The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization by the Turkish government, have exchanged harsh words in recent weeks over who has control over the strategically imporant city of Sinjar in northern Iraq. In an email interview, Jordi Tejel, a research professor in the international history department of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, discussed intra-Kurdish tensions. WPR: How has the fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS) affected relations between the KRG and the PKK—and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian affliliate of [...]
When U.S. President Barack Obama announced his strategy for countering the so-called Islamic State (IS) last September, it was met with an immediate volley of criticism, most of it asserting that the president’s approach was too timid. Incensed by IS’ horrors, the critics called for large-scale American military action. Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, demanded that the Obama administration “destroy” IS within 90 days. When told by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that this was impossible, Cruz issued a press release saying the general was wrong. Now that the 2016 presidential race has kicked off, [...]
Whether by burning a Jordanian fighter pilot alive, massacring Shiites or beheading American hostages, the self-declared Islamic State (IS) has an unprecedented knack for making enemies. IS has also inadvertently achieved what the United States never accomplished during more than a decade in Iraq: the mobilization of a willing coalition of Arab countries to fight jihadi extremists. Still, in the first year of its so-called caliphate, IS’ aggressive expansion appears to have passed its zenith. Both on the internet and on the ground, there are many indicators that the group’s decline has already begun. But IS will likely endure for [...]
