2014 has seen its share of dramatic and shocking events: the Russian annexation of Crimea, the festering insurgency in eastern Ukraine, including the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines plane, the Hamas-Israel war, the mass kidnappings of girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the continuing horrors of the Syrian civil war.
That last conflict took an unexpected turn early in the year with the rise of the Islamic State group (ISIL), which morphed from an al-Qaeda offshoot into something much more sinister. With its declaration of a restored caliphate, its control of wide swaths of territory and populations in both …read more
Source: Ottawa Citizen
