Syria

May 07, 2020 Gregory Waters

ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency

At the end of 2017, the Syrian regime and Russian President Vladimir Putin proudly proclaimed their militaries’ victory over ISIS. Andrew Roth, “On visit to Syria, Putin lauds victory over ISIS and announces withdrawals,” The Washington Post...

ISIS’s Struggling Media Strategy

ISIS’s media arm is struggling to find a way to report on the group’s recent military encounters, specifically its humiliating losses to the Syrian and Iraqi armies in Abu Kamal and al-Qaim, respectively. This problem is clearly reflected by ISIS’s...

Countering Hezbollah, Iran’s Expansion

The Trump administration recently unveiled its new strategy to counter the threat Hezbollah and Iran pose to the United States and its interests abroad. Despite talk of designating the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist...

ISIS – The Terrible Twos

The rise of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) took much of the world by storm. In a 2014 interview with the New Yorker, President Obama pronounced the blood-spattered theocratic gang to be no more than a “JV squad” (compared with the varsity...

Assad’s “Military Solution” for Aleppo

Reading - and watching - the news out of Syria, it is difficult for observers to find grounds for optimism. The “peace talks” hosted by the United Nations collapsed in Geneva before they ever reached takeoff speed. The “cessation of hostilities”...

The Best of Frenemies

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," goes an ancient proverb. New common enemies in today’s Middle East might not turn old foes into friends, but they may at least create a détente, allowing adversaries to join together against larger threats. One...

July 09, 2015 Brian Stewart

ISIS in Iraq and Syria: Bloodied but Unbowed

At the dawn of the US-led campaign against ISIS in September 2014, President Obama announced the formation of a “broad coalition” whose mission was to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. Since then, the international coalition has carried out more...

Syria Post Assad – No Closer to Pluralism

In the early days of the Syrian rebellion, it was widely assumed that the Assad dictatorship would collapse in short order. The “Arab Spring” had already cast off tyrannies in Tunisia and Egypt. The Ghaddafi regime in Libya would soon join that list...

Competition Among Syrian Extremists

The outbreak of armed conflict in Syria has driven the country into chaos, with a spectrum of opposition groups claiming to be fighting for the people and against the Assad regime. As the Syrian Civil War enters its fifth year, Islamic extremist...

Daily Dose

Extremists: Their Words. Their Actions.

Fact:

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded southern Israel where, in the space of eight hours, hundreds of armed terrorists perpetrated mass crimes of brutality, rape, and torture against men, women and children. In the biggest attack on Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust, 1,200 were killed, and 251 were taken hostage into Gaza—where 101 remain. One year on, antisemitic incidents have increased by record numbers. 

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