Stephen Frand Cohen was an American scholar of Russian studies. His academic work concentrated on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's relationship with the United States.
Asharq Al-Awsat is an Arabic international newspaper headquartered in London. A pioneer of the "off-shore" model in the Arabic press, the paper is often noted for its distinctive green-tinted pages.
The Islamic State (IS)—also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and by its Arabic acronym Da'ish—is a Salafi jihadist transnational Islamist terror group and former unrecognised quasi-state. Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency. The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants conquered large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, aided by the Syrian civil war. By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its interpretation of Islamic law, administered an annual budget of more than US$1 billion, and had more than 30,000 fighters under its command. After years of intense and grinding combat with American, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces, by 2019 it had lost all its Middle Eastern territories and returned to insurgency tactics in the regions it once controlled, operating from remote hideouts and continuing its propaganda efforts, which have gained it a strong following in northern and Sahelian Africa.
Souad Mekhennet is an ethnic Turkish and Moroccan journalist and author who has written or worked for The New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast and German television channel ZDF. She is a civic national of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Majalla, often directly transliterated as Al Majalla is a Saudi-owned, London-based political news journal published in Arabic, English and Persian. The magazine's headquarters in Saudi Arabia is in Jeddah.
In response to rapid territorial gains made by the Islamic State during its 2014 Northern Iraq offensives, universally condemned executions, human rights abuses and the fear of further spillovers of the Syrian Civil War, many states began to intervene against it in both the Syrian Civil War and the War in Iraq (2013–2017). These efforts are called the War against the Islamic State, or the War against ISIS. In later years, there were also minor interventions by some states against IS-affiliated groups in Nigeria and Libya. All these efforts significantly degraded the Islamic State's capabilities by around 2019-2020. While moderate fighting continues in Syria, as of 2023, ISIS has been contained to a manageably small area and force capability.
On 22 September 2014, the United States officially intervened in the Syrian civil war with the stated aim of fighting the Islamic State as part of Operation Inherent Resolve in the international war against the Islamic State. The U.S. also supports the Syrian rebels and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces opposed to both the Islamic State and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Following US President Barack Obama's address on the subject, a series of international conferences took place in order to build a formal coalition to destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which had taken over large portions of Syria and Iraq and had briefly invaded a small part of Lebanon.
Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) is the United States military's operational name for the international war against the Islamic State (IS), including both a campaign in Iraq and a campaign in Syria, with a closely related campaign in Libya. Through 18 September 2018, the U.S. Army's III Armored Corps was responsible for Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF—OIR) and were replaced by the XVIII Airborne Corps. The campaign is primarily waged by American and British forces in support of local allies, most prominently the Iraqi security forces and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Combat ground troops, mostly special forces, infantry, and artillery have also been deployed, especially in Iraq. Of the airstrikes, 70% have been conducted by the military of the United States, 20% by the United Kingdom and the remaining 10% being carried out by France, Turkey, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Jordan.
The Barwana massacre was committed by unknown Shia militia as a revenge for ISIS atrocities. It allegedly involved the sectarian execution-style killing of over 70 unarmed boys and men in the small Sunni village of Barwana, which is just west of Muqdadiyah, Iraq.
The Kobanî massacre was a combination of suicide missions and attacks on Kurdish civilians by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on the Kurdish-majority city of Kobanî, beginning on Thursday, 25 June 2015, and culminating on Friday, 26 June 2015. The attacks continued into 28 June 2015, with the last remaining ISIL militant being killed on the following day. The attacks resulted in 223–233 civilians dead, as well as 35–37 Kurdish militiamen and at least 79 ISIL assailants. It was the second-largest massacre committed by ISIL since it declared a caliphate in June 2014.
This article contains a timeline of events from January 2015 to December 2015 related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS). This article contains information about events committed by or on behalf of the Islamic State, as well as events performed by groups who oppose them.
Hassan Hassan is an American author and journalist of Syrian origin. He co-wrote the 2015 New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror with Michael Weiss. He has written on Islamist groups in the Middle East. He frequently appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, Amanpour and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, and has written for The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and The Daily Beast, among others.
ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror is a 2015 non-fiction book by the journalists Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan. The book details the rise and inner workings of the terrorist group ISIS.
Clint Watts is a senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University and a Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow. He previously was an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was the Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at United States Military Academy at West Point (CTC). He became a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation where he served on the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). He has consulted for the FBI Counterterrorism Division (CTD) and FBI National Security Branch (NSB).
The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election is a non-fiction book by Malcolm Nance about the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It was published in paperback, audiobook, and e-book formats in 2016 by Skyhorse Publishing. A second edition was also published the same year, and a third edition in 2017. Nance researched Russian intelligence, working as a Russian interpreter and studying KGB history.
Coda Media is a New York–based news website, headed by Natalia Antelava, a former BBC correspondent, and Ilan Greenberg, a magazine and newspaper writer who served as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Peter Pomerantsev, a British journalist and TV producer, serves as the editor-at-large.
Souad Nawfal is a Syrian Muslim schoolteacher and activist who became known for her protests against Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria. She received the Homo Homini Award, a human rights award, in 2014.
