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Mar 29, 2017

ISIS Drags out the Battle for Mosul

By Feras Hanoush

The battle to liberate Mosul in northern Iraq from the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) has gone on for four months, reflecting the organization’s stamina and the fact that it has a sophisticated plan for arming, supplying, and defending itself. A combination of Iraqi army and security forces, Shia Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Kurdish […]

Iraq

MENASource

Mar 28, 2017

The Shifting Strategies of ISIS

By Mona Alami

The battle for Mosul — the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) bastion in Iraq — is entering its sixth month with Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition controlling about three quarters of the city. While fighting is focused on capturing the symbolic Nuri mosque in the Old City, where the organization leader Abu Bakr […]

Iraq

MENASource

Mar 23, 2017

Sixth Anniversary of the US-Libya Intervention: A Model for the Future

By Nedal M. Swehli

Six years ago on March 19, 2011, the United States started its military intervention in Libya. In 2009, President Obama, in his inauguration speech, addressed the world’s dictators asking them to “unclench their fist” and said  that “America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace […]

Libya

MENASource

Mar 22, 2017

Russian Policy toward Libya: The Egyptian Factor

By Mark N. Katz

A great deal of media attention to Russian involvement in Libya arose as a result of a March 14 Reuters report that Moscow “appears to have deployed special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya.” These forces, reportedly consisting of a 22-man unit, deployed to support General Khalifa Haftar, who […]

Libya North Africa

MENASource

Mar 20, 2017

Turkey Is in a Bind as Syria’s War Approaches its Final Chapter

By Aaron Stein

Russian and American action in Syria is fundamentally at odds with Turkish interests. The two international actors have both backed the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), in ways that harm Turkish interests. The PYD is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an insurgent […]

Syria Turkey

MENASource

Mar 20, 2017

Libya, The Time to Avoid Escalation is Now

By Karim Mezran and Mattia Toaldo

Libya risks a new escalation and a deepening of the division between the eastern region under General Khalifa Haftar and the rest of the country nominally under the control of an ever-weaker UN-backed government headed by Fayez Serraj. On March 3, fighting started in the Oil Crescent, the part of Libya’s central coast where 60 […]

Libya

MENASource

Mar 15, 2017

While All Eyes On Mosul, Extremists Return To Other Iraqi Provinces

By Mustafa Habib

In the town of Baiji in central-northern Iraq, a senior police commander has been recording attacks by extremists – almost every day. “Before, extremist attacks were more rare,” the police chief, Saad al-Azzawi, told NIQASH. “But over the past few weeks, the numbers have increased in a very frightening way.

Iraq

MENASource

Mar 13, 2017

Priorities for Ending the Libyan Crisis

By Emily Burchfield

Former US Special Envoy to Libya, Ambassador Jonathan Winer spoke at a panel event on Libya at the Rafik Hariri Center on March 9, 2016 and gave a short interview afterwards describing the priorities for ending the Libyan crisis. Below is a summary of his comments and the Facebook Live interview. 

Libya

MENASource

Mar 13, 2017

Is Libya’s “Skhirat” Agreement Really Dead?

By Karim Mezran

The Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB)’s recent successful offensive conducted against the Libyan National Army (LNA) in the Gulf of Sidra—in which it seized the oil ports and terminals of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider—leads one to consider its effects on the Skhirat agreement. This is the agreement that produced the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) and […]

Libya

MENASource

Mar 10, 2017

Saudi’s Purist Salafi Drive into Southeast Asia

By H.A. Hellyer

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud is currently engaged in a tour in Asia, which will last about a month. Five out of six of the countries he is visiting are Muslim majority nations (the sixth, China, has a significant and ancient Muslim minority population). While there is undoubtedly a financial and economic aspect […]

Saudi Arabia