John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, will be travelling to the Gulf and Egypt next week in order to brief their leadership on the ongoing nuclear deal with Iran. The fight against the horde of Islamic militants is also on the agenda. After this, he is scheduled to sooth ruffled feathers in Southeast Asia, where the China’s are increasingly flexing their naval power to further their territorial ambition.
 
 
Kerry is scheduled to arrive in Cairo on the 2^nd August to further strategic dialogs between the U.S and Egypt. A spokesperson from the States Department labelled these talks as one which "reaffirms the United States’ longstanding and enduring partnership with Egypt."
 
The next day, John Kerry is scheduled to travel to Doha and meet his counterparts from the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising of Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. Here too his agenda is likely to be the same: he will brief them regarding the ongoing nuclear deal with Iran as well as discuss the battle against the Islamic State and the battle in Syria. He is also likely to meet here his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
 
On Friday, Kerry had said he plans on discussing with Lavrov, details on how best to combat the militants from the Islamic State as well as a possible Iranian role in the combined war effort, if Ankara agrees to step up its own war efforts and allows U.S fighter jets to launch air strikes from bases bordering Syria.
 
Since long, Russia has been making efforts at rapprochements between Syria and regional states so as to hammer out a united front against militants from the Islamic State.
 
On the 4^th of August, Kerry is scheduled to visit Singapore for talks. Incidentally it is also its 50^th independence anniversary. Here he will focus on investment and trade and soothe ruffled feathers of China’s increasing assertions while pursuing territorial claims.
 
From 6^th to 8^th of August, Kerry will be visiting Vietnam, Hanoi, in order to participate in the 20th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations with the U.S, after the U.S lost the Vietnam War.
 
Source(s): Reuters.com

Thestrategist.media, United Nations – 20 May 2015 – As per IPS news, the minorities under assault incorporate Yezidis, Turkmen, Shabaks, ethnic Kurds, and both Coptic and Assyrian Christians.
 
Mark Lattimer, MRG's official executive, advised IPS the danger to minorities around the globe from terrorism is manifestly obvious, ‘however it is for the most part not as incredible as the risk from their own particular governments’.
 
From Sudan to Myanmar to the Russian Federation, he brought up, minorities have experienced deliberate assaults the legislatures that should ensure them.
 
In Syria, while numerous minorities now live in government-held enclaves, the regular citizen loss of life in general is most astounding from assaults by the administration side, he included. With more than 200,000 individuals now dead in the contention, and up to 50% of the populace constrained from their homes, the emergency in Syria keeps on worsening.
 
Amazing sectarianism has now tainted a significant part of the nation, with about all the staying Christian groups living in enclaves in government-held territories, the report noted.
 
Just in the Kurdish-held locales of the north has there been a genuine endeavor at building up a comprehensive majority rule government, says MRG. As indicated by the report, danger levels to regular people in seven nations – Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan- expanded essentially both a year ago and this year.
 
Asked what the United Nations can do to ensure minority rights, Lattimer told IPS a large number of U.N. staff members around the globe endeavor to ensure minority groups.
 
Be that as it may, the U.N. in general regularly takes a responsive methodology, just paying heed once infringement of minority rights gets to be great.
 
Huge changes could be made if minorities were routinely included being developed tasks, if minorities had the capacity take part completely in broad daylight life and if minority groups were spoken to around the table settled talks, he included.
 
Iraq headed the table when the Peoples under Threat record was initially distributed in 2006 and it has never been a long way from the highest point of the file in the interceding years.
 
More than 14,000 regular folks were executed in 2014, huge numbers of them in slaughters executed by ISIS as it removed minority groups, including Yezidis, Shabak, Chaldo-Assyrians and Turkmen, from Mosul, Sinjar and the Ninewa plain.
 
A large number of Yezidi ladies and young ladies stay in ISIS imprisonment, and the danger stays intense for Shi'a groups undermined by ISIS and Sunnis at danger of striking back from Iraqi Security Forces and unified Shi'a state armies, as per MRG.
 
Clash in the Central African Republic, which has risen four places this year, to possess number 10 in the positioning, proceeded between the to a great extent Muslim previous Séléka radicals and hostile to Balaka volunteer armies contained principally of Christians.
 
Upwards of 850,000 individuals – about one-fifth of the nation's populace – were displaced people or inside dislodged toward the end of 2014, and numerous several thousands more fled their homes in the first months of 2015.
 
A dubious peace understanding was marked in April 2015 between ex-Séléka and hostile to Balaka pioneers in Nairobi.
 
Egypt rose another three spots in the list this year, as indicated by the study. Continuous battling and toughening efforts to establish safety have influenced the lives of Sinai Bedouin, who have since a long time ago endured political and monetary minimization.
 
Human rights activists additionally kept on reprimanding the legislature for doing too little to give security to Coptic and other Christian groups, particularly in Upper Egypt, where people, their homes and spots of love consistently went under assault.

In China, the assault has raised a sensational 15 spots in the table; there was a serious heightening in the strategies utilized by Uighur activists looking for autonomy in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. More than 200 individuals were slaughtered in terrorist assaults, hundreds kept in mass captures and many capital punishments passed on.
 
Little has been done, says MRG, to address the legacy of being worked on and avoidance of Uighur groups that lies behind the distress, and the administration's method of naming Uighur human rights activists as terrorists has thwarted endeavors to enhance the circumstance.
 
The arrival of a more dictatorial style of government in the Russian Federation, which possesses position 16 in the table, has corresponded with rising xenophobia in Russian culture against vagrants, whether from abroad or from the Caucasus, says MRG.





References:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/05/minorities-threatened-more-by-governments-than-terrorist-groups-says-study/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=minorities-threatened-more-by-governments-than-terrorist-groups-says-study

The Bard had once said “What’s in a name?” Well going by France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, quite a bit actually. ISIS, or the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ has been splattering itself all over the news lately with its shocking brutalities which only goes to highlight its desperation of trying to impose a dream of an Islamic caliphate.  

As pointed out by Laurent Fabius – France’s Foreign Minister, ISIS is a bit of a misnomer, for it tries to robe itself as being Islamic. The usage of this very word is a cunning means and source of confusion. It not only confuses the gullible victims but also misleads and clouds their sense of judgment. As Mr. Fabius point outs, the end result is that these poor individuals cannot distinguish between Islamists, Islam and Muslims. Further, he goes on to state, that although ISIS has projected itself as a state, it clearly and definitely is not. It is only a terrorist organization.

References:
http://theweek.com/speedreads/446139/france-says-name-isis-offensive-call-daesh-instead
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31607728
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-31791607
http://www.france24.com/en/20140917-france-switches-arabic-daesh-acronym-islamic-state/

Thus, ISIS is a misnomer. The correct way of referring to this terrorist group would be ‘Daesh’. As per France24  the word Daesh, is an approximate acronym for ‘al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham’.

Despite its grotesque acts of terror, Daesh, it seems, has quite a fan following: in the last three years, more than 20,000 foreigners have joined its ranks in Syria and in Iraq. Of this group, around 4,000 are from Western Europe. It is estimated that 500-600 people from the UK have in various stages of their journey to join its ranks.

Question is - how does Daesh recruit? Is it possible to stereotype those who join their ranks? As per this BBC bulletin, two brothers aged 16 and 17 were headed to a “conflict zone”. In spite of the horrors of war and the reports of women being used as sex slaves, women “brides of Jihadists” still leave their home for foreign shores. Stereotyping the Daesh fighters and the ‘wanna-be’ brides have grown to be quite a challenge.

However, the Institute for Strategic Dialog (ISD) has got a few leads and insight into their mechanisms, thanks to various social platforms and online tracking methodologies. Daesh’s decentralized online presence is strong and it is uses this its advantage by providing money and dedicating time and energy into cultivating social bonds with individuals and in the process radicalizes them. Men and women recruiters in its rank, tweet, blog, communicate, and share their experiences, painting a rosy picture which is far from the brutalities and the savagery of war.

Because of the varied background of its recruiters, this multilingual fluid and fluent propaganda is used to target specific individuals. The propaganda is delivered through a culturally relevant online medium, which allows the free exchange of practical questions being asked and answered, in a way that is not verifiable to the individual being recruited.

Investigative research has however, found out that ‘offline network’ often are the spark that disseminate and propagate extremist ideologies. Typically, the offline network creates a spark of interest which the recruit feeds on his own through social platforms and is ultimately brain washed and helped to make the crossing into a war zone.

Daesh, it would seem has exploited the online social medium to gain robust fan following and thus ensure a strong recruitment strategy.