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…
With the resurgence of direct military conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2015 and in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey began to reinstall and reinvigorate the invasive security apparatus it constructed during the 1980s. This report uses satellite imagery to track the development of 73 checkpoints across southeast Turkey, showing…
Before tuning in via Skype to oversee the murder and dismemberment of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saud al-Qahtani, a high-level adviser to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), was best known for running social media operations for the royal court and serving as MBS’s chief propagandist and enforcer. His portfolio…
Since the onset of its direct intervention in Syria, Turkey has struggled to create stability in northern Aleppo. Writing in mid-2017, Aaron Stein and others attributed this to the Turkish development and support of two conflicting security apparatuses; the newly created local police forces and existent militant opposition, as well as local council governance structures…
Individual U.S. states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Arizona, and others have exported hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since the Saudi-led war in Yemen began. Altogether, per publicly available data released by the U.S. government, 11 states plus the District of Columbia have each exported over…
In early May 2019, it was reported that agricultural areas of central and northern Iraq were being set ablaze — allegedly by remaining pockets of fighters from the so-called Islamic State. The motive was said to have been punishment of farmers who refused to pay protection money to the terrorist organization. There is evidence that in…
Online videos may be today’s most efficient information vector. They are the closest thing to a real-life event happening in front of your eyes, as opposed to pictures, texts, or even a combination of both. Nevertheless, the emergence of maliciously altered videos and deepfakes puts us at risk of being dangerously misinformed. To counter this,…
