The past year has seen a spate of dangerous brinkmanship in the Persian Gulf, with Iran and US naval forces along with those of the Gulf's oil-rich Arab mini-states playing chicken over the strategic choke-point of the Strait of Hormuz. But in addition to this show-down over a global oil outlet, the Gulf has seen escalating militarization in the guise of narcotics enforcement. Bahrain's Gulf Daily News on Nov. 26 ran a story boasting of the exploits of a 29-nation Combined Maritime Forces group, based at the petro-kingdom's sprawling US Navy base and commanded by Capt. Robert Slaven of the Royal Australian Navy. While it claims to have "considerably reduced the number of terrorist attacks in the region" over the past decade, it's most concrete gains are hashish and heroin seizures.
Recent comments
13 weeks 6 days ago
18 weeks 9 hours ago
19 weeks 4 days ago
19 weeks 5 days ago
32 weeks 12 hours ago
37 weeks 5 days ago
48 weeks 5 days ago
49 weeks 4 days ago
51 weeks 1 day ago
51 weeks 5 days ago