With the situation in Gaza and Israel entering a critical stage, Foreign Affairs has put together a package of articles that offers analyses from subject experts on the crisis. The articles in this package cover different aspects of the conflict such as the future of Israeli democracy, the ability of Egyptian president El-Sisi to negotiate a ceasefire and regional […]
Considering the violent political unrest in various parts of the world, many accept the claim that the 21st century will go down in history as a period of global reorder, perpetual insecurity and bloodshed. If the grim headlines of the first decade could be taken as forecasts of the storms ahead, many nation-states are […]
It is time that the United States takes a hard look at supporting an independent Kurdistan.
Credit: AFP Over the weekend Israeli officials confirmed that Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the Palestinian teen who was found last week in a Jerusalem forest beaten and burnt to death, was likely murdered by Jewish Israelis who were seeking revenge for the recent kidnapping and killing of Gilaad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah by Palestinians. […]
With many eyes on the World Cup, another international contest has been brewing in Central Asia: the region’s biggest mosque. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both former Soviet republics, each have under construction mega-mosques in their respective capitals, funded by foreign partners. While perhaps unsurprising in predominately Muslim countries in the fading shadow of the USSR, the […]
Richard Barrett is Senior Vice President at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security intelligence firm that provides strategic services to governments and multinational organizations. He is an internationally recognized expert on violent extremism and the measures that can be taken against it. A former British diplomat and intelligence officer with the British government in the […]
Known today at the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has gone through many reorganizations and name changes in the course of the past dozen years, but it has kept essentially the same goals. Although sometimes referred to as a branch of al Qaida, it is better described as a rival organization that formed […]
Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute. Dr. Cagaptay has written extensively on U.S.-Turkish relations, Turkish domestic politics, and Turkish nationalism, publishing in scholarly journals as well as key American and Turkish media outlets. He writes regularly as a columnist for Hürriyet Daily News, Turkey’s oldest and […]
The U.S. should not help Shia Islamists to the detriment of Sunni Islamists. The U.S. should support toleration and moderation in Iraq. Their current policies don’t do this. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated that it would be a serious mistake to ease pressure on Iran in the nuclear talks in exchange for help […]
Last week, three young Israeli Yeshiva students (two 16-year-olds and a 19-year-old) were kidnapped. They were tremping in the West Bank. Tremping is easily translated into English as hitchhiking, but it typically lacks the questionable connotations which that word can conjure in America, at least after “the Summer of Love.” The story is ongoing and […]
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a prominent Middle East scholar at Bar Ilan University, told an audience at the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel that the United States made a great mistake by not dividing Iraq into three states, one Kurdish, one Sunni, and one Shia. He believes that this mistake led to a situation […]
With the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) pressing now toward Baghdad, Iraq’s only hope in the chance of a more inclusive government is to move toward a coalition embracing all of the country’s religious and ethnic groups. But with suspicion and hatred in Iraq running deep, it’s easier said than done, and […]
I have been recently asked by LinkedIn to contribute writing for the professional social networking site. So, for my first piece I decided to write the following on the worsening situation in Iraq. The piece can be accessed in its entirety here. The crumbling of government authority in Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq under the alarming onslaught […]
By now, everyone has heard about the abduction of three Israeli teenagers on Thursday night in the Gush Etzion area of the West Bank. Everyone has heard the reports about one of the kidnapped teenagers calling Israeli police shortly after being kidnapped to ask for help and the slow response of the Israeli police. Everyone […]
As a former detractor who has not been a fan of the Obama administration’s foreign policy toward Somalia, it is an overstatement to say that I watched Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman’s speech on June 3 with certain level of skepticism. Of course, nothing more than that healthy dose necessary in […]