An address by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Munich Security Conference this month was a remarkable exception to the pervasive sense of helplessness and lack of strategy that hung over the annual conference during discussions about the world’s “boundless crises:” Syria, the refugee crisis, the threat from the so-called Islamic State, and the Ukraine crisis.
Tag: conflict
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The recent battle for Aleppo has the potential to tilt the balance of power between the warring parties in the region.
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On December 21st, Burundi’s parliament unanimously rejected the proposed AU peacekeeping force.
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After nearly eight years of relative tranquility in the Taiwan Strait, voters on January 16th elected the country’s first female president, giving the pro-Taiwan DPP control of parliament for the first time ever.
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The most concerning issue in 2016 to date has been the developing crisis between predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran and Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia.
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Despite the increasing public acknowledgment of the limitations of military responses and the recognition that responding to violence with more violence makes us all more insecure, there continues to be deliberate reluctance to dig deeper in diagnosing some of the powerful drivers of violent extremists.
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While the research on the effect of climate change on the risk of armed conflict and other forms of violent unrest is far from settled, climate change is at least anticipated to affect many of the more established pathways to conflict.
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A genocide-in-the making is the worst-case scenario, although this misses the fact that the opposition to the president is multiethnic.
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The normalization of brutal tactics by the state’s security forces suggests the possibility for systemic violence by state actors against perceived threats to Nkurunziza’s regime.
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The AU’s programmatic engagement in elections is evolving from a short-term to a long-term observation, with greater focus on electoral risk assessment; from purely political missions to those that are more technical in nature; as well as recognizing the need for strategic and targeted support and assistance to electoral bodies.
