Featured

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – After four weeks of negotiations, a revised UN treaty on nuclear disarmament has been torpedoed by the United States, leaving the issue of global disarmament dead in the water for the next five years. Non-nuclear states are furious at Washington and also fearful that in the absence of […]

Featured

Daesh/ ISIL blows up Shiite Mosque in Saudi Arabia, seeking Sectarian Civil War

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – A suicide bomber with a concealed weapon detonated his payload during Friday prayers at the Ali b. Abi Talib Mosque in Qadif, a suburb of the major Shiite city of Qatif in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. It killed 21 and wounded 102, according to the […]

Bashar al-Assad

ISIL beheaded Dozens in Palmyra, but how Strategic is the City?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – Nearly 500 people died in the campaign by Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) to take the Syrian city of Palmyra, including 49 who were executed before the fundamentalists reached the city center. On Thursday, they are alleged by the Syrian Observatory on Human Rights to have beheaded at least […]

al-Qaeda

Washington asks, “Who lost Ramadi?” But Washington never had Ramadi

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | — The inside-the-Beltway debate set off by the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) on Sunday is, as usual, Dadaistic in its disconnection from reality. Republican talking points blame Barack Obama for withdrawing US troops from Iraq in 2011, as though Daesh suddenly […]

Featured

Iraq: 25,000 Shiite Militiamen gather for Battle of Ramadi

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | — Al-Zaman (The Times of Baghdad) reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi met Tuesday with leaders of the Shiite militias to plan the retaking of Ramadi, a Sunni Arab city about 78 miles due west of Baghdad that fell on Sunday to Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) as the […]

Counter-Terrorism

Why does the Iraqi Army Keep Running Away from ISIL?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Commen) | — Baghdad was shaken by the news that the Iraq army and police in Ramadi ran away from the advancing forces of Daesh (ISIL, ISIS). As a result, good American weaponry again fell into the hands of the extremists. Diya’ al-Wakil, former Iraqi military spokesperson, has the same […]

Apartheid

Who does Jerusalem belong To?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – Far right Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commemorated Israel’s “Jerusalem Day” with a speech in which he said, “Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people only, and no other,” and warned that Muslim terrorism menaced it. Jerusalem, Daru Shalem, was founded sometime between 6500 and […]

Arab Spring

Death Sentence for Morsi: Egypt’s Junta takes another step toward being N. Korea

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – That the only freely elected president Egypt has ever known has been sentenced to death is only to be expected from the current military junta, which made a coup in July, 2013, and declared the former ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood, to be a terrorist organization indistinguishable […]

Featured

Cole: Iraq’s Ramadi falls to ISIL as Shiite Gov’t refuses to Arm Sunni Tribes

contributors

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) The Times of Baghdad (al-Zaman) reports that fighters of the Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) terrorist group raised their black flags over the central government building in Ramadi on Friday. The city, just sixty miles due west of Baghdad, is the capital of al-Anbar Province. Daesh announced their victory with megaphones […]