June 30 - The Russian Jihadis behind the Terrorist Attack in Istanbul; The Looming Collapse of Oil-Rich Venezuela; The Fragile States Index of 2016

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with officials confirming Turkish media reports that the suicide bombers who killed 45 people and wounded 240 at the Istanbul airport came from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and speak with an expert on jihadism in Russia’s Caucasus and the former Soviet Union, Gordon Hahn, a professor and researcher at the Terrorism Research and Education Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. The author of “Russia’s Islamic Threat” and “The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond”, he joins us to discuss why the several thousand jihadis from Russia and the former Soviet Union who have joined the Islamic State or “daesh” are so hardcore and are used as the tip of the spear in terms of asymmetrical warfare which “daesh” is resorting to more and more as it suffers mounting losses on the battlefield.

Part 2

Then Virginia Lopez joins us in the studio. She is a Caracas-based journalist who covers Latin America and Venezuela for Al Jazeera English and we discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation in Venezuela where Venezuelans are storming supermarkets and attacking food delivery trucks as basic food supplies and staples grow scarcer. We examine the looming collapse of an oil-rich country in an economic freefall with political paralysis and next to no security for its citizens as the National Guard can no longer control the long lines at the supermarkets nor prevent journalists from covering the reality of everyday life that the government tries to censor and continues to deny.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the Fragile States Index of 2016 just released by The Fund for Peace and speak with J.J. Messner, the Executive Director of The Fund for Peace where he leads many of their security and human rights implementation programs. We discuss which countries are the most fragile and which are the least, and alarming trends for the future of Europe following the refugee crisis and the “Brexit” vote.