... terrorism", the Federation Council official wrote on his Facebook page.
Kosachev said that although "not only the Sunni, but also some Shia countries (e.g., Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain) have been invited to join the coalition," without Iran and Iraq "this coalition cannot be called viable and efficient anyway."
According to him, the success of the fight against international terrorism "now depends on the willingness and ability of the countries facing the common threat to pool ...
... in the region and to spread their influence beyond its borders. The list is long enough -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, UAE .
Global powers also contributed to making the situation even less manageable. Attempts to reestablish institutions in Iraq were only partially successful. Sectarianism turned to dominate political transformation; Sunni politicians and managers were replaced mostly by Shiites. The law on "debaathization" and the dissolution of the Iraqi armed forces put many ...
On
November 13, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, backed by US airstrikes, retook the Northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, located on the Road 47, about 60 miles from Mosul and 120 miles from Raqqa, in Syria, the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL). The Iraqi Kurdish forces lost the control of the city in August 2014,...
The attacks will almost inevitably lead to an escalation of war in Iraq and Syria, as well as to changes in the balance of forces in the Middle East as a whole.
Although it will take time to truly evaluate the consequences of the November 13 massacre in Paris for the French, European and world politics, some conclusions ...
... a war that lasted through most of the 1980s and precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the entire Soviet Union.
As far as who learns from history, for now, the U.S. has a president in office now who campaigned on the fact that invading Iraq in 2003 was a colossal mistake, who, keeping this in mind, intervened only lightly in Libya and went out of his way to avoid being entangled in Syria. Meanwhile, Russia is placing a significant (though not huge) presence on the ground in Syria and ...
...
anti-Assad resolutions at the United Nations Security Council. This has left many in the west wondering: how can any country support such a monster?
There is no doubt that President Assad has blood on his hands – lots of it. So did Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Both these dictators were endorsed and armed by western powers – including the United States – before they were vilified and deposed. If western condemnation of murderous dictators has one rationalization,...
... conflict with direct intervention by degrading the Assad regime’s military capabilities and limiting the shipments of weapons into Syria with a combination of naval blockades, no-fly-zones, and the U.S. specifically partnering with its allies Iraq and (NATO member) Turkey to use drones, reconnaissance flights, and other high-tech monitoring equipment to lock down Syria’s land borders with both nations. NATO could have played a significant role in such an operation, too, not terribly ...
A Sensible Grading of Obama’s Middle East Strategy, As Opposed to Republican Nonsense: Part I: Introduction, Muslim World Reset, Iraq, Israel/Palestine
If you can’t understand that Obama’s overall Middle East strategy is starting to work, you don’t know what you’re talking about
By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 21st,...
... groups, two questions arise: what is the nature of these differences, and whether Islamic State can overcome them and unite other members of the international jihadist movement under its banner?
The rise of ISIS in June 2014 and the seizure of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, resulted from a comprehensive and multifaceted process, incorporating a variety of factors, ranging from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the political vacuum that followed to Iran’s growing influence in the ...
Military aircraft in the Middle East conflicts
December 18, 2011 was a momentous day for the U.S. Air Force: it flew the
last combat sorties
as part of
Operation New Dawn
, the final phase of the second Iraq War that began in 2003. For the first time since the start of the Desert Storm operation in 1991, U.S. war planes stopped combat operations over Iraq
[1]
. However, Iraq did not enjoy a peaceful sky for long. On August 8, 2014 two U.S. Navy carrier-based ...
