War

ISIS militants have executed 250 women for refusing to engage in ‘sexual jihad’ with their fighters since Iraq’s largest city Mosul fell into their hands in early June 2014. Under the pretext of Shariah law women are forced to submit to sexual slavery through temporary marriage otherwise they could face harsh penalties for refusing. Abna24 reports: A Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official from Mosul, Said Mamuzini, said that life is too hard for the women in Mosul due to the ISIS strict rules imposed on them.

William Hartung chides the Obama administration for trying to buy Saudi goodwill with weapons:

One justification that has been put forward for the continued flow of weaponry from the United States to Saudi Arabia is that it provides reassurance to the kingdom’s leadership that Washington won’t tilt toward the Iranians in the wake of the deal reached last year over Iran’s nuclear program. But if demonstrating a commitment to the Saudi government entails supporting deadly and reckless initiatives, like the war in Yemen, the policy is not worth the price.

Can you believe it? We’re in the last year of the presidency of the man who, on his first day in the Oval Office, swore that he would close Guantánamo, and yet it and everything it represents remains part of our all-American world. So many years later, you can still read news reports on the ongoing nightmares of that grim prison, ranging from detention without charge to hunger strikes and force feeding. Its name still echoes through the halls of Congress in bitter debate over what should or shouldn’t be done with it. It remains a global symbol of the worst America has to offer.

A massive Taliban suicide bomb as well as a gun attack on a government security office in central Kabul near the US embassy during rush hour on Tuesday killed at least 28 people and wounded more than 320 in Afghanistan earlier today, a week after the militant group announced a spring offensive.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the assault "in the strongest possible terms" in a statement from the presidential palace, only a few hundred meters away from the scene of the blast in the Afghan capital.

Following threats of economic sanctions against America from the Saudi royal family, the Obama administration have hit back by announcing that the original source of funding for Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks came from the Saudi regime.  The stunning admission follows a serious deterioration in relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, after the Whitehouse announced plans to declassify 28-pages from the 9/11 report that implicates Saudi Arabia as having a role in orchestrating the September 11 attacks.