Middle East

By Nawzat Shamdeen | Berlin | via Niqash.org All Mosul women must now wear either black or white niqab. A young Mosul man tells NIQASH how his social life, and the lives of others his age, has been cruelly interrupted by the fact that Sunni Muslim extremists now control their city. The young man says […]

Iraq

How does this End? 35 Military Interventions since 1980 and Terrorism Grows

contributors

Brave New Films: “Since 1980, we have militarily intervened at least 35 times in more than 27 countries. We keep bombing, we continue spending trillions of dollars, but we’re no safer as a result.” Brave New Films: “How Does This End?”

Iraq

Terrorism craves an audience and we are playing into Islamic State’s hands by watching

contributors

By Akil N Awan, Royal Holloway The well-known US security expert, Brian Jenkins, famously declared in 1974, that “terrorism is theatre”. And over the last few weeks, the brutal videotaped beheadings of British and American hostages by Islamic State militants have proved the prescience of his statement with horrifying clarity. We are now accustomed to […]

Iran

Coalition Of One: Iran Leads Own Fight Against Islamic State

contributors

By Charles Recknagel, RFE/RL The United States is putting together the first international coalition to try to roll back the Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria. But when the nearly 40-state-strong alliance starts operations, it will find that there is already another coalition on the ground whose presence could complicate the U.S.-led effort […]

Apartheid

A Way out of the Gaza Trap

contributors

By Jean-Pierre Filiu, author of Gaza: A History One person has been enjoying every minute of this summer’s fifty-day war on Gaza. He was known formerly as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, until he changed his name to Caliph Ibrahim. His self-proclaimed “Islamic State” has been winning recruits by the dozen every time a child was killed […]

censorship

Is Israel’s Far-Right Government Inciting against the Israeli Left?

contributors

Middle East Eye Leftist Israeli activists staged weekly protests during the war in Gaza and they were confronted by rightwing protesters that shouted racial slurs and physical attacks. Middle East Eye: Israel’s Zionist Left: A Chronicle of Ambivalence

Featured

Shiite Militias of Iraq Reject US Return, Threaten to Attack US Forces

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The pan-Arab, London-based daily, “Al-Sharq al-Awsat” (The Middle East) reports that the major Shiite militias of Iraq are denouncing Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi for welcoming US air support in the fight against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Prime Minister al-Abadi himself rejected conventional US ground troops for […]

Iraq

The Next Conflict in Iraq? Will the Kurds try to Annex Kirkuk Permanently?

contributors

By Nawzat Shamdeen | Berlin | via Niqash.org What will happen to Iraq’s “disputed territories” once Sunni Muslim extremists have been driven out? Will the Iraqi Kurdish military, who now control some of it, insist on staying? Or will conflicts between the Iraqi Kurdish and the Iraqi army make for the country’s next crisis? NIQASH […]

Iraq

Congressman Lloyd Doggett: Don’t be Stampeded into War

contributors

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) House Floor Speech September 16, 2014 The Middle Eastern tragedy, in which this resolution will further entangle America, is directly related to the wholly unnecessary Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq. Having learned so little from the sacrifices of that conflict, the Congress now approves greater involvement in a Syrian civil war […]