Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Reuters: “About 60,000 Syrian Kurds flee into Turkey in the space of 24 hours, a deputy prime minister says, as Islamic State fighters seize dozens of villages close to the border. Sarah Toms reports.” For anyone who knows the history of the Turkish government’s dirty war against Kurdish separatists in the 1970s and 1980s, it […]

Iraq

Iraq: Are Sunni Arabs of Kirkuk Province Turning on ISIL?

contributors

Ahmad Mohammed | Kirkuk | via Niqash.org Sunni Muslim extremists continue to kidnap, execute and otherwise impose their authoritarian rule on locals in the areas they control, such as in southwestern Kirkuk. Slowly but surely though, local resistance against them is growing. Tribal leaders suggest an organized, salaried force is in development. On the 12th […]

Iraq

The Saddest Story In Mosul: Love In The Time Of The Caliphate

contributors

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 […]

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Gulliver and the Lilliputians: It’s America’s Small Wars that are Unwinnable

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt It’s possible I’ve lived most of my life on the wrong planet — and if that sounds like the first sentence of a sci-fi novel maybe, in its own way, it is. I thought I knew where I was, of course, but looking back from our helter-skelter world of 2014, I wonder. […]

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 […]