Thursday 01 Oct 2020 | 04:43 | SYDNEY
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Go to the Interpreter
  • 30 Sep 2020 14:00

    The unfinished Chinese civil war

    John Culver

    Many frame China’s options against Taiwan as peace or invasion. This is a dangerous oversimplification.

  • 30 Sep 2020 06:00

    Duterte’s vaccine promise is a political placebo

    Michael Beltran

    The Philippine president has pinned hopes on a miracle solution to the Covid crisis while gutting effective responses.

  • 29 Sep 2020 10:00

    Evaluating aid in the Pacific

    Jonathan Pryke , Aidan Myatt

    A common rating system could make aid evaluation less opaque. Better yet, it could deliver more bang for precious bucks.

Kurdistan

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The worrying precedent of Turkey’s “safe zone”

There is a reason the Kurds say they have “no friend but the mountains”. Time and again human rights atrocities have been perpetrated against them, and they are not strategically important enough for any country to take their side. News of death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
By Rebecca Barber
28 Oct 19
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Washington's weak hand to play in Syria

With the change of administration in Washington came new clarity about US policy on Syria. The admirable, short-term aim was to defeat ISIS. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the organisation that would produce this outcome on the ground, was founded in late 2015 (the '
By Rodger Shanahan
23 Jan 18
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The ongoing plight of the Yazidis

As the Iraqi Army and Shiite militias drive Kurdish forces out of cities and villages in the wake of the Kurdish Regional Government's independence referendum, the plight of the ever-persecuted Yazidis remains as dire – and as invisible – as ever. Caught between two governments vying for land
By Susan Hutchinson, Nikki Marczak
27 Oct 17
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Kurds aren’t always the good guys

I have written recently about the recklessness of Kurdish leaders in staging their independence referendum. Rather than advance the Kurdish cause, it has probably set it back years, if not decades. Despite its laudable efforts against Islamic State, the Kurdish Regional Government has 
By Rodger Shanahan
27 Oct 17
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Worst enemy: Kurdistan’s history of infighting

Hopes were high in Kurdistan after the historic, if ill-advised, referendum on independence earlier this month. To the question 'Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the region's administration to become an independent state?', 92% of respondents voted 'yes'.
By Lydia Khalil
24 Oct 17
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Kurdistan’s strategic overreach

There is no doubt that the Kurds have been unfairly dealt with as an ethno-linguistic group throughout modern history. They’re not alone in this, but they are probably in a different category as far as the West is concerned, as they have sometimes proven to be good allies. Their recent efforts in
By Rodger Shanahan
18 Oct 17
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Iraq, the Kurds, and the mess America has made

Tensions between the Iraqi military and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are once again threatening to boil over. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has ordered the military to 'impose security' in and around the oilfields and airport in the province of Kirkuk, a region the Kurds took back from Islamic
By Anthony Ricketts
17 Oct 17
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Kurdistan precarious but steadfast on eve of referendum

It is hard not to be sympathetic to the decades-long Kurdish struggle for independence and self-determination. The long-suffering Kurdish nation was summarily divvied up by the Sykes-Picot Agreement (a document that continues to vex the Middle East to this day) and the Treaty of Lausanne after World
By Lydia Khalil
25 Sep 17
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Leave the Iran nuclear deal alone

In 2015, now-President Donald Trump said of the Iran nuclear agreement (otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA]) that 'Never ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran. And I mean never.’ Of course, Trump has
By Rodger Shanahan
25 Sep 17
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Erdogan leaves Trump empty-handed

The language at the press conference following their meeting earlier this week may have been conciliatory, but there is no masking the tensions between US President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two strongmen lavished praise on each another,
By Lauren Williams
18 May 17
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Muddying the Syrian waters

The number of US boots on the ground in Syria is gradually increasing without, it would appear, a plan to inform the public about what broader purpose the troops' presence serves and, perhaps most importantly, what defines mission success and would allow the troops to redeploy. Before leaving
By Rodger Shanahan
13 Mar 17
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Retaking Raqqa: Facts on the ground

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has turned from a state of strength, expansion, and influence to a position of fragility, weakness, and retreat. As the Iraqi forces encircle Mosul, ISIS’s last stronghold in Iraq, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have announced the launching of an
By Anas Iqtait
15 Nov 16
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