By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 February 2022
The compound where Islamic State leader Amir Muhammad al-Mawla killed himself, 3 February 2021 || Image taken from social media
Another Islamic State “Caliph” Falls
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Tag Archives: America
Islamic State Gives Its Version of the Syrian Prison Break
Islamic State Dismisses the West’s “False Victory” Against It
India’s Options in Afghanistan
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 October 2021
Army Jawans hold the National Flag near the snow-covered border on the 71st Republic Day (ANI Photo)
The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman arrived in India today for a three-day visit. Afghanistan will be high on the agenda. Continue reading
What Can We Learn From Iran’s Foreign Minister?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 May 2021
Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif, December 2020, during an interview with Lotfullah Najafizada of TOLO News
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Muhammad Javad Zarif, took part in an oral history project intended for internal use by the clerical dictatorship in February and on 25 April the audio was leaked—so goes the story. There is every reason to think this is a controlled leak, which is to say an information operation or a piece of strategic messaging—more pejoratively, propaganda or disinformation: choose the terminology as you will—intended to assist the Iranian theocracy as it works through its negotiations on the nuclear file with the new American administration of President Joe Biden. Still, there are some insights from this episode, as with an interview Zarif gave—focused on Afghanistan—in December. Continue reading
Russia’s View of the Endgame in Afghanistan
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 February 2021
Russia’s presidential envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov
Russian ruler Vladimir Putin’s current special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, spoke to Sputnik’s Tajik service on 17 February, and a translation of the interview is published below with some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Kabulov was the KGB resident in Kabul in the 1980s and early 1990s, and later in the 1990s, during the Taliban’s reign over Kabul and much of the rest of the country, he was an adviser to the United Nations peace envoy. Continue reading
Women and Terrorism: The Case of the May 19th Communist Organization
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 January 2021
This article was originally published at European Eye on Radicalization
The world has been captivated this week by the scenes of an insurrectionary mob overrunning the United States Capitol at the behest of President Donald Trump. It is unlikely that many people remember or even know that nearly forty years ago, this building—the meeting place of the U.S. Congress, the place where laws are made—was bombed by a Communist terrorist group, a group remarkable for its all-female membership. A new book, Tonight We Bombed the Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America’s First Female Terrorist Group, by William Rosenau, a senior policy historian at CNA and a fellow in the International Security program at New America, examines this forgotten episode. Continue reading
Al-Qaeda Tries to Take Advantage of American Racial Divisions
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 June 2020
Al-Qaeda’s General Command released a statement on 29 June 2020 through its As-Sahab Media, entitled, “A Message For The Oppressed Masses In The West”, which seeks to capitalise on the recent unrest in the United States by offering Islam as the solution to racial divisions. Al-Qaeda, of course, diagnoses the root cause of America’s problems in its greed “Jewish overlords”, an antisemitic conspiracy theory that is common to most jihadists. The text of this message is reproduced below. Continue reading
The CIA and Iraq: Intelligence Failures, Media Successes
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 December 2019
In a long article last week, I looked at why the U.S. ran a formal occupation of Iraq for fourteen months after the fall of Saddam Husayn in April 2003, given that there had been an explicit pre-invasion decision not to have an occupation government. The short answer is that the occupation was installed through deception by the State Department, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). State and CIA had argued for a protracted occupation in the Situation Room debates in 2002, but President George W. Bush had sided with the Pentagon, which advocated a rapid transfer of power to Iraqis. Having lost in the formal inter-agency process, the State Department succeeded by subversion in getting its way on the ground in Iraq. The disaster this caused in the mismanagement of post-Saddam Iraq was, as the article explained in detail, only the most serious impact of the toxic schism between State/CIA and the Pentagon, a factor whose import is difficult to overstate when examining how the Bush administration functioned. (This feud also at times drew in the Vice President’s Office, which tended to support the Pentagon.)
Turkey Balancing Between America and Russia
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 July 2019
U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meeting during the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, 29 June 2019 [image source]
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