ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved by ISIS. Does paying their captors for their freedom fund the terrorist organization? ERBIL, Iraq—In a crowded room in an undisclosed location in Northern Iraq, a Yazidi father is begging an American woman for money to buy back his daughters from the so-called Islamic State. Via a translator the man says he has been in contact with a broker—a middleman used as a go-between from ISIS to grieving Yazidi families—who for a high fee will return his children after they were taken and sold as slaves among the jihadis just over a year ago in the ISIS blitz of Northern Iraq. The man is desperate and low on cash, and says he’s considered selling his truck to pay for the girls’ release. In a haze of cigarette smoke and in between rounds of tea, the American, 66-year-old Amy Beam, tells him he shouldn’t sell his truck, but still needs to renegotiate with the broker. The asking fee is too high she says, and the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Childre...

To take down the so-called Islamic State in Syria, the influential former head of the CIA wants to co-opt jihadists from America’s arch foe. Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus. The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast. The heart of the idea stems from Petraeus’s experience in Iraq in 2007, when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency the U.S. persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military. The tactic worked, at least temporarily. But al Qaeda in Iraq was later reborn as ISIS, and has become the sworn enemy of its parent...

Russia has begun its military intervention in Syria, deploying an aerial contingent to a permanent Syrian base, in order to launch attacks against ISIS and Islamist rebels; US stays silent. Alex Fishman Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state. According to Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria and set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase. The base is said to be in area surrounding Damascus, and will serve, for all intents and purposes, as a Russian forward operating base. In the coming weeks thousands of Russian military personnel are set to touch down in Syria, including advisors, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and the pilots who will operate the aircraft. A formation of Russian Mig 31's (Photo: R...