Iraq

Daesh consolidates, Kurdish opposition divides

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates around 5,000 people from all sides and including fighters and civilians died in Syria during August. The shocking recent death toll in Syria is just the latest reasons why hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled the country. The total number of Syrian refugees displaced across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa now stands at over four million. The Jerusalem Post reported that among those who have fled to Europe are 100,000 Palestinian refugees that have previously been living in refugee camps across Syria, but had never had the right...

Erdogan turns to repression as he loses support

In the last week of July, Turkey began its bombing of Kurdish forces of the PKK in Syria and Iraq. The cover given for the bombings was Turkish President Erdogan’s eventual agreement to take action against Daesh (ISIS) and support the US’s bombing of them. But the truth is very different. The bombings began as the two year truce broke down between Turkish armed forces and the Kurdish PKK — the militia, primarily based in Turkey, which has had an on-off war with Turkey for 30 years. It also followed the massacre of young pro-Kurdish socialist activists in the town of Suruc who had gathered...

Turkey breaks ceasefire with PKK

The bomb attack on the youth wing of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed, the SGDF, as their members travelled to Suruc on the Turkey–Syria border to help reconstruct Kobane, has provoked a wide ranging response from the Turkish state. The SGDF according to official accounts were attacked by a suicide bomber from Daesh (ISIS), with over 30 of their members killed. The SGDF is part of a coalition of groups with close links to the People’s Democratic Party. Press reports from across the region quote their members and supporters who are sceptical of the official claims and believe they were...

How to fight Daesh

The killing of at least 39 people by a gunman in Sousse, Tunisia, along with the destruction of a Shia mosque in Kuwait, on Friday 26 June, may signal a shift in strategy for Daesh (ISIS). Until now, their declared aim was the establishment of a caliphate in Iraq-Syria. This latest development could be the start of a new global jihad. The targeting of tourists is a move away from the targeting of religious minorities and non Sunni Muslims. The flow of foreign fighters to Daesh’s capital in Raqqa, Syria, is another alarming trend. Tunisian nationals now make up the largest proportion of foreign...

Where did ISIS come from?

It is true that ISIS is a dangerous force that has started a devastating war in the Middle East in which the results are beheading, raping and ruining the traces of civilisation. It is true that ISIS wants to drag civilised societies into the same primitive Sharia reign of Islam. But the worst and most dangerous thing is that it tries to drown the civilised world in blood, terror and killings, as a means to grab the power and wealth of society. ISIS is a black spectre overwhelming human society. As a bourgeois force carrying the banner of Islam, ISIS has a strategy for the world-wide political...

Daesh captures Ramadi

Daesh (ISIS) has caputred the Iraqi city of Ramadi. This represents a reverse of Daesh’s perceived fortunes, after air strikes seriously injured their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. With Iraqi forces again fleeing a majority Sunni area, Iranian backed Shia militia are moving towards Ramadi with the Iraqi Government’s backing. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province and is just 70 miles from Baghdad. It was a key battleground during the “Sunni Awakening” and the US troop surge which helped to partially defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq. The US has pledged to provide no military or logistical support to the...

The rise of “Islamic state” in Iraq and Syria

Cockburn’s 160 pages are an introduction to the rapid rise of Islamic State (IS) across Iraq and Syria. Recycling material from articles in the Independent and London Review of Books Cockburn charts how Islamists from various groups came to dominate the Syrian rebellion after 2012 and changed it from one of predominantly secular and democratic opposition to the ultra-conservative. In which Saudi Wahhabism and Saudi and Gulf state funding played a big role. Cockburn argues here, as he has in the past, the invasion of Iraq created a sectarian war between Shia and Sunni. Subsequently a US-backed...

Syria: four million refugees

Lebanon has now revoked the six month residency that it granted Syrians and is enforcing new visa restrictions. Since 2011 four million Syrians have been forced to leave Syria. Almost half Syria’s population of 11 million people have been displaced. Lebanon alone has taken in 1.5 million refugees. Many refugees are now living in only slightly worse conditions than the local population and competition for work, aid and resources is now provoking a backlash among Lebanese; a further 220,000 became unemployed in the last quarter of 2014. In comparison, the UK has taken just 1,500 asylum seekers...

UN suspends refugee food aid

The UN World Food Programme has suspended the food aid scheme for the 1.6 million Syrian refugees now living in Iraq and Jordan until new funding is secured. The suspension of the programme, costing £41 million for December alone, could create a crisis for refugees. More than 3.2 million Syrians have become refugees since the beginning of the conflict with President Assad; a further 7.6 million have been internally displaced. 200,000 Syrians have been killed, 60,000 civilians. The death toll in Kobane continues to rise with casualties on both sides. 11 Kurds and 50 ISIS (“Islamic state”, Daesh...

Daesh: a slow fightback

According to the Kurdish website Rudaw, the Syrian-Kurdish forces in Kobane, augmented by peshmerga troops from Iraqi Kurdistan, are now pushing back the ultra-Islamists of Daesh (ISIS, or “Islamic state”). Kurdish commanders in Kobane say that they now control half the city, which is in a Kurdish-majority part of Syria close to the Turkish border, and the other half is “destroyed” by US air strikes against Daesh. Regaining territory, however, is a slow process of street-by-street fighting. In Iraq, on 23 November Daesh launched an attempt to take the city of Ramadi, but elsewhere they have...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.