Summary: ISIS has lost its caliphate but remains a potent force, using mobile guerrilla tactics and a highly sophisticated smuggling and extortion network to finance its ongoing insurgency.
Arab Digest editor William Law’s podcast guest is Caroline Rose, Senior Analyst and programme head in the Human Security Unit at the Newlines Institute. Caroline recently authored a report for the institute titled In the wake of drawdown: addressing blindspots in Iraq. Their conversation looks at the blindspots and the blunders, the road travelled thus far and what America needs to do on the road ahead to extricate itself from Iraq.
Summary: Syria’s war has slipped out of the headlines but as the world’s attention is elsewhere ISIS and Russia remain busy.
Summary: a massive explosion devastates Beirut; Israel denies any involvement. We also circulate below a transcript of last Friday’s podcast “The tactics of terror: ISIS and Al Qaeda in Yemen”.
Arab Digest editor William Law in conversation with Dr Elisabeth Kendall, @Dr_E_Kendall, a Senior Research Fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Oxford University’s Pembroke College. Dr Kendall is an expert on Yemen and on the jihadist organisations operating there. As the war grinds on into its sixth year, the conversation today focusses on ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – dangerous and still very determined to realize their jihadist dreams.
Summary: For nearly ten years a war the world has chosen to ignore has been dragging on in North Sinai with non-combatants caught between the Egyptian military and ISIS-allied fighters.
