Special to WorldTribune.com Turkey and Russia risk setting off an “accidental war” which threatens to bring NATO into the equation, analysts say. “Both Russia and Turkey are looking to position for strategic advantage,” Tim Ash, head of emerging-market strategy at Nomura in London, said on Feb. 15. “The risk is of an actual Russo-Turkish military […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Yazidis are said to have burned and looted homes of Muslims in the Iraqi town of Sinjar as revenge for Islamic State of Iraq and Levant’s (ISIL’s) brutal slaughter of Yazidis last year. According to witnesses in Sinjar, the Yazidis were burning homes that had been marked “Sunni” by ISIL after it […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Turkey’s government reported that 3,337 Syrians had crossed into Turkey from Syria since June 3 amid heavy fighting between Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and Kurdish forces. The Kurds are attempting to push ISIL out of Tel Abyad in Syria’s Hassakah province which is close to Turkey’s border town of […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Kurds in the Syrian north offer one of the few glimmers of hope in a region where religious minorities are brutalized, repressed and at risk of genocide. Minority Rights Group International (MRG) issued its 2015 Peoples Under Threat list and Syria was at the top after five years of war that has […]
Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — The United States, despite intensified air strikes, has acknowledged significant gains by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. President Barack Obama’s envoy to the anti-ISIL coalition said ISIL continues to advance in Iraq. [Ret.] Gen. John Allen said U.S. and coalition air strikes failed to stop ISIL in its […]
Special to WorldTribune.com WASHINGTON — The United States has pledged a more aggressive military deployment in Iraq. Officials said the administration of President Barack Obama has approved a more than 50 percent increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. The officials said the troops would engage in training and mentoring of Iraqi military […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Gregory R. Copley, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Much has been spewed forth about the seemingly inexorable and sudden rise, steeped in blood, of a chimeric new “state”, the so-called Islamic Caliphate. It has occupied land seized from Syria and Iraq, both states conveniently presently divided, distracted, and ripe — at least for […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System / Defense & Foreign Affairs In the so-called “Geneva II” round of talks underway (in Montreux, Switzerland, not Geneva) during late January 2014, on the conflict in Syria, Syrian opposition chief Ahmed Jarba has kept demanding, in the name of the international community, the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Norman Bailey A mere two and a half years ago the Middle East and North Africa were organized in the following categories: Democracies: Israel and Turkey Traditional monarchies: The gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan Oman and Morocco Secular dictatorships: Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Syria, of which Libya and Syria […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Fariborz Saremi Sectarian tensions in Iraq are reaching a crisis point. A series of bombings in Sunni-dominated areas of Baghdad and its surroundings which resulted in over 700 hundred deaths in April, followed by 200 more deaths since Friday May 17, are indicative of the worsening security situation. Moreover, extreme forces […]