Syria

June 02, 2020 Gregory Waters

ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency in May 2020

Following is the May installment of “ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency,” a monthly update on the ongoing attacks by the terrorist group ISIS in central Syria. The April update, which detailed ISIS’s killing of at least 34 Syrian regime...

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...

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...

Daily Dose

Extremists: Their Words. Their Actions.

In Their Own Words:

We reiterate once again that the brigades will directly target US bases across the region in case the US enemy commits a folly and decides to strike our resistance fighters and their camps [in Iraq].

Abu Ali al-Askari, Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) Security Official Mar. 2023
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