the advancing Kurdish forces, raise grim questions about northern Syria’s future after the eventual defeat of ISIS.

Iraq

Carnage in anti-ISIS campaign jumps under Trump

Civilian casualties from the US-led war against ISIS are set to double under President Trump, according to the AirWars website that has been monitoring the toll of the conflict. At least 2,300 civilians were killed in Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House in Iraq and Syria. As of July, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed in Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated.

Iraq

Iraq: will fall of Mosul widen war?

The full liberation of Mosul from ISIS has been declared, but at a terrible cost in human lives—and multiple contradictions among the alliance assembled to take the city could open a new war in Iraq's north.

Syria

Syria: will peace plan mean world war?

Russia announced that it is sending forces to police the “de-escalation zones” in Syria—which could provide a spark for massive escalation.

Iraq

Syria: will fall of Raqqa widen war?

With the Syrian Kurds now facing open war from both Turkey and the Assad regime, the imminent taking of Raqqa portends a multi-sided scramble for former ISIS territory.

Syria

Syria slides closer to Arab-Kurdish ethnic war

Clashes broke out between Syrian rebel factions and Kurdish fighters in Aleppo province, as Arabs and Kurds are further pitted against each other by Great Power manipulation.

Central America

Taiwan sacrificed to Central America geopolitics

Panama is the latest Central American nation to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Bejing—under pressure of China's fast-growing economic presence on the isthmus.