There is a growing concern from leaders in Central Asia about the encroaching threat of ISIS. Their top concern is that its extremist ideology will prove attractive to the region's many Muslims, lure some of them to the Middle East to fight as part of the group, and ultimately be imported back to the region when these militants return home.
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), although currently limited to fighting in north Iraq and east Syria, has managed to gain the support of Muslim extremists from across the world--igniting a trend that threatens to expand their jihad outside the confines of the war-torn Middle East.
The threat of Islamic militants deploying terror tactics across Southeast Asia is making an unwelcome comeback. Driven in part by the relentless drive into Iraq by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the threat has already emerged in Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines.
A senior Kremlin official has warned that the Islamist group ISIS is gathering its forces in northern Afghanistan in preparation for an attack against Central Asia and Russia, and that a wide array of military measures are required to prevent that.
Can the United States, European Union and Russia cooperate against the burgeoning common threat posed by the so-called Islamic State, even as their diplomats cross swords over the most recent escalation of fighting in Ukraine? The short answer is yes, but the path to cooperation will not be easy.
As many as 1,700 Russian citizens could be fighting for jihadist groups in Iraq, Russia's head of federal security (FSB) has said during a U.S.-chaired summit against violent extremism in Washington DC, Russian news service RIA Novosti reported today.
Russia is in ISIS's scope and now they must prepare for the inevitable military action it will take to deture them. As ISIS closes in on Russia's borders and continues to threaten one of the worlds superpower what is the solution?
recent gains by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and the well-publicized executions of captured American freelance journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff have once again drawn U.S. military assets and personnel into a civil war.
An international summit on combating militants from the Islamic State has opened in France, bringing together around 30 countries from a U.S.-led coalition. The Obama administration says several Arab League countries have signed on for airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but no sustained campaign is imminent.
The use of U.S. military force against ISIS is a significant escalation whose long-term significance is elusive. The announced justification for the military strikes combined a humanitarian rationale (the exigent need of the Yazidis stranded on their bleak mountain) with the threat that ISIS posed to American citizens in the Kurdish capital of Erbil.
A militant force will not be enough to completely extinguish the fires that are ISIS. Someone will rise from the ashes of ISIS and continue their extremist agenda.
If the United States is serious about thoroughly defeating ISIS, it must somehow, some way go through Syria. But how? And in what way? Those are the big questions now, as President Barack Obama weighs what to do inside the war-ravaged nation where ISIS leaders are based and where the Islamist terror group rose to prominence.
U.S. troops have been in combat longer than at any point in American history. In addition to two major wars, U.S. Special Forces were deployed to 133 countries (approximately 70 percent of the nations on the planet) in 2014. It makes little sense to continue with the same tactic of perpetual war, without any assurance of a better strategic outcome.
Baghdad must make unsavory choices as the U.S. sits out a key battle to retake a strategic town from the Islamic State group. President Barack Obama's refusal to be dragged back into another messy land war has forced a desperate Iraqi government to accept the help of its eastward neighbor as it attempts to beat back the Islamic State group, which now occupies as much as a third of the country.
The United Nations says the Islamic State group is systematically killing, torturing and raping children and families of minority groups in Iraq, and it is calling on government forces there to do more to protect them.
With images of violence and torture coming out of Syria daily, a U.N. panel on stated what many people consider obvious: ISIS has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and leaders of the militant group should be held accountable by organizations such as the International Criminal Court.
United Nations human rights investigators recently leveled accusations of genocide and war crimes at the Islamic State, citing evidence that the extremist group's fighters had sought to wipe out the Yazidi minority in Iraq.
kdancer on 13 Apr 15There is a growing concern from leaders in Central Asia about the encroaching threat of ISIS. Their top concern is that its extremist ideology will prove attractive to the region's many Muslims, lure some of them to the Middle East to fight as part of the group, and ultimately be imported back to the region when these militants return home.
