"Low Lying Threat: Risk from domestic radicals rises in the Maldives."Jane's Intelligence Review, October 2014The Maldives is experiencing a growing undercurrent of Islamist extremism. Animesh Roul examines this trend and the domestic risk posed by Maldivian youths travelling to fight alongside Islamist groups in jihadist theatres such as Syria.
In his famous 1990 essay in Foreign Affairs, Charles Krauthammer declared that the unipolar moment had arrived. He listed a few reasons to support his argument: there was no challenging power, nor was there likely any in the few decades, no power dispersion at the international level, and the former Soviet Union’s capacity was in decline. Thus, Krauthammer emphasised that at that time, there was no first-rate power in the world that could match the capacity of the US.
The Syrian crisis has achieved the unachievable. It has compelled a communist country to talk peace and democratic/capitalist countries to talk war. Fortunately, it appears that the invasion of Syria by the US forces has been stopped, at least, temporarily. An agreement on chemical weapons stockpiled in Syria has been reached following the talks held in Geneva between the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey V. Lavrov, and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Syria's state news agency, Sana, reported that an explosion in Aleppo on July 26 killed around 15 soldiers and wounded 50 others. The Syrian officials had claimed that highly explosive products blew up due to an accidental fire at the facility, and no sabotage was involved. They had reasoned that the increase in ambient temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius caused an ammunition dump to explode, killing and wounding the soldiers.