Crisisgroup

The West’s current focus on the refugee crisis in Europe obscures the larger truths of a global crisis of displacement that endangers the international order. This is a crisis largely born out of war, and one that will be with us for decades to come. Understanding this reality is essential if Europe is to mount an effective response.

Fallamos al predecir la guerra en la antigua Yugoslavia. Después de Bosnia, descansando en los laureles, repetimos nuestro error con la degeneración de Kosovo en un conflicto abierto. La sabiduría intervencionista de la comunidad internacional se puso a prueba de nuevo en Afganistán e Irak y más recientemente en Libia.Hoy día, mientras el conflicto sirio amenaza con agravarse aún más, uno espera que al menos hayamos comprendido que la fase de ganar o finalizar una guerra debe ser vista únicamente como comienzo de la mucho más compleja y exigente tarea de alcanzar la paz, construir Estados y consolidar naciones.

For the first time in years, Jerusalem’s Holy Esplanade, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, was relatively calm during the Passover holiday. The reasons why are as complex as they are significant. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pointed to his government’s heightened use of force and the banning of the northern branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement, which increasingly mobilized Islamic activists over the past few years. But while Netanyahu’s claims have a purpose — defending his right flank against criticism that he has grown soft on security — the real sources of calm are different.

As I write this message, Crisis Group experts are working to address urgent challenges ranging from escalating hostilities in Syria to the complex peace process in Colombia to the formation of a transitional government of national unity to calm violence in South Sudan. Our field-centred analysis and advocacy are influencing key players in each of these major conflict-prevention efforts. I ask you to consider making a donation to Crisis Group today, as we approach the end of our fiscal year on 30 June. We need your support now with the demand for our work growing alongside the terrible trend toward more wars, more civilians killed, and more people displaced worldwide.

Violations of a fragile internationally brokered cease-fire between government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine are at their highest level in months. Paul Quinn-Judge, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group who just returned from the demarcation line that separates the two sides, attributes the volatile situation to the numbers and proximity of troops along the line of separation, and their willingness to fire on one another.

Even in a country hardened by nearly a decade of deadly criminal conflict, the Ayotzinapa case stands out: 43 students forcibly disappeared during the night of Sept. 26, 2014, allegedly at the hands of municipal police in league with a local drug gang. President Enrique Peña Nieto promised that this horrific crime, above all, would not go unpunished. “After Iguala,” he declared, naming the city where the youths went missing, “Mexico must change". Nineteen months later, the case has generated much controversy but little change.

Im Nahen Osten und in Nordafrika jagt eine Krise die nächste. Auch Europa bekommt immer härter die Auswirkungen davon zu spüren: Attentate im Herzen europäischer Städte, die Terror verbreiten und Angst vor weiteren Anschlägen schüren, aber auch der Zustrom von Flüchtlingen und Migranten, die sich Sicherheit und ein besseres Leben erhoffen. Beide Phänomene setzen die Politiker enorm unter Druck: Sie müssen den Terror besiegen und die Einreise mittelloser Menschen verhindern, die vor Krieg, Armut und dem Mangel an Lebensperspektiven fliehen. Gefährlich ist, dass zwar beide Phänomene ihre Wurzeln in Konflikten im Nahen Osten und in Nordafrika (MENA-Region) haben, dass sie jedoch höchst unterschiedlich sind: Das eine ist eine Sicherheitsbedrohung, das andere eine humanitäre Katastrophe. Daher müssen unterschiedliche Lösungen gefunden werden

The month saw fighting escalate again in Syria and Afghanistan, and erupt in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenian-backed separatists and Azerbaijani forces. In Bangladesh, election violence and killings by extremist groups showed how new heights of government-opposition rivalry and state repression have benefitted violent political party wings and extremist groups alike. Political tensions intensified in Iraq and Macedonia, and security forces severely supressed opposition protests in the Republic of Congo and Gambia. On a positive note, new governments were formed in the Central African Republic and South Sudan to consolidate peace gains, and talks to end Yemen’s one-year-old civil war got underway, albeit later than planned.

The actions of President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) make clear his intention to stay in power beyond his second term. But with the people set against it, and a strong and unambiguous two-term limit in the constitution, his ambitions are leading his country to a dangerous impasse.

Two simple truths are often overlooked in debates about today’s global refugee crisis: The principal driver of the exodus is, above all, the recent rise in the spread of deadly conflict in the Middle East; and what opened the way to this disorder is the breakdown of an international system we had built over the past 70 years.Because of our failure to end wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia, we are collectively responsible for more than half of the estimated 20 million refugees. Globally, another 40 million people have been displaced within their own countries.

El continente africano siempre ha tenido un enorme potencial, pero muchos de sus Estados se han visto postrados por conflictos, corrupción y subdesarrollo. Ahora, sin embargo, su estrella está al alza, lo que se refleja en una mayor confianza global en las economías africanas

לאחר שרחבת ההר בירושלים עמדה במוקד הסלמות אלימות בשנתיים האחרונות, חיוני למנוע הסלמה שלישית. גל הדקירות ופיגועי הירי אשר החל לפני שישה חודשים שכך. אך במהלך חג הפסח, בו לעלייה להר-הבית תפקיד מרכזי, יש סכנה אמיתית לחידוש ההתנגשויות בהר. ישראל וירדן, אשר בפועל מנהלות יחד את ההר, מעוניינות להימנע מהתנגשויות אלו, אך כל אחת מתמודדת עם לחצים אשר יכולים בקלות לפרום את ההסכמות השקטות אשר ייצבו את השקט באתר בששת החודשים האחרונים.

Per risolvere la crisi libica serve una strategia che tenga conto della rivalità tra le fazioni e dei conflitti locali. Un governo di unità nazionale imposto dall’alto non potrebbe funzionare.

With Jerusalem’s Holy Esplanade — known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Palestinians as al-Haram al-Sharif – at the center of two bloody flare-ups in Jerusalem over two years, it is essential to prevent a third. The wave of stabbings and shootings of Israelis that began six months has waned, but with the approach of Passover, in the celebration of which the Esplanade figures prominently, there is a real risk of renewed clashes. Both Israel and Jordan, each with a role in controlling and policing the holy site, want to avoid them, but each is buffeted by countervailing pressures that easily could unravel the quiet understandings that have stabilized the site over the past six months.

La tierra es todavía redonda y dura pero el mundo –el de la gente– se ha vuelto plano y fluido. El mundo ha cambiado y está cambiando. Un torbellino de revoluciones científicas y tecnológicas barre nuestro planeta, llevándonos a una velocidad extrema de un mundo definido por la imprenta de Gutenberg a otro encarnado en el Facebook de Zuckerberg. El aumento de la prosperidad y la medicina moderna –que ha expandido significativamente la esperanza de vida– supone que al final del siglo XXI la población mundial alcanzará los 9.000 millones. En este mundo de creciente interdependencia, la supervivencia de la humanidad dependerá cada vez más de la cooperación y la buena gobernanza global.

Two simple truths are often overlooked in debates about today’s global refugee crisis: The principal driver of the exodus is, above all, the recent rise in the spread of deadly conflict in the Middle East; and what opened the way to this disorder is the breakdown of an international system we had built over the past 70 years.

The Syrian Kurds are playing an increasingly prominent role in that country’s conflict, and in recent years Democratic Union Party (PYD) forces have seized effective control of most territories in northern Syria with substantial Kurdish populations. In March 2016, shortly after the PYD was excluded from participation in diplomatic talks hosted by the United Nations in Geneva, the Syrian Kurdish party proclaimed that the self-administered territories it had previously established would henceforth constitute a federal region within Syria. Meanwhile, Turkey, which sees the PYD as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) with which it has been in conflict since the 1980s, has pledged to prevent a further expansion of PYD power in northern Syria. To get a better understanding of Syrian Kurdish politics and their relationship to the broader conflict in Syria, and as part of a series of Quick Thoughts with International Crisis Group Middle East Analysts, Jadaliyya turned to Maria Fantappie, Senior Analyst with the organization, who has led its research on the Kurdish issue since the beginning of the conflict and recently paid an extended visit to Syria’s Kurdish enclaves

After long years in which Labor did not present an alternative to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conflict management approach and left it as the sole pertinent option, Labor’s new Separation Plan rekindles a national conversation on the matter.

Poor Jordan. A small, economically precarious country, it shares a two-hundred-mile border with Syria. Yet unlike Syria’s other neighbors, Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon, it rarely gets any attention in the international press. Indeed, while the world focuses on the European Union’s controversial deal with Turkey—in which Ankara has agreed to limit the number of asylum-seekers hoping to reach Greece’s shores in exchange for a lavish foreign aid package from Europe—hardly anything has been said about this crucial American ally on Syria’s southern border.

[يلعب أكراد سورية دوراً يزداد بروزاً في الصراع الذي تشهده البلاد؛ وفي السنوات الأخيرة بسطت قوات حزب الاتحاد الديمقراطي PYD سيطرتها الفعلية على معظم الأراضي الواقعة في شمال سورية التي يشكل الأكراد جزءاً كبيراً من سكانها. في آذار/مارس 2016، وبعد فترة قصيرة من استبعاد الحزب الديمقراطي الكردي من المشاركة في المحادثات الدبلوماسية التي تستضيفها الأمم المتحدة في جنيف، أعلن الحزب الكردي السوري أن المناطق الخاضعة للإدارة الذاتية التي كان الحزب قد أسسها ستشكل من ذلك الوقت فصاعداً إقليماً فيدرالياً داخل سورية. في هذه الأثناء، تعهدت تركيا، التي ترى في حزب الاتحاد الديمقراطي امتداداً لحزب العمال الكردستاني الذي تخوض صراعاً معه منذ ثمانينيات القرن العشرين، بمنع المزيد من توسيع قوة حزب الاتحاد الديمقراطي في شمال سورية. للتوصل إلى فهم أفضل للسياسات الكردية السورية وعلاقة الأكراد بالصراع الأوسع في سورية، وكجزء من سلسلة من الأفكار السريعة مع محللي مجموعة الأزمات لشؤون الشرق الأوسط، التقت جدليةبماريا فانتابييه، كبيرة المحللين لدى المنظمة، والتي قادت الأبحاث حول القضية الكردية منذ بداية الصراع وقامت بزيارة مطوّلة مؤخراً للجيوب الكردية في سورية].