Afghanistan's Future

It was announced on Thursday November 21, 2013 that Washington and Kabul had reached an agreement to allow limited American training forces and anti-terrorism personnel to remain on after the scheduled departure of American combat personnel from Afghanistan in 2014. The deal has yet to be approved by the Grand Council or Loya Jirga, which has the power to approve or reject a deal. Afghani President Hamid Karzai is using his weakness as a strength to attempt to manipulate Washington into granting more concessions to him by making the deal subject to the Loya Jirga.

Syria's Possible Futures: An Israeli View

Former head of Israeli military intelligence, Aman, Amos Yadlin, laid out five possible outcomes to the ongoing and escalating civil war in Syria in a briefing to the public at the Institute of National Security Studies in Israel yesterday. He is presently the director of the institute. Here are the five scenarios:  First, the regime could survive by working out its problems with Turkey and winning more support from Russia. Second, the civil war continues forever as a low-level conflict of the type that is common in the Third World. Third, Syria disintegrates into three sectarian states: Alawite, Sunni, and Kurdish. Fourth, a Sunni-dominated state emerges. And lastly, a failed state emerges reminiscent of Somalia after the fall of Siad Barre or of Congo after the collapse of the Mobutu regime. Yadlin did not indicate which of these scenarios was most likely to occur or even rank order them. He simply pointed out that all of them was less threatening than the status quo ante in which a powerful centralized Alawite regime legitimized its rule through maintaining a verbal conflict and tension with Israel. A senior Israeli security official, possibly Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking anonymously took the exact opposite viewpoint arguing that the border had become more dangerous since the start of the civil war in Syria.