Turkey’s diplomatic clash with the EU shows no signs of letting up. A German politician accused Turkey this week of “unacceptable” spying on dissidents on its soil, like reported by middleeasteye.net

Meanwhile fresh after Ankara’s diplomatic bust-up with the Netherlands, Turkey’s President Recip Tayyip Erdogan continues to admonish Europe. He recently went as far as to threaten Europe that if his ministers are disrespected Europeans will be unable “to walk in the streets with peace and safety in any place in the world”.

Such statements, of course, angered European leaders who were still stunned by Erdogan’s tirades against the Netherlands, which according to the Turkish president is a “banana republic”, a “Nazi remnant,” and responsible for the Srebrenica massacre by Serbs against Bosnian Muslims in 1995.

Erdogan was vexed by the decision to deny entry to his ministers to campaign in the Netherlands. Germany, which also restricted access for Turkish ministers, as did other European nations, was accused by Erdogan of engaging in “Nazi practices”.

All’s fair in Erdogan’s Turkey

Such statements might appear harsh to the ears of a non-Turkish observer. However, in Turkey such behaviour by Erdogan and his associates is common practice. For them, politics is a no-holds-barred battle for power where nothing is considered below the belt.

For example, during Erdogan’s 2014 presidential campaign, his team maliciously claimed that his opponent, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, did not know the Turkish national anthem, avoided compulsory military service and wanted to prevent Turks from reading the Quran in Arabic. It did not matter that all of these accusations were entirely false.

Ahead of next month’s referendum, which if successful, would grant him a monopoly of political power, Erdogan and his political supporters have said that those who vote against are siding with last July’s coup plotters, sound like terrorists, and, unless Erdogan is given his greater powers, terrorism will continue.

Let’s also not forget that since last July’s attempted coup, blamed on the Fetullah Gulen Movement, over 140,000 Turks have been either arrested or suspended from their jobs. There has been little care to differentiate the innocent from the guilty.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Kurdish-oriented Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), critics of Erdogan from the left flank, were arrested and still remain in prison on trumped up and politically motivated charges of terrorism. All’s fair in Erdogan’s Turkey.

Anti-EU discourse

Campaigning ahead of the referendum is taking place while the country remains under a state of emergency, allowing the government to ban public meetings, rallies and protests, and even restrict access to public places.

In other words, the ability of Erdogan’s opponents to mobilise is limited. Meanwhile, Erdogan and his government have a virtual monopoly over campaigning. Towns and cities are brimming with “Yes” campaign sign posters, signs and adverts, while the print and broadcast media air government publicity.

But such propaganda has had little impact. Instead, the increase in support for Erdogan’s ‘Yes’ campaign was a result of his anti-European discourse. So, of course, Erdogan does not care about European sensitivities. Nor does he care that by drawing parallels to genocidal campaigns he denigrates the horrors of the Nazi and Serbian atrocities.

All that Erdogan currently cares about is his country’s forthcoming referendum. However, his actions may backfire.

More bark than bite

Turkey has little leverage on the Netherlands, Germany or any other European country. Turkey’s threat to scrap the refugee deal is more bark than bite. First, if Turkey were to tear up the agreement, it would lose much needed revenue promised by Europe.

Second, it is unlikely that Europe would be inundated with hordes of migrants. Some wish to stay until it is safe to return to Syria. Also, Europe has worked to increase its security along Turkey’s borders with Bulgaria and Greece as well as the Mediterranean. If some migrants get through, it is doubtful they will get very far.

As Turkey’s largest trading partner, Ankara needs the EU now more than ever. Almost 55 percent of exports from Turkey go to Europe. What is more, almost $8bn of Turkey’s $12bn dollars of foreign direct investment comes from Europe.

Turkey is also desperate to welcome back European visitors to fill up its empty hotels on the verge of bankruptcy. All this is while Turkey’s economy is on the ropes with growth forecasts looking tepid. There has been a 1.9 percent rise in unemployment (now at 12.7 percent), the credit agency Moody’s recently cut Turkey’s rating outlook to negative and the lira continues to devalue against the dollar, euro and other major currencies.

Europe is fed up and is starting to react. Turkey’s military is dependent on German arms so Berlin’s decision to veto arms exports to Turkey on 21 March was quite a setback. In the soon to leave UK, a parliamentary select committee warned that closer ties with Erdogan could harm Britain’s international reputation and that Ankara is using last summer’s attempted coup to suppress human rights.

If Turkey continues on its current trajectory, European retaliation is inevitable. However, in all likelihood, Erdogan will continue to play the anti-EU card. This might win him a referendum, but Turkey as a country stands to lose.

In this country, people have learned to accept that one war follows another, every two or three years. “An Inevitable Conflict in Gaza,” ran a headline in the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot earlier this month. “With Lebanon no longer hiding Hezbollah’s role, next war must hit civilians where it hurts, Israeli minister says,” Haaretz reported a few days later.

What hardly any Israelis will consider, though, and virtually no influential voices in the West will publicly suggest, is that Israel — not Hezbollah in Lebanon, nor Hamas in Gaza, nor the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria — is provoking the next war. Counterintuitive though it may be to Israeli and most Western minds, Israel, not its militant Islamist or brutal Syrian enemies, is the aggressor in these border wars, like reported by nytimes.com.

On March 17, Israeli military jets did what they’ve been doing every few months since the Syrian civil war started in 2011 — they bombed Syrian weaponry believed destined for Hezbollah, Syria’s ally and Israel’s enemy in southern Lebanon. But this time, instead of letting the attack pass without a response as it usually does, the Syrian Army fired antiaircraft missiles at the Israeli jets.

By the time the exchange was over, air raid sirens had woken people in Israel. Afterward, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted publicly what Israel was doing. “Our policy is very consistent,” he said. “When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, and we have the intelligence and the operational capability, we act to prevent that. That is what was and that is what will be.”

According to Syrian reports, he was as good as his word. In the following days an Israeli drone killed a pro-government militiaman in Syria and Israeli jets struck targets on the Syrian-Lebanese border, then hit Syrian Army posts near Damascus.

Around here it is considered perfectly legitimate, indeed necessary, to send bomber jets and drones to stop Hezbollah from getting advanced weapons. According to mainstream Israeli thinking, Hezbollah, being pledged to Israel’s destruction, will act on its desire as soon as it gets strong enough, so the only thing to do is prevent it from getting strong enough. And if one of these times Syria or Hezbollah hits back and kills some Israelis and another war breaks out — well, the next war’s inevitable anyway. Nothing to do in the meantime but keep bombing.

Israel is continually attacking Syria, at times killing Syrians and Hezbollah members even though they’re not attacking Israel. They don’t dare bomb Israeli weapons depots or go after Israeli military figures; Israel is far too strong for that.

Hezbollah and Syria are well and truly deterred, and if Israel were to simply let them be, they would have to be crazy to strike first. (Hezbollah tried that in 2006, killing two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, and in the war that followed Israel taught Hezbollah and all of Lebanon a very harsh, lasting lesson.) But if Israel keeps rubbing their noses in their weakness — as Mr. Netanyahu is now doing — national honor at some point will compel them to hit back with force. The “inevitable” next war will begin.

That very scenario was probably averted this month only because the Syrian antiaircraft missiles missed the Israeli jets.

With Hamas in Gaza, the situation is somewhat different. There, no deterrence will work for long because unlike with Lebanon — where Israel ended its occupation in 2000 — Israel to this day controls Gaza militarily from without, rules its sister territory, the West Bank, from within, and keeps several thousand Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank in Israeli prisons.

Until all that ends, there is no deterring Hamas or the more radical Islamic groups in Gaza over the long term — and probably not in the West Bank either. As long as the Palestinians live under hostile Israeli rule, they will always have a reason to attack, and sooner or later they will. While the Palestinian government in the West Bank has become Israel’s grudging collaborator, Hamas and the more radical groups in Gaza are pledged to fight.

Lately, militant groups in Gaza other than Hamas have been firing their rockets in Israel’s direction, typically hitting nothing but open space. In return, Israel has been blasting away at Hamas military targets. Hamas has been holding its fire, but as the military affairs commentator Alex Fishman wrote in Yediot Aharonot, that calm “may be broken as soon as Israel attacks and Hamas feels that it can no longer take the humiliation, or if an Israeli strike leaves too many casualties.”

Since its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel has fought three wars against Hamas that devastated Gaza. Avigdor Lieberman, now the defense minister, has said that the next one is “inevitable.” And now the attacks on Syria and Hezbollah have gone from one every few months to four in less than a week. How long before Israel wages its next “war of self-defense”?

The bleeding Middle East and the intensive occupation with ISIS have distracted the world’s attention from Iran’s deployment in the entire region, as it seeks to create a territorial sequence from Iraq through northern Syria to Latakia, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, like reported by ynetnews.com

A world suffering from temporary blindness was caught off guard, and is now waking up to a Middle East in which Iran (in addition to Lebanon) has a “Hezbollah model” in  the process of construction in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The bleeding Middle East and the intensive preoccupation with the Islamic State have distracted the world’s attention from the Iranians, which are deploying in the entire region with malicious sophistication, seeking to create a territorial sequence from Iraq through northern Syria to Latakia, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. A perfect export of a revolution in relative silence, orchestrated by the Revolutionary Guards.

The Iranian leadership successfully read the change in the rules of the game in the regional system, and acted accordingly. The American hesitation over the Syrian issue in 2013, and the decision not to use a military option there, were seen by Iran as a proper opportunity to launch a diplomatic move and aim for an agreement that would get the country out of its diplomatic-economic isolation within a relatively short time. As it turned into “the lesser of two evils” upon the emergence of ISIS, Iran was positioned as a sought-after player in the regional and international circles, without providing a real promise to withdraw from its military nuclear aspirations.

The details of the agreement can be debated, but it’s important to remember that it will be tested by its implementation rather than by the direct meaning of its clauses. It’s safe to assume that parts of it were worded vaguely so as to leave the parties room for interpretation, and that will be a source of future disputes and will make it difficult for statements such as “Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon has been closed” or “the deal is not based on trust but on supervision” to stand the test of time.

If those who support the agreement hoped that the deal and its economic fruit would be enough to set in motion deep processes that would wear out the Iranian regime’s power in the coming decade or later on, in the short run the agreement has become an “insurance policy” for the regime. The ruling elite has grown stronger politically. While it has directed some of its new resources to public welfare, it has continued to oppress and crush human rights. Western claims against the tyranny of the “Republic” have diminished accordingly, as the agreement legitimized Iran as regular player in the community of nations.

The agreement provided a future guarantee for the status of the religious clerics controlling Iran alongside the Revolutionary Guards commanders. They have already reached the conclusion that turning Iran into a nuclear threshold state will guarantee the regime’s security and survival, after it has been proved that countries like Libya and Syria are trampled when their leaders are forced to give up the nuclear infrastructure they began to build.

In addition, the agreement has intensified Iran’s standing from the regional geopolitical aspect. With improved economic assets and broad international legitimacy, Iran continues to support the “clients” accepting its authority—Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and more—and inflame conflict in the region. The arrival of thousands of Revolutionary Guard fighters in Syria, for example, created a new reality in strategic terms. The Iranians allegedly arrived to secure Assad’s survival, but were actually aspiring to establish a presence in the eastern Mediterranean Basin.

The reports in Kuwaiti daily al-Jarida about the Iranian initiative to build a missile manufacturing facility for Hezbollah on Lebanese soil, as well as the Iranian effort to create a navy port in Latakia, Syria, join the construction of Iranian infrastructure aimed at reinforcing Tehran and deepening its hold on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

In general, Iran’s naval activity, on the shores of Yemen and in the Bab-el-Mandeb or Mandeb Strait as well, reveal that it is has a considerable interest in establishing home ports outside its borders. The bottom line is that Iran is here to stay, and despite the warnings—it’s all business as usual.

Syrian groups affiliated with al-Qaeda are capitalizing on the U.S.-led coalition as well as the Iran and Russian-backed Syrian regime’s nearly single-minded focus to annihilate the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in the war-torn country, like reported by breitbart.com

The U.S.-led coalition, forces loyal to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and the mainly Iran-backed allied militias have attacked both ISIS and its rival al-Qaeda. They have killed some of their high-ranking leaders, pushed them out of Syrian territory, and prevented them from completely seizing the country’s capital Damascus.

However, the anti-jihadist efforts have long primarily focused on ISIS, allowing al-Qaeda to fully replenish and at times exceed their losses while their enemies continue to fight each other.

The Washington Times reports:

Al Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria have begun gaining ground in the central part of the country, taking advantage of the regime’s increased focus on the ongoing fight against Islamic State in northern Syria.

Fighters from Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, a faction of the former Syrian al Qaeda cell now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, have overrun government forces in the central Syrian cities of Qomhana and Ma’an, 30 miles south of anti-government stronghold of Idlib, according to local reports.

As early as June of last year, former American special envoy for the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, Brett McGurk, acknowledged that ISIS at the time was already losing territory, fighters, leaders, and financial resources.

Meanwhile, ISIS’s rival the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate was becoming the “largest” al-Qaeda affiliate “in history,” warned McGurk.

The Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is also benefiting from a similar situation like the one facing their counterparts in Syria.

AQAP is taking advantage of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s primary focus on fighting the Iran-allied Shiite Houthis while al-Qaeda grows stronger, capturing territory and recruiting fighters.

While the U.S. intelligence community has long described AQAP as the most strong and dangerous wing of the terrorist group, the former American president’s special envoy has identified the Syrian branch as the “largest” al-Qaeda affiliate “in history.”

Together, both Sunni terrorist group would at the very least appear to be a formidable enemy that may outlast ISIS.

Even the U.S. military conceded last year that the America-led bombing campaign against ISIS had helped Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, or the al-Nusra Front gain strength and capture more territory.

Perhaps to divert attention from claims that it had reached unprecedented strength, Jabhat al-Nusra declared in July that it was no longer affiliated with al-Qaeda after renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS).

Voice of America (VOA) noted that various analysts dismissed the name change as a “feint” to their opponents, rather than a real decision to drop its links to al-Qaeda.

JFS also intends to establish its own caliphate by announcing “officially an emirate in territory it controls in northern Syria, mainly in the province of Idlib to the west of the besieged city of Aleppo,” explained VOA.

With ISIS allegedly on its last legs in both Iraq and Syria, the time for al-Qaeda to officially establish its territory may be fast approaching,

“Syrian President Bashar Assad has begun diverting his forces from battling rebel fighters in central Syria to territory held by Islamic State, or ISIS or ISIL,” notes the Washington Times. “The ensuing vacuum has allowed al Qaeda-affiliated groups to push into rebel-held territory near Idlib and Hama.”

“It remains unclear how far the group’s Syrian cells will push unchecked by Damascus into rebel territory. But those efforts in Syria fall in line with al Qaeda’s recent resurgence in Yemen, west Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” it adds.

President Donald Trump’s administration has ramped up military efforts against both ISIS and al-Qaeda, particularly bombing the Yemen-based AQAP.

Meanwhile, the Iran and Russia-backed Assad forces have also intensified their offensive against the two jihadist groups.

Current responses seem to normalise terrorism – cementing it into the everyday reality of daily life, in the same way that we accept poverty, homelessness or inequality. The way things are, like reported by opendemocracy.net

So, once again, we face a terrorist attack in the western world. And moreover, not only do we face the reality of the bloodshed, the violence and the affront we all feel in the sense of a violation of security, we also face the need to respond. Each time these attacks take place, whether in Brussels, Paris or London (but perhaps not Baghdad) the same messages, texts and narratives emerge across newspapers, television screens and social media. What is interesting to note is how these narratives, themes and ideas are appearing increasingly lazy and inadequate.

As soon as the events in Westminster began to unfold, each actor began to play their role – their lines rehearsed, their movements pre-determined and choreographed. News outlets poured across our social media with timelines of events, dramatic and amateur hand-held camera footage, action shot images, trigger warnings about graphic scenes we may find distressing (but cannot look away from), profiles of a hero captured in the moment, and speculative pieces on the character of the main suspect and any potential links to carefully constructed phrases such as ‘Islamist-inspired’ terrorism.

Politicians then have their share of the narrative space offering their contributions: discourses of freedom, of never giving in, of being above this – Britain’s values won’t be defeated. Each political leader had their turn and had their say, and they all said the same thing.

And then you have the critics. Those who point out how you weren’t upset by the bombing the other day in Kabul, those who mention the number of people who died yesterday in car accidents, those who blame British foreign policy, those who attempt to open the debate from the stock of narratives that come from more powerful voices.

And of course, you have the more fringe responses: from racist tweeters jumping on a bandwagon to incite hate and division to those who perhaps support the actions of the attacker, taking pride in taunting victims.

And yet, through all these diverse narratives there appears one common theme: they are all wearing thin. Each of these narratives appears tired, over-used, more emaciated than when last rolled out in a tweet or a post. In examining media responses, both print and social, there appears a potent sense of boredom, of tiredness, of having seen this story before and of knowing how it will probably end: tragedy for the victims, a tightening of surveillance and a spike in hate crime.

The cracks in the political narrative are certainly more obvious than on their last outing. Take Theresa May’s speech on the night of the attacks for example: a sombre tone, a podium positioned for strength and leadership, a message of defiance, an emphasis on values. One can’t help but feel like these themes have simply been copied and pasted from the last time an attack took place – a template story taken from the shelf with only the dates and names altered. Quite equally, Sadiq Khan’s video lacked the leadership or poignancy of Ken Livingstone’s in 2005 – a speech, which even while delivered on video from Singapore, seemed to speak the voice of the Londoner, rather than the looping voice of the ‘terrorist attack responder’ of today: repeating ad nauseam exactly what has been said before. The speeches lacked punch, gravitas or a political energy on which a critical counter-terror policy could take hold.

But these inadequacies in leadership and oratory demonstrate not the mediocre quality of current political leaders, but rather demonstrate the need for a profound shift in the way that such incidents are both spoken of and dealt with by political institutions and leaders. Seemingly endless and brazenly empty narratives around values, freedom and defiance cannot alter the fact that the public is aware that little is being done to alter the political landscape such that the next attack won’t take place. Instead, these repeated phrases instil a fatalistic and normalising mode of thinking in the wider public: there’s been another attack, I hope I’m not caught up in the next one.

Yet, the critics equally need to reflect on their own narratives. The message that terrorists kill fewer people annually in the western world than bathtubs appears to fall on deaf ears. And not because of ignorance. Many people in society are aware of the irrationality of the heightened fear of the terrorist. Yet, as the philosopher Slavoj Zizek argued – it’s not that we don’t know what we do, it’s that we do know, and yet we still do it. We know we shouldn’t be as scared of the looming terrorist as the increasing number of cars on Britain’s roads, or the meagre provision of safe cycling infrastructure, and yet we still are. And that is not going to change by itself. If the critics want to change counter-terror policy, it is their narrative that must also shift. It needs a more creative response to burst through this complacent thinking.

Responses to terror need a fresh approach if these responses are to play a constructive part in the production of a world where terror ceases to exist. Current responses seem to normalise terrorism – cementing it in the everyday reality of daily life, much in the same way we accept poverty, homelessness or inequality. We’ve accepted that this is just the way things are. This is unhelpful thinking both for policy-makers, and for those working on a more critical approach to terrorism. Terrorism is becoming banal. We need to shift that thinking.

But what should that response be?

A terrorist rams his car into a crowd. Then he steps out and starts knifing civilians.

That was Wednesday in London, but in Israel it can be any day of the week, like reported by israelnationalnews.com.

So the terrorist attack at Westminster outside Parliament, which killed four, would surprise no Israeli, particularly as to this pattern of terrorism. In Israel it’s been going on for years…deadly car rammings and indiscriminate knifings as a method to strike fear into the heart of an entire population.

Now the entire world knows how it feels, but it all begins in Israel, where Islamic terrorists try out new tactics to see how the rest of the world will respond. I call it spring training for Radical Islam. If the response is full support for Israel, we win, they lose.

But if the world says the terrorists had an excuse…if the world says Israel must give up more land to pacify Muslim extremists…we lose, they win.

So yesterday violent Islam won again, this time in London, from where the UK’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, only a few weeks ago, warned Israel that it must absolutely abide by a two-state solution – must split itself in half to make happy Hamas, Abbas, the PA, the PLO and the rest of them that seek Israel’s destruction – along with the rest of Western civilization.

Does nothing get learned?

The brave talk fools nobody, not the Islamic hot heads first of all. “We remain defiant,” said one Member of Parliament over at the BBC.

Defiant, how? You keep bringing more of them in.

Basic math says the more terrorists you bring in, the more you are bound to suffer the consequences.

Granted, they are not all terrorists, but so inclined from specific countries. Our President, Donald Trump, keeps trying to keep them out.

So far he has not been entirely successful because of certain judges who tolerate anything, including rape, in the name of Tolerance.

In the name of Inclusiveness they give in to terror, and so, an hour after the attack, another Member of Parliament told the BBC:

“We will never give in to terror.”

Have you tried getting on a plane lately – without being near strip-searched? Every big city has quadrupled its police force and its intelligence gathering operations. Walls have gone up all over Europe – and we are building a wall. Check points everywhere. Constant alerts – if you see something, say something.

What is that? That is giving in to terror, and it’s happening all over, and electing a Muslim as London’s mayor stopped nothing.

Over the months, Mayor Sadiq Khan has called Trump’s proposed travel pause offensive and “ridiculous.”

Now what’s he say?

Kahn also said that every big city around the world ought to be ready and to expect terror attacks.

No, Sir, we never expected any such business until we shut our eyes and flung our doors and borders wide open.

A great deal of media attention to Russian involvement in Libya arose as a result of a March 14 Reuters report that Moscow “appears to have deployed special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya”, like reported by atlanticcouncil.org.

These forces, reportedly consisting of a 22-man unit, deployed to support General Khalifa Haftar, who controls much of eastern Libya. Haftar is at odds with the UN-backed (and thus Russian-approved) Libyan government based in the western part of the country headed by Fayez al-Sarraj.

Moscow, as it often does in response to reports about Russian troop deployments, denied that it sent special forces to Libya. Moscow did signal its support for Haftar through several high level discussions, including with Russian foreign minister Lavrov and defense minister Shoigu. All of this fuel speculation about Putin’s potential intentions in Libya. Observers suggested several intentions, including support for a Russian-aligned leader controlling all of Libya; revival (or even expansion) of Qaddafi-era deals for Russian involvement in the Libyan petroleum sector as well as arms sales; the establishment of another Russian naval base in the region; and the prevention of a pro-Western regime from taking power in all of Libya and cooperating with NATO.

Moscow may indeed be pursuing these aims—or may hope to do so if sufficient stability in Libya could be established to enable it to do so. But whatever Moscow hopes to achieve in Libya by supporting Haftar, what is clear is that it is doing this in conjunction with Egypt. Indeed, Russian support for Haftar may have as much to do with Moscow’s ambitions in Egypt as in Libya itself.

Moscow is cultivating its ties with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and has ever since he overthrew the elected Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013. Egyptian-American relations deteriorated when the Obama administration cut back on US arms supplies to Cairo after this event—Obama saw Sissi reversing progress toward democracy in Egypt, while Sissi saw himself as not appreciated by Washington for rescuing Egypt from an elected Islamist demagogue. When Putin then offered to sell Russian weapons to Egypt, Russian-Egyptian ties improved dramatically.

Yet despite the optics of close ties between Putin and Sissi, Egypt continued to rely primarily on the United States as a security partner. Some in Moscow suspect that Sissi’s turn toward Putin was less about a reorientation of Egyptian foreign policy in a pro-Russian direction, but rather an Egyptian effort to get Washington to be more sympathetic toward Cairo’s concerns. Sissi’s support for Haftar in eastern Libya, though, has provided Moscow with an opportunity to be helpful toward Egypt on something of great importance to Cairo that Obama was unwilling to support Sissi on and Trump has not yet formulated a policy toward.

Cairo, like many others, is concerned about the presence of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) and other jihadists in Libya. But Egypt is concerned about stabilizing eastern Libya, right next to its western border. Especially since the UN-backed Libyan government based in Tripoli does not seem capable of ruling even the western part of the country, Sissi sees Haftar as the best hope for maintaining stability in eastern Libya.

Russia joining Sissi in supporting Haftar serves to advance the goals of the Egyptian government in Libya. Nor are Russia and Egypt the only governments to support Haftar; the UAE does too, and so has France. Like Egypt, the UAE and France are also important American allies. On the issue of Haftar, Russia is more aligned with these US allies than the United States itself has been. This is hardly a sign that any, including Egypt, are moving away from Washington and toward Moscow. What it may signal instead is that because these three American allies support Haftar, Washington really cannot object too strongly to Moscow doing so without alienating Egypt and others who are also backing him. And, of course, the Trump administration may even agree with Cairo and Moscow that Haftar is the best bet for keeping the jihadists at bay in eastern Libya.

A question that arises is whether Moscow either could or would support Haftar or pursue a more aggressive Libya policy in ways that Cairo found inimical. There is even precedent for this in Syria where, although Moscow and Tehran both support the Assad regime, Russia and Iran do pursue some opposing goals—Moscow is more willing than Tehran to see Bashar al-Assad depart; Moscow is supportive of the Syrian Kurds while Tehran is not; Tehran and its Shi’a allies are anti-Israeli while Moscow has good relations with the Jewish state. Russia has a much smaller presence in Libya than it does in Syria, making it highly dependent on cooperation from Egypt for pursuing its Libya policy. Not only would Russia risk damaging its overall relations with Egypt, but also its ability to act in Libya by attempting to do so in ways that the Sissi government objected to. Thus, it does not seem likely that Putin will do this.

Another question that arises is what can Russia, Egypt, and any other country hope to achieve through supporting Haftar? The answer to this question is not clear. As weak as the UN-backed government in west Libya is, and as much as Moscow and Cairo would both like to see a reunified Libya ruled by someone sympathetic toward them, Haftar does not seem capable of uniting Libya under his rule. It is possible that Russia could help in the ongoing Egyptian-Tunisian-Algerian attempt to mediate between Libya’s warring parties that oppose not just the jihadists, but one another as well.  But neither Russia nor anyone else has yet been able to do this on Libya. Perhaps the best they can hope to achieve by supporting Haftar is establishing a degree of security in eastern Libya, but even this will take considerable effort. If so, Libya will not be the great geopolitical gain for Russia that many in the West seem to fear.

The continuing, if forgotten, war in Afghanistan is the United States’ longest-ever conflict, like reported by abc.net.au.

But President Donald Trump has vowed to end “nation-building”, raising expectations of withdrawal.

The alternatives? Stalemate, or more troops.

Last month, Republican Senator John McCain asked America’s top general in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, a simple question: “Are we winning or losing?”

“I believe we’re in a stalemate,” the commander of Operation Resolute Support replied to the chair of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.

According to a January report from America’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the United States has spent approximately $150 billion on nation-building in that country since 2002.

Why not cut the losses?

Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations and military history at Boston University, suggests it is because of a “reluctance to acknowledge that we have failed”.

So what are the alternatives?

Mr Trump has stated his intention to pull back from nation-building, but the US military — which the President has promised separately to build up and return to “winning” ways — wants a troop increase.

Kate Clark, from the Afghan Analysts Network, says Afghanistan would fail if Mr Trump were to cut aid.

“Clearly, if international funding — especially to the military but to the state in general — were cut, it is difficult to see the state surviving in its current form,” she said.

Of course, Afghanistan’s survival wasn’t the initial reason for invading.

The so-called Islamic State (IS) is public enemy number one today, but in 2001, it was Al Qaeda.

A week after the 9/11 attacks on New York, when President George W Bush made the case for going to war, he told America that the crucible of terror was Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime gave Al Qaeda safe haven.

“It [the Taliban] is threatening people everywhere, by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists,” he stated.

Has the blood spilt and money spent since then been effective?

No, according to the Woodrow Wilson Center’s South Asia expert Michael Kugelman.

“I would argue that one of the sources of terror that tends to be overlooked in this town is Al Qaeda, which has never gone away,” he said.

Mr Kugelman argues today’s focus on IS and wavering support for Afghanistan overlooks a dormant Al Qaeda.

“What I worry about is that history could repeat itself in Afghanistan,” he said.

“We could revert to the pre 9-11 days, where Al Qaeda essentially was given one huge sanctuary in Afghanistan to plan attacks in the United States.”

Currently, there are 8,400 American troops and 5,000 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

General Nicholson says he needs more personnel who can help to train the Afghan National Army units fighting the Taliban.

“In my train, advise and assist mission, we have a shortfall of a few thousand,” he told the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.

Will the President agree with this?

For Mr Trump to increase troops, the generals must convince him that Afghanistan poses a threat he can’t ignore.

In other words, they must argue that 16 years on, the war on terror’s original mission remains incomplete.

Afghans naturally fear the vacuum that total withdrawal would create, so are keen to highlight the risk of IS gaining a toehold there, said Ms Clark from the Afghan Analysts Network.

“The [Afghan] Government likes to overplay Daesh [IS] because it’s useful for getting international financial and military support,” she said.

Indeed, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States wrote this week that the “security reasons for going into Afghanistan 16 years ago are arguably more urgent now”.

He cited Islamic State influence and “groups looking for a platform from which to destabilise our region and launch attacks on the rest of the world”.

Against that warning though, the prospect of continuing stalemate will weigh heavily on a President obsessed with victory.

In Islamic eschatology the Mahdi (‘messiah’) plays a prominent role. For the Iranian Shia he is already born and has hidden down a well for over a millennium, waiting for the right time to emerge. Turkish Sunnis already have a candidate, breathing fire and brimstone and ready to purge the world, like reported by frontpagemag.com.

At least, so it would seem, to judge from the campaign Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has waged against unbelievers who have dared to block his plans to become the country’s all-powerful leader.

On April 16 a referendum will be held in Turkey, where voters can decide on constitutional amendments which will remove all cumbersome checks and balances to Erdoğan’s power. In his campaign to secure a ‘yes’, Erdoğan has admitted he has been planning for such a system since he was mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s. Furthermore, that his plans for an executive presidency will concentrate all power in the hands of one person.

This “Turkish-style” presidential system means Erdoğan will have the power to appoint and dismiss ministers and high-level state officials without the need for parliamentary approval. He will also be able to declare a state of emergency, issue decrees, dissolve parliament and call elections without being held to account. The president will not only be head of state but also head of government – the post of prime minister will be abolished, and in effect the judiciary will be subject to his control.

What is particularly alarming, as the Venice Commission (the Council of Europe’s advisory body) has pointed out, the way the new constitution is configured means the president could stay in office for a potentially unlimited period of time.

The current conflict with Europe derives from Erdoğan’s insistence to extend his referendum campaign to the Turkish diaspora (there are about two and a half million Turks eligible to vote in Turkey in various European countries). However, as not all Turks are Erdoğan supporters, there is the danger of clashes, which could destabilize forthcoming elections in France and Germany, and latest in Holland.

Erdoğan has reacted violently to Germany and Holland’s refusal to allow him and his ministers to hold rallies, accusing Germany of “Nazi methods” and Holland of being “Nazi remnants” and “fascists” as well as “a banana republic.” This may go down well with Erdoğan’s supporters but not in Europe, where relations with Turkey are already strained.

But Erdoğan has stepped up the rhetoric. In a spectacular example of projection Erdoğan has claimed that “the spirit of fascism is running wild on the streets of Europe” and has compared the banning of rallies to the treatment of Jews during the Second World War. Here Erdoğan conveniently ignores that there has been a state of emergency in Turkey since the abortive coup last July, where public assemblies are banned and free speech is stifled. Also the fact that more than 135,000 have lost their jobs and over 140,000 have been detained or arrested in the ongoing purge of the Gülen movement, which has been held responsible for the coup.

Naysayers have been stigmatized as siding with the coup plotters, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Gülen movement have been accused of backing the ‘no’ campaign. A prominent cleric has also branded opponents of the constitutional amendments as “opponents of Islam.”

Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu has warned of “holy wars” in Europe and Erdoğan has spoken of a struggle between the cross and the crescent, after the European Court of Justice allowed employers to ban the Islamic headscarf along with other religious symbols. As Turkey is term president of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), President Erdoğan also intends to mobilize the OIC against Euro-fascism.

President Trump has not yet formulated a policy against radical Islamic terrorism but until now has left it to his generals to decide policy in the war against ISIL.

Here Turkey plays a key role, especially as Turkish forces in support of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) occupy an area in northern Syria, driving a wedge between two Kurdish autonomous areas. The question is whether the US in its drive to take Raqqa will continue to support the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) or agree to cooperate with Turkey. The issue is still open to debate but will not be decided until after Turkey’s referendum in April.

In the meantime, the Trump administration has decided to send Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to meet with Turkey’s leaders at the end of the month. Whether this will be enough to assuage Turkish fears remains to be seen.

The U.S. campaign against the Islamic State in Syria has evolved in the past couple years from airstrikes and training of local forces to an increasingly complicated mission, which now includes hundreds of American troops on the ground and coordination with a hodgepodge of allies, partners and even rivals engaged in the fight, like reported by ap.org.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States’ role is likely to expand further.

While Trump has announced no changes to the U.S. approach, the Pentagon in recent months has incrementally increased its footprint in the northern reaches of the war-ravaged, Middle East country, where it is backing a coalition of Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters closing in on the Islamic States’ self-declared capital at Raqqa.

Trump is reviewing options for accelerating the recapture of Raqqa. These include proposals for more U.S. troops, greater firepower and tweaks in the existing strategy.

Here is a look at how the U.S. mission has evolved, how it stands today and challenges facing the Trump administration it contemplates speeding up the fight.

HOW IT BEGAN

Former President Barack Obama ordered the start of a U.S.-led air campaign against IS in Syria in September 2014, weeks after a parallel bombing effort began in neighboring Iraq.

IS militants that year had swept across Syria’s border into northern and western Iraq, capturing the city of Mosul and declaring an Islamic caliphate. Its rapid progress created alarm in Washington and around the world about the prospect of Baghdad potentially falling.

Almost 1,000 days later, the Pentagon says it has spent $11.5 billion. That includes money for training and advising local forces.

Obama initially ruled out putting U.S. ground troops in Syria, but sent small numbers of military advisers to Iraq to develop a plan for retraining an Iraqi army that had all but collapsed. Gradually the U.S. role in Iraq widened and deepened. There are now well more than 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, largely focused on helping the government recapture Mosul.

Later, Obama authorized an initial contingent of about 200 U.S. special operations troops into Syria. Their task was to recruit and organize local fighters who were opposed to the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, but willing to prioritize the battle against IS in its strongholds in the country’s north. Last December, Obama boosted the U.S. troop total in Syria to as many as 503.

In recent weeks, under Trump, U.S. forces in the country climbed to roughly 1,000.

THE CURRENT MISSION

The mission in Syria is being carried out by U.S. special operations troops as well as several hundred conventional forces such as a Marine artillery unit.

The Americans aren’t leading the fight against IS but are involved in an increasing number of ways. The Marine artillery is a recent addition, for example, and about two weeks ago a few dozen Army Rangers began acting as a “deterrence and reassurance” force on the outskirts of the city of Manbij. The Rangers are showing the U.S. flag in hopes of dissuading Turkish, Russian, Syrian and U.S.-based opposition forces from fighting each other, deliberately or accidentally.

The air war continues. The U.S. is conducting strikes on IS daily from bases in Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere in the region.

The Marines in Syria arrived from the USS Makin Island and two other ships that moved into the region last November. The ships carry the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit of about 2,400 Marines. They’re expected to leave and eventually be replaced by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit that left Norfolk, Virginia, in early March with the USS Bataan, USS Mesa Verde and USS Carter Hall.

Commanders have raised the prospect of sending additional forces into the region to be ready to assist in accelerating the fight. They could head to either Syria or Iraq.

But decisions have largely stalled. Discussions continue within the Trump administration on possibly ending strict limits on troop numbers set by Obama. The new approach would give commanders more flexibility in determining how many forces they need.

THE WAY AHEAD

Military commanders, frustrated by what they considered micromanagement under the previous administration, have argued for greater freedom to make daily decisions on how to fight the enemy. And Trump says the threat must be extinguished quickly.

Still, America is having some success at the moment. U.S.-trained Iraqi forces have pushed IS to the brink of a major loss in Mosul, following the group’s defeats in the western Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Fallujah.

But the elimination of IS in Iraq appears far from over, and U.S. commanders may determine they need more troops there.

It’s an altogether tougher situation in Syria, where the fight against IS is happening simultaneously with Syria’s six-year-old civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, is working at cross-purposes with the U.S. in some respects. Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria aims to push IS militants back from the border and prevent Kurdish forces from holding contiguous territory on Turkey’s frontier.

Turkey considers the main Syrian Kurdish force, the YPG, as terrorists because of their links to Kurdish insurgents in Turkey. Washington, on the other hand, considers the YPG its most effective partner on the Syrian battlefield.

The Pentagon would like to arm the Syrian Kurds as part of a planned push to recapture Raqqa, but the Turks are adamantly opposed. Efforts to reach some type of compromise have dragged on for months. So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.

Any significant increase or change in military action in Syria will be tough to advance while questions related to Turkey and the Kurds remain unsettled.