Broken trust: How Iraqis lost their faith in Washington, long before the Kurds did

by Mieczysław P. Boduszyński, Assistant Professor of Politics, Pomona College In all the hand-wringing that critics and commentators have done since President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria, one of the common refrains emphasizes the breach of trust between Washington and its Kurdish militia partners. Some scholars of international relations Read more

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Final results of the 2018 elections in Iraq: no real winner

The results may be disappointing to Iraqi politicians, but it is a positive sign for the process. To form a government, they must work together to form a governing coalition, and the results show that there is no king maker. Here is what we know about the requirements and about the results: available seats 329, Read more

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Why are Western governments angered by those who compare the military campaigns in Mosul and Aleppo?

Charred bodies of ISIL fighters suggest abuse Over the last weekend of the month of November, Russian military leaders reacted to Western criticism of Russia’s support to the Syrian government to retake eastern Aleppo from armed groups. They countered by accusing the U.S. and its allies of double standard. They suggested, essentially, that what the Read more

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Will Russia react to Idlib’s incident the same way the U.S. reacted to Fallujah’s?

The similarities between two events–one took place in Idlib (Syria) on July 31, 2016 and the other happened March 31, 2004 in Fallujah (Iraq)–are eerie. It is reminder of the connections between the two conflicts. Syria’s is a direct result of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Fallujah incident, Americans killed, dragged in Read more

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The truth is the first and last victim of wars

Considering the utterly conflicting reports about a single strike, not a battle or a war, it becomes evident that a truthful narrative about war is elusive and indistinguishable from propaganda. This fact was underscored in the wildly divergent reports about a single attack on ISIL’s fighters fleeing the recently liberated city of Fallujah. In the Read more

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Saudi Arabia’s Impracticable Alliances

by Ahmed E. Souaiaia * Abstract: Before WikiLeaks released the Saudi diplomatic cables in 2010, the rulers of Saudi Arabia had cultivated the image of being deliberate, moderate, and averse to confrontation. Since the start of 2011, the Saudi rulers have behaved in ways that annulled that perception. The Saudi rulers hosted the Tunisian dictator Read more

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The legacy of the illegal war on Iraq and the burden of befriending the Wahhabi rulers

by Ahmed E. Souaiaia A day after the couple Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in San Bernardino, CNN reported that Malik had made “a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Subsequently, it was reported that Malik attended al-Huda, a religious institute whose funding and curriculum were decided by Saudi Read more

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