By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – In a bold move, Daesh (i.e. ISIL or ISIS) fighters moved Monday on Kirkuk and Erbil, two cities patrolled by the Iraqi Kurdistan paramilitary, the Peshmerga (those who stand before death). Erbil is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Kirkuk is an oil city and is disputed among Turkmen, […]
Month
Category
- Africa (146)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (841)
- Australasia (2)
- Australia (6)
- Authoritarianism (182)
- Canada (1)
- Cats (1)
- Culture (419)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (247)
- Dissent (288)
- Economy (727)
- Education (75)
- Elderly (3)
- Energy (1,083)
- Environment (1,511)
- Europe (788)
- Featured (2,680)
- fiction (5)
- Food (8)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (464)
- History (241)
- Human Rights (994)
- Immigration (17)
- International (606)
- Islamophobia (307)
- Juan Cole (268)
- Latin America (68)
- Latinos (3)
- leisure (21)
- media (375)
- Middle East (7,264)
- Arab World (4,621)
- Iran (912)
- Israel (703)
- Israel/ Palestine (1,949)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (264)
- Turkey (446)
- military (105)
- Modernism (1)
- nationalism (102)
- NATO (6)
- Natural Disasters (11)
- nuclear weapons (58)
- Patriarchy (2)
- Peace (75)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (11)
- privacy (19)
- racism (352)
- Rape (5)
- religion (839)
- Rights (128)
- robots (1)
- Romance (1)
- science (117)
- Secular (West) (8)
- Secularism (25)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (1)
- Spirituality (21)
- Statelessness (14)
- Surveillance (259)
- Terrorism (1,035)
- Tolerance (4)
- Uncategorized (8,045)
- United Nations (80)
- Urbanization (3)
- US Foreign Policy (586)
- US politics (3,982)
- Anti-War Movement (6)
- Campaign Finance (27)
- Censors (21)
- Central Intelligence Agency (59)
- Civil Rights (83)
- Congress (38)
- Conspiracy Theories (6)
- Constitution (322)
- crime (5)
- Democratic Party (568)
- Democratic Socialists of America (14)
- Domestic Terrorism (16)
- Drone Warfare (26)
- Espionage (116)
- Ethnicities (287)
- Far Right (216)
- FBI (42)
- Foreign Policy (203)
- Gay Rights (14)
- Guns (65)
- Immigration (194)
- Israel Lobbies (83)
- Marijuana (1)
- Militarization (229)
- National Security State (383)
- Native Americans (26)
- Nuclear arsenal (6)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (365)
- Police (34)
- prison reform (6)
- Private Prisons (1)
- Puerto Rico (25)
- Religious Right (1)
- Reproductive Choice (7)
- Republican Party (2,486)
- Supreme Court (60)
- Voter suppression (19)
- Whistleblowers (4)
- Xenophobia (8)
- Veterans (29)
- Voting Rights (4)
- War (277)
- Western Religion (376)
- White Supremacists (90)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (291)
- workers (147)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (121)
Shiites
Iraq: Sunni Sheikh Killed trying to Mediate between Shiite, Sunni Extremists
By Erin Evers | (Human Rights Watch) In Latifiyya, a small town 20 miles south of Baghdad, fighting has been raging since long before the armed conflict that erupted when the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) took over Mosul. For at least two years state security forces and government-backed militias have been battling Sunni […]
Iraqi Gov’t AWOL: It’s Shia Militias vs. the Islamic State
VICE News | – “Last summer, the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept from Syria into northern Iraq, routing Iraqi security forces and seizing the city of Mosul. Soon afterward, the group declared the establishment of a dubious “caliphate” in the area it controls and rebranded itself the Islamic […]
2nd Iranian Commander killed in Iraq defending Samarra Golden Dome
By RFE/RL | – A commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been killed in Iraq, Iranian media reported. The Tasnim news agency, said to be affiliated with IRGC, says Reza Hosseini Moghadam was in Samarra to confront militants of the Islamic State (IS) when he was killed on February 7. “He [Moghadam] […]
Shiite Coup in Yemen: $400 mn. in US Weaponry Falls into Houthi Hands
Euronews | – “The United Nations and the United States have condemned Yemen’s dominant Houthi group for dissolving parliament. The move was also denounced by the country’s main political faction as a coup. Houthi rebel leaders, however, say a new interim assembly and government will be formed as swiftly as possible. Gamal Al-Soudi, the Houthi […]
The Other Sinjar Massacre: As Iraq’s ISIL driven Back, Reprisals against Sunni Collaborators
Khales Joumah | Mosul | (Niqash.org) – As extremists from the Islamic State group are slowly driven out of northern Iraq, members of one of the groups that suffered at their hands – the Yazidis – began to take revenge on locals they say collaborated with them. This week several villages were looted and burned […]
Ironies of Empire: US now Allied with Shiites Trained by Assassinated HIzbullah Leader
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The revelation by the Washington Post’s Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima that the car-bomb assassination of Hizbullah commando Imad Mughniyah in Damascus in 2008 was a joint CIA/ Israeli Mossad operation comes at an awkward time for Washington. The administration of George W. Bush did not target Mughniyah […]
With US Tanks, are Iraq’s Shiite Militias getting stronger than the Army?
by Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) – Iraq’s unofficial Shiite militias are an essential part of the fight against the extremist Islamic State group. But they act independently of the army, and are sometimes brutally murderous. Army officers now note that the militias have better weapons and better working conditions and that’s why their […]
As Americans are shot At: Saudi Death Sentence on Shiite Cleric inflames Sectarian Tensions
By Giorgio Cafiero | (Foreign Policy in Focus) – The fate of one Shi’ite cleric hangs over the Gulf like a sword of Damocles. [Updated: Two Americans were fired on in the Shiite Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia on Friday, and one injured; this incident is likely related to the radicalization of Shiites via oppressive […]
© 2021 All Rights Reserved