ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and capitalist corporations that support the loosening of foreign employment are at the bottom ladder of evolving into yet another cultural wipeout. Indeed, one only needs to visit major cities in Europe including Brussels and Paris to know that yesteryear seems like a distant dream. After all, issues related to crime, the breakdown of the social fabric in certain parts of these cities, the specter of terrorism, issues related to narcotics, and other important negative factors – all point to deterioration and increasingly divided areas. In other words, exclusive zones are in a short-distance of “no-go areas.” Therefore, it could well be that certain mega-capitalist corporations and sectors, along with the current leader of Japan, are on the crest of following an uncertain cultural and ethnic future based on the European disease that is dividing many nations. If Japan needs to follow the multi-ethnic reality of certain European nations like Belgium,

Like many conflicts, it shows the weakness of the current international system that obsesses over arbitrary borders that date back a hundred years. Over the weekend, fighting erupted in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. As many as 30 soldiers were killed on both sides and there were also civilian casualties. An Azerbaijani helicopter was reported to have been shot down and reports noted the involvement of heavy artillery and tanks in the battle over a contested region that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but functions as an autonomous Armenian-run self-declared republic. This is an incredibly complex situation that threatens to draw in Turkey and Russia, as well as other regional powers, such as Israel and Iran, all of whom have relations and interests in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and long and convoluted histories with both. For some, the conflict has echoes of a Muslim-Christian confrontation, but others will see echoe

K.N. Pandita In October 1993, I was in Brussels attending the Socialist Group of European Parliament’s seminar on Kashmir. Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Prof. Bhim Singh were also there. A group from PoK lead by Amanullah Khan of JKLF was also attending. Around midnight, my telephone rang and a local friend on the other end said that Amanullah Khan had been arrested. The Indian government had issued a red-corner letter to Interpol wanting his arrest for the murder of Indian diplomat Mhatre in London. The next day, the British Parliament passed a resolution demanding the Belgian government release Amanullah Khan forthwith. Belgium obliged. I asked my Belgian friend, who, I knew, had close contacts with the Pakistanis how the release came about that soon. She said,” Brussels is the hotbed of jihadis in Europe.” During the past year, terrorist attacks have occurred in many places, including Paris, Turkey, San Bernardino, Israel, Toronto, Ivory Coast, Pathankot, and more recently Belgium. These

Every time we tweet, retweet, write a blog post, or publish an article about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, we become unwilling combatants in a decades long war that, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we know very little about. The so-called ‘frozen conflict’ (a cleverly configured yet analytically useless oxymoron if there ever was one) is less about the contested territory that spawned it, and more about deflecting attention away from two illiberal regimes that have grown disparagingly repressive and inattentive to the needs of their people. In this sense, the attention we give it, void any meaningful details about the conditions on the front, or developments leading to its resolution, end up boosting, in one way or another, these regime’s efforts to one-up each other in the world of social media and world opinion. Both the Azerbaijani and Armenian governments have spent enormous sums on building up their armed forces, while their economies have grown increasingly fragile, and th