Canberra, 20 January 2016 Ever since King Salman came to power in early 2015 and brought about sweeping changes in the hierarchy within the monarchy, the administration has been pursuing a more vigorous foreign policy than the one followed by the previous regime of King Abdullah. The focused objective has been to limit to the […]
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Tag Archives: IS
The Middle-East: An Open Pandora’s Box
December 12, 2015 
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Singapore, 12 December 2015 Even before the discovery of the vast oil reserves in the region, the Middle-East had been the stomping ground of the global powers of the time. The past century has seen the region embroiled in convoluted conflicts that have simmered and altered shape, but have never really been brought to […]
Continue readingTHE ISLAMIC STATE—UNDERSTANDING AND COUNTERING ITS STRATEGY
September 22, 2015 3 Comments
Canberra, 22 September 2015 The Islamic State (IS) has been fighting the combined military might of the US-led coalition for over a year without having been contained or defeated as was promised by world leaders at the start of the war. The term ‘war’ is being used after due consideration, for what is going on […]
Continue readingAFGHANISTAN: FRAGILE AND FORGOTTEN
September 8, 2015 0 Comments
Canberra, 8 September 2015 Deliberate and repeated insurgent attacks, endemic corruption within the governing polity, a shrinking ‘formal’ economy, the end of a development boom as a more than decade long international war draws to a close that in turn has created unemployment levels of 35 to 40 per cent and a deteriorating security situation […]
Continue readingTHE IMPROBABILITY OF PEACE IN SYRIA
August 25, 2015 1 Comment
Canberra, 25 August 2015 The regime of President Bashar al-Assad now effectively controls only about one-sixth of the territory of original Syria and its control is diminishing on a daily basis because it is losing territory to insurgents and facing a manpower shortage in the military. Till recently the regime continued to hold the core […]
Continue readingSAUDI ARABIA: CHARTING A COMPLEX COURSE
July 11, 2015 3 Comments
Canberra, 11 July 2015 From the very beginning of their rule of the Saudi kingdom, the al-Saud family has embraced the principles and practices of the Wahabi ideology, an extreme and strict version of Islam. The support for the extreme variety of Wahabi teachings increased in 1979 after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in neighbouring […]
Continue readingYEMEN: WHO IS FIGHTING WHOM, AND WHY?
April 29, 2015 3 Comments
Canberra, 29 April 2015 All the nations of the Middle-East are now at war—against one another or against undefinable entities who are pursuing their own warped agenda—ruthlessly attempting to shore up lost prestige, struggling to retain power and influence, and to regain long lost command over the region. The rationale put forward is the necessity […]
Continue readingSAUDI ARABIA: ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA
December 30, 2014 1 Comment
Phuket, Thailand, 29 December 2014 The entire Arab world is situated within the region now called the Middle-East. However, the Middle-east is not exclusively Arab; there are numerous non-Arab minorities resident in the region and there are three major non-Arab nations that straddle it—Iran, Turkey, and Israel. Even so Saudi Arabia, the richest nation in […]
Continue readingDECIPHERING THE FIGHT AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE Part I: The Major Participants
November 18, 2014 1 Comment
Canberra 18 November 2014 [This is the first part of a two-part series analysing the on-going conflict in the Middle East] Introduction The world is continuing to look at the Islamic State (IS) as yet another, and admittedly more potent, terrorist or ‘jihadi’ network. This is a rather simplistic view since the current conflict in […]
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Sanu Kainikara 
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