Free Republic

<p>Washington -- Foreign ministers from 68 countries meet in Washington on Wednesday to agree on the next steps to defeat Islamic State, the first such gathering of the U.S-led military coalition since the election of President Donald Trump in November.</p>

Some observers have noticed something rather peculiar about Turkey’s new bombing campaign against Islamic State positions. The curious thing about the airstrikes on ISIS targets, Ankara’s critics say, is that they aren’t really occurring. Instead, Turkey is aggressively hitting PKK targets and although Turkey made it clear in its appeal for NATO support that it doesn’t discriminate between one "terrorist" group and another, commentators say the air raids have been noticeably one-sided. "Opponents [of] President Tayyip Erdogan [have] pointed out the air strikes against the PKK have so far been heavier than those against the Islamist radicals," Reuters notes.As we’ve...

Decked out in his US army-issued fatigues and a lip stud shining from his mouth, the young American fighter cuts an unusual figure in the northern Iraqi town of Al-Qosh. He served in the US army in Baghdad in 2006-2007 and has now returned to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group with Dwekh Nawsha, a Christian militia whose name is an Assyrian-language phrase conveying self-sacrifice, reports AFP. The 28-year-old, who goes by the pseudonym Brett, has become the figurehead of an emerging movement of foreigners coming to Iraq to support Christian groups. Bearing a tattoo of a machinegun on...