Tag Archives: sectarianism

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Terror Attacks in Australia, Canada, and America

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on November 21, 2014

The Islamic State released the fifth edition of its English-language propaganda magazine, Dabiq, on November 21, 2014. In it, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks: in Australia by Numan Haider on September 23, in Canada by Martin Couture-Rouleau on October 20 and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau on October 22, and in America by Zale Thompson on October 23. The Islamic State says these attacks were in response to the call on September 22 by the organization’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. The article is reproduced below with some minor editions for transliteration and some important sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

Will The Alawis Break With Assad?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 12, 2014

A grisly brood: The Assad family

A grisly brood: The Assad family

Last Thursday, in Akrama, an Alawi section of Homs City, there was the most extraordinary scene: Alawite anti-Assad protests. A twin bombing at a local school—reported as a suicide bombing by the regime, though there is no evidence for this—had massacred fifty Alawi civilians, most of them pupils. Annexing the slogans of the revolution, the Alawis took to the streets to demand the removal of Homs Governor Talal al-Barazi. “The people want to topple the governor,” people shouted, a conscious echo of the “Arab Spring” chant, a-shab yurid izkat an-nizam (the people want to topple the regime). Continue reading →

Nouri al-Maliki Is Pushing Iraq Into The Abyss

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 10, 2014

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

Whatever one thinks about the decision in 2003 to finish the war Saddam Hussein started by annexing Kuwait, serious people should be able to agree that the way the country was abandoned by the United States—first politically after 2009 and then militarily—was deeply irresponsible, not least because of the motives of this decision. Continue reading →

Book Review: Cruelty and Silence (1993) by Kanan Makiya

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 7, 2014

 

Kanan Makiya, an Arab author who writes of the decline of the Arab world as a story where Arabs have the primary agency, can be disorienting to read in the modern context. The first part of Cruelty and Silence deals with the cruelty of the Arab world in general and the Saddam Hussein regime in particular, Continue reading →