Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden announced on Monday evening that a CIA-operated drone had killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second leader of al-Qaeda after Usama Bin Laden, on Saturday while he stood on the balcony of a Taliban safe house in Kabul. He was allegedly hosted by the Haqqani clan, one of whose […]
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Jabhat al-Nusra
What will be the Mideast Crises facing Biden in the Coming Year? US Intelligence Threat Assessment
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community is out. It has a Middle East section and a report on Afghanistan in the South Asia section. Although the threat assessment aims at highlighting potential threats to the US and US interests, I am struck by how little their analysis […]
Russia and Syria are committing War Crimes, Targeting Civilian Infrastructure
Unlawful Attacks on Hospitals, Schools, Markets Forced Idlib Population Out
Did the US War on Terror Displace 37 Million?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Brown University Watson Institute Costs of War Project has put out a report concluding that the US-led “War on Terror” has displaced 37 million people. While there are parts of the report I agree with, some of the argument seems to me flawed. Let me explain why that is, […]
Trump Supports Turkey against Putin-backed Russo-Syrian Campaign to Finish off Rebels in Idlib
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump called Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday and appeared to back Turkey against Russia and Syria with regard to the current Syrian Arab Army campaign in west Aleppo province and the province of Idlib. The Turkish press said that Trump thanked Erdogan for his efforts to avert a humanitarian […]
Is an al-Qaeda Front dominating 3 Million People in North Syria?
Throughout its numerous iterations, HTS has not altered its ideology and is still widely thought to maintain links with Al-Qaeda
Rescuers say cannot keep up with air strikes battering Syria’s Ghouta
Middle East Monitor | – – Rescuers in Syria’s eastern Ghouta said the bombing would not let up long enough for them to count the bodies, in one of the bloodiest air assaults of the seven-year war. Warplanes pounded the rebel enclave on Saturday, the seventh day in a row of a fierce escalation by […]
Will the US missile strike be the turning point in Syria’s shifting war?
By Harout Akdedian | (The Conversation) | – – The US has struck the Syrian airbase used to launch a suspected sarin gas attack against Khan Sheikhun that killed more than 80 civilians. US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cited the chemical attack as the reason for their country’s first direct […]
Washington’s Supreme Hypocrisy on Chemical Weapons and Civilian Deaths
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Army in Idlib is an atrocity and the pictures of dead children tug at the heart. But the outrage of American politicians inside the beltway about it draws on the myths of American exceptionalism and Alzheimer’s of the […]