Porkins Great Game: Episode #16 – Moderate Rebels & Heroin Warlords

After a long hiatus, Pearse Redmond and I are finally back with a new episode of Porkins Great Game. We start off by looking at the recent parliamentary elections in Georgia and the latest Saakashvili scandal.
Our second segment focuses on Afghanistan. We talk about Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's return, the Qatar talks and the growing rift between the Taliban and Pakistan.
Afterwards we move on to Syria. Pearse and I discuss the situation in Aleppo, the push for war and the risk of a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia.
Staying with the Syria theme, we try to make sense of the strange case of Jaber al-Bakr, certainly a worthy addition to our collection of weird terrorism stories.
At the end of this episode, we reflect on the death of Uzbekistan's leader Islam Karimov and the appointment of Shavkat Mirziyoyev as his successor.



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