Weaponizing Refugees
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Willkomenskultur (“Welcome culture”) refugee policy of last year has screeched to a grinding halt. Delivering an early December speech at her C...
Syrians
The sorrow and the pity in Syria
Over the last five years, Syria has been descending into a hell on Earth. Over the last four months, the lowest depths of the...
Op-eds
Obama Tries to Pin his Syria Policy on Trump
Talking to reporters in Germany on Thursday, President Barack Obama expressed the ho...
Op-eds
Syrian Refugees: Ankara’s Trump Card Against Europe
The Cipher Brief: What is the current situation of the displaced Syrians in Turkey? How has the Syrian refugee crisis shaped Turkish politics and society over the past five years? Aykan...
Op-eds
Reconsidering safe zones in Syria
The situation in Syria remains bleak, with no end in sight to its five-year civil war. President Bashar Assad’s forces and their Russian and Iranian backers continue to lay waste to rebel-h...
Op-eds
EU Refugee Crisis: Turkey as an Effective Partner?
Numbers alone are sufficient to convey the grim reality of Syrian refugees in Turkey: Of the 4.3 million displaced Syrians who have been registered as persons of concern by the UNHCR, 2.2 million...
Op-eds
Bystanders to genocide
It’s surprising how time slips away: Five years ago next month, President Obama proclaimed a “responsibility to act” when American “interests and values are at stake.&rdqu...
Op-eds
The Impact of ISIS on the Homeland and Refugee Resettlement
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Legislative Testimonies
This Iranian Airline is One of the Assad Regime’s Lifelines
It's hard to fly to Damascus these days. Even if Russia's military intervention in the country has the ruling Assad regime breathing easier after months of infighting, manpower...
Op-eds
Obama’s Talk and Putin’s Blitz: A Russian Middle East Coup in Three Acts
In New York, the United Nations is still lumbering through its Sept. 28th – Oct. 3 general debate. But even with today’s declaration by aging potentate Mahmoud Abbas that the Palestin...
Op-eds
‘Shut Out’: Turkey Finds Itself ‘In a Very Difficult Position’ With the Russian Moves in Syria
The Russian incursion into Syria is hampering one of the region's most important players. Turkey, which has long sought Syrian president Bashar Assad's transition out of power,...
Op-eds
Europe Should Take Syria’s Assad to War
The photograph of a drowned 3-year-old boy washed up on a Turkish beach put the Syrian refugee crisis front and center of Europe’s immigration policy. Sadly, Europeans still fail t...
Op-eds
Saudi Steps on Terror Finance Fall Short
The U.S. Treasury Department announced last week that it was taking joint action with the government of Saudi...
Policy Briefs
Jihadi General Hospital
Controversy erupted in Turkey la...
Op-eds
Can France Regenerate Itself to Fight Radical Islam?
The nation of France imploded last week. Heavily armed Islamic extremists ran amok, massacring police officers, cartoonists, and shoppers at a kosher supermarket. The overall death toll reached 1...
Op-eds
In Latest Sanctions, U.S. Again Targets Iranians Holding Caribbean Passports
For the fourth time this year, U.S. officials blacklisted an Iranian national using a Caribbean passport while purportedly helping Iran circumvent sanctions. The U.S. Treasury Depa...
Op-eds
The Uruguay Six
On Sunday, December 7, a U.S. military medical aircraft landed in South America, to deliver six jihadists from the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay to Uruguay. For more than a dozen ye...
Op-eds
Khaled Mashal’s Road to Damascus Runs Through Tehran
An...
Policy Briefs
BOOK REVIEW: Was Lawrence Gay in Arabia?
Among the innumerable highly regarded T.E. Lawrence biographies, Anthony Sattin’s new work, “The Young T.E. Lawrence,” is noteworthy in deftly capturing the pre-World War I inte...
Op-eds
Was David Drugeon a French Intelligence Agent?
David Drugeon, a high-ranking French member of the al-Qaeda-linked Khorasan group in Syria, has been little known by English speakers. That is beginning to change: On October 29, CNN reported tha...