Dr Amir M Kamel This post is the first of a three-part series based on a panel titled ‘Middle Eastern Pragmatism and the Islamic State’ which took place at the Tenth Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern Studies Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies 22-24 September 2016 at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense. The Islamic… Read More Iran’s DAISH Policy: Pragmatic as ever
This is Part Two of a two part series on the topic by Dr. Rod Thornton. Dr Rod Thornton Throughout Ottoman times and from probably much earlier, it was the agricultural produce of the Mosul vilayet that fed the people of the less fertile vilayets of Baghdad and Basra. Finished-goods trade went the other way.… Read More Why Islamic State is wrong: Sykes-Picot is not responsible for controversial borders in the Middle East – but the British military is (Part 2)
This is Part One of a two part series on Sykes-Picot and the controversial borders of the Middle East. Dr Rod Thornton The Sykes-Picot Agreement, reached during the First World War by Britain and France, has recently been given renewed prominence. This has come about with the claim by Islamic State (IS) that this accord… Read More Why Islamic State is wrong: Sykes-Picot is not responsible for controversial borders in the Middle East – but the British military is (Part 1)
BY BILL PARK This is the first of a two-part series on the topic. The second of which will be posted next week on the Defence-in-Depth blog. Turkey’s very own Kurdish problem Turkey’s AKP government’s attempts to seek a resolution to the country’s domestic Kurdish problem had by the second half of 2015 deteriorated into… Read More TURKEY’S KURDISH PROBLEM(S), THE KURDS’ TURKISH PROBLEM(S), AND THE CRISES IN THE MIDDLE EAST (PART 1)
By DR AMIR M KAMEL On Wednesday 2 December, the British Parliament voted 397 to 223 in favour of extending the air bombing campaign, targeting DAISH (aka Islamic State, IS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL) from Iraq to include Syrian territory, following a one-day… Read More The UK Decision on Syria: Will air-strikes solve the problem?
This is the sixth and final post in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. An audio recording of this roundtable can be listen to or downloaded from the Defence Studies Department’s… Read More Iran’s Response to DAISH: It’s all about the Revolution
This is the fifth in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. An audio recording of this roundtable can be listen to or downloaded from the Defence Studies Department’s SoundCloud page. by… Read More ISLAMIC STATE AND TURKEY’S ‘PRECIOUS LONELINESS’
This is the fourth in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. An audio recording of this roundtable can be listen to or downloaded from the Defence Studies Department’s SoundCloud page. by… Read More The Kurds as Proxies against the Islamic State
This is the third in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. Subsequent posts will come out on Wednesdays and will cover topics such as the responses by the Kurds, Turkey, and… Read More Migrating to the Land of Jihad: Why European Muslims fight in Syria
This is the second in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. Subsequent posts will come out on Wednesdays and will cover topics such as the motivations for joining IS and the… Read More The Political, Religious, and Everyday Allure of Islamic State’s Utopianism
Defence-In-Depth 