Back in the beginning of March, we looked at future facing discussion related to upcoming Nigerian elections with a particular focus on the effects of potential political violence and disruption of oil production. Now, with just a week to go before national elections take place, I received this Futures alert on “Political Event – Nigeria – Next 12 Months”:

Interesting, although not totally unexpected, to see the effects of political uncertainty and civil turmoil on foreign investments in the country accompanied by a piece on political players dropping out of the presidential race just days before the election actually takes place. The second issue reveals bit players consolidating their allegiances with truly viable presidential candidates.

However, the first story on foreign investment touches on all the same issues from our previous post: disruptive violence and oil production. Upon review of events taking place during March, neither subject has quieted. In fact, fear of violence marring the electoral process may be even more prevalent, and in the following Recorded Future timeline you can see both domestic and external voices raising concern over acts of violence as well as several deadly events already occurring driven by political and ethnic divisions.

Political Violence in Nigeria - Last 30 Days - Click for Live Timeline

We’ve also looked previously at the individuals mentioned in a future facing search related to the upcoming elections. The same query asked today, still looking forward at the month of April, on personal and political events related to Nigeria shows a much more dense collection of entities accumulated.

Click to See Live Treemap

Amongst the various individuals and organizations, some there are some standout issues, and hints emerge about potential outcomes and consequences of the elections.

First of all, there is some indication of the efforts and possible fate of participating parties. For example, highlighted in the image above is Deputy governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Dr Yinka Olatunji urging residents of Lagos to vote for the party at the April polls by “arguing that Lagos under opposition in the last 12 years has been a disaster.”

Second, this post begins with reference to a disruption of foreign investment in Nigeria, and it’s no surprise that “oil prices” appears as an entity depicted in the treemap. Any hiccup in the Nigerian political process next week is likely to further destabilize oil prices.

And finally, we see prognosticators emerging on possible scenarios should incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan not win on the first ballot. Highlighted in the treemap above is former Director General of the Center for Democratic Studies Prof. Omo Omoruyi warning “the nation may be plunged into crisis if President Goodluck Jonathan does not win at the first ballot.”

Final Thoughts

Reviewing events over the past months reveals that there is little preventing further acts of violence ahead of elections despite pleas from government officials. Already tense social factions, mentioned in our previous post, appear further strained by splintered allegiances to the various presidential candidates campaigning ahead of the April 9 election.

Indeed, the worst case scenario may be what Prof Omo Omoruyi warns about: a run-off that pits political opposition against President Jonathan in a head to head competition.

We’ll be watching closely as campaigns come to a close and the election takes place. You can track all the events as well with Recorded Future by clicking “Create Future” above the results on personal and political events related to Nigeria in April.

The Middle Eastern powder keg has exploded. Over the past month, protests have rocked a laundry list of countries including Libya, Bahrain, Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia. A pan-Arab youth movement has so far forced two dictators to step down (Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarek) and is turning the most volatile region in the world on its head.

With so many governments in peril the news media, and the government has had trouble keeping up with the protests. Coverage may bounce between three or more countries over the course of a day. What country should everyone be watching? The answer: Iran.

Why is Iran so important to understanding the future of the Middle East? As the largest financier of state sponsored terrorism, Iran wields considerable power over political outcomes in the region. It spends millions of dollars each year supporting terrorist organizations that foment violence and seek to disrupt Arab governments. The Islamic Republic is by far the greatest threat to stability in the Middle East.

In order for us to draw broader conclusions about what may happen in the Middle East, we must first analyze the posture of Iran. Who really governs the Islamic Republic? What is the country’s political and economic outlook? Are the Green Movement’s protests likely to be successful?

Using Recorded Future’s open source intelligence tools, we can deep dive into the political structure of Iran and discover new information about the future of the regime.

Political Structure

The problem that Iran poses for political scientists is that no one really knows who governs it. Our best guess is that real power is divided between the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Guardian Council, and the Revolutionary Guards. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, directly appoints members to the Guardian Council and essentially maintains veto power over all aspects of the government. Thus, Ayatollah Khamenei is at the apex of this complex governing apparatus.

To fully understand the motivations of Iran, we must examine the intentions, statements, and travel patterns of its most powerful figurehead.

Click for a real-time, interactive view of Khamenei's relations

Here we see that Ayatollah Khamenei is the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that he is linked to the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Further, news articles have highlighted his opposition to Israel, the UK, and the United States. More importantly, what are his political relationships inside Iran? Who may pose the greatest internal threat to the regime?

Khamenei's Real-time Personal & Political Network

Examining Khamenei’s personal feuds and social links, we can draw some insights into Iranian politics. In the upper right portion of the diagram are two of Khamenei’s staunchest supporters (Alamolhoda and Jannati). Jannati at one point even called for opposition executions to be sped up after the 2009 protests. In the bottom portion of the diagram are two of Khamenei’s critics, Rafsanjani and Montazeri. Rafsanjani particularly troubles the ultra-conservative regime as he contested Ahmadinejad in an election and is a former moderate president. If Ahmadinejad’s government were to crumble in the face of oppositional protest, Rafsanjani would likely play a critical role in a transitional government.

Economic and Political Outlook

The Iranian regime is in considerable political and economic trouble. For years it has supported terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah to fight proxy wars against Israel.

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However, in January 2010 it was reported that the regime had slashed Hizballah’s budget by up to 40%. This indicates that Iran’s ability to financially support terrorist organizations may be dwindling.

Over the past few years the Iranian state has experienced significant economic difficulties. It has relied extensively on subsidies to maintain prices and secure political support. According to NPR, Iran’s currency is weak and its banking system is shaky. This does not bode well for the Iranian regime.

Most troubling of all for Ahmadinejad’s government is that Iran ranks #32 on Foreign Policy’s Failed State Index, a measure of the overall sustainability of a state. Iran’s ranking has increased in recent years, jumping 25 positions and moving from “Borderline” to “In Danger” during the period 2007-2010. A change of this magnitude is considerable.

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The ultra-conservatives are also facing considerable political opposition, both from outside and occasionally within the regime itself. In a rare outburst, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association reported that Khamenei’s representative, Hassan Rowhani, criticized Ahmadinejad for “maladministration and squandering Iran’s wealth”. Although Khamenei supports the hard-line Ahmadinejad, that does not mean that he could not change his support sometime in the future.

Travel Patterns of Ayatollah Khamenei

Click for a real-time interactive view

Khamenei seems to travel very little. There is evidence of him traveling to different cities within Iran, including Qom, but rarely outside of Iran. This may indicate that he is either afraid of assassination or of losing control during his absence like the Shah did in 1979. Khamenei is acutely aware of his country’s failing economy and mounting political unrest. He wants to stay in Iran and consolidate his power over the regime. This lack of travel also indicates that he is probably afraid of losing power.

States that are weak often resort to brutal tactics to quash unrest, and unfortunately they are often successful. The Iranian regime used domestic security forces to crush the Green Movement in 2009. It also appears that Khamenei may have been afraid of losing power.

Using Recorded Future’s ability to find articles of interest linked to Khamenei’s travels patterns, we discover that Khamenei may have been planning to flee to Russia if the opposition movement increased:

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Although the authenticity of the article has been questioned, it is in line with some other facts. For instance, Khamenei travels very little outside of the country, preferring to send Ahmadinajad to conduct foreign policy abroad. The Russian government has some ties to the Iranian regime (other than being close geographically) and has been reluctant to sanction Iran. Khamenei is probably afraid of losing power, and this may have reached a climax during the 2009 protests.

Conclusion

The Iranian regime is in trouble and Ayatollah Khamenei knows it. A failing economy and popular domestic unrest pose significant threats to the regime. On the other hand, the Islamic Republic is unlikely to be overthrown in the short term. The Revolutionary Guards are strong and intensely loyal to the regime- enough so to kill their own people. We did not see this happen in Egypt because of a secular military that supported the people. Khamenei is likely to retain control of Iran because of a strong security force that has more power and motivation than the Green Movement.

The good news is that Iran’s ability to finance terror organizations is waning. The Iranian economy is sputtering and this should have an impact on its ability to influence Middle Eastern politics.

Mass Egyptian protests achieved their primary goal last Friday as the world watched Hosni Mubarak step down from his longtime position as president. So, now what for the country’s political direction?

Be sure to check out our new interactive analysis too! Read the full post, and check out the new functionality over at the Recorded Future Blog.

President Zardari of Pakistan may be looking for a new position soon. The recent release from WikiLeaks has exposed waning support from the Saudis, and uncovered significant internal strife. Zardari reportedly fears fears for his life:

Using Recorded Future we can quickly look at a timeline of his recent travel patterns. Here we see he’s been rapidly meeting with foreign and regional leaders, and made a number of trips abroad with out a lot of the typical press advance. Perhaps a sign of desperation since things are uneasy at home?

Current & Future Travel Events for Zardari

It’s also interesting to see how many public individuals are making statements about Zardari. The growing network of new commentaries is astounding.

Quotes about Zardari Over Last 7 Days

After the November 2nd elections, we see President Obama traveled through Asia from the 5th through the 15th.  We can even generate a KML file showing the places he visited and view it in Google Earth.

We then extract all Obama mentions using the Recorded Future API from 8 weeks before the trip through one week after.  For each instance, Recorded Future calculates both a positive and a negative sentiment score, which is based on the vocabulary used to describe the instance.  We organize them by published date across four time periods: from September 10th through November 3rd (instances occurring far before the trip), November 4th and 5th (during the lead up to the trip), November 6th through the 15th (the trip itself), and the 16th until the 22nd (the week post-trip).  We then sort them by source country and average the positive and negative score for each time period based.  The results are below.

The Afghan elections that will place 249 members in the Wolesi Jorga (House of the People), which is the lower house of the Afghan Parliament, is finally set for tomorrow, September 18, after being postponed from May of this year.

On the eve of the event, we could identify an infinite number of factors that play a role in the upcoming political event. Below, we briefly look at three major issues to watch as the election takes place this weekend, results emerge and a political path forward emerges for Afghanistan.

Violence

Opening research was conducted by simply using a query in Recorded Future for “Political Event” in Afghanistan during the time period of September. In the resulting data, you can see quite a bit of commentary related to or predicting what’s to impact the election.

Certainly the most concerning and disruptive are ongoing threats that the Taliban continues to direct toward threaten election workers, candidates and voting locations in an effort to send the election into disarray. We’ve heard their rationale for such threats before in a post on Paki Taliban, and are allegedly driven by claims that the political process is serving foreign interests more so than the Afghani people.

Taliban Threatens Afghan Election Violence

Though the militant violence is one concern, reports on recent NATO attacks on insurgents in the country can also seen in the same screenshot above of Recorded Future results. Foreign intervention activity, whether its military or civilian, ahead of the elections has served to fuel inflammatory Taliban rhetoric.

International Influence

The above point on NATO bombings leads into the a second area to watch, which is the scope of international aid, influence and security needed to successfully pull off an election and provide stability in the aftermath.

Below, we can see statements related to international aid or intervention in Afghanistan during 2010.  The timeline view is here limited to the more recent past in an attempt to gather sentiment and discussion regarding political impact of an ongoing foreign presence in Afghanistan.

Conflicting Viewpoints on International Aid in Afghanistan

Looking at quotations related to the rest of the year, we can clearly see an uncertainty about the benefits of continued military presence in Afghanistan, as government entities weigh the addition or removal of forces in the country.

Quotations on Military Presence in Afghanistan for the Rest of the Year

President Hamid Karzai

Aghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has been in the spotlight, as he continues to defend the country’s ability to support itself while at the same time being embroiled in controversy for corruption ties and alleged meetings with the Haqqani Network, which has been closely tied with al-Qaeda.

How Will Hamid Karzai Position Himself During and After the Elections?

While his voice has been strong on security issues, we can also see (using a search for Hamid Karzai over the “Last 60 days”) that controversy outside of the election process continues to plague Karzai in recent weeks.

Hamid Karzai's Brother in Kabul Bank Freeze

We’ll know soon how the election (and all the uncertainty around safety and fraudulent results) plays out as well as how key figures like President Karzai emerge in the aftermath, but always interesting to provide some context around what’s to come in the near future.

Using Recorded Future, you can quickly map out events around foreign elections ranging from research on particular individuals and associations to the statements related to security issues. You can also set up a research scope to watch the landscape for Afghanistan over the next months or years.

Researching geopolitical events? Visit us to find how Recorded Future can bolster your open source intelligence analysis.