Phyllis Diller
HYPERLINKS MAY REQUIRE AN EMAIL:
USA
What's Actually Interesting About the Latest Snowden Leak
United States: The Problem of Aging Infrastructure on Inland Waterways
AFRICA
South Africa Seeks Balance in Its Investment Treaties
Southern Africa's Resource Hunt
Bringing Central Africa's Minerals to Port
ASIA
Upcoming Japanese Military Exercises
EUROPE
Bulgaria: Tensions Rise Despite EU Funding
MEXICO/LATIN AMERICA
Mexico: Military Takes Control Of Port November 5, 2013
Mexico's military has assumed control of policing duties in the city of Lazaro Cardenas and the port of the same name, officials said Nov. 4, AP reported Nov. 5.
AFGHANISTAN
Supply lines into and out of Afghanistan could get tricky. Again. A Pakistani opposition party says it will block NATO supply lines into (or out of) Afghanistan unless the U.S. stops drone strikes in that tribal area. UPI: "The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which is led by the country's former cricket captain Imran Khan and is the ruling party in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, voted Monday to block the supply lines beginning Nov. 20 if the drone strikes in nearby tribal areas do not stop. The PTI is one of the parties which had campaigned strongly against the drone program during general elections last May and its latest resolution comes in the wake of last week's killing of Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistan Taliban, in a drone strike. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province is the main route for transporting supplies to U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan."
CHINA
Mongolia, China: A State Visit and Encouraging Signs for Investors
IRAN
Iran Struggles to Change Its Ways
KNIGHTWATCH:
Iran: An Iranian prosecutor announced that 16 "terrorists" were executed on 26 October in retaliation for the deaths of 14 Iranian border guards in clashes on the 25th.
Fourteen border guards were killed and three were kidnapped in clashes with "bandits" in Sistan Baluchistan Province in southeastern Iran which borders Pakistan's Baluchistan Province.
Comment: Baluchi tribes straddle the Iran-Pakistan border. They are Sunnis and they are restive in both countries. In Pakistan, for example, Baluchi nationalists want to secede. The group which claimed responsibility for the clash with the border guards is new or is using a new name. It apparently uses Pakistan as a base, as have many similar groups in the past.
This group poses only a threat to local law enforcement in Iran when security forces let their guards down. Iranian retaliation is swift and now certain.
IRAQ
NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT
ISRAEL
NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT
RUSSIA
Russia's Military Preparations for the Arctic
SYRIA
KNIGHTWATCH
Syria: Kurdish militiamen took control of a key border crossing between Syria and Iraq on 26 October in an effort to prevent Syrian Sunni rebels with the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq in the Shams (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra from entering the region, according to a news outlet.
The Kurdish militiamen seized the border crossing point in al-Hasakah Province in northeastern Syria after three days of fighting.
Comment: The Kurdish militiamen continue to beat and defeat the Syrian Sunni Arab fighters linked to al Qaida, who supposedly are the best fighters in the Syrian opposition. Kurdish control of border crossing points along the Turkish and the Iraqi borders helps contain the Sunni extremists. The Kurds represent a major obstacle to ISIS' plan to unite Sunni Arabs in Syria
Syria: Update. Kurdish fighters have driven jihadists from 19 towns and villages in northeastern Syria in the week since they maintained control of a key Iraqi border crossing that the jihadists sought to seize.
The Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPJ), the main Kurdish militia in Syria, has for months prevented the jihadists from making gains in northeastern Syria.
Comment: The government in Damascus made a strategic decision to let the Kurds protect their homeland region and to not use government forces to blunt opposition expansion into the northeast. That gamble appears to be paying off.
The government decision does not mean that it consents to secession by the Syrian Kurds or formation of a pan-Kurdish state that includes Kurds in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. It does mean that the government will have to make concessions to Kurdish autonomy, as has Iraq, when the fighting ends. Damascus owes the Syrian Kurds.
...The Assad regime has come to view doctors as dangerous, their ability to heal rebel fighters and civilians in rebel-held areas a weapon against the government. Over the past two and a half years, doctors, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists who provide treatment to civilians in contested areas have been arrested and detained; paramedics have been tortured and used as human shields, ambulances have been targeted by snipers and missiles; medical facilities have been destroyed; the pharmaceutical industry devastated. Directly and indirectly, the attacks have had a profound effect on tens of thousands of health professionals and millions of Syrian patients, let alone the more than 2 million refugees who have fled to neighboring countries.
Here is how a surgeon from Aleppo describes the attitude of the Syrian government. Last April, while treating a man seriously wounded by a government sniper, he was accosted and wrenched away by a military intelligence officer: “We are shooting at them in order to kill them. This is obvious,” the intelligence officer told him. “Since you are stopping him from dying, you are a terrorist. For this you will be punished.” The surgeon’s clinic was destroyed, his wife’s clinic was shut down, and they were forced to flee Aleppo. As a surgeon, he is not authorized to practice in Turkey, where they have taken refuge, despite the urgent need of his skills there....
MIDDLE EAST GENERAL
NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT
MISC
Geopolitical Intelligence, Political Journalism and Wants vs. Needs
Except where noted courtesy STRATFOR.COM
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