Thera- I made a (very) short) video on my Fabled City Youtube channel about the failed Kurdistan independence referendum which was now nine years ago. Hard to believe 2017 was that long ago. I had just got back to Erbil…
Cleveland- My fieldwork in Iraq’s Kirkuk governorate on Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqa al-Naqshbandia (JRTN) was cited by the Mapping Militants Project at Houston’s Rice University. JRTN was led in the shadows by the late, enigmatic Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the last major…
New York- My frontline work in Iraq in the heady days of the war against IS-known as Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in American security speak-was cited in a research report published by the Rand Corporation. The report titled…
New York- My work in Syria and Iraq was cited by the Library of Congress and the London-based openDemocracy respectively. My fieldwork in northern Syria’s Idlib governorate for Janes Islamic Affairs Analyst was given a hat tip in “Unrest in…
New York- Something I happened in my years covering the era of the terror wars (known in the Anglosphere more formally as Operation Inherent Resolve-more simply the war against the so-called Islamic State) was the mystical sound of the tanbur.…
New York- I have a few new-ish academic citations I want to post here on the blog this week. It means the world to me that my frontline work lives on in academia and the think-tank world in part because…
New York- My work in Iraq during the war against IS for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point is cited (pp. 29, 33) in this new volume Surviving the Islamic State by Austin Knuppe, an academic at Utah State…
New York- I’m pleased to share that my fieldwork in Iraq from the war against IS circa 2016-17 is cited in a new book called Death, Dominance, and State-Building by MIT professor Roger D. Petersen published this month by Oxford…
New York- For many years I had dreamt of making with way to the tiny village to Taq Kasra and nearby Salman Pak in southern Baghdad governorate. to cast my eyes of the Arch of Ctesiphon, a wonder of the…
Dubai- I have a new episode on my Fabled City channel about my recent travels from Kuwait City to Dammam, Saudi Arabia. It was a highly unconventional trip in that there is no formal, established method for an international solo…
Al-Khobar- I’ve written this essay about my recent journey to Iraq which was a very personal milestone as it marked twenty years since I first visited the country. This was perhaps my twelfth visit to Iraq over the span of…
Kuwait City- Yesterday I went by taxi, foot, and bus from Basra to here in Kuwait City in my bid to explore the Middle East’s newly liberalising visa/border policies on the ground. I wanted to compare this crossing with that…
Nasiriyyah- I have a new episode up on my channel about exploring what remains of Baghdad’s old quarter after a failed photo mission. Walk with me as late afternoon gradually turns to night along the banks of the Tigris. Iraq’s…
Baghdad- I returned to the Iraqi capital by road via a nearly identical route I took twenty years ago, two weeks from now. It was the utterly avoidable, wholly unnecessary war we could have avoided. Somewhat similar to Afghanistan, Iraq…
Thera- In northern, and more recently eastern, Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) emerged as the critical indigenous force in the conventional battle to defeat the so-called Islamic State (IS). The SDF is an aggregate, underfunded outfit comprised of an…
New York-I have a new piece out in the September 2018 issue of the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point’s monthly Sentinel journal on IS’s insurgent rear bases and operations in Iraq’s northern federally controlled governorates of Kirkuk, Salah ad-Din, and…
Kirkuk- I have a featured report in London at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (subscription required) this week about ad-Dawla al-Islamiyya’s (IS’s) return to almost purely asymmetric tactics after the forcible collapse of its all too modern, social media-fueled state-building…
Pai- Fifteen years ago today the Ba’athist government of Iraq was wholly overthrown by the United States military along with its United Kingdom partners and a minute cabal of disconnected, diaspora Iraqis looking to implement various unrealistic political agendas in…
Erbil- I arrived back in Iraq for the sixth time since the American-led invasion that commenced fifteen years ago (a month from now give or take). On 20 March 2003 Baghdad time, the ground forces of the United States, United Kingdom,…
Barcelona- I have an article out in the October issue of the CTC Sentinel entitled “The Hawija Offensive: A Liberation Exposes Faultlines,” based on my fieldwork in Kirkuk governorate in August and September. I began this work before the offensive…
Paros-I have a piece out this week for Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre on the findings from my field research in late August and early September in the troubled, multi-ethnic Kirkuk and Salah ad-Din governorates. These contentious regions act as…
Erbil- I have a new article out for Jane’s Intelligence Review on the forces arrayed around what has come to be known as the ‘Hawija pocket’ in southwestern Kirkuk governorate. The traditionally Sunni Arab town of Hawija, a restive northern bastion of…
Barcelona- Regretfully I haven’t updated TWD for quite some time. I had wanted to do regular updates during my recent stint in Iraq but that whole time I was focused on my goals there to the point where I shirked…
New York- “Mosul, Mosul, Mosul!” is what enterprising taxi drivers in Erbil would yell as I walked past a dusty lot referred to as the Mosul garage years ago now. I would contemplate hopping in one of those shared orange-and-white…
New York- I don’t have much time to do full fledged blog posts as of late but today I was prepping an image for my ongoing #fabledcity street art project, (prints available for sale via paypal) rooting around my archives. While…
New York- I don’t ordinarily post the work of others here on TWD (unless they happen to be close friends) but I am thoroughly impressed by this interview by Jon Stewart of the disgraced former NYT reporter Judith Miller. It is…
New York- With each coming day lately there is a new tragedy being announced by the takfiri evangelists who refer to themselves as ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyyah (the Islamic State). With a campaign noted for executions believed to be taking place in ar-Raqqah…
New York- I have an article out now for IHS Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst on the eruption of violence in Iraq’s sprawling western al-Anbar Governorate that borders the relatively calm governorates of Ma’an, Amman, Mafraq, and the somewhat sketchier Zarqa in…
Tbilisi- The Republic of Georgia is on the cusp of a presidential election that is shaping up to be the country’s first non-ultra dramatic transition of power (think the coup against President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the Rose Revolution ousting Eduard Shevardnadze). Buzz here…
Barcelona- Proud to announce that I have to lead story in this month’s issue of Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst (Subscribers only). I travelled along a section of the so-called “Green Line” that divides Iraqi Kurdistan from Arab-majority Iraq. Iraq’s Green…