... component, which is harder to counter. We know that ISIS has already chosen a new leader, and as often happens, when you eliminate the head, the person that comes after is usually even more of a risk. The main priority now is to resolve the issue for thousands of ISIS fighters and affiliates, as well as wives and children who are in prison camps in North-East Syria and Iraq. This is another domain where international cooperation will be necessary to ensure that the instability in these regions do not lead to an ISIS 2.0.
It is in this context that international actors need to learn the lesson of Iraq. Any diplomatic ...
... days ago, Russian oil major Rosneft announced that it will invest in gas pipelines in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan, expanding its commitment to the region, to help it become... ... infrastructure through which crude is exported via Turkey to global markets. For the USA, it is not satisfied with the Turkish rapprochement with Moscow, and might use the... ... Moscow and Washington fear the current timing of independence poll, as the fight against ISIS is tensing and progressing. A crack between Baghdad and Erbil would badly alter...
... had defeated its foe, liberated Kabul, and changed the regime.
2003 War of Choice in Iraq
But afterwards, as Paula Broadwell observed, the initial brilliant success in Afghanistan... ... members down to Level 4 without any agreed reconciliation process. This gave tens of thousands of influential Iraqis – often Western-educated – an incentive to oppose the... ... or Massive Ordnance Air Blast), the largest conventional bomb in the US arsenal, on ISIS fighters in Afghanistan on April 14. Facing what Mattis has called a “clear and...
... alliance against their mutual enemy: Maliki’s anti-Sunni government. Using Anbar as a base within Iraq, ISIS was able to advance and take large amounts of Iraqi territory, much of which it still holds today. Thus, it was Maliki’s absolute refusal to compromise with and accommodate Iraqis Sunnis and others that created the current crisis with ISIS. The sad truth is that if Maliki had treated the Sunnis and Kurds more fairly, the Iraqi government—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds united against terrorism as they were back in 2007—would have been in a strong position to fend off ...
... are coming from all over the world—even young girls from the West—to join ISIS in Syria (some 30,000 over the past few years, according to a recent major report)... ... involved in this will have been veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq. All of those conflicts lasted about a decade; almost none of these guys quit easily... ... little further into Russia itself. This restive population includes hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees now, most of whom will have legitimate gripes against Russia...
... Eastern conflicts, the civil war raging in Syria is currently the largest and deadliest. Here, as in other situations, we have a crisis in which we must be careful not to blame Obama too much but must also note the missed opportunities where his substantive ... ... 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 ...
... granting immunity and having already committed to his Iranian allies that he would see our troops out in 2011. We will come to ISIS (and Obama’s mild military reengagement in Iraq) and Syria as separate issues.
Israeli/Palestinian Peace
Here, one may be tempted to make more of the efforts of the ... ... Israel announced the construction of 1,600 settlement housing units to be built on illegally occupied, disputed land in East Jerusalem (which was occupied in 1967 along with the West Bank and Gaza and which Israel has held in defiance of multiple binding ...
... Maliki’s closest allies, including the Shiite Iranian regime (arguable even a bigger supporter of him than the U.S.), began to distance themselves from him and abandon him.
The Obama Administration Makes Its Move: Checkmate on Maliki
Tens of thousands of Yazidis were running out of time, though, and facing genocide, and ISIS kept making gains, even threatening Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. With intense pressure coming at Maliki from all angles, Obama announced on August 7 that U.S. forces would carry out limited air strikes in Iraq aimed at halting ISIS’s advance. Many of these initial strikes were in the north, helping ...
... military spending.
One reason to be optimistic about addressing the IS problem is that there is a 'coaltion of the unwilling' which is nonetheless appearing more assertive than its more 'willing' counterpart back to 2003 in Iraq. No wonder since the threat for other states in the region is formidable. On the other side, the new Iraqi government shall be one of the major pieces of the puzzle since it has to become a better alternative for Iraqi Sunnites. Concentrating power ...
