Syria With everybody's eyes on the peace conference in Kazakhstan, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham has made a big move to consolidate its control of the rebellion in Idlib: Heavy fighting erupted in northwestern Syria on Tuesday between a powerful jihadist organization and more moderate rebel groups, threatening to further weaken the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad … Continue reading Conflict update: January 24 2017
Author: DWD
writer, blogger, lover, fighter
Deadline posting: the Battle of Rafa (January 2017)
Hi everybody! I'm on a deadline that may keep me from posting anything else today (stay tuned if you like), but in anticipation of just such a thing I've been holding on to Michael Collins Dunn's two-part look at the Battle of Rafah, which took place 100 years ago this month. Rafah wasn't a huge … Continue reading Deadline posting: the Battle of Rafa (January 2017)
Conflict Update: January 23 2017
Iraq Stop me if you've heard this one: Iraq has fully retaken eastern Mosul from ISIS. It seems like somebody has made this same announcement every day for the past week, and that's because somebody has made this same announcement every day for the past week. But you're dealing with different somebodies who have different … Continue reading Conflict Update: January 23 2017
Welcome to 2017: Get your war on
If it seems like we have a lot of wars going on all over the world right now, well, that's because we do--e.g., Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Kashmir...shall I continue? I'm not here to talk about any of those. Instead, this is a look at a handful of places that could flare into brand new wars … Continue reading Welcome to 2017: Get your war on
Conflict Update: January 22 2017
So our guests left a short time ago, whereas I thought they were staying another day for some reason. Leaving on Sunday makes a lot more sense, now that I think about it, but anyway that leaves me free to do a little Bad News Digest tonight. Iraq OK, the news isn't all bad. Eastern … Continue reading Conflict Update: January 22 2017
Conflict update: January 20 2017
Site Update The rest of January is going to be a difficult one for regular blogging. We have guests in from out of town who are participating in tomorrow's march in DC, and while things will return to normal early next week, I'll be traveling at the end of the week for family reasons. Tonight's … Continue reading Conflict update: January 20 2017
Conflict update: January 19 2017
The Gambia Private Citizen Yahya Jammeh, whose presidency still exists only in his own imagination, began his day by finding out that his vice president, Isatou Njie Saidy, had quit. He spent his day hearing about the inauguration of new Gambian President Adama Barrow in the Gambian embassy in Senegal (which is Gambian soil, technically) … Continue reading Conflict update: January 19 2017
Barack Obama and American foreign policy
As President Obama heads off to, well, whatever it is he plans on doing, everybody and their NatSec Granny has been doing foreign policy retrospectives of his administration. Some of them have been mostly positive, others largely negative, and that's just among the analysts who are generally straight shooters rather than rabid partisans whose assessments … Continue reading Barack Obama and American foreign policy
Conflict update: January 18 2017
NOTHING MATTERS LOL ♫ It's the final countdown... ♫ Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016, trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of … Continue reading Conflict update: January 18 2017
Welcome to 2017: Time for a reality check
UK Prime Minister Theresa May delivered her long-awaited (?) Brexit speech yesterday. I say "long-awaited" because, for a while there, people were starting to complain that May had offered no guidance as to how her government would approach exit talks with the European Union, to the point where she had to deny earlier this month … Continue reading Welcome to 2017: Time for a reality check
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 