Latest Articles about Middle East
OMV JOINS WITH GAZPROM TO UNDERCUT NABUCCO
On January 25 Austria’s state-dominated OMV energy company and Russia’s Gazprom signed an agreement to turn the Baumgarten gas transmission center near Vienna into a joint venture. Owned 100% by OMV until now, and ranked as the second- or third-largest gas transmission center in continental... MORE
NO RECKONING WITH REALITIES IN RUSSIAN ECONOMIC POLICY
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week was an unusually somber affair. Anti-globalization protesters were conspicuous by their absence, but the schmoozing among the cosmopolitan business elite was overcast by the heavy turbulence on global stock markets caused by the... MORE
RUSSIA CAPTURES SERBIA’S ENERGY SECTOR
On January 25 in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin and Serbian leaders witnessed the signing of agreements to hand over Serbia’s entire gas and oil sectors to Russia’s Gazprom at one stroke. Serbia’s February 3 presidential election runoff and Russia’s support to Serbia against the West... MORE
SEMYON MOGILEVICH’S ARREST – A BLOW TO MEDVEDEV, OR A FAVOR?
Last week’s arrest in Moscow of Semyon Mogilevich was a surprise not because he was so elusive, but because he had apparently been living unmolested in the Russian capital for some time (even, reportedly, maintaining an office in the Ukraina Hotel). The Ukrainian-born reputed organized... MORE
Sufi Insurgent Groups in Iraq
The mystical approach to Islam known as Sufism has deep roots in Iraqi society. Adherents to Sufism normally stress prayer, meditation and the recitation of the various names of God as part of their effort to create a mystical communion between themselves and Allah. Yet... MORE
Jailing Jihadis: Saudi Arabia’s Special Terrorist Prisons
Saudi Arabia is nearing completion of new purpose-built prison facilities for its program of rehabilitation and counseling for Islamist militants. Under this program five new specialized prisons have been built in Riyadh, Qassim, Abha, Dammam, and Jiddah over the span of approximately nine months. These... MORE
Back with a Vengeance: Turkish Hezbollah
In a recent report submitted to the country’s National Security Council (NSC), Turkish police warned that the most powerful militant Islamist group in recent Turkish history has now recovered from the killing of its founder and the arrest of a substantial proportion of its armed... MORE
MEDVEDEV, MILITARY PROMOTE DIFFERENT OUTLOOKS FOR RUSSIA
On Saturday, January 19, the first deputy defense minister and chief of the General Staff, four-star general Yuri Baluyevsky, announced that Russia must build an armed force that will be ready to meet the challenges of the modern world. Baluyevsky sent a stern-sounding warning to... MORE
Al-Qaeda Completes its Organizational Mission in Iraq
This is the second of two articles assessing the content of Osama bin Laden’s December 29 statement. Since 2003, al-Qaeda has had dual but independently achievable goals in Iraq—the two can be termed “Islamist” and “organizational”—and each is assessed in bin Laden’s December 29, 2007... MORE
PUTIN’S SUCCESSOR LAYS OUT AMBITIOUS PLANS, BUT CAN HE DELIVER?
On January 22 Dmitry Medvedev laid out what are apparently the main planks of his presidential election campaign platform in an address to the Civic Forum, a gathering of representatives from some Russian non-governmental organizations and other groups sponsored by the Public Chamber, a Kremlin-appointed... MORE