The airstrikes that Emirati forces with Egyptian support conducted against militia positions in Libya in late August 2014 were sparked by an anti-Islamist military campaign in eastern Libya. The campaign, led by retired General Khalifa Hifter and a breakaway faction of the Libyan military, has profoundly altered Egyptian-Libyan relations. But the roots of Egyptian meddling in Libya run deeper than Hifter’s current operation.
Among Libya’s many afflictions, none is more threatening to Egypt than the two states’ nearly 700-mile-long shared border. Border policing in Libya has always been weak and ill-defined—even under Muammar Qaddafi—but it has suffered a catastrophic decline following the dictator’s overthrow in 2011. Oversight of borders has devolved to a constellation of eastern militias that are only tenuously connected to the government and that, in many cases, are colluding in the very smuggling they are meant to combat. The border is now North Africa’s eastern thoroughfare for weapons, fighters, illegal migrants, and illicit goods flowing into the Levant, with profoundly destabilizing effects on the Sinai, Gaza, and Syria…
Backdrop to an Intervention: Sources of Egyptian-Libyan Border Tension – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
August 31, 2014
Uncategorized Conflict, International Security, People & Society, peter singhateh, Peter Singhatey, Research Leave a comment
Four Ways to Beat the Mid-season Blues #running #marathon #triathlon
August 25, 2014
You’re making your way through a long season. You’ve been training for months. You’re about half-way through and all of the sudden. . . it feels so hard to work out everyday. Your race suddenly feels so far off. I call this the “Mid-season Blues” and when it hits, it can be really hard to kick.
Today I’ll give you four ways that you can beat the Mid-season Blues to get that training on-track and re-focus yourself for your big upcoming race:
First Keep an eye on your goal. Everything you do is preparing you for your ultimate goal of completing your marathon or other event. If you’ve lost sight of the goal, take a moment to reflect on it. Go on-line and look at pictures or read about your race. Visit the event’s web-site. Do some fundraising. Talk to people about the race, as opposed to your training…
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NASA Spacecraft Reaches Neptune on Its Way to Pluto
August 25, 2014
Fascinating, Space has always intrigue me!!!
Thanks for the blog!
Who Aids Whom? Exposing the True Story of Africa’s $192 Billion Losses | Think Africa Press
July 16, 2014
Uncategorized Africa, Aid, corruption, Development, peter singhateh, Peter Singhatey Leave a comment
Who Aids Whom? Exposing the True Story of Africa’s $192 Billion Losses | Think Africa Press.
“It says something about this country. It says something about our standing in the world and our sense of duty in helping others… in short – it says something about the kind of people we are… And that makes me proud to be British.”
As exhibited by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who made the above comment on 8 June 2013, governments of wealthy countries like to tell tales of generous aid spending and a common responsibility to help those less fortunate in the world. But there is another story to tell. And it is not a story of what is given to continents such as Africa, but of what is taken away.
Research published today reveals that whilst the continent receives $30 billion in aid a year, this figure pales in comparison to the $192 billion leaving the continent via illicit financial flows, the repatriation of multinational company profits, debt repayments, loss of skilled workers, illegal logging and fishing, and the costs imposed as a result of climate change…
Iraq Illusions – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
July 12, 2014
Uncategorized International Security, peter singhateh, Peter Singhatey Leave a comment
Iraq Illusions – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The story most media accounts tell of the recent burst of violence in Iraq seems clear-cut and straightforward. In reality, what is happening is anything but. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), so the narrative goes, a barbaric, jihadi militia, honed in combat in Syria, has swept aside vastly larger but feckless Iraqi army forces in a seemingly unstoppable tide of conquest across northern and western Iraq, almost to the outskirts of Baghdad. The country, riven by ineluctable sectarian conflict, stands on the brink of civil war. The United States, which left Iraq too soon, now has to act fast, choosing among an array of ugly options, among them renewed military involvement and making common cause with Iran. Alternatives include watching Iraq splinter and the creation of an Islamist caliphate spanning eastern Syria and western Iraq.
Much of this is, at best, misleading; some is outright wrong. ISIS, to begin, is only one of an almost uncountable mélange of Sunni militant groups. Besides ISIS, the Sunni insurgency that has risen up against the government of Nouri al-Maliki includes another jihadi group, Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam), as well as the Military Council of the Tribes of Iraq, comprising as many as eighty tribes, and the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, a group that claims to have Shiite and Kurdish members and certainly includes many Sunni Baathists once loyal to Saddam Hussein…
Peter "Just Loves Flying" 
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