By Juan Cole 1. On Sunday evening, BBC reports that Iraqi fighter jets bombed the villages of al-Riyadh and al-Nirab in the vicinity of Hawija, north Iraq, leaving 14 dead and 10 wounded. Hawija is a largely Sunni Arab town near the city of Kirkuk (Kirkuk is controlled now by the Kurdistan Peshmerga paramilitary). The […]
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Syria
Can Obama Resist Hawks’ Pressure to Rush to Syria Quagmire?
By Adam Quinn, University of Birmingham via The Conversation US president Barack Obama has yet to work out exactly what America’s strategy is in confronting Islamic State (IS), and has been foolish enough to say so in public. Cue the foreseeable torrent of point-scoring from opponents. As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp perceptively pointed out, however, a […]
Obama & Cameron find little Enthusiasm at NATO for new Iraq War
By Juan Cole The NATO summit in Wales was supposed to be all about getting out of Afghanistan. Instead, two new issues dominated it– the Ukraine and ISIL in Iraq and Syria. British prime minister David Cameron joined Barack Obama in castigating NATO members for paying ransoms to ISIL and for not stepping up to […]
Would a US/ NATO war in Syria be Legal in International Law?
By Juan Cole Efforts are being made in Congress give to President Barack Obama the formal authority to conduct air strikes in Syria against ISIL. Vice President Joe Biden is now talking, as well, about a concerted and long-term NATO response to the brutal fundamentalist movement, which controls desert territory and some oil resources in […]
Israelis Alarmed as al-Qaeda Captures Golan, UN Peacekeepers
By Juan Cole Israel now has a border with al-Qaeda! Israeli observers have been alarmed by the capture of the Quneitra checkpoint between Syria and the Israeli-Occupied Golan Heights by the al-Qaeda affiliate, the Succor Front (Jabhat al-Nusra). The Succor Front has also captured 44 Fijian UN peacekeeping troops and has surrounded some 75 UN […]
Obama, al-Assad and ISIL update FB Status: It’s Complicated
AJ+ AJ+ Will The US Bomb IS Group (AKA ISIS) In Syria?
ISIS: How to Defeat a Phony “Caliphate”
By John Esposito via Huffington Post Containing and ultimately defeating ISIS will require both short and long-term response. ISIS expansion has been made possible by political conditions in Syria and Iraq, ethnic-religious/sectarian divisions and violence and terror in the region, and the failures of the US and international community. Bashar al-Assad’s unprincipled and disproportionate military […]
US Public Worried about ISIL, Putin– But Climate Change is Real Challenge
By Juan Cole In a new Pew/ USA Today poll, the American public shows itself alarmed by the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq and Syria as a threat to US security, finding it more threatening even than Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has risen on the villain […]
Syrian Rebels welcome US Air strikes on ISIL Terrorists
By Juan Cole Ilaf reports that rebels in East Aleppo, Syria are deeply divided over the prospect of President Obama ordering US air strikes on the so-called “Islamic State” (IS). IS is vicious and has spent most of the past 18 months studiously avoiding actually fighting the Baath government of Syria, concentrating instead on destroying […]
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