Ongoing conflicts — including U.S. “counterterrorism” operations — combined with escalating poverty and repression could amplify the pandemic’s social cost.
COVID-19 Is a Huge Threat to Stability in Africa
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al-Qaeda
The Embalming of Syria
The Trump administration is doing its best to keep Syria dismembered and near death.
The View from Syria’s Peace Talks
After 13 rounds of talks in Kazakhstan, the parties are aiming small. Still, that’s a lot better than nothing.
America’s Yemen Policy is Creating More Terrorists
As Iraq finally pries the death grip of the Islamic State off of its bloodied form, you’d think US policy would reflect the lessons learned from killing innocent civilians and destroying the basic functions of a nation. Instead, more than a decade of using drones to...
The Final Obama Doctrine? Racking Up the Body Count
During its final years in office, the Obama administration has devised a new form of warfare with major implications for how the U.S. government confronts its enemies. With the ability to quickly locate and eliminate potential adversaries with little to no risk to...
The Right Way to Defeat Terrorism
The recent attacks on Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are just the most recent examples of the horrific terrorist acts taking place around the world. The Islamic State’s recent bombing in Baghdad killed 250 people and wounded hundreds. The uptick of ISIS...
The Children’s Crusade
This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com. In 1954, a single book destroyed the popular notion that children are innocent souls. In that book, a plane of such innocent souls crashes on a deserted island. There, in a paradise of...
Bombing the Islamic State Is Like Watering Its Roots
Al Qaeda and the Islamic State’s creation stories can be seen as a combination of domestic despots and foreign intervention. The latter began with Great Britain in the 1800s through World War I and reached its apex with the United States with its invasion of Iraq (not...
Islamic Extremism Not Only Protean But Potentially Synergistic
We recently ran a post titled Islamic Extremism Is Nothing if Not Protean. “Whack the mole of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda will pop up,” we remarked. That was based on the concept of one or the other. But what if, instead of one replacing the other, as the Islamic...
Why Are Disproportionate Numbers of Islamic Extremists Engineers?
In a wide-ranging article (highly recommended) in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dan Berrett address a new book on Islamic extremists by social scientists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection Between Violent Extremism and...