By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 February 2022
Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell to jihadists on 15 August 2021, and this has emboldened the jihadist movement across the world, providing it with a morale boost and a model, as well as renewing the terrorist safe haven that incubated 9/11. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 June 2021
By the autumn of 1940, the entirety of Western Europe except Spain and Portugal lay under Nazi control, as did much of the Centre and parts of the East: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France had all fallen without serious resistance, and Britain’s refusal to take the German offer of leaving the Continent to the Nazis and the Nazis would leave the British with India had incurred the wrath of the Luftwaffe with night after night of air-raids.
It was in this context that a meeting was held, on 23 October 1940, between Adolf Hitler and Spain’s ruler, Francisco Franco. The meeting, taking place at the railway station in Hendaye, within conquered France, on the western-most point of the Franco-Spanish border, was also attended by the foreign ministers, Ramón Serrano Súñer (Spain) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (Germany). The Germans arranged the meeting to try to get Spain into the war, and General Franco attended the meeting intent on refusing—politely. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 June 2021
The Idea of Central Europe: Geopolitics, Culture and Regional Identity (2018), by Otilia Dhand, is an engaging and rather ambitious book, a work of intellectual history. Dhand’s core argument is that from the introduction of the term “Central Europe” in the nineteenth century, it did not describe a set geographical zone and the definition was always contested since the term was an attempt to construct local identities, a self separate from some other, as an instrument in the pursuit of geopolitical interests, always revisionist: these were attempts to will something into existence by influencing political behaviour. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 January 2021
“Luther at the Diet at Worms”, by Anton von Werner, 1877
The Diet of Worms convened 500 years ago today.[1] Four years earlier, Martin Luther had sent his Ninety-five Theses as part of a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz, Albert of Brandenburg. The date on which Luther sent this letter, 31 October 1517, is now celebrated as “Reformation Day”, but the Reformation in a serious sense did not begin until after Luther was summoned before the 1521 Diet of Worms. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 April 2019
Ahmad al-Shara (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani) [image source]
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 26 September 2018
The spokesman for the Islamic State (IS), Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, gave a short speech today, “The Muwahhidin’s Assault on the Tower of the Mushrikin” (The Monotheists’ Assault on the Tower of the Polytheists). Abu Hassan’s speech was further confirmation of IS’s responsibility for the terrorist attack in Iran on 22 September. IS has published an English-language transcript of this speech, which is reproduced below with some editions for transliteration. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 July 2018
Foreign fighters with the YPG/PKK on the outskirts of Tal Tamr in northwestern Syria, 16 April 2015. UYGAR ÖNDER ŞİMŞEK / AFP / Getty Images
ABSTRACT: The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) operates under the names of the Democratic Union Party and the People’s Protection Units in Syria. The PKK is registered as a terrorist group by most Western governments, the European Union and Turkey, where it originated as a separatist organization. Nonetheless, the YPG has been the partner of the United States-led coalition in Syria against the ISIS. The strengthening of the YPG/PKK and its political messaging has brought in a flow of western foreign fighters. Some of these fighters are now returning to their homelands with indications that they are bringing security problems with them.
Article published in Insight Turkey.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 10 May 2018
Saddam al-Jamal after his capture, 9 May 2018 (image source)
Saddam al-Jamal, born in al-Bukamal, a town near the Iraqi border in Syria’s the Deir Ezzor province, became a prominent example of a rebel against Bashar al-Asad’s regime who joined the Islamic State in 2013. It has now reported that al-Jamal has been arrested by the Iraqi government after an operation involving Turkey and the United States lured him into a trap. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 March 2018
Screenshot from video of a PKK attack on Turkish diplomats in Paris, France (13 March 2018)
A wave of politically motivated violence has swept over Europe in the last few days, carried out by an extremist group and its sympathisers, accompanied by public statements threatening further attacks.
These attacks are intended to change western policy to one more suitable to the attackers.
The conventional term for this is “terrorism”.
These assailants are not Islamist, however; they are from the Kurdish PKK, and this seems to have both reduced the amount of attention this campaign has received, and to have dulled the reaction from some who suggest that perhaps the attackers have a point. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 August 2017
The Coalition announced yesterday that it had killed eight Islamic State (IS) “leaders involved in directing external operations, as well as bomb-making, directed at regional and Western targets”. Continue reading