Iraq If you've been keeping up with Joel Wing's neighborhood-by-neighborhood accounting of the Mosul fighting, you'll likely notice that the Iraqis have been declaring a bunch of neighborhoods "liberated" for the second or third time since they entered the city. This, as much as anything else, should tell you how quickly the operation is progressing, … Continue reading Conflict update: November 21

Yemen Here today: A Saudi Arabia-led coalition supporting Yemen's government against Houthi rebels has declared a 48-hour ceasefire that began on Saturday, according to local media. "It has been decided to begin a 48-hour ceasefire from 12:00 noon in Yemen's timing (09:00 GMT) on Saturday," a coalition statement carried by Saudi Arabia's official SPA news … Continue reading Conflict update, November 19

Iraq Another day, another ISIS atrocity discovered: Iraqi security forces have discovered two mass graves near the city of Mosul containing around 250 bodies, police said Thursday. The graves were found near the town of Hammam al-Alil and were created by ISIS militants, Iraqi Federal Police Commander Brig. Gen. Faris Radhi Abbas told CNN. Their … Continue reading Conflict update, November 17

Syria Stop me if you've heard this one before: Jet fighters and helicopters bombing east Aleppo hit a children’s hospital and a blood bank on Wednesday, as medics and patients sheltered in the basement waiting for the hours-long assault to end. An ambulance driver and at least two children were among at least 20 civilians … Continue reading Conflict update, November 16

Syria The only really big conflict news today, and it is big, is that the Russian/Syrian pause in bombing the shit out of eastern Aleppo, and rebel-held Syria in general, has definitely ended: Warplanes resumed airstrikes on the besieged rebel-held sections of Aleppo, Syria, on Tuesday, as Russia began a major new offensive against insurgents … Continue reading Conflict update, November 15

Iraq I should have mentioned this days ago, but if you're looking for really nitty gritty information about the Mosul offensive, like which specific villages and neighborhoods Iraqi forces have liberated, Joel Wing's "Musings on Iraq" blog is the place to go. He gets into those details, whereas I tend to stick to more macro … Continue reading Conflict update: November 13

Here's a big update on events in the greater MENA region to punish you and/or make up for the fact that I've gone a little dark around here since Donald Trump was elected. Iraq Iraqi federal police, are in the process of entering Mosul from the south. This will put them in position to advance … Continue reading Conflict update, November 11

Oh, hi there. Been a while, huh? Sorry. Sometimes you just need a break, or a decent night's sleep, or in my case both. Here are the latest updates from all the various places in the greater MENA region where people are currently killing each other, or thinking about killing each other: Syria The big … Continue reading Conflict update, November 6

Iraq Let's start in Mosul, where the possibility of an Iraq-Turkey war immediately following the conclusion of the Iraq-ISIS war got considerably bigger today, when it became clear that Turkey has been deploying what sure looks like an invasion force along its Iraqi border. Ankara insists that it's just preparing for "eventualities," like, I guess, … Continue reading Conflict update, November 2

Syria Syria's parent corporation, Russia, decreed today that peace talks are on hold "indefinitely," citing Moscow's strong desire to blow a whole bunch more shit up the West's failure to separate the good rebels from the bad rebels: Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday a Western failure to rein in violent Islamists in … Continue reading Conflict update, November 1