Seth Frantzman is the author of Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machine, Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for the Future (Bombardier 2021) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
From our UK edition
Next month, Iraq’s Kurds head to the polls in an eagerly-awaited independence referendum. Ahead of the vote, on September 25th, the country’s Kurdistan Regional Government is searching for inspiration from abroad. Brexit, unsurprisingly, is an obvious pick; many Kurds are hoping that Kurdexit could – as with Britain’s shock departure from the EU – finally
From our UK edition
Since June 2014, when Islamic State attacked northern Iraq, the desks at Mar Ephrem seminary in Hamdaniya, a city 18 miles southeast of Mosul, have stood empty. Today, they are dusty and rooms once teeming with priests and nuns in training are dark; student ID cards, with titles such as ‘Syrian Catholic: Parish of Bashiqa, Iraq’, litter the floor and a
From our UK edition
The Afghans on the road in Serbia were wet from the rain. They were trying to hitch a ride into the border town of Presevo to make the way north to Hungary. Later I saw them sitting next to a train station drying their socks. Did they fear for the future? ‘This is nothing, we
From our UK edition
As the sun set over the frontline in northern Iraq on the first day of the long anticipated Mosul offensive, Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi army soldiers began to celebrate the first victories over Islamic State. Almost a dozen villages had been taken yesterday, and more than 77 square miles liberated southeast of the Isis stronghold. The offensive
From our UK edition
At night, the temperature around the Islamic State-held city of Mosul drops to around 80°F. At the Bashiqa front line, 15 miles northeast of the city, it would feel pleasant and almost calm, were it not for the steady sound of exploding shells. Most of life is tea and cigarettes. It’s like a quiet day
