Interview with an American YPG fighter: Straight Outta Raqqa

Kurt: Who are you and what’s your background besides YPG? Mitchell: Mitchell Clark — I have a pretty typical small town AmericanAmericanAmerican story. I grew up playing football and got really serious about it in high school. I was planning on going to college to play, but I had a severe shoulder injury that pretty […]

SDF releases public statement in the face of Turkish aggression

In light of the recent attacks by Turkish forces on sovereign Kurdish land in the territories of Afrin and Manbij, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has released a public statement: We in the Syrian Democratic Forces are a peaceful movement focused on defeating Daesh and bringing stability to Syria consistent with UN […]

Turkey deploys military forces to Syrian border

Reports are coming through that a convoy of five tanks and multiple military vehicles have been dispatched to Turkey’s southern border with Rojava, northern Syria. This move by Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is presumably in response to the Kurds neglecting to heed his earlier threats of military response if they did not withdraw from the […]

Iraqi government commits $380 million for KRG salaries

Iraq’s Central Bank has started a new account for the Kurdish Regional Government to pull its government wages from; a total of 450 billion dinars was deposited in to it according to documents recently made public by Iraqi government officials. According to a letter sent to the Ministry of Finance for Iraq, the account was […]

Attack on prison transfer thwarted by Kurdish counter-terror unit

An attack on a prisoner transferring transport occurred in Chamchamal, Kurdistan Monday night (1/15/2018) around 0230. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) counter-terror unit responded and swiftly neutralized the attempted hijackers. As a result, three of the gunmen were injured and the 4th killed by direct fire. This was a coordinated and well-planned attack; this […]

Kurdistan to begin talks with Baghdad over airports

A delegation from the Kurdish Regional Government intends to meet in Baghdad with the Ministry of Interior for Iraq to discuss the possibility of reopening the airports in both Sulaymaniah and Erbil while simultaneously addressing the issue of closed borders. A source from within the Iraqi Ministry of Interior confirmed that the meeting would take […]

ISIS groups arrested in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan

Recently two cells of Islamic State operatives were arrested in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan. While both groups had direct ties to the Islamic state, one consisted of all females and was tasked with social media outreach along with propaganda. The other was an all male group dedicated to direct action based terror attacks to be carried out in […]

American mercs hold off ISIS attack in Kirkuk

I had been in Kurdistan, northern Iraq, for about a whole two weeks and was probably as “green” as I could possibly be. The region was still engaged in a heated conflict with IS and attacks of all kinds were occurring daily. I had just arrived at the Peshmerga‘s 9th Brigade, one of the only […]

Kirkuk to send oil to Iran as early as January

It has been made known by Jabar al-Luaibi, Iraq’s Minister of Oil, that Iraq will begin sending Iran approximately 30,000 barrels of oil a day around the end of January. Jabar was quoted  saying, “God willing, we will start before the end of the month.” The plan to sell the oil to Iran was announced in […]

Operation Euphrates Shield

Turkish military intervention in Syria began in August 2016 under the code name Operation Euphrates Shield. The operation was supposed to be in an effort to support the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and crush the Islamic State from the north by doing a cross border assault en mass. What was supposed to be a swift […]

Legal fears over French plan to leave IS suspects to face trial in Kurdish courts

Lawyers representing western nationals detained in Kurdish-held areas of Syria on suspicion of fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group have expressed concern that their clients will not be treated fairly if they are left to face trial in local courts. Farid Malik, a solicitor at ITN Solicitors which is representing individuals in the region, […]

Middle East Sitrep 12/31/17

The current situation in the Middle East is really not all that different from before the Islamic State took control of huge swaths of land. Small pockets of Islamic State resistance are still in existence throughout the formerly occupied regions of Iraq and Syria. As such, it is inevitable that small attacks and minor combat […]