Syria

By Shalaw Mohammed | Kirkuk | (Niqash.org) – – As extremists rule harshly and coalition airstrikes hit, there’s a mass exodus of civilians out of Hawija. And one of the ways they are getting out is with people smugglers on the “death road”. A few days ago Mahmoud Fathallah arrived with his family and another […]

Bahrain

Iran’s Khamenei Praises Nuclear Deal, but slams US Foreign Policy

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical Leader, appeared to be attempting to mollify hard liners on Friday in his Friday prayers addresses. On the one hand, he praised the negotiators at Vienna who in long and arduous negotiations crafted the deal on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. He […]

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 […]

Druze

How the Washington Post got Taken in by Syria’s Taliban

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) Making alliances of convenience is a perennial temptation in Washington, where policy-makers often have more ambition than ethics or common sense. Thus, the Washington Post just published a slick op-ed by a representative of the Islamic Movement of Syrian Free Men (Ahrar al-Sham) claiming that the group is “moderate” […]

Bashar al-Assad

4 Million Syrian Displaced Abroad: ‘Biggest Refugee Population From a Single Conflict in a Generation’

contributors

By Kanya D’Almeida | – – UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) – Barely 10 months ago, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said the refugee population from Syria had reached the three million mark. Today, the latest data from the field show that the number has passed four million. “This is the biggest refugee population from a […]

Alevis

Why defeating ISIL/ Daesh with military might is starry eyed idealism

contributors

By David Alpher | (The Conversation) | – – Just this past weekend of July 4, US-led coalition aircraft targeted the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria. It was one of the “largest deliberate engagements to date,” said a coalition spokesman, and it was executed “to deny [ISIS] the ability to move military capabilities throughout […]

Featured

Obama: No more US troops to fight Daesh/ ISIL, but more Training

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama on Monday went for a briefing at the Pentagon on the fight against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). In remarks afterwards, he acknowledged that training of Iraqi troops has been going much slower than originally envisaged (about 5,000 have been trained in the past year, and […]

Human Rights

Daesh/ ISIL Marked Women and Children for Death in Syria’s Kobani

Juan Cole

Human Rights Watch | (New York) — Armed militants believed to be members of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, deliberately targeted people they knew were civilians in a June 25, 2015, attack in and around the northern Syrian city of Kobani. Syrian Kurdish authorities and local human rights groups said that 233 to 262 […]

Children

Child Labor: A Hidden Atrocity of the Syrian Crisis

contributors

By Kanya D’Almeida UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2015 (IPS) – In a conflict that has claimed over 220,000 lives and injured a further 840,000 people as of January 2015, it is sometimes hard to see beyond the death toll. What started as a confrontation between pro-democracy activists and the entrenched dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad […]