Over the past two months, the ISIS international franchise has made gains from West Africa to the Indian subcontinent, with militants in several countries proclaiming for the "caliphate."
Many rare and antique volumes were lost as ISIS forces put the Mosul library to the torch—over vociferous pleas and protests from the city's notables.
Kurdish and allied Free Syrian Army forces, backed by US air-strikes, have advanced into Raqqa governorate, where ISIS has its de facto capital at the provincial seat.
Human Rights Watch said that militias allied with Iraqi forces are committing systematic abuses against Sunni civilians that are "possibly war crimes."
The ISIS immolation video reveals a totalitarian cult, but Jordan and other regimes in the anti-ISIS coalition are also despotic—while Syria's pro-democratic forces are betrayed.
The conspirosphere is jumping on claims that a Pakistani suspect revealed that ISIS is being funded "through the US." But it's all based on anonymous sources—of course.
Fighting broke out between Assad regime troops and Kurdish forces in Syria's divided northern city of Hassakeh, signalling an end to a pact established to keep ISIS at bay.
US media accounts of gains against ISIS at Kobani play up the role of US air-strikes and depreciate that of Kurdish fighters—or even deny the success at Kobani entirely.
Kurdish forces made further gains against ISIS at Kobani in the final days of 2014, while the Peshmerga are preparing an offensive to drive the jihadis from Kurdish lands in Iraq.
Backed by US air-strikes, Peshmerga forces liberated the last remaninig Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar. But the Yazidis' home town of Sinjar remains occupied by ISIS.
US ground troops fought their first direct battle against ISIS as the jihadists launched an attack on a base in Anbar that housed mixed US, Iraqi and tribal forces.
Despite—or perhaps partly because of—threats and deadly attacks from ISIS militants, a record 15.5 million Shi'ite pilgrims have converged on Karbala for Arbaeen.
