Photo Source: Associated Press By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront To flare up more tensions in the Middle East, United States has said that West Bank settlements are consistent with international law. In November 2019, Mike Pompeo told reporters that the Trump administration believes any legal questions about settlements should be settled by Israeli courts, and that declaring them as an infringement of international law, hinders a negotiation for any peace deal. President Trump has retracted many of the decisions on Israel-Palestinian conflict, since he took over office, which has resulted in more torment for the Palestinian leadership. Infact, talks between Israel and Palestine have been broken down since 2014. The reason why United States calls West Bank settlements legal now is because the political and diplomatic actors believe that the mantle exhibited before hasn’t helped the cause of peace. But, in reality, it embraces the hardline Israeli view, at the cost of fut...

Photo Source: Al-Monitor By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront Tens of thousands of Syrian and non‑Syrian families affiliated with members of the Islamic State remained trapped in northeast Syria, posing a daunting challenge for the region. They lived in camps such as al‑Hol in Hasakah and Ain Issa near Raqqa, which had grown from a few tents in muddy fields into sprawling settlements with shops, schools, clinics, mosques, and NGO offices. Yet despite this infrastructure, conditions were dire. As Human Rights Watch reported in 2025, tens of thousands of people in al‑Hol and Roj camps lived in life‑threatening conditions, with limited medical care and rising insecurity. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurds, Arabs, and Assyrians led by the YPG, had guarded these camps since 2019. Al‑Hol alone housed around 60,000 people, many of whom had fled Baghouz, ISIS’s last stronghold in Deir Ezzor. According to US officials cited by The Washington Post, the SDF also...

Photo Source: BBC By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront T he black flag of the Islamic State is flying high on the frontlines of Sahel, on the southern bounds of the Sahara. Since seven years, national and international forces of France, United Nations, United States, and G5 Sahel Joint Force have tried to stop the jihadism spreading. So far they have failed in their efforts, as the allies are divided by language, culture and experience. As Britain has also to step up its political, military and humanitarian involvement in Sahel, spending over four hundred fifty million pounds in the last five years, it is widely believed that Sahel has eclipsed the Middle East, as a new battleground for Islamic extremism. Despite repeated French airstrikes, jihadist groups claiming allegiance to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, such as Nusrat al-Islam, Ansar ul Islam Burkina Faso, and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) have expanded their influence beyond the borders of northern ...

Photo Source: Middle East Eye By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront A s Southern Transitional Council has declared self rule in the southeast part of Yemen, on April 26, 2020, a north – south regional divide once again has come to the forefront. Now, it seems likely that there will be new conflicts emerging, not only within warring sections in the country, but also involving Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Iran, signaling a proxy war. The division between the two supposed allies is another facet of the Yemen’s complicated civil war: on one side there are the separatists, strong in and around Aden, and on the other are forces loyal to former President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Both have fought together in the Saudi-led coalition’s war against Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels, particularly in northern Yemen. The move was condemned by United Nations  recognised government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. Saudi Arabia has called the move as an ‘escalatory action...

Photo Source: Voice of America By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront A pril 2020 marks one year since Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive towards Tripoli to expel its Government of National Accord (GNA). Seen as the next Gaddafi, by many, it was believed that he launched the campaign last year in desperation, as not doing so could have brought his political and military demise. The offensive left more than thousand fighters dead on both sides, and forced more than one hundred twenty thousand people flee their homes to safer areas, according to World Health Organisation. The country seems partitioned on military lines. As of now, conditional ceasefire seems a distant dream, although there have been some short-term truces in the past. In early 2020, at-least  two operations namely Operation Peace Storm and Operation Peace Spring have been conducted by GNA against LNA, to keep them away from the capital. The disinterest in conditional ceasefire was also demon...

Photo Source: Washington Source By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront In February 2020, the United States signed a peace deal with Taliban in Qatar, and agreed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, in following fourteen months, provided Taliban upheld the conditions of the agreement, including distancing itself from Al-Qaeda. The U.S. said that it was also committed to close its five military bases, within one hundred thirty five days, and also expressed to end economic sanctions on the Taliban, by August 2020. The Afghan government, which was not party to the deal, rejected the US and Taliban call for a prisoner’s swap, in March 2020, because President Ashraf Ghani believed such a swap would require a further negotiated agreement, and that it should not be implemented as a precondition for future peace negotiations. However, Ghani contradicted his statement on March 10, 2020, and eventually signed a deal to swap fifteen hundred Taliban soldiers, provided they did not retu...

Photo Source : Global Research By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront I n mid April 2020, a report issued by the United States State Department called " Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments " raised concerns that China might be conducting nuclear tests with low yields at its Lop Nur site, in violation of its Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) undertakings. The U.S. report also claims that Russia has conducted nuclear weapons experiments that produced a nuclear yield, underlying the CTBT. Russia and China have rejected the U.S.’s claims. With growing rivalry among major powers, the report harbingers a new global nuclear arms race, which would mark the end of the CTBT that came into being in 1996. In search of a political diplomacy, it was in March 2020, when Donald Trump  agreed to a proposal that China should join for a new round of arms control talks, along with four other pe...

Photo Source: Gard.no By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront  G ulf of Guinea continues to be world’s most dangerous route for international shipping trade. Called as ‘world's piracy hotspot’, it has now eclipsed the troubled waters off Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, by becoming a new epicenter for looting and kidnappings. According to International Maritime Bureau, almost eighty two percent of maritime kidnappings, in the world, occurred in the Gulf of Guinea in 2019. Attacks against merchant ships were recorded off Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.  There were seventy-two attacks on vessels at sea, in 2018, between Ivory Coast and Cameroon, up from twenty-eight in 2014, and thirty in 2019, as per a report in The Economist.   Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea target all kinds of vessels: crews from fishing, refrigerated cargo vessels, or even oil tankers. They have been mostly attacking ships with international crews, according to ...