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    Akbar Shahid Ahmed

    Akbar Shahid Ahmed

    Foreign Affairs Reporter, HuffPost

  • How Designating The Muslim Brotherhood A Terror Group Could Spell Disaster

    Designating the Brotherhood a terror group would weaken American alliances, boost violent extremists and endanger Muslim organizations in the U.S.

  • Mueller Report Is Bad News For Trump Ally And Blackwater Founder Erik Prince

    The special counsel's team suggested Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, lied to Congress, and it portrayed the mercenary as amateurish.

  • The GOP Is Playing Defense For Trump And Saudi Arabia. Bernie Sanders Isn't Giving In.

    On Wednesday the Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill ending U.S. support for the Saudis in Yemen that could get through the House within weeks and force an embarrassing Trump veto.

  • Here's The ISIS Recruitment Hub You Aren't Hearing About

    It's one thing to fight the extremist Islamic State group's recruitment within the United States. It's another for the U.S. to help partners tackle the group's fighters on the ground in Iraq and Syria. A potent example is Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population.

  • Other Countries On U.S. Marriage Equality: Been There, Done That

    The U.S. took a giant step toward full equality for its LGBT citizens Friday when the Supreme Court ruled that the freedom to marry is a constitutionally protected right that no one -- no activist, bureaucrat, legislator or any other variety of hater -- can deny to Americans of any sexual orientation. Here in Canada, and indeed in much of the Western world, marriage equality is almost taken for granted because it has been legally enshrined for years. New York Times reporter Liam Stack noted that some other Canadians may have had a less polite reaction.

  • Biggest Obstacle To Kurdish Victory Over ISIS Might Not Be ISIS

    Fighters with the Kurdish People's Protection Units sit near a checkpoint on the outskirts of the destroyed Syrian town of Kobani on June 20, 2015. AKCAKALE, Turkey -- Standing at the Turkey-Syria border last week waiting for his relatives to cross from a warzone to protected NATO territory, Khalid Abu Suliman threw up his hands in frustration. “What exactly is the Kurds’ stance?” the 30-year-old Syrian from Tal Abyad asked, eyeing a dozen slow-moving figures -- his family -- as they walked through the desert toward the border.

  • U.S. Airstrikes In Syria 'Have Killed So Many People. We Want Them To Stop'

    The U.S. military's admission this week that an airstrike against extremists last year in Syria killed two children is too little and too late for many Syrians, hardening a deep distrust of U.S. efforts in the war-ravaged country. “It’s not surprising at all,” Syrian activist Abdulla Sallom said over a weak Skype connection from Kafranbel, a northern city in the Idlib countryside currently under the control of non-extremist forces battling the Assad regime. U.S. strikes have "killed so many people.

  • Solar Panels Could Save Patients In Gaza's Hospitals, Thanks To A New Fundraising Campaign

    The electricity is there one second and cut off the next. Israel has imposed restrictions on the Palestinian enclave, home to 1.8 million people, since the area was fully taken over by the elected militant group Hamas in June 2007. Israel sees the blockade as necessary to prevent Hamas from obtaining weapons it can turn on Israeli civilians and soldiers.

  • These Activists Are Spending 40 Days Tweeting The Names Of 100,000 Killed Syrians

    Four years into a bloody civil war, many Syrians say the revolution that erupted in March 2011 has been all but forgotten by the international community. The deaths of over 220,000 men, women and children seemingly have been eclipsed by murky politics and an obsessive focus on the Islamic State, they warn, while the Syrian regime continues to drop devastating barrel bombs on civilians and run torture prisons. Some of its members will read the names of roughly 85,000 more killed Syrians in front of the White House this week.

  • How Egypt Is Harming, Not Helping, The ISIS Fight

    Egypt's forceful response to the Islamic State's murder of Egyptian Christians in Libya this past weekend seemed to be a welcome addition to the fight against the extremist group. Concern is growing because Egypt's tightly controlled political environment is awash with claims the Islamic State is secretly connected to Qatar and the United States, which are publicly committed to defeating the extremist group.

  • Tunisia Has A Democracy, If They Can Keep It

    Tunisia, where the Arab Spring first arose, has a new democratically elected government following presidential elections over the weekend, and the U.S. couldn't be happier about it. "Tunisia has provided a shining example to the region and the world of what can be achieved through dedication to democracy, consensus, and an inclusive political process," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday morning in a statement. "Tunisia’s achievements this year lay the groundwork for a more stable, prosperous, and democratic future for the country.

  • This Is What It's Like To Be A Woman Fighting ISIS

    The militant group known as the Islamic State has a limited view of what women can do: At best, they can support their husbands and produce new generations of jihadists. In a new report, exclusive to The Huffington Post, Swedish broadcast journalist Khazar Fatemi talks to female fighters in Iraq who are battling the Islamic State under the auspices of the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party.

  • Syrian Kurds Gain Importance In Campaign Against ISIS

    After more than a month of being outnumbered and outgunned, facing likely doom in Kobani, Kurdish fighters have begun to turn the tide against Islamic State militants with help from airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition. The U.S. has said the strikes are intended to aid Kobani's defenders. Such cooperation represents a significant development in U.S. strategy in Syria and the Middle East, Syria watchers told The Huffington Post.

  • ISIS May Have Chemical Weapons

    The Islamic State militant group may possess chemical weapons that it has already used to extend its self-proclaimed caliphate, according to photos taken by Kurdish activists and examined by Israeli researchers. The group, making gains in Iraq and Syria, may have captured chemical agents in Iraq in June and used them in July to kill three Kurdish fighters in the strategically important region of Kobani in northwest Syria,  suggests a report released Sunday by the Global Research in International Affairs Center, a branch of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. If verified, Islamic State's possession of unconventional weapons could make international efforts against it more urgent, and bolster claims that the world has not responded quickly or powerfully enough to the threat.

  • Al Qaeda-ISIS Merger A Terrifying, But Unlikely Possibility

    In what would be a nightmare for their enemies across the United States and the rest of the West, global terror network al Qaeda and the increasingly powerful Islamic State militant group may eventually join forces, according to an expert on the Islamic State. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the self-declared Islamic State, also known as ISIS, may reconcile with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda, "to fight the crusader enemy," said Hisham al-Hashimi, a former adviser to the Iraqi Security Forces and the author of a just-completed book about ISIS, in an interview with The Fiscal Times.

  • As They Battle ISIS For Kurdish Town, U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebels Question Support

    For three weeks, Syrian Kurdish fighters, outgunned and outnumbered, have held off an unrelenting assault from the Islamic State on the key city of Kobani. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its coalition partners have launched just a handful of airstrikes against Islamic State forces in the region -- including a new round of strikes Tuesday morning. Despite the strikes against additional ISIS forces moving toward Kobani, Syrian Kurds continue to warn that the city could fall to ISIS at any moment: The militants had already moved into parts of the town on Monday, and the fighting is now in the actual streets of the city.

  • 3 New Findings On ISIS Weapons That You Should Know About

    Islamic State militants are wielding arms manufactured in 21 different countries -- including the United States -- according to a new report released Monday. The study of ammunition captured during the Islamic State's battles with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and Syria in July and August highlights the diverse array of arms sources fueling the extremist group, also known as ISIS. Investigators from the arms monitoring group Conflict Armament Research cataloged more than 1,700 bullet cartridges by their country of origin and their date of manufacture.

  • Syrian Aid Workers Speak Of Help, Harm By U.S. In ISIS Campaign

    For a group of volunteer rescue workers trying to protect civilians in the Syrian war, the recent escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria is at once a blessing and a curse. While the Syrian Civil Defense is set to receive millions of dollars in additional U.S. assistance, representatives of the group this week criticized the U.S.-led coalition's airstrike campaign as risky and counterproductive. Speaking at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington on Tuesday, members of the Syrian Civil Defense said they had recently been promised $4.5 million in U.S. funding, on top of $6 million the group has already received.

  • What Do America's Arab Partners Against ISIS Really Want?

    As the U.S. launched the first airstrikes against the Islamic State and other militants inside Syria, it drew on support from five Arab nations: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. President Barack Obama views Arab involvement as key, administration officials have said.

  • Are The U.S. And Iraq On The Same Page?

    When Secretary of State John Kerry met with freshly minted Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Wednesday, he declared that the U.S. was "very encouraged" by al-Abadi's efforts to build a functioning Iraqi government. While al-Abadi emphasized that he would govern inclusively to rally disaffected Sunnis against the Islamic State, meeting one of U.S. President Barack Obama's conditions for expanded U.S. involvement in Iraq, he spoke of Iraq remaining dependent on U.S.-led international support.