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The U.N. Security Council recently renewed the mandate of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the international peacekeeping force that has been present in Lebanon since 1978. Under pressure from the United States, the Security Council charged U.N. Secretary General António Guterres with finding ways to “increase UNIFIL’s visible presence, including through patrols and inspections.” But this may fall short in helping UNIFIL carry out its mission.

UNIFIL’s original mandate was to ensure Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory and the assertion of Lebanese authority throughout the country. After Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel, the U.N. expanded UNIFIL’s mandate to assist the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in “taking steps” to ensure that southern Lebanon remains free of unauthorized weaponry and “armed personnel.”  

Nonetheless, thanks to its patron Iran, Hezbollah has grown into a regional military player. Middle East security officials have documented how Hezbollah has more than tripled the number and lethality of its rockets and other weaponry since the 2006 war. Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian civil war for the past five years alongside the Syrian army has directly shifted the balance of power in that conflict. We most recently witnessed this with Hezbollah’s arrangement—in coordination with the Syrian government—for ISIS fighters to be bused from near the Lebanese border to areas under the terror group’s control in Syria’s east.

UNIFIL has consistently lacked the authority to directly confront Hezbollah. And the Lebanese army has proven unwilling or unable—or both—to disarm the terror group. During a press tour of Hezbollah’s positions in southern Lebanon earlier this year, for example, Hezbollah fighters openly showed reporters rocket-propelled grenades and other artillery. When an Italian UNIFIL officer reportedly tried to clear the group from a restricted area near an Israeli listening post, a Lebanese army officer instead escorted the UNIFIL officer away.

Contrary to the facts on the ground, UNIFIL has repeatedly claimed that it has not witnessed any Hezbollah weapons entering southern Lebanon. In 2008, Colonel Marc Ollier of the French UNIFIL contingent said that he didn’t “believe Hezbollah's weapons figure in Resolution 1701.” According to a U.N. spokeswoman earlier this year, “UNIFIL has not observed any unauthorized armed persons … or found any basis to report a violation of the (cease-fire) resolution.” UNIFIL issued a similar statement in 2015.

Ahead of the Security Council’s debate, Lebanon called on the U.N. to renew UNIFIL’s mandate but without any changes. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley sharply criticized UNIFIL for allowing Hezbollah to rebuild its arsenal in southern Lebanon. Haley further accused UNIFIL’s commander of being “blind to what Hezbollah is doing.”

Both Lebanon and the United States were reportedly satisfied with the outcome of the U.N. debate, but it is now up to Guterres to determine how much authority UNIFIL will have to confront Hezbollah and prevent it from growing even stronger. Unless UNIFIL’s teeth are sharpened, Hezbollah will continue its military expansion in Lebanon and Syria. And that will be bad for everyone—except Iran.

You may be a notorious terrorist financier, but you can still use Instagram to raise money. At least that’s the case for U.N.-sanctioned Hajjaj bin Fahd al Ajmi, one of several Gulf-based donors to have funneled millions to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Despite being sanctioned, Ajmi is still able to use Instagram to fundraise and win ad sponsorship deals, publishing more than 1,000 posts to more than 1.7 million Instagram followers. This status quo is unacceptable: Instagram needs to shut Ajmi down.

Ajmi has been sanctioned by the United Nations, United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for financing al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front (also known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham). The Kuwaiti-based sheikh is particularly adept at using social media as a fundraising platform. In 2012, he launched a fundraising campaign on Twitter to finance unspecified jihadist groups in Syria, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and reportedly providing groups with weapons and other material support. The following year, Ajmi used Twitter and YouTube to solicit funds for an August 2013 militant offensive in Latakia, Syria, in which jihadist groups including the Nusra Front and ISIS massacred several hundred civilians. Human Rights Watch named Ajmi as one of the offensive’s “most prominent donors.” Nonetheless, Ajmi has used Instagram in recent years to actively solicit donations for terrorist-affiliated charities and has even received money through sponsored posts.

Through his Instagram posts, Ajmi has urged donations to terrorist-linked charities, such as Mercy International (depicted below), an organization accused of facilitating al-Qaeda’s 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya, and the Islamic International Charitable Organization, an organization with reported ties to Hamas. As in the example below, his posts frequently exploit the plight of victims in the Syrian civil war, highlighting the suffering of children to elicit sympathy and—most importantly—financial support.

On his Instagram account, Ajmi also posts advertisements for goods and services such as restaurants, real estate investments, and cars. Ajmi has publicly admitted to receiving sponsorship payments from these ads, which has helped him overcome the financial challenges of being widely sanctioned, according to the Wall Street Journal.

On first glance, it may seem like an oversight that Instagram has allowed an internationally-sanctioned terrorist financier to use its platform to fundraise for himself and for terrorist-affiliated charities. However, as a for-profit company (parent company: Facebook), Instagram has a financial incentive for   keeping Ajmi—with his 1.7 million followers—on its platform.                  

This should not be allowed to continue. On Instagram, Ajmi does not make any attempt to conceal his identity––or his status. In Arabic, his profile states his name in full (Hajjaj bin Fahd al Ajmi). In reference to a new terrorist designation by several Gulf countries, his description for several weeks read, “Not a terrorist. A new clip concerning the terrorist designation in the joint announcement” and directs the reader to a YouTube video entitled “Hajjaj al-Ajmi is not a terrorist.”

Ajmi's Instagram account description, screenshot from July 2017.

It is unconscionable that Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, allows a U.N.-designated terrorist like Ajmi to remain active, let alone use the platform to solicit donations for terrorist-linked charities and as a business opportunity for himself. Instagram’s Community Guidelines asserts that it is not a platform used to “support or praise terrorism.” Its parent company, Facebook, similarly claims that “social media should not be a place where terrorists have a voice. We want to be clear how seriously we take this.” And yet, it remains the case that Instagram is allowing an internationally-sanctioned al-Qaeda terrorist financier to run rampant on its platform, raising money for himself and other terrorist-linked actors.

It’s time for Facebook prove its “seriousness” and crack down on terrorist financing carried out in plain view on its platforms. It’s time to shut down Ajmi.

In a bid to better its international standing, Hamas unveiled its new political platform May 1 in Qatar. Despite what are being marketed as ideological compromises, the new document is depressingly similar to its old political platform. What it reveals, instead of any meaningful movement toward a lasting peace, is a cynical attempt by Hamas to ingratiate itself with the region’s Sunni powers.

Since Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and began its authoritarian stranglehold on the citizens of Gaza, the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers (the United States, European Union, United Nations, and Russia) have demanded the group renounce violence, recognize Israel, and adhere to past Palestinian agreements before receiving international recognition. Hamas has routinely refused. But the group’s frayed ties with Iran have forced it to go cup in hand to neighboring Egypt and other Sunni nations, which led to this new document.

Hamas’s 1988 charter focuses on four central themes: Hamas’s allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood; Palestine’s sanctity as part of the greater Arab nation; Israel’s illegitimacy as a state; and Hamas’s dedication to destroying Israel through armed conflict and only armed conflict. The document is also peppered with anti-Semitic tropes that make clear that Hamas’s outrage is directed at all of “the warmongering Jews,” not just Israelis. For example, Article 28 specifies: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.”

Gone from the new policy document, which does not replace the original 1988 charter, are the references to “the Jews.” But Israel remains, and Hamas’s leaders swear they are not anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist. Yet that claim is inconveniently contradicted by everyday evidence.  Hamas’s official al-Aqsa television station continues to broadcast sermons demonizing “the Jews,” such as a January 6 sermon by a Hamas parliamentarian accusing “the criminal Jews” of smuggling drugs and pornography into Gaza in order to undermine Palestinian society.

Hamas’s new document falls pitifully short of meeting international demands. While it accepts a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 ceasefire lines, it does not recognize Israel’s legitimacy. “We were and we still are in an open war with the criminal enemy,” Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal said on March 27, referring to Israel. And while the new document accepts a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines, it also rejects “any alternatives to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Nor has Hamas renounced violence or its determination to destroy Israel. In the last 10 years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian centers. In Late March, Hamas reportedly acquired dozens of new and more powerful missiles.  The recent election of hardliner Yahya Sinwar as Hamas’s political leader in Gaza reinforces Hamas’s commitment to armed conflict. Sinwar is closely associated with Hamas’s armed wing, which maintains ties to ISIS’s affiliate in the Sinai. Hamas’s new document continues to embrace “armed resistance” as “the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”

If Hamas’s core ideologies remain intact, what has changed and what is the purpose of this new document? The biggest modification is the removal of references to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas’s original charter defined Hamas as “one of the wings of the Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.” Since the 2013 fall of Egypt’s Brotherhood-led government, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states have designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has cajoled Hamas to do the same as a precondition for restoring ties. Hence, Hamas has cleansed references to the Brotherhood from its offices and its new political program.

But words on a piece of paper cannot override genetics. Hamas is still an outgrowth of the Brotherhood, and the two groups share the core values of Islamism. Rather than an ideological shift, Hamas's rewrite is nothing more than realpolitik, an opportunistic ploy to get back into Egypt’s graces and reopen its smuggling tunnels to that country. Whether Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas will ally with whoever presents the better deal.

The disavowal of the Brotherhood may be enough to mend some fences, but the new political program remains far removed from the Quartet’s demands. It is a momentary distraction from the fact that Hamas’s core ideology of violent Islamism is immutable and remains in full effect.

Hamas may have put a new coat of paint on the barn, but the foundation is still rotten. They just hope you won’t notice. 

Turkish voters will decide on April 16 whether their country’s parliamentary system, where the prime minister is chosen by elected lawmakers, should be replaced by a presidential model with a strong executive. Should the constitutional referendum pass, the role of prime minister will be dissolved, and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will have new and unprecedented powers to appoint his own cabinet and name top members of the judiciary. A yes vote will also extend Erdogan’s hold on power by making him eligible for two additional five year terms and give him the authority to dissolve parliament on national security grounds without the approval from any other government body.

The Netherlands and Germany entered the campaign fray since they host a large community of Turkish ex-pats who will be voting on April 16. Given the greater press freedoms in Europe, the “No” campaign has a stronger voice abroad than in Turkey itself. This has increased tensions between Turkey and the governments of Germany and the Netherlands, reminding the public of the growing clash between the autocratic tendencies of Erdogan and the more open societies of Europe vis-à-vis politicians. Erdogan has arrested hundreds of journalists in the past few years for criticizing his political positions, and even demanded in 2016 that Germany prosecute a comedian for satirizing him.

Polling suggests the support for Erdogan’s constitutional reforms are as close as 50-50 and as they have done in the past, Erdogan and his party, the AKP, have waged a campaign based on the need to respond to internal and external terror threats.

Regionally, Turkey continues to oppose the Assad regime, but has also tried to patch up differences with Russia and has also played a role in arming and training fighters that are slowing clawing their way toward the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.  

The April 6 U.S. bombing of a Syrian airbase used by the Assad regime to launch a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun, signaling a possible increase in U.S. involvement in the region, was supported by Erdogan. But Turkish support for a larger role in Syria is likely to wane in the long-term since the West’s anti-ISIS strategy heavily relies on Kurdish fighters – an ethnic group that the AKP and Erdogan consider a greater threat to Turkish borders than ISIS – and one whose demands at the end of the war will likely be recognition of a larger Kurdistan than currently exists in northern Iraq.

Should Erdogan prevail on April 16, and consolidate more executive power, the relationship between NATO member Turkey and the West is likely to deteriorate further. Erdogan may be intentionally gambling with Turkey’s western relationships in favor of cultivating a leadership role in Muslim-majority countries. Strong economic gains in the past 10 years gave Erdogan the ability to advance his neo-Ottoman agenda by building economic, charitable and religious ties from Bosnia to Pakistan. Moreover, Erdogan has used his international trips to Muslim-majority countries to push the argument that Muslim countries must unite in opposition to an anti-Islam agenda in the West. As a result, during the time Turkey has been stable and relatively prosperous, Erdogan succeeded in making himself popular among Muslims globally. Whether turning East is economically an effective strategy remains to be seen.

Erdogan’s over-confidence may become Turkey’s Achilles heel.  If the constitutional referendum passes, the West will likely become warier of the Turkish regime in general, hurting Turkey’s economy in the long-run, though probably not hurting Erdogan and his family personally.  Consequently, the economic power of Turkey, which is the engine of Erdogan’s soft power in the East, may lose steam, resulting in the AKP falling out of favor among Turks if the country’s economic growth rate continues to drop from a its high of 9 percent in 2012; to 6.1 percent in 2015; and to 2.9 percent in 2016.

Conversely, if Erdogan’s “Yes” campaign fails, the AKP is likely to also lose the next general election in 2019, having over-played its hand politically, providing Turkey’s secular parties an opportunity to prove  they can again lead, despite Turkey’s complicated internal politics and thorny regional issues like the response to terrorism.