On May 24, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that Türkiye would start a new cross-border operation in Syria once preparations were complete. He defined the main objective of the new operation as establishing a 30 kilometer-deep “safe zone” on the southern borders of Türkiye. A... MORE

Turkish military operations against Kurdish Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan, or PKK) militants inside northern Iraq have evolved since the 1990s from large, ponderous, marginally effective incursions into a combination of semi-permanent screening operations with more precise strikes and raids. The shift, facilitated in large... MORE

On July 10, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh claimed that Jordan had never treated Iran as a national security threat (BBC Arabic, July 10). However, two months earlier, Jordan's King Abdullah II had underlined the threat that Iran and its proxies would pose on Jordan's... MORE

Thai Military Continues Counter-Insurgency Operations Amid Peace Process Jacob Zenn Amid rising hopes for a more inclusive peace process in southern Thailand, the Thai military is continuing its counter-insurgency operations against ethnic Malay Muslim militants. This represents a strategy whereby the military is allowing talks... MORE

Three days after US President Joe Biden's trip to the Middle East, Tehran hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 19. This tripartite meeting was held within the framework of the seventh summit of the heads of states of... MORE

The Ukraine war has generated shockwaves far beyond the Donbas battlefields, and the Middle East has absorbed and returned the variegated impacts and, as a result, has attracted increased attention in recent weeks. Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to visit Tehran, Iran, on July... MORE

Uighur Jihadism Fades Into Obscurity Jacob Zenn A decade ago, at the onset of the Syrian civil war, Uighur militants joined the forefront of the jihadist movement. Originally based in Afghanistan, they comprised a sub-group of the Islamic Movement in Uzbekistan (IMU) and allied with... MORE

On March 18, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad landed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a whistle-stop tour involving meetings with numerous high-ranking Emirati government officials (Arab News, March 18). Among others, al-Assad met with UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum before being... MORE

Russia’s highest-level military officers are heavily influenced in their operational thinking by shared experience of the Syrian theater of military operations. This was used as an en masse training opportunity, which included significant military experimentation, and it boosted combat experience and confidence—arguably over-confidence—among the officer... MORE

Is Myanmar’s Military Junta Quashing the Insurgency Through Domestic Crackdowns and Regional Outreach? Jacob Zenn Since Myanmar’s February 2021 military coup to overturn the democratically elected victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the junta has experienced widespread resistance from multiple regions of the country... MORE