By Juan Cole The NATO summit in Wales was supposed to be all about getting out of Afghanistan. Instead, two new issues dominated it– the Ukraine and ISIL in Iraq and Syria. British prime minister David Cameron joined Barack Obama in castigating NATO members for paying ransoms to ISIL and for not stepping up to […]
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Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
Mosul’s First Death By Stoning: Extremists Distract With Displays of Savage Justice
By Khales Joumah | Mosul | via Niqash.org Mosul locals were invited to witness the city’s first death by stoning late last week – extremists who had taken over the city in early June had sentenced a man to death for adultery. Eyewitnesses say the event was shocking. And many in Mosul expect more of […]
Would a US/ NATO war in Syria be Legal in International Law?
By Juan Cole Efforts are being made in Congress give to President Barack Obama the formal authority to conduct air strikes in Syria against ISIL. Vice President Joe Biden is now talking, as well, about a concerted and long-term NATO response to the brutal fundamentalist movement, which controls desert territory and some oil resources in […]
Iraq Flashpoint: Can the Kurds defend themselves from ISIL?
By Verena Gruber, Talalward, Kurdistan (Special to Informed Comment) There is something incredibly odd about seeing the black flag of the so-called “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)” flapping in the wind; particularly when you see it, not on a television screen, but through a pair of binoculars. Today my journey led me […]
Iraq: Is the Battle of Amerli a Turning Point?
By Juan Cole The Iraqi military is maintaining that it has successfully relieved the town of Amerli (pop. 15,000) in northern Iraq from a siege by ISIL (the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). If true, this is the first success of the Baghdad military against ISIL since Mosul fell in early June. […]
Iraq Crisis: Will Sunni Tribes of Besieged Falluja Turn on IS There?
By Mustafa Habib | Fallujah | via Niqash.org Recently most of the attention has been on northern Iraq. But military action in western Iraq has been going on for months, after areas came under control of Sunni Muslim extremists and other anti-government groups. Some, like the city of Fallujah, have been under constant attack from […]
Obama, al-Assad and ISIL update FB Status: It’s Complicated
AJ+ AJ+ Will The US Bomb IS Group (AKA ISIS) In Syria?
ISIS: How to Defeat a Phony “Caliphate”
By John Esposito via Huffington Post Containing and ultimately defeating ISIS will require both short and long-term response. ISIS expansion has been made possible by political conditions in Syria and Iraq, ethnic-religious/sectarian divisions and violence and terror in the region, and the failures of the US and international community. Bashar al-Assad’s unprincipled and disproportionate military […]
US Public Worried about ISIL, Putin– But Climate Change is Real Challenge
By Juan Cole In a new Pew/ USA Today poll, the American public shows itself alarmed by the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq and Syria as a threat to US security, finding it more threatening even than Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has risen on the villain […]