Whether it is the rule of militias, the rising influence of the Islamic State (IS – Daesh) or the tragic fate of migrants fleeing the scourge of war off its coast, Libya is once again in the international headlines. Then again, Libya has always been newsworthy, but there always seems to be something else overshadowing it. Continue reading “What Went Wrong in Libya? Everything.”
Time to Re-Evaluate the War against Daesh
We all knew that Daesh was capable of horrible things. However, the death by burning to which Jordanian pilot Moaz al Kasasbeh was subjected to broke through a morbid threshold I believe very few of us, if any, thought would happen. This isn’t to say that the other killing methods (decapitation, execution, drowning, etc..) used by the so-called Islamic State are any less brutal. But we dealt with them by exercising a degree of denial, if only because of the sheer number of times they have and continue to occur and more importantly, as a coping mechanism to deal with the horrors of Daesh at our doorsteps. Continue reading “Time to Re-Evaluate the War against Daesh”
“The West will never understand Iraq’s complex landscape”
It is heartbreaking to watch a country fall apart and become accustomed to its cities becoming synonymous with war itself. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, this has been the fate of Iraq. Sadly, recurrent violence in Iraq and the eruption of wars elsewhere, such as Syria, have also pushed the Iraqi story away from the front pages of the world’s news.
Continue reading ““The West will never understand Iraq’s complex landscape””
Eye on the East 