Geopolitics

BY GIORGIO CAFIERO AND DANIEL WAGNER In early November, Pakistan’s chief of army staff, General Raheel Sharif, made an important visit to Saudi Arabia. The general met with King Salman and other top officials in Riyadh, where he stressed Islamabad’s commitment to ensuring the safety and protection of …

BY JAMES M. DORSEY Words but no actions. That is Amnesty International’s evaluation of promised Qatari labor reforms on the fifth year of the awarding of the 2022 World Cup hosting rights to the Gulf state. Qatar’s failure to enact wide-ranging reforms heightens the risk of its hosting …

Russians are more convinced than at any time in recent history that their country is a great power, as enthusiasm over military campaigns in Ukraine and Syria seems to outweigh worries about a deep economic slump. Sixty-five percent of Russians surveyed by the independent Levada Center pollster said …

Russia is actually building an all-over air defense zone in Syria, according to Russian Zvezda TV channel. The Hmeymim air base, Russian jets and also pilots will be protected by the most advanced Russian weapons. After a Turkish jet shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber over Syria, the Russian Defense …

The Syrian army has taken control of key areas in northern Syria, and is near to completing the encirclement of a key town in the Latakia province still under the control of the Islamic State (ISIL) jihadist group, an army spokesperson said Monday. “We have cleared the 1122 height and virtually completed surrounding the Salma …

The mere hope that NATO membership could give Turkey carte blanche to do anything it wants is profoundly wrong; even though the alliance has publicly supported Erdogan’s version of how the downing of the Russian bomber happened, its rhetoric in private could be the polar opposite, according to …

Three important events influenced the course of the Syrian war in the course of last month: the Metrojet flight 9268 crash in Sinai October 31, the Paris attacks on Friday November 13 and the downing of a Sukhoi 24 on November 24, 2015. The Metrojet The Metrojet crash was not …

The deployment of Russia’s most advanced S-400 Triumf air defense system in Syria is “a message,” Zero Hedge anonymous analyst Tyler Durden stresses, posing the question, to whom exactly is this message addressed? In the aftermath of the downing of the Russian Su-24 bomber by the Turkish F-16 fighter, Moscow has …

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) assisted by Russian forces and Hezbollah fighters is on a roll in northern Latakia, pushing extremists out of strategic areas close to the Syrian border with Turkey, where the Russian Su-24 bomber was shot down earlier this week.  “The Syrian forces’ operations in the …