By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Jeb Bush announced his run for president on Monday. It is hard to know what his Middle East policy would be from his wibbly wobbly pronouncements, but that it would be imperial and aggressive can be deduced from his foreign policy advisory team, including Neoconservatives such […]
Flash Fiction: “The Office”
N.B. Fiction with mature themes. By Juan Cole | The Office Adib was winning at cards again. Bashir was already out, sitting in a corner with his French novel. Soliman hated losing, even though they didn’t play for much in the way of stakes. They only had their share of the […]
Pres. Erdogan sees Syrian Kurds’ advance against ISIL as “danger” to Turkey
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The leftist Kurdish Protection Forces (YPG) and their Arab allies, the Euphrates Volcano, continued their assault on Sunday on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) positions in northern Raqqa Province in Syria, taking the village of Salouk on the outskirts of Tel Abyad. Tel Abyad lies on the border […]
5,000 Hanging Skirts: How Women Remember War Rape in Kosova
By Frances Trix | (Informed Comment) | – – On 12 June, 5,000 skirts and dresses were hung on 45 clotheslines in the football stadium in Prishtina, capital of Kosova. “The laundry is washed clean, like the women who are clean and pure—they carry no stain,” asserted artist Alketa Xhafa-Mripa, the Kosovar originator of the […]
Can Leftist Kurdish Militia cut ISIL/ Daesh off from Turkish Supply Routes and Kill the Caliphate?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The intrepid Liz Sly of the Washington Post gets the story of the attempt of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their Arab allies, the Euphrates Volcano, to cut Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) off and kill it. Sly’s insightful report is buttressed by one from Ahmad […]
Young Middle East Millennials’ Digital Split From Fundamentalism (Cole Interview)
Elliot Hill | (TheLipTV Video Interview) | – – “Millennials in the Middle East are forming a clear generational gap between themselves and their elders, with the digital revolution effecting a sweeping advance of secularization. With majority populations under the age of 30, many countries are seeing a wide gulf between their social media savvy […]
Wind Power rapidly bringing Clean Electricity to masses in Global South
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Google is in talks to invest in Kenya’s enormous Lake Turkana Wind Power Project, which will cost $700 million. The project will increase Kenya’s electricity production by a fifth, adding 300 megawatts, in a country where less than a quarter of the population has electricity. Wind […]
Al-Qaeda in Syria rubs out 23 members of Druze Religious Minority, Persecutes Others
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The al-Qaeda-linked Support Front has murdered 23 men from a single Druze clan in Qalb Lawzah, Idlib Province, Syria. Druze villagers fled in large numbers to surrounding Sunni hamlets seeking refuge from al-Qaeda. There are some 18 Druze villages in the north of Idlib Province. The […]
Has ISIL/ Daesh killed 50,000 in one Year? Iraq’s Horrors by the Numbers
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Human Rights Commission of Iraq, a body attached to the Iraqi parliament, issued statistics on Wednesday for the one-year impact of Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) on that country. Some of the numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, but others are likely about […]
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