Turkey’s ties with Ukraine have complicated relations with Russia.
Ukraine has used a Turkish drone for the first time in its conflict with pro-Russian separatists, according to Turkish media.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted a video yesterday showing an aerial view of an unspecified target in an open area. The target then explodes, seemingly as a result of a strike from above.
Al-Sadr’s party controls 70 of a total 329 parliamentary seats in Iraq and the movement has a large base across country.
Muqtada al-Sadr remains one of Iraq’s most influential political figures and plays a pivotal role when it comes to the country’s future. He is currently considered the kingmaker, but it remains unclear if he can form a government with stability.
In the latest elections, al-Sadr’s party obtained 70 of a total of 329 parliamentary seats – a significant increase compared with the result of 2018, when his movement won 54 seats.
Police said the ISIL attackers used several vehicles and semi-automatic guns in their attack.
At least 11 people have been killed and others wounded in an ISIL (ISIS) attack on a village in Diyala province in eastern Iraq, according to the country’s security forces.
The attack on Tuesday targeted “defenceless civilians” in the village of al-Hawasha, near the town of Muqdadiya, the Joint Operations Command said in a statement.
Speculation has been rife American forces would withdrawal from Syria after the Afghanistan pullout in an effort to end ‘forever wars’.
The United States will not be withdrawing its roughly 900 troops from northeast Syria any time soon, despite mounting speculation it would do so following its much-maligned August pull-out from Afghanistan, according to officials with knowledge of the Biden administration’s plans.
The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army in north Syria announced a series of mergers recently, derailing plans by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to seek rapprochement with some of the factions affiliated with the Syrian National Army.
The Azm Operations Room, which consists of a number of Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions, recently announced the merger of six FSA factions with the new Third Legion.
The main opposition CHP announced an hour before the session that it would vote against the motion.
Amid rumors of a Turkish military offensive in northern Syria, the Turkish parliament ratified today a motion that extends the government’s mandate of carrying out cross-border operations in Iraq and Syria for another two years.
During a four-day visit to Russia, the head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Iran, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, discussed with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ways of strengthening military-technical cooperation between the two countries. Bagheri was particularly interested in new Russian hardware now that international restrictions on arms supplies to the Islamic Republic have expired. Bagheri termed defense interaction with Moscow unprecedentedly wide in scale, and explained that Iran at this stage is interested in the implementation of previously concluded agreements with Russia covering the supply of fighters, training aircraft and military helicopters.
The issue of Abu Muslim al-Shishani” has come to the surface via an audio recording where he accused HTS with lie and deception in a bid to dismantle his faction after demanding them to hand their weapons and deport Idlib.
Abu Muslim al-Shishani said he doesn’t want to enter in clashes al-Mujahedeen and that the HTS has repeatedly asked for leaving Idlib and hand over the weapons on nullified charges for his and his group of sheltering criminals of ISIS.
He refuted such charges and called on members of the HTS to not believe their leaders and not to accept fighting against his group. He also affirmed that he wouldn’t accept their demands and if any of his headquarter in al-Shahel are attacked and he will defend himself and die in dignity instead of being humiliated in the HTS prisons like what has happened with other Jihadists.
Al-Haskah province: SOHR activists have went on in large protests outside the headquarters of the UN in al-Qamishly to condemn the Turkish attacks that target areas under control of the Autonomous Administration in north and east Syria and asked to stop it. The latest attack was on yesterday where military car has attacked the SDF by a drone which led to the murder of three of members of the SDF
While concerns of a terrorist resurgence in Afghanistan are front and center, we need to remember that there are thousands of ISIS fighters waging a low-level insurgency in Iraq and Syria. Containing that threat is critical, and doing so over the long term requires an international relations moonshot: creating an independent Kurdish state.
Based on past efforts to create an independent Kurdistan, it would seem unlikely and Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Russia would oppose such a move. However, the status quo is untenable, and no other solution likely would be as effective and durable in containing the terrorist threat in the region.