Tag Archives: Iraq

Estimation: The Islamic State – Doomed Legion of the Lost and Drifting

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isisIslamic State fighters lift their rifles and shout victory slogans. (Al Jazeera)

Army of the lost and drifting
The Islamic State stands no chance of survival. It now has almost every single regional and international player as an enemy. Its ranks are filled with the lost and drifting of the world, who seek easy solutions to their miserable lives.

The Middle East as a whole, though, and the situations in Iraq and Syria in particular, do not allow for such illusive way out of one´s personal identity crisis. Soon, this army of the hopeless will turn into an army of the disillusioned and erode.

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Estimation: 2014 – Year of turnarounds in the Middle East (Part 1)

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netanyahu-wef

Will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet Iran´s President Hassan Rouhani at the World Economic Forum in Davos? (World Economic Forum)

Summary
Indications of new settlements for the Middle East are peeking around the corner. From our point of view those potential developments are logic, because everything else would bring about chaos over the whole region. Chaos that could easily spread like wildfire and get out of hand. No major player can afford that.

Hawks can make decisions
On January 17, 2014, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, citing Canadian CTV News, he would consider meeting Iran´s President Hassan Rouhani if the latter recognized Israel´s right of existence.

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Estimation and outlook on the situation in Syria and the region

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Iraq heating up again

Militants in Iraq show their readiness to fight on May 18, 2013. (Al-Jazeera)

Estimation and outlook on the situation in Syria and the region – Part 5

Iraq heating up
Iraq is the most uncertain variable in any current estimation.

Conflicts are heating up in the country again, and gains of Sunnite fighters in Syria have given Sunnites in Iraq motivation to act against the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, by which they feel being discriminated against.

Iraq has the longest border with Syria of all neighbouring countries, running from Turkey to Jordan. With the US not anymore in position to play into internal Iraqi politics, the international community is fearful of future developments in Iraq.

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SYRIA – Comment on “For desperate Syrians, a search for any way out” (Daily Star, 04. February 2013 – David Ignatius)

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Comment on “For desperate Syrians, a search for any way out” (Daily Star, 04. February 2013 – David Ignatius)

Arming “paramilitary” forces, which in fact are militias, has rarely been a good idea. They take the knowledge and the arms. Once they got what they wanted, they are loose guns and often the nightmare of their fellow countrymen.

Ordinary people in Syria don’t have an agenda. They want to eat, drink and send their children to school. Life in Syria was not as bad for the majority of people as one might think when now we read about the “dictator” Bashar al-Assad, who was the “President” for ten years before the uprising.

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