From Sarajevo to Baghdad: The Lessons of War

Apologies to all you World Cup fans, but today I am concentrating, briefly, on less uplifting matters. In Iraq on Sunday, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate extending from western Iraq through parts of Syria, areas it already largely controls. “This is not the first border we will break, we will break other borders,” a jihadist boasted in an English-language video called “End of Sykes-Picot,” which was posted on (and subsequently removed from) YouTube. Meanwhile, here in the United States, intelligence experts warned that terrorists trained in Syria and Iraq may be preparing to launch attacks on Western airliners with new hard-to-detect bombs.

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