Open Dialogue Research Journal
The common denominator connecting these five questions is the ultimate one about how Russia’s top brass really assesses the conflict’s overall military-strategic dynamics. The latest Malian insurgency took a twist after the terrorist-designated groups, the Tuareg “Azawad Liberation Front” (FLA) and the al-Qaeda-affiliated “Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin” (JNIM), reached out to Russia. Their messages […]
If it wasn’t for the Africa Corps’ valiant defense of their positions throughout the country, Mali probably would have already fallen, but it now has a fighting chance to survive and foil this Western power play. Russia’s Africa Corps played an indispensable role in helping Mali thwart last weekend’s terrorist […]
The solutions are difficult to implement during the crisis, however, but hopefully that’ll happen after (if?) it passes. Saturday’s coordinated attacks across Mali by terrorist-designated Tuareg rebels in the rural north and Islamic terrorists in the urban areas, which were described as “unprecedented” by Al Jazeera and Le Monde, caught the government by surprise. This […]
The growing Israeli-Turkish rivalry might soon expand to Jordan. Turkiye, Syria, and Jordan signed a trilateral MoU in early April on transport cooperation that followed their meeting more than half a year prior last September where they first committed to reviving the Hejaz Railway. This late-Ottoman project connected Istanbul with Medina and Mecca but […]
The Druze seem to be fine with this since they’d prefer being Israel’s junior partner over the risk of being slaughtered by their non-Druze “compatriots” like what happened to the Alawites last spring. Israel announced on Friday that it bombed Syrian military positions “in response to the events yesterday, in which Druze […]
An Invasion is Unlikely The Trump administration has fundamentally changed direction on Iran. US NATO Ambassador Matt Whitaker says the US will not try and force regime change in Iran, suggesting that “we don’t want another Libya scenario.” Whitaker says “We’re not asking for much, just stop killing your people […]
They’re all connected to its role in jointly building the “New Syria”. Syrian President Ahmed “Jolani” al-Sharaa’s second trip to Moscow in several months was widely interpreted as having to do with the future of Russia’s air and naval bases there. That may be true, especially since they play a practically irreplaceable logistical role […]
After months of skirmishes and mutual accusations, the militants, formally structured into the Syrian armed forces and the Kurdish militia in the northeast of the country (Rojava region by the Kurdish definition), known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, turned to intense fighting that happened last weekend. Pretty quickly, the Kurds […]
Part I Regional backers (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey) moved quickly to lobby for sanctions relief, portraying the new Syrian authorities as pragmatic partners. Washington, however, adopted a more transactional approach. Rather than offering relief as a reward for regime change, the United States sought to make Damascus “earn” normalization. […]
One year after the fall of Syria’s old regime, the country remains shrouded in what military theorists once called the “fog of war” – a condition of uncertainty, incomplete information, and contradictory interpretations. External observers, diplomats, journalists, and analysts offer sharply divergent assessments of what has emerged in Damascus since […]
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