Since the beginning of this year, and even earlier, the world was taken over - with its values, frustrations, concerns and, most of all, with the frightening count of those defeated - by the poisoning stench of the killer COVID-19. The tale of this ailing world filled numerous bookshelves, and the obsessive leitmotif was whether “the world after” will ever be the same. Epidemics, which humanity had experienced throughout its long journey to civilization and survival have not been forgotten, nor have the nostalgic ludic moments with their beaches, the joy of exotic places and the customary normality threatened with extinction. During the isolation and the “social distancing” imposed by official decrees, or while avidly waiting for the return to the simple “normality” of every day existence, however, how many of us had the time to realize, at least as a late lesson of our own history, that in the shadow of this pandemic “ennobled” Corona another disease persists – while decision makers keep silent, the media shows no interest and the players themselves treat it cynically since they see the political map of the world as a mere chessboard.

This disease is called war and, unlike other diseases, its taxonomy is as complicated as it is harmful. Listing types and tangles would take too long and prove useless, as they are too well known and for too many times experienced. Today, we are no longer referring (yet) to the global extent of the phenomenon. Easier to pronounce and more effective to wage, we can talk about atypical wars, civil, religious, proxy wars or a “franchised” wars, and we could go on confusing even Saint Augustine, he himself an advocate of the “just war” theory – jus bellum justum.

During all this time of apparent lull, the “New” and “Great” Middle East – one of the hottest regions in global geopolitics – is still as hot as ever. Despite what we have seen through the curtain of the pandemic, the realities in this area unfold at a faster pace and tend to transform a frail peace into the preamble of belligerent prospects. So, what is going on in this “New” and “Great” Middle East stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the Mediterranean Sea?

Afghanistan: From Soleimani to the New Franchise War?

By executive order signed by president Donald Trump, on January 3, 2020, US drones manned in the vicinity of Baghdad International Airport struck and burned to the ground the convoy transporting the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and a number of leaders and sympathizers of the Shiite Iraqi militias Al-Hashd Al-Shaabiy (Popular Mobilization Forces). The famous Muslim vendetta was expected, and the international nervousness suggested a new ravaging war between the Yankees and the Mullahs. However, none of this occurred, except for a few Iranian missile strikes on some US military bases in Iraq. Then all went quiet. Nevertheless, it did not last long, since Iranian Navy speedboats carried out several raids to harass US Navy warships in the Persian Gulf.

The Iranian General Soleimani among Afghani militia and pro-Iranian Azerbaijani (www.mei.edu)

On the 9^th of February, the Qatari capital (Doha) witnessed the signing of a “historical” peace agreement - after a long period of negotiations - between the Western coalition and the Taliban Islamic rebels from Afghanistan. The agreement, to which the government in Kabul was not a signatory, stipulated the withdrawal of the Western coalition troops over the following 14 months and a prisoner exchange between the Taliban and the government of president Ashraf Ghani. The implementation of the agreement, though, is hindered not only by the mutual mistrust of the belligerents, but also by the reactivation of the Iranian militancy that, after the Doha signing, returned to its tactics of waging war through intermediaries – having as main target the Western troops getting ready to go back home. This is why Iran, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, took steps to redeploy militias from Syria to the (Iranian) border with Afghanistan. The redeployed troops are part of the so-called Fatimid Brigades (Liwa Al-Fatimiyun, named after Fatimah, the youngest daughter of the Prophet Muhammad), a militia consisting of Afghanis and Shiite Azeri from Afghanistan that was established in 2014 with view to fight alongside Bashar Al-Assad’s loyalist army. At the same time, Hezbollah’s militias in Afghanistan have been placed on high alert.

The Flag and Seal of the Fatimid Division

After Iranian Navy speedboats got provocatively close to a US Navy warship in the Persian Gulf, on the 15^th of April, president Donald Trump warned on Twitter that he had instructed the US Navy “to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.”

Aside from the symptoms of the COVID-19 pandemic, that has been causing devastation in the USA and Iran as well, the symptoms of the war seem to be immune to the therapy called “peace”. This is all the more so since on the shores of the Atlantic, as well as on the coasts of the Persian Gulf, the famous dictum si vis pacem, para bellum remains timeless.

Libya and the New Caliph

In Arabic, the word khalifa means “caliph”, a lexeme used – based on its archaic meaning – to designate the successor of Prophet Muhammad to the political, social, military and leadership of the Muslim nation. After World War I, in 1942, Mustafa Kemal ended the institution of the caliph and the caliphate, by defeating Ottoman Turkey. The attempts to revive and rebuild the caliphate led to the birth to the Muslim Brotherhood – founders and theorists of what would later turn into fundamentalism and its Jihadist incarnations from which a new caliph, in the person of the Iraqi imam Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and a small caliphate called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant would emerge in the 20^th century,

Al-Baghdadi was dispatched after his mentors, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden, and the world could breathe again as if it awakened from the nightmare.

Only by lexical coincidence, based, even if to a small extent – at least according to some Western European and US politicians – on deeds that could entail the accusation of “war crimes”, a new caliph arose in another part of the “Great” and “New” Middle East.

The birthplace is the former Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya of colonel Gaddafi, and the new khalifa is the field marshal Khalifa Haftar - a former general under Gaddafi’s command and the latter’s opponent once the Arab Spring and the first Libyan civil war started. Nowadays he is commanding the National Libyan Army in the second civil war in the former Jamahiriya – a war that has been ongoing for three years. In the first part of May 2020, Khalifa Haftar declared himself some sort of caliph, and renamed himself governor over the eastern part of the country.

Khalifa Haftar (www.cursdeguvernare.ro)

Under his command, on the 19^th of May 2019 the National Libyan Army (NLA) engaged against the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli - internationally recognised and consisting of several Libyan Islamic militias, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood and former combatants, converted to democracy, of the former Islamic State/ISIS/Daesh. None of the UN’s actions and of the international community in general did not manage to put an end to the civil war and bring the two belligerent parties to the negotiating table.

While general Khalifa Haftar has been benefitting from Russia’s strong support (including mercenaries from the famous “Wagner” Group), on the 4^th of January 2020, the Turkish Parliament passed a motion authorizing president Recep Tayyp Erdogan to send troops and weapons to Libya, in support of the GNA led by Fayez Al-Sarraj. The intervention had at least two immediate consequences. On one hand, the balance of forces between Khalifa Haftar’s army and the government led by Fayez Al-Sarraj swiftly changed in favour of the latter. On the other hand, we witnessed a considerable activation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was perceived as encouragement to violent activism by its affiliates, especially those in Egypt.

The interference of the religious factor in Turkey’s reason for the intervention contributed to the intensification of the civil war, with no prospects for returning to dialogue… Not even for fear of the threats posed by the Corona pandemic!

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Looking at the current map of the conflicts and interferences that kept on eroding and inflaming the heaven and earth of the Great Middle East since the beginning of this year, we will find military active hotbeds in five countries in the area, while the number of directly involved countries – be them small or large, regional or extra-regional – in these wars exceeds 15. And these interferences evolve between the mercantile interests, powerlessness and lack of political will of the players on the front line, on one hand, and of the international community on the other.