Al Jazeera: The World Food Programme (WFP) has slashed food rations distributed to 1.4 million displaced Iraqis by 50 percent because of delays in payments from donor states. The sharp cutbacks come at a time when a growing number of Iraqis flee the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group. At least 160,000 people have… Read more »
The United States’s relationships with Middle Eastern states have been built on economic interests. The CIA assassinated the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran and replaced him with the US-friendly, export-friendly Shah. We spent 1990 through 1991 fighting off Saddam Hussein to defend our oil interests in Kuwait (though ostensibly for preserving Kuwait’s national sovereignty). It can also be argued that the… Read more »
(The Guardian) Isis’s minister of information, Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, killed in Raqqa by US-led coalition airstrike An Islamic State leader who oversaw the militant group’s propaganda has been killed in Syria in an airstrike carried out by the US-led coalition on 7 September, the Pentagon has said. A statement from Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said that the airstrike… Read more »
(The Telegraph) The United Nations Security Council has convened at the behest of the Russians after dozens of Syrian soldiers were accidentally killed in a US coalition bombing raid. It met within hours of the Obama administration expressing its regret at the strikes on Jabal Therdeh, southwest of the Deir Ezzor airport in eastern Syria. According to Russian estimates 62… Read more »