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Articles on Islamic State

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It is hard to police ‘soft targets’ for violent, lone wolf actors without becoming an overpoliced state. AAP/Dean Lewins

Q&A: what we can learn from the Sydney siege, and what next

Sydney is slowly returning to normal after police brought an end to a 16-hour siege in a Martin Place cafe in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The perpetrator, Man Haron Monis, and two hostages, Katrina…
The printed word or waving flags, such as this ISIS banner, can only reach so many people. EPA

How terrorists use Twitter to become ‘brand ambassadors’

On an overcast afternoon in London in May 2013, an off-duty soldier named Lee Rigby was murdered near his barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. Rigby’s killers were two young British men of Nigerian…
Three Australian IS fighters may have been killed in the last month, including Mohammad Ali Baryalei. AAP Image/YouTube

Foreign fighters test the state’s monopoly on violence

Estimates are that there are more than 60 Australian citizens in the ranks of the Islamic State (IS) armies sweeping through Syria and Iraq. In a recent case, reported by the Sydney Morning Herald last…
David Cameron entering parliament on Friday. AAP/Alan Porritt

How far should communications companies police the internet?

Climate change, Tony Abbott’s encounters with Vladimir Putin, the looming G20 and much else have pushed to the sidelines another important development of this week – the indication from Barack Obama that…
From the Turkish side of the border, residents watch an attack on Islamic State positions in the Syrian town of Kobane. EPA/Sedat Suna

Turkey has its own good reasons for not intervening in Kobane

As the Kurdish town of Kobane continues to defy Islamic State (IS) forces, many pundits have condemned Turkey’s unwillingness to help the People’s Protection Units (YPG) keep the forces of “evil” at bay…
The start of a beautiful friendship? The US’s John Kerry and Iran’s Javad Zarif. EPA/Carolyn Kaster/Pool

US must not miss another chance to mend fences with Iran

It’s a desperately sad historical irony: in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq because its secular dictator was allegedly about to supply Islamist terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. About three…
President Barack Obama said that allied forces need “to train and assist Iraqi security forces” so they could go on the offensive against ISIL. EPA/WANG ZHAO / POOL

Obama talks to Abbott about ‘supplementing’ US effort in new phase of Iraq conflict

Some Australian special forces have entered Iraq but more than half the contingent is still to do so. As US president Barack Obama said on Monday he was having conversations with Australia and other Coalition…
A military campaign against Islamic State forces will offer no long-term resolution to Iraq’s extremist problem. YouTube/VICE News

Islamic State knows its history; to defeat it, we must know ours

To explain the disaster befalling Iraq, as well as the rise of Islamic State (IS), you have to go back a century – before modern Iraq even existed. That’s not to discount the shared culpability of Iraq’s…
One size doesn’t fit all. Matthew Black

Why there is no such thing as the Muslim ‘community’

Cases of extremist violence and sexual exploitation have caused significant anxiety in the UK in recent years and politicians are continually looking for ways to identify how these things happen and how…

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