In 2014, Iraq was said to lose 42% of its territory to Daesh (the Arabic acronym for what our press calls ISIS or ISIL). This statistic refers to the loss of the mostly Sunni Arab provinces of al-Anbar and Ninewah, as well as parts of Salahuddin and Diyala. It is a little bit misleading, since […]
Did Drought and Climate Change cause Middle Eastern States to Collapse in 2014?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — The Middle East, from North Africa to Afghanistan, has seen an unusual number of governments collapse in recent years. Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen have abruptly become something akin to failed states, and masses overthrew dictators in Egypt and Tunisia. It is unclear how strong the Afghanistan state […]
Did Iran win “2014”? Top 6 Iran Developments this Year
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — In 2014, Iran made news on a number of important fronts. 1. Although there was no decisive breakthrough in its relationship with the United States and the European Union, there was anticipation that some sort of deal would be reached eventually with the permanent members of the UN […]
GOP Figures used racist Ape imagery for Obama before North Korea did
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment)– North Korea lashed out at President Barack Obama on Saturday, blaming him for the Sony film, “The Interview,” and for the North Korean internet outage, adding “”Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest..” Given the long history of racist associations of […]
Baathist Riposte: How the Regime Came back in the Syrian Civil War in 2014
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — In the course of 2014, two major trends, long since visible in the Syrian civil war, were strengthened. First, the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad continued to assert control over most urban areas along the trunk roads of the west of the country. Damascus, Homs, Hama, Latakia and […]
Why Kim Jong-Un was Really afraid of “The Interview:” A Humiliation Romp, not an Assassination Flick
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — N.B.: Contains spoilers; if interested in the film, go see or stream it first and then read. There has been a lot of blaming the victim in the commentary on Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg’s controversial film, “The Interview” (2014). The premise, of an assassination plot against the […]
The Bureaucracy of Terror in Mosul: Todenhöfer’s Unprecedented Footage from Within
BBC News | — “A German author given unprecedented access to territory controlled by the so-called Islamic State, has told the BBC that IS is stronger, more brutal and harder to confront than he’d expected. Jürgen Todenhöfer spent 10 days in Mosul and Raqqa. Caroline Hawley spoke to him about what he found.” BBC News: […]
Have the Kurds cut the ISIL/Daesh State in Two, Blocking Supply Lines?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — Al-Mada newspaper in Baghdad had an interesting article in the aftermath of the fall of Shinjar to the Iraqi Kurdistan Peshmerga. The piece argued that the Peshmerga (Kurdistan’s paramilitary, meaning ‘one who stands before death’) have now effectively cut of the supply lines between Raqqa in Syria and […]
Is the NSA Responsible for N. Korea’s Hack of Sony Pictures?
By Juan Cole | — In all the discussions of what is alleged to be North Korea’s horrible cyber-vandalism against Sony Pictures, I haven’t seen anyone bring up a key issue: The National Security Agency has been for two decades a powerful behind-the-scenes lobby for weak internet encryption and privacy protocols. I don’t know enough […]
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