Posts Tagged: ISIS

As ISIS threat grows, Baghdad makes deal with Iraq’s Kurds

November 19, 2024 by Lara Vergnaud in Middle East.

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People hold the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdistan Democratic Party's flags at the Ibrahim Khalil Border Crossing to welcome Peshmerga forces, sent by KRG to fight against Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) alongside other armed groups in Syria's Ayn al-Arab (Kobani), on October 28, 2024 in Duhok, Iraq.

The deal could mark a lasting boost to Iraqi-Kurdish relations, which hit an all-time low under al-Maliki.

With spread of ISIS, China bolsters narrative of domestic terrorism

October 15, 2024 by Lara Vergnaud in Asia-Pacific.

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Chinese police seal off the road leading to the Urumqi Intermediate People's court as the trial of Ilham Tohti, a former economics professor at a university in Beijing, begins in Urumqi, west China's Xinjiang region on September 17, 2014. Chinese authorities imposed tight security in Urumqi Wednesday for the separatism trial of a prominent scholar from the mostly-Muslim Uighur minority, as critics warned the prosecution will worsen tensions in violence-wracked Xinjiang. AFP PHOTO / GOH CHAI HIN

Beijing has long sought to equate its campaign against Xinjiang separatists with the global war on terror, in much the same way that Russia’s President Vladmir Putin has done so with militants in the Caucasus.

Turkey’s Erdogan fans flames of Kurdish unrest

October 9, 2024 by Lara Vergnaud in Middle East.

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Demonstrators hold a banner as they are sprayed by a water cannon during clashes with riot police outside of the Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in Ankara on October 9, 2024 during a protest to denounce Turkey's unwillingness to intervene militarely against Islamic State (IS) forces in the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane by the Kurds.

The longer Turkey waits, the greater the danger that the tenuous peace with Kurdish militants will unravel.

Extremism in Iraq, explained

July 2, 2024 by Lara Vergnaud in Middle East.

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Iraqis who have fled recent fighting in the cities of Mosul and Tal Afar try to enter a temporary displacement camp but are blocked by Kurdish soldiers on July 2, 2024 in Khazair, Iraq.

The situation in Iraq is worsening, what with Sunni militants declaring their own expansive Islamic “caliphate” this week.

Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria

November 16, 2024 by Mark Galeotti in Europe, Middle East.

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Syrian army soldiers take their positions, south of Damascus, Nov. 8, 2013. (AP Photo/SANA, File)

It has emerged that Russian mercenaries are working for the Assad regime- ironically, as Russia stiffens penalties for citizens fighting abroad.

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