Also, Al-Monitor’s on-the-ground reporting on the security situations in Syria and Iraq, including the impact of the Turkish lira crisis on Idlib. Islamic State ‘entrenched as low-level insurgency’ The most recent report from the Pentagon’s Inspector General on Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led diplomatic and military operation against the Islamic …

A number of defence analysts are convinced that the United States of America, supported by Britain and Australia, is goading China to go to war over Taiwan. They point to constant statements by officials from the three countries pledging to come to Taiwan’s defence if it is attacked by China …

“This war has to end,” President Biden intoned in his first major foreign policy address at the State Department in early February 2021. He wasn’t talking about the war in Afghanistan. Rather it was the bloody, mostly one-sided, six-year battering led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against …

At the G7 Summit last June, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, representing the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia respectively, met in private talks. The subject was how to contain China and its influence. In September these leaders announced the AUKUS Alliance, a defence agreement between the countries. Australian …

The SDF and the Coalition forces conducted “operations in Ar Raqqah Province resulting in the detention of a key Daesh (ISIS) facilitator” The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested an alleged ISIS facilitator in Raqqa in a joint operation with the US-led coalition on Tuesday. Today @cmoc_SDF and Coalition forces …

At home in Helsinki, Ilona Taimela scrolls through hundreds of WhatsApp chats with her former pupils — pictures of animals, maths sums and simple sentences in English and Finnish. Last year, the teacher gave lessons to Finnish children imprisoned about 3,000 kilometres away in Syria’s Al Hol displacement camp — …

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) continue to plan to act independently and take out Iranian nuclear facilities if the upcoming Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) talks fail. Iran has stalled for five months on the resumption of talks which are scheduled to finally begin today. However, the talks between …

President Michel Aoun’s meetings in Doha focused on Lebanon-Qatar relations, soccer and the crisis between Lebanon and Gulf countries. Lebanese President Michel Aoun visited Qatar on Monday. Aoun met Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in the capital, Doha. The two discussed bilateral relations, and Thani expressed Qatar’s …

Thousands of migrants have gotten stuck at the Belarus-Poland border this winter, many of them Kurds from Iraq. Authorities from Baghdad and Erbil are continuing to repatriate migrants from Belarus. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in conjunction with the federal Iraqi government has returned 1,872 people from the eastern European …

The Kurdistan Region’s peshmerga forces suffer another attacked by Islamic State fighters. The Islamic State (IS) attacked Kurdistan Region security forces in northern Iraq again today. The assault occurred north of Kifri in the Diyala province. There were casualties among the Kurdistan Region’s peshmerga forces, the Erbil-based news outlet Kurdistan …