As I write this, the people of Gaza hopes for an end to the week-long Israeli bombardment which has killed more than 180 Palestinians – many of them civilians have been dashed after Hamas rejected the…
Kurdish soldiers have been forced to defend parts of Iraq from jihadi fighters. What are their chances of gaining independent statehood?
AAP/Guillaume Briquet
Without the bloodshed and destruction associated with the Islamic state jihadis, one of Iraq’s constituent pieces is moving quietly towards establishing itself as a free-standing political entity. Massoud…
This Assyrian winged bull is safe in Chicago, if far from home. How much else is safe?
Trjames
Iraq has a long and rich heritage, home for thousands of years to mighty empires – Assyria and Babylon, the Abbasid caliphate – that ruled the region once known as Mesopotamia, widely held as the cradle…
Watchful: Iraqi government troops at border with Jordan.
EPA/Alaa al-Shemaree
After a month of fighting in Iraq, the ISIS insurgency has made considerable progress, even if there is now something of a stalemate as Shi’a militias organise themselves and the weak Iraqi Army gets a…
Smoke pours from the Baiji oil refinery, the largest in Iraq, by some reports under the control of ISIS forces.
EPA/STR
The mid-June penetration of northwestern Iraq by the extreme Islamist movement ISIS has prompted major concerns about the world’s oil supply and energy security. The group’s incursion threatens Iraq’s…
Yes we can (I’ve checked this with my legal team).
EPA/Evelyn Chavez
With the world focused on ISIS and Iraq, last month US Special Forces carried out a capture operation in Libya against Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi. The…
British support for opposition groups fighting against the Assad regime in Syria has waned considerably since the summer of 2013, with the increasing prominence of more radicalised Islamic organisations…
Iraqi forces have retaken Tikrit but now face a united enemy.
EPA/Alaa al-Shemaree
After the death of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, the global jihadist movement seemed to have become fragmented and considerably weakened. This happened for various reasons. First, the coincidence of the…
Prince Faisal and his party (including T E Lawrence) at Versailles, 1919.
Wikimedia Commons
The sweeping advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has given rise to a lively debate about who should bear ultimate responsibility for the disintegration of Iraq and Syria. On one hand…
The jihadi fighters in Iraq and Syria include hundreds of Australians.
EPA/Mohammed Jalil
The conflicts in Syria and Iraq are attracting many westerners, including young Australians, as jihadi fighters. Last December, Australian intelligence agencies reported that they were aware of at least…
Concern is again mounting about the radicalisation of young British Muslims, with the news that up to 500 may be fighting in Syria. But despite the gravity of the issue, the public discussion of it is…
Since its nadir in the 2000s, British Islamophobia has become more tempered.
John Giles/PA
For some time now, speculation has raged over the number of young British Muslims travelling to Syria and Iraq with the intention of fighting in the ongoing conflicts there. At the high end, Birmingham-area…
A photograph made available by a jihadist affiliated group.
Albaraka News/EPA
This week Twitter began suspending accounts related to ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham). This follows an ISIS fighter reportedly posting the photo of the head of a decapitated Iraqi police major…
ISIS appears to be attempting to recruit fighters from Europe via social media.
Twitter
The Sunni rebels in Iraq have made further gains, taking control of important border crossings with Syria and Jordan, the Rutba truck-stop on the main road from Baghdad to the Jordan border and two towns…
Baiji oil refinery in northern Iraq under attack.
STR
David Elmes, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
Recent tensions progressing to conflict in Iraq have raised concerns that world prices for oil will rise after a period of relative price stability that’s masked significant changes in supplies. Conflict…
Shia militias have flocked to defend Baghdad.
EPA/Khider Abbas
Once again, Iran and the United States find themselves thrust into the heart of a Middle East crisis. As the Sunni ISIS militia rampages across Iraq, consolidating its hold on a large area of territory…
Hard sell: can Obama convince Americans to trust Iran?
EPA/Martin Simon/Pool
Charles Dudley Warner’s oft-quoted suggestion that “politics makes strange bedfellows” is never better illustrated than the prospect of a rapprochement between Iran and the United States. Stimulated by…
Iraqi volunteers join forces to fight ISIS alongside the army.
EPA/Alaa Al-Shemaree
Saad Jawad, London School of Economics and Political Science
The fall of several Iraqi cities to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS, or Da’ish as it is known in Arabic), was a shocking turn of events – shocking, but not totally unexpected. Whatever Tony…
Kurdish peshmerga brigades, which have emerged as the only viable military counterweight to ISIL in Iraq, prepare defences at Kirkuk.
EPA/Khalil al-A'nei
The Kurds have no friends but the mountains, runs the adage. Marginalised, dispossessed and oppressed in their historic homelands, Kurds have long lamented a lack of powerful allies willing and able to…
Dorothy Parker famously reacted to the ringing of the telephone with the phrase, “What fresh Hell is this?” Occupants of the White House could be forgiven for having adopted the same practice when it comes…