Orientul Mijlociu

Any measure of annexation is based on the extension of a military’s boots. Diplomats tend to be silenced before the noise of tanks, weaponry and garrisons. Countries may claim to possess territory but can only dream in the absence of military weight. When it came to the issue of negotiating the post-World War II agreements, Generalissimo Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union had a clear sense of this in charting out Soviet influence in east European states. Israel also bullied its way into recognition, making sure that it acquired, at various stages, the Sinai (since relinquished), the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

On March 19, 2019, a Kuwaiti court sentenced reformist journalist ‘Abdallah Al-Hadlaq to three years in prison for offending the Shi’ites and “fanning controversies among the sectors of society,” i.e., between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Kuwait. Al-Hadlaq was prosecuted for two tweets he posted in August 2018, in which he wrote that Imam ‘Ali bin Abi Talib – considered by Shi’ites to be the rightful heir of the Prophet Muhammad – and his sons had caused the Sunni-Shi’ite divide in Islam and that ‘Ali bin Abi Talib had deliberately delayed swearing loyalty to the first caliph, Abu Bakr.[1]

During the period of 17 September to 11 December of 2016, the United States and its allies carried out a massive operation to move ISIS’s surviving jihadists who were in the oil-producing Iraqi region of Mosul, into the Syrian oil-producing region of Deir Ezzor and Palmyra.

Save for the conflict’s opening salvos in the middle of 2014, the Libyan Civil War has largely been contained to pockets of violence. Prolonged battles decimated cities such as Benghazi, Derna, and Sirte, but the majority of the country has been spared large-scale destruction.

If you are one of the 3,400 mullahs who work as Friday Prayer Leader (Imam Jum’ah) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, you better start getting worried, very worried. The reason is that you may soon find yourself disembarked from the gravy train and your cushy seat given to a spring chicken novice.

Turkish police recently raided the homes of, and detained, more than a dozen nationals suspected of “joining conflicts in Syria, providing logistics and money, and recruiting for [terrorist] organizations.”

Britain, in recent days, has had a rare distraction from its seemingly endless Brexit debate. The distraction, however, has not been an altogether welcome one. It involves the case of Shamima Begum, one of a number of girls who left their school in Bethnal Green in London in 2015 to go and join ISIS.

The following is an op-ed by MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky that was originally published in USA Today on February 20, 2019.

Terrorist groups usually find ways to exploit the ever expanding services offered by major online platforms and tech companies, and Amazon Drive is no exception. Designed for storing and sharing photos, videos, PDFs and other forms of content, it has been adopted by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other organizations as a stable and reliable platform for disseminating their content. They upload it and then share the links to it with followers and sympathizers, primarily using the encrypted messaging app Telegram — terrorists’ “app of choice.”