Terrorism

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | AP is reporting that Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland maintains that the number of ISIL fighters in Syria and Iraq is in steep decline, having fallen to as little as 15,000, down from 25,000 at the organization’s height. In Iraq the organization has lost Tikrit, Beiji, Mt. Sinjar, Sinjar, […]

Bashar al-Assad

Monsters to Destroy: Top 7 Reasons the US could not have forestalled Syrian Civil War

Juan Cole

by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The interventionist temptation, muted since the Iraq imbroglio, is now returning. Sec. Clinton’s team are already talking about taking steps to remove Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from office as soon as they get into the White House. An excellent and principled NYT columnist called the non-intervention […]

Featured

No, Obama did not found ISIL, Mr. Trump: That was the GOP

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump in his daily free association exercise accused President Obama of creating Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) in Iraq by withdrawing troops from that country in 2011. It is an accusation he has in past made against Sec. Clinton, but now he is shifting blame to Obama. Obama […]

Bashar al-Assad

Looming Aleppo Battle indicts both sides of Civil War for breaking Cease-Fire

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The only thing worse than the new hero status of now-covert al-Qaeda operative Abu Muhammad al-Julani and his Army of Syrian Conquest (ASC) is the news that he plans to subject all of Aleppo. Aleppo is Syria’s largest city, or at least it used to be, […]

Featured

Syria: Key ISIL Smuggling city, Manbij, falls to Kurd-Arab Force

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Syrian War is nowhere near over, but the Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) episode may be drawing to an end. Alarabiya reports that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is largely leftist Kurds of the YPG but includes a small Arab auxiliary faction, has taken almost all […]

Featured

ISIL Captures Thousands trying to flee it in Iraq, Executes a Dozen

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Oman Daily’s Jabbar al-Rubaie reports that Iraqi security sources announced yesterday that Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) had executed a number of the residents of the city of Hawija near Kirkuk in northern Iraq because they attempted to escape the city, over which Daesh holds sway. Hawija […]

al-Qaeda

Top Five Ways to tell if a Terrorist is still al-Qaeda despite name Change

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The leftist Beirut newspaper al-Safir comments scathingly on the name-change of the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front led by Abu Muhammad al-Julani, to the Syria Conquest Front. Here are some reasons that the name change isn’t going to work: 1. Al-Julani got permission from 9/11 […]

Iraq

Will Iraq’s next Government be . . . Iran-backed Shiite Militias?

contributors

By Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) | – – The [so-called] Islamic State [IS] group has caused a realignment of Iraq’s political map. Next year’s provincial elections will signal who will rule the land after the security crisis has passed – and it may not be to everyone’s liking. In April 2017 Iraq will […]

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

The West Under Attack: What we can Learn from the Roy vs Kepel Debate

contributors

By Mustafa Gürbüz | (Informed Comment) | – – The ax attack on a train in Würzburg, Germany, sparked the latest controversy on lone wolf radicalization in the West. Recently, just days before the attack in Nice, two prominent French academics on terrorism, Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel, were covered in the New York Times […]