Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community is out. It has a Middle East section and a report on Afghanistan in the South Asia section. Although the threat assessment aims at highlighting potential threats to the US and US interests, I am struck by how little their analysis […]

al-Qaeda

Vanilla ISIL: Social Media is forced to Treat Trump and Trumpists Like Terrorists

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Not everyone who mobbed the Capitol on 1/6 was a terrorist, but there were many terrorists among them. Some people came armed, or with ties for taking congressional representatives and senators hostage. Some were desperately looking for Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi in order to assassinate them for, in their […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

From the KKK to Europe’s new “Jihadis”: The Hidden Logic of seemingly Random Acts of Terror

Glenn E. Robinson

By Glenn E. Robinson | – Prior to his November 2 shooting rampage in Vienna, Kujtim Fejzullai’s affinity for ISIS was known to Austrian police, given his earlier unsuccessful attempt to cross Turkey’s border to join the ‘caliphate.’ But as far as is known, Fejzullai never actually made contact with ISIS before he swore his […]

al-Qaeda

Trump’s Falsehoods about Election Fraud give Aid and Comfort to Russia, ISIL Extremists

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s meltdown on Thursday evening in which he alleged a vast Democratic conspiracy to stuff ballot boxes and steal an election he believed himself to have won, along with the gun-toting, menacing MAGA crowds gathering outside vote-counting facilities, have embarrassed America before the world. Worse, they have given hope to […]

Barack Obama

Who really defeated the Islamic State – Obama/Biden or Trump/Pence?

The Conversation

By Brian Glyn Williams | – One common claim by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has been that his administration beat IS, or what’s formally known as the Islamic State terrorist group. It came up most recently in the vice presidential debate, when Mike Pence boasted, “We destroyed the ISIS caliphate. … You know when […]

Barack Obama

Six Years later, remembering how Socialist Kurds and the US Air Force defeated the ISIS Siege of Kobani

Brian Glyn Williams

By Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Troy Souza | – Dartmouth, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – Six years ago, in October, 2014, the brutal ISIS terorist group came for the Kurds in the Syrian enclave of Kobani. It would have been a gateway for them into Turkey, on which it bordered. The US intervened […]

Banking

ODNI Blamed Syrian Banks, but Did the West’s Deutsche Bank Facilitate ISIL Finances in Mosul?

Middle East Monitor

By Hala Nouhad Nasreddine | – ( Middle East Monitor) The Islamic State’s infamous rule over vast areas of Iraq during 2014 and 2016 not only led to a humanitarian crisis, but also left the country’s economy depleted. Its expansion in Iraq, marked by its control over vast areas of the country, most notably capturing […]

Afghanistan

Trump boasted he “Obliterated” ISIS in Afghanistan; Then ISIS Massacred a Shiite Wedding Party

Brian Glyn Williams

By Brian Glyn Williams and Javed Rezayee | – Williams, Boston/Bamiyan. On November 13th yet another suicide bombing shredded the lives of people across the globe in a land whose seemingly endless conflict has once again been forgotten by many, if not most Americans. But, as devastating as that blast that took the lives of […]

Iraq

Kurdish Yazidi Survivors of ISIL Massacre, Female Enslavement, Demand Justice

The Conversation

By Tutku Ayhan and Güneş Murat Tezcür | – It’s been five years since the Islamic State killed 3,100 Yazidi people in Iraq – mostly men and the elderly – forced 6,800 women and children into sexual slavery, marriage or religious conversion and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing. The Islamic State saw the Yazidis as […]