Aims and Implications of China’s Military Involvement in Syria

Aims and Implications of China’s Military Involvement in Syria

China is deploying troops to train, advice and assist in Syria. The decision comes after Syrian Presidential Advisor Bouthaina Shaaban met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Nov.24. Islamic militants from East Turkestan (China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) have shown up in increasing numbers in Syria’s north recently. The Syrian government claims that some 5,000 fighters of…

Cherry-Picking Toward War with Iran

Cherry-Picking Toward War with Iran

Although nobody knows exactly where Donald Trump intends to go with his campaign of seeking confrontation with Iran, his administration already has provided disconcerting parallels with the techniques an earlier U.S. administration used in selling its launching of a war against Iraq. Among these techniques is the cherry-picking of intelligence not to inform policy-making or to…

Battle may be Brewing in Sinai Between al-Qaeda, IS Groups

Battle may be Brewing in Sinai Between al-Qaeda, IS Groups

It looks like affiliates of the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda could go to war with each other in the Sinai Peninsula, though at this point the battle would be lopsided. In an audio recording released Nov. 11, al-Qaeda adherent Jund al-Islam declared war on much larger Wilayat Sinai, which is associated with IS, and claimed responsibility for the…