The Kurdish people in North Syria are attacked by Turkey to the north and Syria to the south. No one wants them there but they have nowhere to go. People attend the funeral of four Kurds in the town of Jinderis, Syria, 21 March 2023. The assailants shot the Kurdish...
A conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is heating up as the war in Ukraine prompts geopolitical realignments, with implications for outside powers including the West and Russia. Azerbaijani soldiers carry portraits of soldiers killed during fighting over...
“It is easy to pay little attention or to even ignore regional conflicts, but they can hold the key to understanding larger political currents in the world.” Correspondent Bryson Hull’s words remind us of why a simmering conflict in the Caucuses between Armenia and Azerbaijan has potential implications for all of us. News Decoder is premised on the notion that young people know a great deal, through headlines on their screens, about what is happening in the world but, because they are young, can have difficulty connecting the dots and understanding why far-away events matter to them. Hull offers a clear explanation of why fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh appears periodically in those headlines, and then disappears, only to reappear some day, like so many other intractable conflicts in distant places.
Exercise: Ask your students to identify a regional conflict that became a proxy for armed competition involving stronger powers.
Russia has long treated relations with Kurds as a bargaining chip as it pursues broader objectives. Today in Syria, things are no different. A Kurdish girl in front of a poster of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Afrin, Syria, 24 January 2018 (AP Photo/Petros...
The Kurds are the world’s largest nation without a state. Yet, when thrust onto the world agenda, questions over the group’s identity invariably arise. Supporters of Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party dance during Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year, in Istanbul,...
By Nadia Dala Both Islamic jihadist movements and Islamic governments that are trying to counter jihadism are relying on women to win over the hearts of Muslims. Women in jihadist circles are child-bearing, silent recruiters, while governments in some parts of the...