ISIS

TURKEY’s president revealed yesterday that the US had proposed a “deep” invasion of Syria to capture the Islamic State (Isis) stronghold of Raqqa. Turkish media reported comments by Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he flew home from the G-20 summit in China. He said his US counterpart Barack Obama had broached the subject at the meeting.

A terrorist for the Israelis, Khaled was a symbol throughout the world for the Palestinian armed struggle, following her participation in one of the four simultaneous hijackings of September 1970, inspiring songs, films and works of art internationally. These hijackings were part of the Palestinian “response” to the ignominious defeat they suffered with the

Sadly, it’s a classic Middle East moment, when regional players’ mistrust of each other overwhelms their common interest in fighting the terrorist Islamic State. And, equally sadly, it’s a moment that illustrates the frailty of the United States’ Syrian policy, which has built its military plans on the treacherous fault line of Turkish-Kurdish enmity.

Islam Karimov is one of the two heads of the former Soviet states who had been ruling the country since independence in 1991. The other one is the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev (age 76). After Karimov’s death, a country where power was centralized in one man, risks falling into destabilization.

The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction. A weak but functioning IS can undermine the appeal of the caliphate among radical Muslims; keep bad actors focused on one another rather than on Western targets; and hamper Iran’s quest for regional hegemony.

« Islamisation de la radicalité » ou «radicalisation de l’islam»? C’est pour avoir soutenu que la radicalité des jeunes Occidentaux candidats au djihad préexiste à leur islamisation, qu’Olivier Roy est l’objet d’une âpre controverse. Gilles Kepel lui a en effet récemment consacré dans «Libération» une tribune assassine ironiquement titrée «“Radicalisations” et

Turkish forces intervened in Northern Syria, officially “against terrorists” (it is a custom now for nearly everybody operating in Syria, to do it under pretext of combating terrorism). But for most observers, the real aim of the operation is to stop the advance of Kurdish forces to the west of the river Euphrates.

By John Feffer Donald Trump may be a bigot and a bully, but it’s hard not to applaud when he pisses off the stuff shirts at...

CNN proclaimed the child “the face of Syria’s civil war,” while the anchor-woman theatrically burst into tears recounting his story. The New York Times called him “a symbol of Aleppo’s suffering,” while USA Today published a short editor’s note reading, “This Syrian boy is Omran. Will you pay attention now?”

Henry Kissinger reminds us that in international relations, states do not have permanent friends or enemies, only interests. That lesson reverberated Tuesday in St. Petersburg, where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan let bygones be bygones with his "dear friend, the esteemed Vladimir" in an ironic (and somewhat excessive) display of diplomatic reconciliation.