Terrorism

With an estimated $1 trillion in natural resources and sitting astride an international crossroads of increasingly critical importance, Balochistan is becoming a stage on which the world’s powers are playing out their ambitions. China, the U.S., and India have all formulated Balochistan policies in the past few years, hoping to utilize the region to achieve wider international goals — and the three countries across which Balochistan is divided, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, have been eager to use it as a bargaining chip for their own purposes.

Nate Rosenblatt, a fellow with New America’s International Security program, and Aaron Y. Zelin, the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, join host Alistair Taylor to discuss Tunisia’s struggles with extremism and the factors that led it to become a major source of recruits for ISIS.

While the Turkish military offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria might, once again, bring Moscow and Tehran together tactically in support of Assad’s rule and Syrian sovereignty, the two powers have fundamentally different visions for the war-ravaged country’s future.

Turkey’s cross-border incursion into northeastern Syria has stirred up a hornet’s nest of instability and threats. If left unchecked, this latest “war within a war” will have deeply destabilizing consequences for many years.

In one fell swoop, the U.S. has found itself evacuating a third of the country; breaking away from a 100,000-strong partner we trained and equipped; and watching it surrender to the regime that we have stood against from day one. In the chaos that has ensued, ISIS prisoners have been let loose, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced, and a once relatively stable northeastern Syria has been thrown into a potentially intractable pit of ethnic, sectarian, and political conflict. The consequences of America’s self-destruction in Syria will be felt for many, many years to come.

After a long-drawn-out series of negotiations, Turkey has successfully convinced more than 40 armed opposition groups in northern Syria to unite under a single umbrella, directly under the command of the Syrian Interim Government’s Ministry of Defense.

As ISIS’s territorial “state” was simultaneously rolled back and then defeated, an international consensus increasingly emerged that claimed Syria’s war was “winding down.” There is no doubt that the geographic scope and intensity of conflict is not what it was at the height of hostilities in 2014 and 2015, but it is certainly not finished either.

In its final report, the congressionally-mandated Syria Study Group (SSG) provided a bleak but wholly realistic assessment of the state of the crisis in Syria. When it comes to policy prescriptions, however, the SSG falls short. Despite clearly identifying the “means and ends” gap as one of two core problems with U.S. policy in Syria, the “recommendations” suggested by the SSG differ little, if at all, from those already in place.

One important dynamic that is not acknowledged enough is the intensifying competition between Russia and Iran to determine the future shape of Syria and their position in it. While the very real competitive dynamic between Moscow and Tehran will never transition to hostility, it is beginning to have a very real effect on the evolution of major aspects of the crisis — from active conflict theaters, to the structures of the state, control over resources, and the prospect of intra-state conflict on Syrian soil.

Three years after a major Islamic State (IS)-claimed attack in its capital Dhaka, defeating the group remains a work in progress for Bangladesh. The residual and regenerative capacity of the local pro-IS cells in Bangladesh is significant as evidenced by actual and thwarted attacks in the country during the first half of 2019. Amidst the threat emanating from Bangladeshi jihadist returnees from Syria, IS ideology continues to resonate and attracts new recruits in this part of South Asia. It remains to be seen how Bangladesh will respond to the re-surfacing of the IS, especially at a time when the region is witnessing inter-religious tensions.

Over the past few weeks, my colleagues at MEI have debated whether the U.S. should stay in Syria or leave. Here I’d make a different argument: that it doesn’t really matter. The president has already made the decision to leave, and while his aides may have been able to slow roll the troop drawdown, the reality is that Donald Trump has made it clear the U.S. will not disburse any additional resources. Even within the 2020 Democratic field, not a single candidate has advocated increasing resources.