On the morning of April 4, 2017, the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib, Syria, was hit by a chemical bomb filled with the deadly nerve agent Sarin, dropped from a Syrian aircraft. It killed dozens, and injured many more. Following the attack, the OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) investigated the incident, confirming the suspected…
In the beginning of August 2019, the Tulsi Gabbard campaign published “Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria”, expressing Gabbard’s views on the allegations of chemical weapons attacks in Syria — and based mainly on the work of Dr. Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…
Today we publish a cluster of 20 incident assessments, Attacks Causing Grave Civilian Harm, as part of our ongoing Yemen Project. These assessments are the product of in-depth open-source analysis focusing on alleged Saudi-UAE airstrikes that have occurred in Yemen since the start of the aerial bombardment campaign on the 25th of March 2015. They…
A farewell to arms transfers? Not so much. Weapons likely purchased by Saudi Arabia from Serbia have wound up in the hands of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese army fighting at the Saudi-Yemen border. The RSF, the successor organization to the Janjaweed, has been accused of war crimes in Sudan — including…
An ostensibly independent activist group has been boosting Hezbollah messaging and fundraising on social media — this is occurring amid increased scrutiny of Hezbollah’s use of Facebook and other platforms. An April 19, 2019 New York Times article highlighted how Hezbollah is among U.S.-designated terror groups that “learned how to stay a step ahead of…
Terrorists have been tinkering with bitcoin as early as 2012 — but today, jihadi crowdfunding campaigns have been on the rise. Some think that since most of these campaigns haven’t raised significant funds, there isn’t much to worry about. I will explain why this is wrong. Terrorists’ early attempts at using cryptocurrencies were filled with…
During the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries one candidate has stood out from the rest due to her stance on the conflict in Syria. Tulsi Gabbard has drawn fire from commentators and her opponents for her comments on Syria, most recently with one of her opponents, Kamala Harris, dismissing Gabbard as an Assad “apologist”. In…
A mysterious incident occurred off the coast of Syria late June of this year. Local news reported that a sabotage action took place on underwater oil pipelines at the Baniyas oil terminal. Scarce information was available on what exactly happened and the resulting impact, yet the likely use of magnetic limpet mines and scuba divers…
The Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Houthi armed group are dealing with drone strikes in Yemen in starkly different ways. Open source investigation reveals that AQAP are on the defensive over the threat of U.S. reconnaissance and armed drones, leading them to desperately convey to their members to avoid being intercepted for…
Soon after the inception of Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch in January of 2018, reports began trickling out of Syria’s Afrin district detailing the desecration or destruction of numerous cultural sites in the region. Just two days into the operation, airstrikes inflicted significant damage on Ain Dara, a “Neo-Hittite temple…built by the Arameans in the first…
