Robin Wright, New Yorker: The Test in Tikrit
Tikrit, the city on the Tigris ninety miles north of Baghdad, has long served as a symbol of Iraq’s ancient past. More recently, Saddam Hussein was born in one of its suburbs, and he was buried there after his execution, in 2006. Now Tikrit has become the test of Iraq’s future.
On March 1st, Iraq launched its first major offensive against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham since the movement seized a third of the country, last summer. The goal is to take back Tikrit, a city of a quarter million people, as the first step in recapturing the Sunni heartland. Without Tikrit, the campaign will have trouble forging north on the highway to Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and eventually reconstructing the country’s frontiers.
Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- March 9, 2015
Keeping Iraq Unified Will Be Nearly Impossible -- James Kitfield, Defense One/National Journal
U.S. Can't Lead From Behind in Iraq -- Bloomberg editorial
Assad's Atrocities Laid Bare at the UN -- Josh Rogin, Bloomberg
Syria’s ancient sites under attack -- Wissam Abdallah, Al-Monitor
Obama's 'Nixon Goes to China' Moment? "Reaching an agreement with Iran would be a historic achievement for the president." -- Akbar Ganji, National Interest
Iran's Yemen Play: What Tehran Wants—And What It Doesn't -- Alex Vatanka, Foreign Policy
The Ghosts of World War II Still Haunt Asia -- Denny Roy, Real Clear Defense
China Technocrats Driving Off Fiscal Cliff At Full Speed -- Gordon Chang, Forbes
Red Alert: The South China Sea's New Danger Zone -- Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, National Interest
Will South Korea Have to Bomb the North, Eventually? -- Robert E. Kelly, The Diplomat
Would the U.S. Go to War for Lithuania? -- Daniel Olivier, American Conservative
Time for Some Straight Talk on NATO -- Andrew A. Michta, The American Interest
Why Nemtsov's Murder Got Pinned on Chechens -- Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg
Europe is being torn apart – but the torture will be slow -- Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
How the Apple Watch could create a $1tn company -- Charles Arthur, The Guardian
3 comments:
The red flag in the foreground and the yellow ones in the background are very important.
James .... you are always seeing things that I do not see .... and you are always reminding me of that. I cannot say thank you enough. :)
Whenever pictures of Iraqi military operations are published you see these flags prominently displayed in virtually every photo. This is not an accident.
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