March 18, 2015

A terrorist attack at the Bardo National Museum, located in Tunis, left 21 people, including 2 gunmen, dead. In the central section of Tunisia’s capital, near the nation’s parliament building, the museum holds an important collection of Roman mosaics and is one of the major tourist draws in Tunisia.

The interior of the Bardo museum in Tunisia, where a terrorist attack occurred on March 18, 2015.

The attack by masked gunmen killed 17 German, Italian, Polish, and Spanish tourists this morning. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it did occur one day after the Tunisian government announced the seizure of a large cache of weapons from an Islamist group.

Since Tunisia’s revolution during the Arab Spring movement of 2011, the small north African nation has managed to avoid violence. Tunisia’s first secular (nonreligious) government was seated in February 2015. On a video from 2014 featuring three Tunisian men fighting for Islamic State (ISIS), the men warn that Tunisians cannot be secure “as long as Tunisia is not governed by Islam.”

Other World Book article:

• The Middle East: From Fall to Spring (a Special report)

March 2, 2015

Colossal statue of a winged lion (lamassu) from the palace at Nimrud of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II. He reigned from 883 B.C. to 859 B.C. The photo was taken in around 1860. (Credit: © Shutterstock)

Last week, the terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) posted a video to YouTube showing members from the group destroying ancient art works at a museum in Mosul, Iraq. ISIS has held the town of Mosul since June 2014. Some of the artifacts destroyed by ISIS were plaster-cast reproductions of art works in the British Museum in London. Other pieces destroyed on the February 26 video, however, were original and many thousands of years old.

Some of the pieces destroyed were statues from Hatra, a walled city established in the 200′s B.C. It was under the influence of the Parthian Empire and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Other pieces were from the the Assyrian Empire, including  huge winged bulls with human heads that guarded the entrance to Nineveh, the last capital of the Assyrians. The 9-ton statues were from the 600′s B.C. Examples of such statues, which are called lamassu, and are meant to protect against evil. The figures may be either winged bulls or winged lions. Such statues can be seen at the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Oriental Institute in Chicago.

ISIS’s destruction of ancient artifacts that its members believe to be “idols” (images of false gods) is not a unique event. Other groups have done the same. In 2001, the Taliban destroyed a pair of enormous Buddhas carved into a cliff at Bamiyan, near Kabul in Afghanistan.

It is not always the case that people destroy the art of religions other than their own. In the 700′s, the Eastern Christian Church was divided concerning the reverence, or veneration, given to religious art. At that time, a group known as the Iconoclasts covered or destroyed Christian religious art—especially icons—within the Byzantine Empire.

Other World Book articles:

• Afghanistan (2001-a Back in time article)
• Iconoclast

February 25, 2015

Before dawn on February 23, Islamic State (ISIS) militants stormed the Hassakeh province in northeastern Syria, kidnapping a number of Christians living in small villages along the Khabur River. Initial reports were of around 90 people having been kidnapped, but by today experts had increased the number to closer to 300. It is not certain why ISIS would kidnap such a large number of Christians. In one hopeful scenario, experts thought perhaps the jihadist group hopes to swap its kidnap victims for ISIS fighters held prisoner by Kurdish forces.

Islamic State (ISIS) fighters during a military parade in Raqqa, Syria, in 2014, shown in propaganda photos released by the militants. Raqqa forms the de facto capital of the largely unrecognized “caliphate” formed by ISIS in 2014. (Credit: © Alamy Images)

The Christians living in this small area of Syria are Assyrian, or Syriac, Christians. They are Nestorians, meaning they belong to a sect of Christianity that follows the teachings of Nestorius, who was made Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul today) in 428. The Assyrian Christians speak a dialect of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus Christ and his disciples.

Assyrian Christians are found in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Many have fled their ancient homelands. Fighting in Syria, Iran, and Iraq has made life dangerous for this group. Despite having lived in the Middle East for thousands of years, they are often targeted by Islamic extremists because of their religion. In addition to ISIS, Al-Qa`ida and the Jabhat al-Nusra Brigade target Christians in the Middle East. More than 600,000 Assyrian Christians are currently living as refugees in Turkey, having fled Syria.

Other World Book articles:

• Eastern Orthodox Churches (2013-a Back in Time article)

• Syria (2013-a Back in time article)

February 16, 2015

A relative of a man seized by the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) covers her face as she weeps at their home in the village of el-Aour, Egypt. Thirteen of the men kidnapped hail from this village. Her relative, Samuel Walham, was one of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians seized by ISIS militants in the central city of Sirte, Libya, over December and January. The day after this photo was taken, video of militants murdering the Egyptian hostages was released.  (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

In response to a video that was released yesterday, showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian workers in Libya by the terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS), the government of Egypt bombed Libyan territory today. The bombing was targeted at ISIS camps, training areas, and weapons depots, and was ordered by Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in retaliation for the murder of Egyptian citizens.

The Egyptian workers killed in Libya were all Coptic Christians, or Copts, an ancient sect dating to the early Christian church in Egypt. Today, around 10 million Copts live in Egypt. Poorer Coptic Christian men sometimes leave Egypt to work in Libya at such jobs as construction. The 21 men who were abducted were taken from the coastal town of Sirte, in eastern Libya, which is under the control of Islamist groups.

Libya is currently under control of two groups—the government, led by Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni; and rival militias, who took over the Libyan capital of Tripoli in 2014. The 2014 take-over of Tripoli by the militias forced the government of Libya to flee to the northeastern city of Tobruk, where they allied themselves with anti-Islamist rebels. Much like Syria and Iraq, both riven by civil strife, Libya’s weak government allows such jihadist groups as ISIS to thrive.

ISIS will sometimes try to justify its actions based on religious ideas. In messages concerning the hostages, ISIS referred to Coptic men as “crusaders,” referring to soldiers that fought in a series of wars proclaimed by Roman Catholic popes. The Crusades occurred from the late 1000′s to the 1500′s, however, and the men killed in Libya were not trying to conquer territory but were poor men trying to make enough money for their families to live.

September 25, 2014

United States President Barack Obama, speaking yesterday at the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, declared that the Islamic State [of Iraq and Syria] (ISIS) understands only “the language of force” and that the United States will “work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.” “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort . . . for we will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.” Referring to recent ISIS atrocities, including beheadings, the president stated that this band of radical Sunni Muslim jihadists has forced “us to look into the heart of darkness.”

Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008 and took office in January 2009. He was reelected in 2012. (The White House)

The president noted, however, that the military campaign against ISIS is only the most urgent of a number of challenges facing the international community: from resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine and eradicating the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to forging a unity government in Afghanistan and confronting climate change. The president was particularly blunt in his remarks regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military incursion into Ukraine: “[His] is a vision of the world in which might makes right, a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another . . .”

A United Nations (UN) General Assembly session brings together delegates from nearly all the world’s nations. The UN works to settle disputes among countries, maintain world peace, and help people better their way of life. (© Mario Tama, Getty Images)

Yesterday’s speech was the culmination of three days of diplomacy personally conducted by President Obama. On September 23, he spoke before more than 120 world leaders during a daylong UN climate summit. Asking for cooperative action on climate change, the president declared that climate change promises to define the next century more dramatically than any other global threat, including terrorism: “No nation is immune . . . We cannot condemn our children and their children to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Joseph Conrad
• Heart of Darkness
• The Middle East: From Fall to Spring (a special report)
• Russia in the Post-Soviet World (a special report)
• Syria: The Roots of the Rebellion (a special report)

September 11, 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking to the nation in a televised address, announced last night that he has ordered a sustained military campaign against the radical jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The campaign includes continuing air strikes in Iraq as well as launching strikes on ISIS forces in eastern Syria, a country racked by more than three years of civil war. An additional 475 military advisers are to be deployed to Iraq to assist the Iraqi army. U.S. military advisers are also to train and support moderate rebels in Syria, with the aim of retaking ISIS-controlled territory in Iraq and wiping out jihadist strongholds in Syria. However, the president emphatically declared, “We will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq.” The president’s strategy also involves stepping up counterterrorism efforts to cut off ISIS funding and to staunch the flow of ISIS recruits from Europe into the Middle East.

President Barack Obama announced last night that the U.S.military will launch strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq and eastern Syria. The government of Russia, a long-time ally of the family of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, denounced the United States plan as “an act of aggression.” (World Book map; map data © MapQuest.com, Inc.)

(World Book map)

“[ISIS] poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East, including American citizens, personnel, and facilities,” noted the president. “If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States. While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, [ISIS] leaders have threatened America and our allies.”

The United States has already launched more than 150 air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and has armed Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting ISIS militants on the ground. In recent months, ISIS has taken control over great swaths of northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. In late June, ISIS declared that it was establishing a caliphate on the territories it controls, to be known simply as “the Islamic State.” In the process, it has become notorious for its extreme violence, including the mass executions of civilians and the barbarous beheading of enemy soldiers and Western journalists.

In Moscow this morning, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign minister responded to the president’s address by denouncing planned air strikes in Syria. He declared that they would be “an act of aggression,” unless sanctioned by the United Nations (UN): “This step, in the absence of a UN Security Council decision, would be an act of aggression, a gross violation of international law.” Russia has been a long-time ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father, Havez al-Assad, who was president of Syria from 1971 to 2000.

In the Syrian capital, Damascus, National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar also denounced the air strikes: “Any action of any kind without the consent of the Syrian government would be an attack on Syria.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Kurdistan
• Umayyad caliphate
• Iraq War
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)

September 8, 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking yesterday on the Sunday morning television news program “Meet the Press,” declared, “What I want people to understand is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)]. We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities; we’re going to shrink the territory that they control; and, ultimately, we’re going to defeat them. On Friday, at a press conference to mark the end of a two-day summit of NATO member-state leaders, the president declared that he found “conviction” among U.S. allies that the international community must “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. “What we can accomplish is to dismantle this network, this force that has claimed to control this much territory, so that they can’t do us harm and that is going to be our objective.”

In recent months, ISIS has taken control over great swathes of northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. In late June, ISIS declared that it was establishing a caliphate on the territories it controls to be known simply as “the Islamic State,” which will extend from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq.

President Obama is scheduled to give a speech on September 10 in which he will reveal his full strategy to combat the radical Sunni jihadists. A chief element of that strategy is to line up a coalition of Arab nations to help in the fight, and yesterday at a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, the League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi urged member nations to confront ISIS on all possible levels. What is required is a “clear and firm decision for a comprehensive confrontation” with “cancerous and terrorist” groups, al-Arabi told the meeting of foreign ministers.

On September 5, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States has formed a coalition with nine allies–largely European members of NATO–to carry out both a military and political campaign against ISIS. Secretary Kerry stated that the multinational alliance has “the ability to destroy” the militants using tactics beyond the battlefield, including disrupting recruiting and fund-raising networks. “It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we’re determined. It has to happen,” stated Secretary Kerry.

Also on September 5, the BBC reported that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, approved co-operation with the United States as part of an international response to ISIS. The ayatollah has authorized his top army commander to co-ordinate operations in Iraq with the U.S. military. Although the Iranian government has long been antagonistic toward the United States, Iran considers ISIS a grave threat. The extremist Sunni group considers all Shi`ite Mulims as heretics, and Iran, a theocracy, is governed by Shi`ite clerics.

Additional World Book articles:

• Umayyad caliphate
• Iraq War
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)

September 3, 2014

President Barack Obama vowed today that the United States will not be intimidated by the latest murder of an American journalist by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Yesterday, ISIS released a video showing the killing of journalist Steven Sotloff, whom ISIS had held captive in Syria since August 2013. President Obama declared that Sotloff’s murder was a “horrific act of violence, and we cannot begin to imagine the agony everyone who loves Steven is feeling right now. Our country grieves with them.” The president went on to warn, “Our reach is long and justice will be served.” He also announced that he had ordered the deployment of another 350 troops to Baghdad to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities.

ISIS first threatened Sotloff’s life two weeks ago when it posted online a video showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley. At the time, the militants said Sotloff’s life depended on the United States ending its air offensive against ISIS forces in Iraq. The United States has launched more than 120 air strikes over the past month to support Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, in their attempt to stop the ISIS advance across northern Iraq. In late June, ISIS declared that it was establishing a caliphate on the territories it controls to be known simply as “the Islamic State,” which will extend from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq.

On September 1, the Peshmerga, joined by Iraqi soldiers and Shi`ite militia men–backed by U.S. aircraft–broke ISIS’s nearly two-month siege of the Iraqi town of Amirli. Instead of fleeing in the face of ISIS forces, the residents of Amirli, primarily Shi`ite Turkmens, had stayed and fortified their town of 15,000 with trenches and armed positions. They lived with little food and water and no electric power since the siege began. ISIS, made up of radical Sunni Muslim jihadists, regard the Shi`ite Turkmen as apostates and, therefore, unworthy to continue living.

Additional World Book articles:

• Umayyad caliphate
• Iraq War
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)

August 19, 2014

Yesterday, United States President Barack Obama announced that military operations begun on August 16th in northern Iraq had recaptured a strategically important dam. The dam, located near the city of Mosul, was captured several weeks ago by armed Sunni extremists with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The extremist group ISIS has seized a large amount of territory in northern Iraq and Syria. (World Book map.)

ISIS has come to the fore in 2014, seizing major swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, in their attempt to create a new Islamic empire. Isis seized Mosul in early June. This major city is strategically placed on routes linking Iraq to Turkey and Syria.

Both the U.S. and Iraqi governments were unwilling to allow the dam to stay in the hands of such extremists. The Mosul dam supplies electric power to northern Iraq and water to cities as far south as Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. The dam is also the water source for much of Iraq’s agricultural land. With ISIS in control of the dam, Iraq’s water and power supplies were suddenly in the hands of hostile extremists. In addition, if ISIS had decided to destroy the dam, it would have sent a 60-foot (18-meter) wave of water down the Tigris River that would have inundated the city of Mosul and flooded Baghdad.

President Obama ordered air strikes, coordinated with strikes by the Iraqi air force, on ISIS forces that began on the 16th. These air strikes were in support of Kurdish military, known as peshmerga, fighting on the ground. By the morning of the 18th, the peshmerga had retaken the Mosul dam from ISIS. On the 19th, Isis posted a video online with the statement to the United States, “We will drown all of you in blood.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Islamic empire
• Kurdistan

August 11, 2014

The new president of Iraq, Fouad Massoum, today named Haider al-Abadi, a prominent Shi`ite politician, as prime minister and called on Abadi to form a new government. “Now the Iraqi people are in your hands,” stated Massoum at Abadi’s swearing in ceremony in Baghdad. Abadi is a member of the ruling party and previously served as deputy speaker of Iraq’s parliament.

While the move would appear to dislodge incumbent Nouri al-Maliki after eight years as prime minister, Maliki has defiantly declared his intention to remain in power. This morning, he petitioned the Iraqi Supreme Court, reiterating his claim that as head of the ruling State of Law coalition, he alone should be charged with choosing a new prime minister: “The coalition is only represented by its head . . . Mr. Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, and no other member in the leadership has the right to sign any papers or documents or agreements.” Politicians who remain loyal to Maliki have appeared on Iraqi television and condemned Abadi’s appointment as unconstitutional. According to media correspondents on the scene in Baghdad, Maliki has mobilized security troops loyal to him as well as army units, and there are tanks in the streets in some areas of the capital. Maliki’s refusal to share power with Iraq’s Sunni minority is widely seen as a major factor in the current Sunni jihadist rebellion in the northwest.

Thousands of Zezidis remain trapped on Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq by ISIS forces, who consider the Zezidis to be heretics to Islam. (World Book map)

The intense power struggle in Baghdad further exposes what remains of Iraq to the dire militant threat posed by those jihadists known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). International affairs experts suggest that ISIS may take advantage of the chaos in Baghdad to advance on the city. However, an initial U.S. military assessment of American airstrikes against ISIS targets, which began on August 8, suggest that the rebels have been forced to disperse and travel more discreetly, slowing their drive south considerably. “They had been acting with impunity,” a U.S Air Force spokesperson reported today. “Now they realize they cannot travel up and down the roads in large groups.”

The power struggle also complicates a humanitarian crisis in the far northwest.  ISIS rebels have trapped tens of thousands of Yezidis on Mount Sinjar and may already have slaughtered hundreds of them. ISIS rebels regard the Yezidis as devil worshipers. (Yezidi monotheistic beliefs are drawn from Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism.) The U.S. military is carrying out massive airdrops of food and water on Mount Sinjar in an attempt to save the trapped Yezidis. U.S. airstrikes on the ISIS militants aided in a Kurdish counteroffensive yesterday that allowed several thousand Yezidis to escape down the mountain and cross the border into Syria.

Additional World Book articles:

• Umayyad caliphate
• Iraq War
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)