The airstrikes that President Barack Obama is considering against Islamic militants in Iraq could prove as messy and inconclusive as the war the U.S. thought had ended in 2011. Unlike the strikes that preceded the Iraq and Afghanistan ground wars, any air offensive this time ...
Sunni insurgents seized a mainly ethnic Turkmen city in northwestern Iraq on Sunday after heavy fighting, solidifying their grip on the north after a lightning offensive that threatens to dismember Iraq. Residents reached by telephone in the city of Tal Afar said it had fallen ...
Iraq military meltdown blamed on graft, politics
The Iraqi Army that disintegrated under an onslaught by Islamist fighters last week was a hollow force, riven by corruption, poor leadership and sectarian splits — a shadow of the military Washington had hoped to leave in the war-ravaged country. The United States dismantled Iraqi ...
ISIS push lessens chance of detente between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran
Last week's advance by Sunni insurgents in Iraq provides a powerful argument for why Iran and Saudi Arabia should bury their Cold War-style feud, but is nonetheless likely to set back detente between the Persian Gulf's dominant Sunni and Shiite powers. After decades of often ...
ISIS leader fights to supplant al-Zawahri as world's deadliest terrorist
The leader of radical Sunni fighters who have made rapid military advances in Iraq is the rising star of global jihad, driven, Islamist fighters say, by an unbending determination to fight for and establish a hard-line Islamic state. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, commander of the Islamic ...
An offensive by insurgents that threatens to dismember Iraq seemed to slow on Saturday after days of lightning advances as government forces regained some territory in counterattacks, easing pressure on the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. As Iraqi officials spoke of wresting back the initiative against ...
Taliban shifting from religious group to criminal enterprise: U.N.
The Taliban's reliance on extortion and kidnappings, along with narcotics and illegal mining operations, is transforming it from a group driven by religious ideology into a criminal enterprise hungry for profit, U.N. sanctions monitors said in a new report. The latest annual report by the ...
Iraq's top Shiite cleric issues call to fight jihadist rebels
Iraq's most senior Shiite Muslim cleric urged followers to take up arms against a full-blown Sunni militant insurgency to topple Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a conflict that threatens civil war and a possible break-up of the country. In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said ...
Obama faces limited options, doubts over airstrikes in Iraq crisis
Two and a half years after President Barack Obama disentangled America from a long, unpopular war in Iraq, his options for helping the government in Baghdad stave off a militant onslaught are slim as doubts simmer over whether even punishing airstrikes would be effective. He ...
U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who spent five years as a Taliban prisoner of war before being released on May 31, left a U.S. military hospital in Germany on Thursday and headed to San Antonio for further treatment, the Pentagon said. Rear Adm. John Kirby, ...
The United States is not ruling out airstrikes to assist the Iraqi government fight a growing radical Islamist insurgency, President Barack Obama said on Thursday, raising the possibility of the first American military intervention in Iraq since the end of the U.S.-led war. Obama was ...
Al-Qaida splinter group advances in Iraq, takes Saddam's hometown
Sunni rebels from an al-Qaida splinter group overran the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday and closed in on the biggest oil refinery in the country, making further gains in their rapid military advance against the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. The threat to the Baiji ...
