Longstanding relations between Moscow and the Kurds has provided Russia with a “Kurdish card”, that is, the ability to modulate its support to various Kurdish national ambitions throughout the Middle East, depending on what the Kremlin was seeking to obtain from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The current Syrian crisis is no exception and has promoted the Russian-Kurdish (PYD[1]) partnership, especially during the period of harsh tensions between ...
... and RIAC. The event was moderated by Director of Arab and Islamic Studies at RAS Institute for Oriental Studies Vasily Kuznetsov.
The discussants focused on interaction between Russia and the Gulf States in settlement of the statehood crises in the Middle East. In his opening remarks RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov underlined that relations between Russia and Gulf States should go beyond tactical limits and become strategic. In his turn, Director of the Saudi Center for Media and Arab-Russian ...
... representatives, Britain’s Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot of France went down in history as the authors of the first hastily put together version to colonially divide the Asian part of Ottoman Turkey.
Sykes started travelling in the Middle East at the age of 11 with his parents, the eccentric Sir Tatton Sykes, who, according to his biographers, was only interested in church architecture, maintaining a constant body temperature and milk pudding, as well as the alcoholic Lady Jessica....
The book “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History” by Andrew Bacevich, a retired colonel and a military historian, represents a detailed account of US overt as well as covert military involvement in the Islamic World. The author goes through 36 years of interventions ...
...
In early 2016, the Saudi
Gulf Research Center
published a report in Arabic subtitled “An Arab Gulf Union is the Future” dedicated to Gulf regional security.
The report is important not only because the problem of regional security in the Middle East has recently become a favorite discussion topic, but also because the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center is chaired by businessman Abdulaziz bin Othman bin Sager. He is considered to be close to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s security ...
... and is independent internationally as far as the acute crisis in the Arab world is concerned, primarily in view of the disasters in Yemen, Libya and Syria.
Generally speaking, Algiers is striving to preserve the so far surviving states of the Greater Middle East in the existing borders and to stabilize the environment, since its deterioration will threaten Algeria, which is something Russia is also trying to achieve.
Yemen
In actuality, Algeria’s stance runs counter to the plans of Qatar, Saudi ...
The problem of overcoming postmodernism, mainly in the Middle East, is analyzed in the article “
The Middle East: Postmodernism Is Over
.”
The exhaustion of the postmodern paradigm of social existence marks the emergence of a new epoch, which can be defined as the era of neomodernism. The uncertainty ...
On May 4, 2016 the Task Force on Cooperation in Greater Europe published its fourth Position Paper “Countering the Threats from the Middle East” on the web-sites of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), the European Leadership Network (ELN), the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and the International Strategic Research Organization in Ankara (USAK)....
Task Force on Cooperation in Greater Europe Position Paper IV
Task Force
on Cooperation in Greater Europe Position Paper
The context
Large swathes of the Middle East have collapsed into a state of violence, chaos and division, causing unimaginable amounts of human suffering. We now face a highly dynamic and very dangerous situation in the Middle East, with the prospect of further instability, but also ...
Working Paper #27, 2016
The Working Paper highlights and compares the most credible estimates of the number of militants arriving from different countries according to data published by the security services of various nations, as well as by leading research centres across the globe.
Particular attention is paid to assessments of the situation regarding terrorists leaving, and then coming back to Europe, Russia and Central Asian countries; the link between migration and the recruitment of terrorists;...
