Why do western media call a barbaric terrorist group the ‘Islamic State’ when it is neither Islamic nor a state?
ISIS has stepped opportunistically into the vacuum created by the absence of state, loss of shared narrative and feeble leverage of powers. But there may be a way ahead. A NOREF report.
What can explain the myopia of US policy towards Sudan, when it knows Sudan has been facilitating ISIS in Libya, Syria and Iraq, and other terror groups?
Not only is this popular description historically inaccurate, but such oversimplification can also be dangerous because it affects how we approach this threat.
The view that one particular religious doctrine is uniquely extremist won’t help us to appreciate the cycles of brutality that feed on narratives of torture, murder and desecration.
A victory for the Kurds and their allies in Syria is a victory for all who want a future that is dictated neither by fundamentalists nor imperialists.
The unravelling of Iraqi society set the context for the emergence of the Islamic State-led insurgency in Iraq. But the role played by IS is a byproduct of the flows of capital and ideology in a much wider theatre of power.
Netanyahu is warning us off an organisation which, like Israeli Zionism, claims its legitimacy on religious grounds and certain narratives of religious history.
On 29 June, after the spectacular takeover of Mosul and other Iraqi cities, the Islamic State (IS) declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. How can the sudden rise to power of IS be explained? What is the future of the caliphate, and of the region as a whole? Romain Caillet provides an assessment.
The roots of the most recent crisis in Iraq can be traced to the US-led invasion of 2003 and western meddling in Syria. At stake, is the neoliberal blueprint of post-invasion Iraq, now defended in an effort coordinated between the Baghdad government and its western backers.
Dominant narratives on Syria simplify it to a struggle between a dictatorship vs Islamic extremists, with Syrians included only as passive, voiceless, victims. In Part 3, Syrians are re-introduced as a people revolting against authoritarianism in both its secular and religious embodiments.
