An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State's takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating. Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: "We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from." In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January…

Despite a sordid and deadly reputation in Iraq, the mercenary army that began as Blackwater and is now known as Academi was a top recipient of Pentagon contracts for training Afghanistan’s security forces from 2002 to 2014, a government watchdog reported Tuesday. The latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also includes the surprising disclosure that IBM—a company not generally known as a defense contractor—was the largest beneficiary of a Pentagon program to stabilize Afghanistan by facilitating private investment in its vast mineral wealth. Both findings were included in a SIGAR report that attempts to account for…

The “Ready for Hilary” campaign has launched a not-very-subtle courtship of discontented Democrats, those leftish liberal activists who yearn for anybody but another Clinton. The not-yet candidate herself spoke to their concerns indirectly when she recently addressed the Silicon Valley Conference for Women. Clinton sketched out progressive goals for family-centered labor-market reforms. They were like love bombs for bleeding-heart liberals. Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress, the shadow think tank that speaks for Clinton-Obama politics, issued a more substantive agenda in a 161-page report from its self-appointed “Commission on Inclusive Prosperity.” The co-chair was Lawrence Summers, former Treasury secretary under…

The Current Situation The Islamic State's blitzkrieg advances in Iraq last summer, coupled with those in Syria, are the biggest threat ever to the post-1919 borders in the lands of ancient Mesopotamia. Many don't want to characterize Abu Bakr's caliphate as a state, but it has an army, controls territory, and operates administrative structures, even schools and hospitals. And in the broad conflict stretching from eastern Iraq to western Syria and even Lebanon, the caliphate is not going away soon. The grievances and fears of the Sunni Arabs that boost the Islamic State, and the grievances and fears of neighboring…

Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS have been shot down by Iraqi forces have been met with shock and denial in western countries. Few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a ‘double game’ with its proxy armies in Syria, but some key myths remain important amongst the significantly more ignorant western audiences. A central myth is that Washington now arms ‘moderate Syrian rebels’, to both overthrow the Syrian Government and supposedly defeat the ‘extremist rebels’. This claim became more important in 2014, when the rationale of US aggression against Syria shifted from ‘humanitarian…