Led by new Saudi King Salman, an alliance of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey is aiding rebels, including jihadists, in new victories against Syrian President Assad’s regime.
Tag: al qaeda
UK GIVES CAMERON FIVE MORE YEARS What all British pollsters foresaw as the tightest election in decades turned out to be a night of triumph for incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party and a stinging defeat for the Labour opposition. The BBC projections of 329 Conservative seats in the new House of […]
AL-QAEDA GAINS AMID YEMEN CHAOS Airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen’s Houthi rebels have “indirectly helped empower al-Qaeda in ways the group had not enjoyed before” because the focus elsewhere leaves them “unopposed,” The New York Times writes. The jihadist group has seized a major airport, a military base and a significant oil terminal, […]
Egypt’s participation in the military operation “Decisive Storm” against the Houthis in Yemen is a question of interests, alliances and cold, hard cash.
Shia militiamen, Sunni clans, al-Qaida, Iran and Saudi Arabia all have their hands in the rapidly shifting sands of the poorest state in the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen is everybody’s business.
Syria’s tangled web grows even more intricate. Hezbollah is key to Assad’s strategy, moderate rebels avoid ISIS and al-Nusra at all cost, and Israel helps the Free Syrian Army.
LEADERS AGREE ON UKRAINE CEASEFIREAfter hours-long negotiations in Minsk, leaders Petro Poroshenko, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and François Hollande (Photo: Henadzi/Xinhua/ZUMA) have reached what the French president described as a “comprehensive deal” for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine to begin at midnight Saturday. Putin was the first one to speak after the meeting adjourned, saying […]
Categories
Has ISIS Really Arrived In Libya?
Deadly attacks in Tripoli are prompting fears that ISIS is spreading north and west. Others however warn of the spectre of a “counter-revolution” of Gaddafi nostalgics similar to what’s happened in Egypt.
Just a few months before the Paris terror attacks, and arguably late to the game, France launched a “disindoctrination” program for Islamist radicals that relies on social and religious approaches.
SAFED — Two unarmed UN peacekeepers stand beside a rusty telescope observing the Syrian border from the Golan Heights on the Israeli side of the 1974 ceasefire line. The air is cold and wintery. Nearby, in the Coffee Anan store (anan, meaning cloud in Hebrew), an Israeli intelligence officer points down towards the bottom of […]
A Swiss NGO convenes representatives of 35 rebel groups in Geneva to talk about the mechanics, and great difficulties, of respecting humanitarian laws when fighting civil wars.
A policy of war abroad, mixed with tighter border controls at home, won’t meet the challenge.
REYHANLI — At the beginning of this year, Jamal Maarouf was regarded as the new white knight of the Syrian insurrection. Over the course of just a few days in January, Maarouf and his men drove ISIS jihadists out of northern Syria’s Idlib province. Armed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, the leader of […]
U.S.-led airstrikes aimed at ISIS are being met with resistance in Syria. Some ask why it took the death of U.S. journalist James Foley for Washington to intervene.
Unlike al-Qaeda, which was always meant to operate on a global level, ISIS has been much more linked to its territory in Syria and Iraq. But that’s now starting to change.
After militants serve time in Guantanamo or Saudi prisons, the kingdom tries to ease them back into society with a mix of carrot, stick and religion.
Compared to radical Sunni terrorist organizations like ISIS, the regime in Tehran can seem relatively tame. But don’t be fooled.
Just how should the West deal with terrorists as ruthless as ISIS? Hunt them down, ally with their enemies, mess with their minds? Some concrete options, but there’s no time to waste.
The news, quantified.
Categories
Iraq’s Thirty Years War, And Counting
Since 1979, Iraqis have known only war and conflict, both from outside and within. With Islamist radicals advancing toward Baghdad, the future looks as grim as ever.
After the verdict sentencing Al Jazeera journalists to prison, it is difficult to consider the country’s court system independent. Dark days ahead for freedom of expression in Egypt.
How did a city known for its ethnic and religious mix roll over for a band of Islamist radicals? In the wake of the ISIS conquest of Mosul, the spectre of it spreading to the capital looms.
Like the Toulouse shootings two years ago, the cold-blooded killings at Brussels’ Jewish Museum show radical Islam mixing with anti-Semitism to target Jews 70 years after the Nazis’ demise.
Old regime elements and al-Qaeda are both interested in fostering violence and widening instability as the Middle Eastern nation tries to stay on path to democracy.
BAGHDAD – Everywhere in the Iraqi capital is an off-limits “red zone” for Westerners except for the American invasion’s legacy known as the “green zone.” This central quarter in Baghdad, accessible only by the right identification document or special permission, is actually a sort of privileged prison for those with valuable blood. But I have […]
The singular tale of a young French-Malian who spent three years in the world’s jihad hot spots in an attempt to join al-Qaeda fighters. No one would take him.
Since soon after the conflict began in 2011, Turkey has always been fiercely opposed to Damascus. Now opposition elements of al-Qaeda across the border may be another reason to act.
One tortured by the regime, another by Islamist rebels, both offer evidence of the worst kind of brutality that reigns in Syria today.
Since the end of the Cold War, from the Middle East to Africa, almost every military intervention carried out by the world’s top powers leads to regime change. But rarely to stability.
Like others around the world, Iranians have watched the evening news’ bloody scenes of civilians targeted by terrorists in places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. But now, the BBC’s Persian-language channel is reporting on growing concerns among Iranian officials about the threat of Al-Qaeda-type terrorism on their own territory. Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani recently […]
More than 13,000 families have been evacuated from areas of Iraq no longer under government control, including the city of Fallujah. The Al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIS has gained control of strategic swathes of the country, actively seeking to create divisions among jihadist Syrian rebel groups. ISIS has earned a […]
Wednesday, January 14, 2014 NEW CHARLIE HEBDO ISSUE SOLD OUTOne week after the terrorist attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, thousands of people lined up at newsstands to get a copy of the much-awaited “survivors’ issue” of the satirical magazine. As many as one million copies were distributed today and every single one […]
Tuesday, December 16, 2014 TALIBAN MASSACRES DOZENS IN SCHOOL ATTACKAt least 126 people, including at least 84 children, were killed and another 122 wounded when Taliban gunmen attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, in northern Pakistan, this morning, Dawn reports on its live blog. A rescue operation is still ongoing with more children believed to […]
Monday, December 8, 2014 ISRAEL ACCUSED OF BOMBING SYRIA Syria has officially asked the United Nations to impose sanctions on Israel after accusing the Israeli military of bombing the international airport in Damascus and another target in the countryside near the Syrian capital. “This direct aggression by Israel was carried out to help the terrorists” […]
Thursday, December 4, 2014 NEW YORK PROTESTS GRAND JURY DECISION For the second time in less than two weeks, the presiding grand jury in a high-profile case of a white police officer who’d killed an unarmed black man chose not to bring charges against the officer involved. Protests quickly spread around New York and in […]
A quick shot of what’s brewing in the Arab world …
In the northern city of Raqqa, the condemned — some civilians, some soldiers, shabiha or alleged Assad collaborators — are brought blindfolded and handcuffed to the city square to be shot in the head in public. Once celebrated as one of Syria’s first fully liberated cities, Raqqa, now under the control of the al-Qaida backed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has become infamous for brutal public executions and other fear tactics carried out by extremists. The executions are carried out swiftly and without legal counsel. Asyad al-Mousa, a 34-year-old lawyer, is dedicated to documenting the mounting number […]
Ankara had bet on Islamist rebels taking down the Assad regime. Now they may have helped create a monster right across the border.
CEYLANPINAR – Instantly, spoons stop stirring in teacups and conversations freeze mid-sentence. A mortar has just been heard a few hundred meters from the main street of Ceylanpinar, a small Turkish town on the border with Syria. Through the window, everybody can see a cloud of black smoke rising up from Ras al-Ayn, the Syrian […]