The US Department of Defense has, for the fifth straight year, failed to pass a financial audit, with only seven out of the Pentagon’s 27 military agencies receiving a passing grade. “We failed to get an ‘A’,” Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller and chief financial officer, told reporters last week, …

On 24 November, the Iraqi government announced its decision to redeploy troops to the borders with Iran and Turkey, following recent attacks by Tehran and Ankara against Kurdish positions in the Iraqi Kurdistan semi-autonomous region, Al-Awsat news reported.

On 19 August, 2014, ISIS released a video of the beheading of American journalist James Foley who was kidnapped by the terrorist organization in 2012 while reporting on the conflict in Syria. Foley’s shocking execution became one of the most widely followed news stories of the Syrian war. Foley’s killer, …

French MAMBA Surface-Based Air and Missile Defence system repelled Wednesday a simulated air attack by Allied fighter aircraft in an exercise, according to NATO’s Allied Air Command Public Affairs Office. Deployed in Romania since May 2022, the MAMBA has been augmenting NATO’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) system. Allied …

China is expanding its multilateral diplomacy, and one of its targets is Central and South Asia. Indeed, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is clearly in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s sights, given that many Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects are situated in SCO member countries. Before Xi attended the G20 …

Introduction Moldova’s new reformist government came to power in August 2021 under President Maia Sandu, promising to clean up Moldova after years of corruption and deepen relations with the European Union. Since that time, it has faced a succession of crises, all of which are connected to Russia. Within weeks …

In The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Industry of Death (New York: Bombardier, 2022), an ambitious and powerful book by Cynthia Farahat, she argues that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), founded nearly a century ago, presents a far greater threat than is usually perceived, being nothing less than “the world’s incubator of modern …

A Turkish drone strike on a top Kurdish commander’s headquarters came within 130 meters of US troops in Syria on Tuesday. The Pentagon warned on Wednesday that Turkey’s airstrikes against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria endanger US troops and threaten to undermine years of progress in the war against the …

The Turkish president adds that “there is no resentment or bitterness in politics.” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has aired fresh interest in a possible meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as Ankara is doubling down on its threat for a ground operation against Syrian Kurdish groups.  “A meeting with Assad is possible. …

The police of the Syrian National Army assaulted protesters near the city of al-Bab following civil protests calling for controlling the security situation in the city and holding the killers of a prominent activist accountable. The Turkish Ministry of Defense said on its official Twitter page, “It’s payback time,” in …