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Russia
(Autumn 2015) Upon its entry into force, this agreement will ensure establishing lines of 24-hour operational communication between the military headquarters of Russia and the United States and mechanisms of interaction, including provision of mutual assistance in case of emergency. The US side has undertaken to inform all other members of the Counter-isil Coalition led by the United States of the agreed rules and the Coalition members’ aircrews will adhere to these arrangements.The signing of the document in no way changes the Russian position of principle, whose military forces in Syria are operating at the request of legitimate authorities of that country. While projection of force of the United States and the Counter-isil coalition led by Washington on the territory of Syria without the consent of Damascus and in the absence of relevant UN Security Council resolution represents negligence of the international law. (Source: MinistryOfDefenseOfTheRussianFederation): http://tinyurl.com/y7o3aay8
Globalization
Oct 31, 2015 A mass migration crisis, and it may yet get worse. What if islamic state militants are not beaten back but continue to extend their brutal writ across Iraq and Syria? What if the taliban continue to increase their territorial gains in Afghanistan, prompting even more people to flee? A quarter of Afghans told a Gallup Poll that they want to leave.There are between six million and eight million people displaced in Syria, along with more than four million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Egypt’s five million or more Copts, the Middle East’s last remaining major Christian sect, are deeply worried about their future in an unstable and hostile country. Ancient minority groups like the Yazidis of Iraq are already homeless, as are many small communities of Assyrian, Nestorian and Chaldean Christians from northern Iraq. While Yemenis have yet to abandon their homeland in substantial numbers, their plight is worsening daily amid wartime shortages of food and medicine and persistent bombardment by Saudi warplanes. Yemen is not much farther away from Europe than Eritrea, now the biggest source of African refugees, just across the Red Sea, and at some 25 million it is as populous as Afghanistan. In Nigeria, which already has double the population of Germany, 40 percent of people would emigrate to the West if they could. And the lesson of 2015 — for them and much of the world — is that they can. “We are talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands,” - Tusk, the president of the European Council, said in a recent Twitter posting. In the Middle East and Africa, borders drawn by Ottoman dynasts and European colonialists are breaking down as the autocratic Arab states that enforced a grim peace for generations continue to implode. As traditional lines of authority break down, militant groups like the islamic state and Boko Haram, in Nigeria, seek to fill the vacuum while minority sects and ethnic groups suffer unspeakable treatment at their hands. Climate change, too, is roiling societies across the Middle East and Africa. Syria was in the grip of a prolonged drought when war broke out, and large areas of sub-Saharan Africa are becoming uninhabitable. With rising sea levels, a single typhoon in the Bay of Bengal could drive millions of Bangladeshis from their homes in low-lying coastal areas and render that land uninhabitable, too. Many migrants are from countries where the West has tried to intervene and failed spectacularly — Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular. There are now some two million Iraqi refugees, many bound for Europe. Libya represents another failed intervention, by the French and British, with American support. The chaos in their country has made it easier than ever before for other African migrants to flee to Europe through northern Africa. Others come from places like Eritrea, where young men are fleeing a brutal dictatorship that offers them the prospect of a lifetime of unpaid military service, and little else. Some are escaping civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo or poverty in nations like Gambia or Senegal. Many, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are motivated by elemental problems like spreading desertification. Others are looking for economic opportunity. (Source: The New York Times): http://tinyurl.com/p7hyxsr
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