Worldcrunch
Updated Oct. 17, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. Raqqa was declared fully liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on this day in 2017. Why was Raqqa so important in the Syrian Civil War? Raqqa was of strategic importance because it served as the self-proclaimed capital of ISIS and was a center for the […]
In the deadliest attack on France since World War II, 131 people were killed in a series of shootings and suicide bombings across Paris by Islamist terrorists. Who was responsible for the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris? Nine members of the Islamic State (ISIS), based mostly in Brussels, carried out the coordinated attacks at the […]
The French president expressed his solidarity with Israel while calling for a political solution for the Palestinians; but he also made a surprise proposal for an international coalition against Hamas, which faces several obstacles — but is also a way to “frame” the conflict so that the dormant two-state solution can return.
-Analysis- The “caliphate” of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will not last. His self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), announced two years ago, is on the defensive. It will vanish as quickly as the morning mist on the Euphrates River. But what about jihadism, Islamist terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Syria — all factors that feed this Middle […]
LUNEL — Tac trimmed his beard and cut his hair short. He also stopped wearing his long prayer shirt. After the Paris attacks in November, he thought, the police were bound to come looking for him. Even his family had gotten into the habit of calling him “Daesh” (acronym for ISIS) as a joke about […]
Two British reporters for VICE news, and their translator, have been charged as supporters of Kurdish group PKK, though they were first accused of being pro-ISIS.
ISIS imposes harsh morality codes on women and girls in Raqqa, Syria. Now females under 45 are not allowed to leave, and one mother of a teenaged daughter says she knows why.
Compared to radical Sunni terrorist organizations like ISIS, the regime in Tehran can seem relatively tame. But don’t be fooled.
CAIRO — Since the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared a caliphate, much has been written about the movement — but still more remains unclear. How seriously should we take their rise? How does ISIS define Islamic law, and how would it be implemented? There are also more basic […]
Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States, but American officials have summarily dismissed its input about airstrikes in Iraq, even with Turkish lives on the line. Why Turkey needs to clarify itself in so many ways.
Facing advancing jihadist fighters, the Iraqi army fled without fighting, and the city of Mosul fell on June 10. Kirkuk, a multiethnic oil city, has been saved by Kurdish fighters. So far.
The ISIS assault in Iraq is spectacular proof that the U.S. has failed in the Middle East. It’s time for a return to power politics and a bloc of former enemies to take on the extremists.
ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham), the jihadist group wreaking havoc in Syria for more than a year, has gained control of the Nineveh province in its country of birth – post-US invasion Iraq. Reports late Wednesday said the extremists had taken control of the city of Tikrit. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki […]
One tortured by the regime, another by Islamist rebels, both offer evidence of the worst kind of brutality that reigns in Syria today.
Bashar al-Assad still in power in Syria, al-Qaeda still strong in Iraq. The West’s double failure, incapable of building a common strategy, is a sign of a now ‘post-American’ region.
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 […]
Tuesday, June 24, 2014 ISIS CLAIMS CAPTURE OF IRAQ OIL REFINERY Jihadist group ISIS has claimed to have taken control of Iraq’s biggest oil refinery in Baiji, after it offered hundreds of Iraqi soldiers safe passage if they laid down their weapons, Al Jazeera reports. But Iraq’s foreign minister rejected the claims, and New York […]