Orientul Mijlociu

Stalingrad Of The Arabs

Forty years ago this summer, the attention of much of the world was focused on Beirut. Israel sought to finish with Palestinian terrorism from Lebanon once and for all and fatefully invaded, coming all the way up to the Lebanese capital. Israel had also hoped to facilitate the installation of a friendly Lebanese Christian government but their principal partner, charismatic Lebanese Forces Commander Bashir Gemayel, would be assassinated by Syrian intelligence shortly after being elected president of Lebanon and before he actually took office. Despite Israel’s clear military superiority, it would utterly fail in its political goals.

Islamic State threatens Kurdish workers in northeast Syria

The Islamic State is threatening to kill employees in the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria in the countryside of Deir ez-Zor if they continue to report to their jobs.

Islamic State (IS) cells in the countryside of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria threatened employees and workers of institutions linked to the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and warned them against carrying out work for the administration.

Turkey signals new rules of engagement to Syrian Kurds, Damascus

Turkish strikes on Syrian government troops and overt Kurdish attacks on targets inside Turkey signal that both sides are changing the rules of the game as Ankara eyes normalization with Damascus.

Ankara’s reconciliation overtures to Damascus have been accompanied by growing Turkish attacks on Syrian Kurdish and government forces along the border — a sign of new engagement rules in a border strip extending 32 kilometers (20 miles) into northern Syria that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to see as a “safe zone.”

Barzani says former Turkish president wanted federation with Iraq’s Kurds

In his memoir, Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani shares that Turkey’s former President Turgut Ozal had once floated the idea of “annexing” Iraqi Kurdistan.

As Turkey escalates its campaign against Kurdish militants in the north of Syria and Iraq and Kurdish politicians within its borders, Masoud Barzani, the preeminent leader of Iraq’s Kurds, recalls a time when Ankara’s policy toward his people was distinctly different.

Iran Prepares to Take Out Israel – Right after Iran Deal Is Signed

The mullahs appear convinced that once the Biden administration capitulates completely to their demands for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, they will be able to step up their already significant efforts to eliminate Israel and export their Islamic Revolution to Arab and Islamic countries. Iran already occupies four Arab countries: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Syrian foreign policy in the Caucasus and Ukraine: An unbalanced, Russia-centered approach

Prior to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in early 2011, Damascus consciously sought to pursue a relatively balanced foreign policy toward most of its neighbors. Its challenges with Israel notwithstanding, Syria tried to maintain diversified and even-handed relations with Iran, Turkey, and the Arab world regionally and with Russia, the European Union, and the United States on the global level. However, when the Arab Spring uprisings brought political crisis home to Syria, the government’s sharp domestic crackdown gradually changed these conditions, resulting in Syria’s expulsion from the Arab League and the escalation of tensions with Turkey and the Western world. This threw Syrian foreign policy out of its traditional balance, compelling the country to rely overwhelmingly on support from Iran and Russia. The constricted room for maneuver on the regional and international stage has had numerous and varied consequences for Syria foreign policy over the past 11 years. But some of the most illustrative about-turns caused by the swing toward Russia could be observed in Syria’s relations with neighbors in the post-Soviet space: namely, Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

Erdogan’s New Offensive – OpEd

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that he is planning a new military offensive in northern Syria directed against the Kurds.

If one authoritarian leader can defy world opinion, invade the territory of a sovereign state and incur only minor consequences, why not another? This may well have been the reasoning that first led Erdogan to send his armed forces into Kurdish occupied areas of northern Syria in August 2016. His precedent would have been the invasion of Crimea by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin two years earlier.

ISIS terrorist El Shafee Elsheikh jailed for LIFE: From West London QPR fanatic to Syria

As a young boy, El Shafee Elsheikh dreamed of playing football for Queens Park Rangers.

Refugees from the civil war in Sudan, he and his family had settled near QPR’s west London ground when he was five.

Footballers were soon replaced by gangsters as role models when he was drawn into a world of drugs and violence on the council estates where he grew up.