Eastern Europe

By Juan Cole| (Informed Comment) | – – The Israeli press is reporting that Iran has made a firmer military alliance with the Russian Federation in Syria, and that Moscow is sending pilots to Damascus to fly missions in that country against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) and other Muslim extremist groups. The Syrian regime of Bashar […]

Eastern Europe

Egypt’s al-Sisi and Putin Pledge Common Front against Terrorism

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met Wednesday for the third time in a year with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Putin is attempting to draw Egypt into a common front against terrorism. He wants to fight Daesh [ISIS, ISIL]) in Syria, which is only a […]

Displaced and Refugees

Slovakia Will Only Accept Christian Migrants

contributors

Jo Ankier and Jose Marcelino Orti | (TheLipTV Video News) | – – “Slovakia announced Thursday that it will only accept Christians when it takes in refugees fleeing conflict in Syria under an EU resettlement plan as Europe deals with an influx of migrants. Muslims would not be accepted because they would not feel at […]

China

As GOP fumes re: Iran, Russia & China are outflanking West with New Eurasia Silk Road

contributors

By Pepe Escobar | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Let’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be an assault on the planning […]

Children

Wars targeting Children: 20 mn Homeless, 300K Conscripted & now Mass Abductions by ISIL

contributors

By Beatriz Ciordia | (Inter Press Service) | – – UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – Whether in Palestine, Ukraine or Somalia, wars result in millions of children threatened by the brutality of armed conflict. The numbers speak for themselves: more than 300,000 child soldiers are currently exploited in situations of armed conflict and six million children […]

Featured

Did rise of Daesh/ ISIL ensure Iran Nuclear Deal?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In Iraq on Tuesday, Iraq militias and the Iraqi military launched a counter-attack on Falluja with the ultimate aim of driving Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) out of al-Anbar Province. The operation follows the successful liberation of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, from Daesh by these same forces. In […]

Balkans

Desperate Afro-Asian Migrants flee war, famine through risky Balkans on The Road To EU

contributors

By Iva Martinovic | (RFE/ RL) | – – These days, the park flanking Belgrade’s bus terminal and the nearby railway station teems with migrants. They are from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Somalia, and they are on the last leg of a grueling journey they hope will take them to the European Union. Inside the […]

art and photography

5,000 Hanging Skirts: How Women Remember War Rape in Kosova

Juan Cole

By Frances Trix | (Informed Comment) | – – On 12 June, 5,000 skirts and dresses were hung on 45 clotheslines in the football stadium in Prishtina, capital of Kosova. “The laundry is washed clean, like the women who are clean and pure—they carry no stain,” asserted artist Alketa Xhafa-Mripa, the Kosovar originator of the […]

Balkans

“Nationalism and terrorism are constructed things to divide us”: Macedonian elections and a Balkan “War on Terror”

contributors

By Frances Trix | (Informed Comment) | – Now it appears, thanks to EU mediation, there will be new national elections in Macedonia next April 2016. In one sense it is quite early—there were national elections in April 2014 in which Nikola Gruevski, president since 2006, was once again elected. But in another sense, these […]