Egypt formally opened an expansion to the Suez Canal amid pomp, spectacle—and a massive troop presence. The new trade hub opens as a jihadist insurgency mounts in the Sinai.
The US and Turkey have reached an agreement to keep Kurdish forces out of the northern Syria "buffer zone" as Ankara expands its air-strikes in both Syria and Iraq.
Washington has given Turkey a green light to crush the revolutionary Kurds—in Turkey, Syria and Iraq alike—as the price of Ankara's cooperation against ISIS.
With US support, Turkey is moving to seize its "buffer zone" in Syria—ostensibly against ISIS but actually against the Kurdish forces that have been the most effective against ISIS.
As Turkey opens Incirlik Air Base to US warplanes, it has launched sweeps against supporters of both ISIS and their enemies in the PKK and allied leftist forces.
The Pentagon announced that Muhsin al-Fadhli, a longtime al-Qaeda operative from Kuwait, was killed in an air-strike in Syria, where he was leading the so-called "Khorasan Group."
Boko Haram, now calling itself Islamic State West Africa, carried out a wave of deadly suicide bombings as a multilateral military alliance prepares to take the field against the jihadists.
A suicide bomb attack in the southern Turkish town of Suruc killed at least 30 at a meeting of young activists to organize solidarity with the reconstruction of Kobani.
Fighters loyal to ISIS have seized substantial territory in Afghanistan, burning opium fields in an apparent bid to stigmatize the Taliban as corrupt and soft on drugs.
Syrian regime forces backed by Iranian troops clashed with residents of two Alawite villages outside Hama following a wave of mass arrests in the area.
Two Spanish volunteers who went to Iraq to fight ISIS in an "International Brigade" were arrested upon their return and face charges of membership in a "terrorist organization."
Obama's Pentagon speech on his strategy against ISIS boasted of "effective partners on the ground"—but pointedly made no actual reference to the Rojava Kurds.
