The evacuation of civilians — especially women and children — continues in Baghouz, the Islamic State’s last bastion.
Tag: isis
Today’s terrorism is different, with a specific way of scripting the violence that echos popular culture. Of course, these aren’t actors. Especially, the victims.
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Watch: OneShot — Saving Mosul
[dailymotion //www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/k4OfmxI2yTFG6qqyXUK expand=1] OneShot — The Battle for Mosul, 2017 (©Ivor Prickett) An unidentified young boy who had survived the siege of last ISIS-controlled area in the Old City of Mosul is cared for by Iraqi Special Forces soldiers. This photo is among the World Press Photo of the Year 2018 Nominees. OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot: [rebelmouse-image 27068863 original_size=”320×320″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068864 original_size=”174×174″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068865 original_size=”128×128″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068866 original_size=”227×227″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068867 original_size=”256×256″ expand=1]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/tQ6IXJrut2g expand=1] OneShot — The Battle for Mosul, 2017 (©Ivor Prickett) Civilians who had remained in west Mosul after the battle to take the city line up for aid in the Mamun neighborhood. This photo is among the World Press Photo of the Year 2018 Nominees. OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot: [rebelmouse-image 27068863 original_size=”320×320″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068864 original_size=”174×174″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068865 original_size=”128×128″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068866 original_size=”227×227″ expand=1][rebelmouse-image 27068867 original_size=”256×256″ expand=1]
BENGHAZI — They call it the “Café of the Displaced,” and it’s always full. “It’s because my customers followed me here,” says Ahmed, a smile on his face as he pours a clever blend of coffee, cream, cocoa powder and sugar. Everybody’s known Ahmed for years. And they know his story, which is also the […]
BAGHDAD — Her hands, covered in magnesium carbonate for a better grip, are white. Her face is flush. Her gaze fixed. Huda Salem, 20, exhales loudly — twice — into the already sweat-saturated air. Her face contorts. Then, a shout as she lifts 70 kilos of cast iron. Behind the young woman’s massive, muscular figure, […]
Last month, on the same day that President Vladimir Putin declared victory over the so-called Islamic State, the militant group launched a surprise offensive against government forces in Deir ez-Zor province, killing up to 31 pro-government fighters in a three-day span. “In just over two years, Russia’s armed forces and the Syrian army have defeated the most battle-hardened group of international terrorists,” Putin told Russian forces on Dec. 11 during a visit to Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Syria. Just hours later, ISIS began to attack government positions north of the town of Boukamal, a former key stronghold for the […]
JAKARTA — While Western countries grapple with the question of what to do with militants returning after fighting alongside the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Indonesia has launched a deradicalization program that helps former fighters open their own businesses, according to the Indonesian magazine Tempo. The program aims to help returning militants and their […]
Rohingya. Outside of Myanmar, it’s a simple word, though not necessarily easy to pronounce. Largely unknown until recently, its utterance now unmistakably evokes persecution, humanitarian tragedy, and what the UN said was “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” at the hands of government authorities and local militias. But inside the Buddhist-majority country, it’s a politically-charged […]
HOMS – Akram al-Khoule and his 7-year-old son hold hands as they stare at the once familiar primary school building, now demolished, looted of its contents and stripped of its identifying markers. “This is where my children studied,” al-Khoule says in a melancholy voice. Al-Khoule returned to the Homs district of al-Khalidiye this year, after being displaced to the coastal Syrian city of Tartous for six years. He is one of 600,000 Syrian refugees and internally displaced people who are estimated to have returned to their hometowns this year – many of whom now face a barrage of problems trying […]
PARIS — Before Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan, before the Bastille Day massacre in Nice and last month’s fatal stabbing in Marseille by a man shouting “Allahu akbar,” there was Toulouse. Back in March 2012, a 23-year-old native of that southern French city went on a meticulously planned shooting spree that killed three French soldiers […]
The southern city of Marawi was liberated last week after months of fighting which left some 1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
-Analysis- The Islamic State is now on the run in Syria and Iraq. Following the terror group’s defeat this summer in its self-declared Iraqi capital of Mosul, ISIS has now been driven from its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. This comes more than four years after ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his “Caliphate” from the […]
Voltaire reminds us that today’s Islamic fanaticism is a kind of pathology of religious faith.
They were the brides of ISIS. These days, they are detained in a camp for the internally displaced north of Raqqa city. They speak about life in the caliphate, and their hopes for the future.
SIRTE — If it were theater, it would be bad theater. Too incongruous, too unreal. The stage — buildings in ruins all along the boulevard — just doesn’t fit the happiness on the people’s faces. Some are busy decorating their cars with ribbons for a wedding. Others are drinking coffee or shopping. The cars are […]
-Analysis- Is there ever a good time to hold an independence referendum? Of course the answer to that question, from Kurdistan to Catalonia, depends on whom you ask. For those looking to declare a new nation based on ethnic, economic or political claims, there’s no time like the present to take destiny into your own […]
AQAP, the local al-Qaeda branch, is determined to learn from its mistakes. They’ve learned that they can’t go too quickly and spill too much local blood.
PARIS — European nations are bracing themselves for the return of their citizens who had left to fight the wars in Syria and Iraq. “The EU member states most affected expect a slow but gradual rise of returnees,” noted a recent Radicalization Awareness Network (RAN) report submitted to the European Commissioner for Security, Julian King. […]
-Analysis- PARIS — The Islamic State (ISIS) is like the Hydra, the multi-headed monster of mythology that Hercules alone was able to slay. Whenever he managed to cut off one its heads, two new ones grew back instantly. Likewise, the jihadists — having recently lost Mosul, in Iraq — are already making headlines again, this […]
Kurdish-led forces advance with hopes to recapture the ISIS capital. Together with Arab and foreign fighters, they share a common enemy. But what happens when ISIS is gone?
-Analysis- PARIS — The nation of France has become a new sort of Ground Zero for Islamic terrorism’s attack on the West. Over the past 30 months, images have spread around the world of both wanton and targeted terror on French soil: from the January 2015 shooting at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices, to the […]
-Analysis- To win back Mosul, the Iraqi armed forces paid with their blood. But the difficult victory — obtained with the help of the international coalition — also marks a rebirth. Against all odds, the Iraqi army, federal police and anti-terror units have all been successfully rebuilt. Back in 2014, the Iraqi troops had fallen […]
PRISTINA — In front of socialist era high-rise blocks, Bill Clinton waves to the Kosovars. Kosovo Albanians built the statue in the capital, Pristina, in gratitude for the bombing of then Yugoslavia by NATO in 1999, which a few years later led to independence. U.S. and Albanian flags flutter alongside each other on the rooftops. […]
-Analysis- The recapture of Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces, with the support of the international coalition led by the United States, is a real achievement. ISIS has seen its biggest military conquest reversed, and its dream of an Islamic caliphate destroyed. But none of this means that the biggest terror organization the world has […]
Christian Assyrians have been targeted repeatedly through history — and found themselves under attack again by ISIS forces in Syria.
Analyzing letters and testimony of ISIS terrorists shows how eye-for-an-eye arguments in defense of Muslim victims meld with monotheistic guilt and a mystic sense of destiny to become offensive weapons in the jihadist strategy.
The minority Yazidi people were killed and taken captive by the Islamic State. Once held as sex slaves and child soldiers, several survivors tell of the psychopathic madness of the jihadists.
Abu al Fadl devoted the final months of his life to clearing al-Bab of improvised explosives left behind by ISIS in everything from washing machines to cooking pots. The 60-year-old disabled several thousand mines before one took his life.
Russia, Iran and U.S. are all looking beyond the defeat of ISIS in Syria. But the little game the great powers are playing is becoming increasingly risky.
The two deadly suicide attacks in Tehran, at the Parliament and inside the mausoleum of Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, appeared as the latest in the litany of woes terrorists have brought to the Middle East. It may also mark a whole new chapter in the region. Iranians, in spite of the political and […]
“Enough is enough.” Theresa May’s remarks after Islamists killed seven and wounded dozens Saturday evening in London — the UK’s third major terror attack in three months — amounted to both a new message and a new tone. The British Prime Minister took aim at the “evil ideology of Islamist extremism” and boldly took a […]
BEIRUT – Few women have ever gained access to Block B of Beirut’s notorious Roumieh prison. This is where Lebanon holds radicalized criminals. It is also a place where suicide bombings have allegedly been planned, and has been called an “operations room” for the so-called Islamic State by Lebanon’s interior minister. So when Maya and Nancy Yamout first began interviewing convicted jihadists in the prison, the Lebanese sisters aroused both confusion and suspicion among guards and prisoners alike. The Yamouts’ interest began with a university project, but it took the support of the former minister of justice to get them […]
Just as terrorism in the name of other religions has existed throughout history. We must call evil things by their name if we want to overcome them.
-Analysis- For the past 36 hours, Washington has been consumed by a pair of scandals that even eternally moderate commentators now say has spread the whiff of possible doom around the Trump presidency. On Monday it was the Washington Post that revealed that Donald Trump had divulged classified counter-terrorism information last week to Russia, potentially […]
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with U.S. President Donald Trump, mutual objectives may be overshadowed by the Kurdish question.
The deadly Palm Sunday attacks in Egypt are just the latest example of a steady effort to remove Christianity from the Middle East. It is long past time to take action.
BAGHDAD — A continuous flow of cars, scooters, and three-wheeled vehicles pour onto the avenues of Sadr City, Baghdad’s massive Shia district, where roundabouts honor the memories of martyrs killed at the front-lines. Ahmed Houcham el-Alabiad, 29, rides his bike on the wrong side of the road until he reaches home, a shack located in […]
PARIS — The 2017 edition of “Paris Plages,” the artificial beaches installed each summer along the banks of the river Seine, will be sans sable— sandless! Why? Because on Monday, the City of Paris announced that it will end its 14-year-old partnership with French-Swiss group LafargeHolcim. But the decision here matters less than what actually […]
TUNIS — Six years ago, the Tunisian Revolution sparked the Arab Spring uprisings and overthrew the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his notoriously violent police state. Now a nascent democracy, Tunisia is once again faced with the issue of police brutality. Tunis-based daily Le Temps reports that several local and international NGOs […]