Serbian Analyst: How war in Ukraine resembles past conflict in Yugoslavia

Interview by Adriel Kasonta, Asia Times, 9/24/22

Dragana Trifković is the general director of the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade, Serbia.

On September 8, a session was held in the UN Security Council on the topic of arms delivery to Ukraine by the West.

In the introductory part of the session, Trifković spoke about the weapons that were delivered to the battlefield during the war in Yugoslavia, comparing it to the current situation in Ukraine.

In the following interview, Trifković elaborates on that point for Asia Times.

Serbian Analyst: How war in Ukraine resembles past conflict in Yugoslavia

Wisconsin Army National Guard headed to Horn of Africa for 10 months

Wisconsin Army National Guard headed to Horn of Africa for 10 months

Related:

Virginia National Guard soldiers return home from Africa

[11-2021] 1,000 National Guard Soldiers to Deploy to Africa as Mid East Wars Wind Down

It is unclear if the 1,000 Guardsmen is an increase in the Pentagon’s force in Africa, or if those troops are replacing others currently deployed. The U.S. has been increasingly operating in countries like Somalia and Niger as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn down.

There are some 6,000 American troops, Defense Department civilians and contractors across Africa, an Army spokesperson told Military.com. About 3,400 of those people operate from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, which serves as the major hub for the U.S. military on the continent.

US accused over huge ‘covert pro-Western’ digital campaign targeting Middle East

Dozens of social media accounts operating for years in an attempt to influence people in the Middle East and Asia have been shut down. Now a major new study believes the US is likely behind it

US accused over huge ‘covert pro-Western’ digital campaign targeting Middle East

Related:

CONOPs

Evaluating Five Years of Pro-Western Covert Influence Operations

The US government got caught using sock puppets to spread propaganda on social media

The data analyzed came from 146 Twitter accounts (which tweeted 299,566 times), 39 Facebook profiles, and 26 Instagram accounts, along with 16 Facebook pages and two Facebook groups. Some of the accounts were meant to appear like real people and used AI-generated profile pictures. Meta and Twitter didn’t specifically name any organizations or people behind the campaigns but said their analysis led them to believe they originated in the US and Great Britain.

For anyone who’s ever been within 15 feet of a history book, the news that the US is using covert action to push its interests in other countries won’t come as a surprise. It is, however, interesting that these operations were uncovered just as social media companies are gearing up to deal with a wave of foreign interference and misinformation in our own elections.

The report also comes right on the heels of a bombshell whistleblower report from Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, Twitter’s former head of security, which accused the company of lax security practices and misrepresenting the number of bots on its platform (something the US government is investigating and that Twitter has strongly denied).

Turkey’s Erdogan: US still feeding terrorism in Syria, Iraq

Turkey’s Erdogan: US still feeding terrorism in Syria, Iraq

Back in May, a number of captured Daesh terrorists confessed to close cooperation with US military forces stationed at al-Tanf base, which is situated near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan, in the central Syrian province of Homs on carrying out various acts of terror and sabotage.

During confessions broadcast on Syria’s state-run television network, several terrorists revealed that they were instructed by American forces to target Syrian government troops in and around the ancient city of Palmyra, the Tiyas Military Airbase – also known as the T-4 Airbase, the Shaer gas field as well as nearby oil wells.

Russia: HTS militants, White Helmets preparing false-flag chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib

Russia: HTS militants, White Helmets preparing false-flag chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib

Addressing a meeting of the security chiefs of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, Patrushev stated that the extremists, having suffered heavy blows in Iraq and Syria, are now changing their tactics and expanding their activities in other parts of the world, including South Asia and Africa.

Did the Syrian Revolution Have Popular Support?

by William Van Wagenen | Aug 3, 2022

In the mainstream view, the armed groups fighting the Syrian government since 2011, collectively known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), were part of a Syrian revolution that represented the Syrian people. At the same time, the Syrian government, or Assad regime, allegedly represented only a small number of loyalists, in particular from President Assad’s minority Alawite community. Such a view undergirded demands by Western and Gulf-funded think tank scholars, who claimed that the Syrian people wished for FSA groups to be armed, and even for Western military intervention on behalf of the FSA, whose fighters they sympathetically described as rebels.

Did the Syrian Revolution Have Popular Support?