History Readings

After a week of disturbing headlines, is Islamic State winning? It depends where. In Syria, where Islamic State (IS) captured Palmyra and is said to have murdered large numbers of people in its usual bloodthirsty fashion, it looks as though the regime of Bashar al-Assad is getting into serious trouble.

On Jordan's bleak, windswept border with Iraq there is little two-way traffic these days. The convoys of articulated lorries that used to thunder through the Karama crossing, shuttling goods between Baghdad and Aqaba, have dwindled to a trickle.

An Islamist coalition that includes Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front has taken over one of the last government strongholds in western Idlib province, activists say. The Jaish al-Fateh, or Conquest Army, took control of the city of Ariha after a "lightning offensive", the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Former SS lieutenant Gerhard Sommer, at the top of a most-wanted list of Nazis, has been declared unfit for trial by prosecutors in Germany. They said he had severe dementia. Sommer, 93, was one of 10 ex-Nazi officers found guilty in absentia in Italy of one of the country's worst civilian wartime massacres.

Nigeria's army has sacked at least 200 soldiers for cowardice and failure to fight against Boko Haram militants, several soldiers have told the BBC. Up to 4,500 other rank and file soldiers could be dismissed, they say. A Nigerian military source confirmed the dismissals to the BBC, but would not give an exact figure.

The football bureaucrats of the world were probably expecting to make global headlines as they gathered for the Fifa Congress in Zurich. But the news so far has been bigger - and worse - than they can possibly have imagined.

The US military accidentally sent live anthrax samples to as many as nine labs across the country and to a US military base in South Korea, the Pentagon says. Twenty-two military personnel at the Osan Air Base in South Korea are receiving preventive treatment after being possibly exposed to the sample.

Pakistan has hanged three Baloch insurgents, 17 years after they hijacked a passenger plane with 30 people on board. The men were executed at jails in Karachi and Hyderabad. They hijacked a Pakistan International Airlines flight in May 1998 and ordered the pilot to fly to India but the plane was diverted and stormed by troops.

Malaysia has detained 12 policemen suspected of human trafficking, two of whom are said to be connected to recently discovered jungle graves. Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the two officers were suspected of transporting migrants. He also clarified that the 139 graves found on the border with Thailand were not mass graves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to make losses of Russian troops in peacetime a secret. The amendment bans information about the deaths of Russian forces "during special operations" in peacetime. The Kremlin has consistently denied sending regular troops and armour to help rebels in eastern Ukraine.

The indictment was unsealed in the District Court of Northern Illinois on Thursday. The Justice Department alleges that Hastert made large withdrawals after he agreed to pay an unnamed subject $3.5 million. The indictment does not explain precisely what the "past misconduct" is, but instead details at length various withdrawals and financial transactions he made with the unidentified subject.

The leader of al-Nusra Front - the al Qaeda-affiliate group in Syria - insisted on Wednesday that he is under orders from the organization's central leadership not to attack Western interests in Syria, but rather focus on toppling President Bashar al-Assad. Golani said "all options are open," for an attack on the West if his group felt compelled to act in self-defense, but he insisted that Nusra is focused on battling the Assad regime inside Syria. Golani also issued a threat to the Shia Alawite community of Syria, saying, "if the Alawites disowned Bashar al Assad, stopped supporting his regime, and if they stopped practicing their erroneous doctrine, we would forgive them." Assad himself is Alawite.

GROZNY, May 28. /TASS/. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Thursday the Islamic State (IS) militant group poses a threat to both the Middle East and Russia. "The IS terrorists have nothing to do with Islam. Their path contrasts with our religion. This has been proven by the leading Islam researchers. They are cutting, beheading and shooting innocent people, including Muslims," Kadyrov was quoted by his press service as saying. "The enemies of Russia want to see the Chechen Republic hit by the war," he stressed.

There are signs Israel may be at war again this summer. This time, not with Hamas in Gaza but with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such a war may be the result not only of spillover from the Syrian war or ongoing Israeli-Hezbollah tensions. The deciding factor may be an Israeli calculation that war will shift momentum in the U.S. Congress decisively against the pending nuclear deal with Iran -- a deal that critics say will increase Iran's maneuverability in the region, including its support for Hezbollah.

ANKARA, TURKEY - Governments throughout the Middle East and well beyond look with suspicion on Turkey's role in the war against the Islamic State. "Turkey's policy is either a double or triple game,"  a former top Jordanian intelligence official was more direct. "They are collaborating with Daash, but they just don't say it," he said of Turkey, referring to the Islamic State by its pejorative Arabic acronym. Turkish officials see a different issue. "The question is not where Turkey is," the official said. "The question is who will be with Turkey when the mayhem starts. Our soldiers will be the primary target. And we don't want to be the heroes . . . we don't want to be left alone with this problem at the end of the day."

While this instability is making the West -- particularly the United States -- uncomfortable, it is also a direct result of the West's own stance towards dictatorships in the region prior to and during the Arab Spring. The West's shortsightedness in handling the Middle East throughout its modern history has directly contributed to its current devastation. The situation in Yemen today shows that even though the status quo under dictatorships may have appeared stable, beneath the surface volcanoes were preparing to erupt But the current misery in the Middle East still does not mean that the region was better off under dictatorships. The aftermath of dictatorships is always messy, and democratic transition is never linear.

Putin said even if "someone has done something wrong," Russia "has nothing to do with it." "Our American counterparts, unfortunately, are using the same methods to reach their goals and illegally persecute people. I don't rule out that this is the case in relation to FIFA," Putin said. "I have no doubt that this is yet another evident attempt to derail Mr. Blatter's re-election as FIFA president. We are aware of the pressure that he was subjected to in relation to Russia holding the 2018 World Cup."

"I will talk about the Zionism, which probably is the most important reason why this acrid attack on Bin Hammam and me was mounted"

KARACHI, Pakistan - "We live in a kingdom of fear, fortified by religious extremism and intolerance," columnist Ghazi Salahiddin recently wrote in The News on Sunday, one of Pakistan's leading English-language newspapers. Such hyperbole reinforces stereotypes about Pakistan. But sometimes, stereotypes contain more than a grain of truth.

A US court has backed a temporary hold on President Barack Obama's plans to shield almost five million illegal immigrants from deportation. The hold was imposed after 26 states launched a legal challenge against the executive action, alleging it was unconstitutional. An appeals court has now denied a government request to overturn it.