Iraq

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 […]

Iraq

Next year in Mosul: Iraqi Kurds cut off ISIL/ Daesh Supply Lines

contributors

VICE News | (Video report) | – “A year after the Islamic State’s lightning conquest of Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul, the poorly-trained and equipped Kurdish peshmerga forces are the international coalition’s only reliable boots on the ground in northern Iraq. The Pentagon’s hopes of recapturing the city by spring 2015 have been dashed by […]

Iraq

Has US started Arming Iraq’s Shiite Militias against ISIL/ Daesh?

contributors

Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) The hostility between the US and Iraq’s Shiite militias seems to have slowed. One leading militia member even went to the US. Is this the beginning of a new, happier relationship and closer battle field cooperation? Last week Captain Amir al-Saadi, whose unit is based in the Habbaniyah camp […]

Featured

Has ISIL/ Daesh killed 50,000 in one Year? Iraq’s Horrors by the Numbers

Juan Cole

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 […]

Human Rights

A Year after the Fall of Mosul, Yazidi Kurdish Survivors of ISIL Massacres Struggle On

contributors

VICE News | (Video Report) | – – “A year after the Islamic State’s lightning conquest of Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul, the poorly-trained and equipped Kurdish peshmerga forces are the international coalition’s only reliable boots on the ground in northern Iraq. The Pentagon’s hopes of recapturing the city by spring 2015 have been dashed […]

Arab Spring

ISIL and the Middle East Generational Shift (with Juan Cole)

Juan Cole

Elliot Hill | (The LipTV Video) | – – “With ISIS rampaging through Syria and Iraq, and a generational shift in politics and religion happening across the Middle East, we dissect some of the political changes happening in the region with author Juan Cole. The dual advance of secularism and violent fundamentalism, islamophobia in the […]

Barack Obama

Modest Increase in Iraq Training Mission shows Obama still Uninterested & Maybe he’s Right

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – The Obama administration got itself some headlines on Wednesday morning by pledging to send a few hundred more military trainers to Iraq and to create a new base in al-Anbar Province. But there is less to this announcement than meets the eye. The US has some 3000 […]

Bush

Donald Rumsfeld Blames Bush For Iraq Democracy Fail

contributors

Mark Sovel & Elliot Hill | (The Lip TV – Video) | – – “Donald Rumsfeld said George W. Bush was wrong about Iraq in a recent interview with British newspaper The Times where the former Secretary of Defense called the Bush administration’s efforts to push democracy on Iraq “unrealistic”. In the interview, Rumsfeld, a […]

Barack Obama

Obama: We don’t have a “complete strategy” against ISIL

contributors

CBS News | (Video Report) | – – “President Obama said Monday the United States does not have a complete plan to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), saying Baghdad needs to show a greater commitment to building a fighting force. “We don’t yet have a […]