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FROM ‘CALLAN’ TO ‘JIHADI JOHN’
by DR GERAINT HUGHES On 19 August the militants of the Islamic State (IS) released a video showing the beheading of an American journalist, James Foley, who had been captured in Syria two years...
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The war against the Islamic State and the plight of Iraqi Kurdistan
by BILL PARK The 10th June fall of Mosul to the irregular forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), now calling itself the ‘Islamic State’, accompanied as it was by the total collapse of...
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Migrating to the Land of Jihad: Why European Muslims fight in Syria
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...
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The Kurds as Proxies against the Islamic State
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...
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RUSSIA HYBRID WAR – A RESPONSE
ROBERT SEELY Over 18 months into Russia’s not-so-very-proxy, proxy war in Ukraine, there remains a thriving and fascinating debate over the tools of conflict that Russia uses, how one describes those...
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The UK Decision on Syria: Will air-strikes solve the problem?
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...
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The UK Decision on Syria: The Labour Party and Air-Strikes against Islamic State
DR GERAINT HUGHES Harold Wilson once noted that a week was a long time in politics, and the current Leader of the Opposition may well agree with him. On Sunday 29th November Jeremy Corbyn told the BBC...
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The UK Decision on Syria: The (F)utility of History
DR CHRIS TRIPODI It’s genuinely interesting, as an historian, to contemplate the current furore over whether Britain should physically commit itself to taking action against Islamic State forces in...
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The UK Decision on Syria: The View From Russia
DR TRACEY GERMAN The news that the British parliament had sanctioned airstrikes against IS in Syria, and that the first missions had taken place, has been widely reported in Russia. The move is likely...
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The UK Decision on Syria: Lions roar, mice squeak – the response of a...
BILL PARK Yesterday’s vote approving the PM’s desire to bandwagon with the UK’s US and French NATO allies in bombing IS targets in Syria will make little difference to the majority of Syrians. The...
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The UK Decision on Syria: The Only Solution Is a Political Solution
DR DAVID B ROBERTS An outline of a modus vivendi with Russia is required if there is to be any progress in the fight against Da’esh. Otherwise, the vaunted 70,000 strong ‘moderate’ forces will continue...
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The Uk Decision on Syria: Bombing Syria matters: Britain’s involvement doesn’t
DR CHRISTOPHER TUCK After much controversy, Britain is now bombing ISIL targets in Syria. But the intensity of the debates surrounding the decision to bomb is unlikely to be rewarded by any immediate...
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The UK Decision on Syria: The Political Calculus on ISIS Has Changed
DR JILL RUSSELL To clarify in advance: I am not a wanton proponent of war or the use of force. I do not pretend that air strikes are an answer on their own. With those disclaimers out of the way, it is...
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Russian Messaging and Intention in Syria: Perception Through Strategic Culture?
ROBERT SEELY Russia’s intervention in the morass of Syria’s civil war was as dramatic as it was sudden. To date, much of the Western punditry has been pondering the question, what is Russia’s aim? Is...
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Reasons to (not) be cheerful in 2016…The Middle East and the...
After a turbulent 2015, members of DSD’s Regional Security Research Centre (@KingsRegSec) look forward to the coming year and examine the issues that they believe will be prominent in 2016, including...
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Reasons to (not) be cheerful in 2016…Russia: coming in from the cold?
After a turbulent 2015, members of DSD’s Regional Security Research Centre (@KingsRegSec) look forward to the coming year and examine the issues that they believe will be prominent in 2016, including...
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Reasons to (not) be cheerful in 2016…Deadly rivalries in Syria, Iraq and Turkey
After a turbulent 2015, members of DSD’s Regional Security Research Centre (@KingsRegSec) look forward to the coming year and examine the issues that they believe will be prominent in 2016, including...
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Syria: Bombing, Peace, and Then What?
BY DR CHRIS TUCK Stabilisation is out of fashion: burned by our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan there seems precious little appetite for engagement any time soon in complex nation-building tasks....
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Thinking the Unthinkable over ISIL
This is the third in a series of posts to come out of the Regional Security Research Centre (RSRC) organised Round Table titled ‘Decoding IS [DAISH] – Retrospect and Prospect’, which took place on 8...
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The UAE’s Jeffersonian Foreign Policy
DR DAVID ROBERTS A small Arab Gulf State is not the first place in the Middle East that one might expect to fashion a foreign policy according to Thomas Jefferson’s dictum of the importance of...
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