Syria

This has been a bad month for Iranian General officers in “advisory” roles supporting Syria and Iraq in the ISIS conflict. Losing three Generals in four months in a single conflict cannot be good for morale.

The key to winning wars, or simply managing chaos, is understanding not only what is going on, but why, and how it has been dealt with in the past.

“Havrem,” whose real name is Alex, presents himself as an ideological warrior who ran away from home at the age of 16 to join the PKK and fight for Kurdish freedom. He talks about scaling the treacherous mountains of Turkey as a PKK fighter and of ruthless battles fought against ISIS in Northern Syria, but […]

Initial reports are ISIS has claimed the downing of it’s first coalition aircraft, a Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF) F-16AM. The government of Jordan is confirming the loss of the aircraft, and as photos indicate, the pilot has been captured. Certainly not good news for the pilot and the Jordanians, who are especially skittish about […]

We’ve published three books that work as a surreal trilogy about the current events in the Middle East.  In Benghazi: The Definitive Report, Brandon and I wrote about how the Arab Spring migrated across the Middle East, eventually blowing up into the Libyan Civil War. While the Arab Spring had been a series of protest […]

SOFREP’s future is quite simple. Hire a bunch of ex-Green Berets, Rangers, SEALs, and other assorted lunatics to travel to and write about third-world war zones. Our writers understand the terrain and can write about it from a much more informed point of view.

Special thanks to Patrick Collins for writing this guest post. -Jack In the mid 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) faced a boiling communist inspired insurgency that sought to overthrow the existing government that was led by the descendants of European settlers. The Rhodesian Bushwar would last over fifteen years, coming on the […]

I heard the 12.7mm gunshots reverberate across the abandoned buildings throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Shot after shot rang out from the lot outside the abandoned warehouse next to the apartment building I stayed in with the YPG. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me. It did not appear to be one of […]

As the SUV bounced down the rocky slope towards the Tigris river, the truck’s headlights illuminated a small inflatable boat churning through the current towards us.  I dumped my bags on the ground and waited for my turn to make the clandestine river crossing from Iraqi Kurdistan into the newly liberated region of Kurdish Syria […]

The Chechen jihadist fighter has achieved near-legendary status in the last decade-plus. “Chechen” has become synonymous with “militarily competent jihadist.” Any time coalition forces have met jihadists on the battlefield who maneuver and shoot well, they are presumed to be Chechens. In 2005, the effective insurgent snipers in Iraq were all presumed to be Chechens. […]

As we head toward November mid-term elections, the writing is on the wall that the United States government is simply waiting out the domestic political situation until they can use military force, including troops on the ground, to battle ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Allied special operations forces are also preparing for this military action […]

Australia has finally reached a deal with the Iraqi government in relation to the deployment of special operations forces and the initiation of their “advise and assist” role to support Iraqi troops in their fight against the Islamic State. Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop recently wound up a two-day trip to Baghdad, where she finalised a deal […]