Where the Russian leader lacks any real strategy, his American counterpart is short on nerve. They’re playing two different games and following very different rules.
Tag: assad
TEHRAN — While the moderate government headed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani enjoys the Supreme Leader’s qualified backing — which is crucial to its survival inside Iran — it contends daily with criticisms, often from its conservative opponents. The conservatives fear that his policy of bringing détente with the West and opening the economy will […]
Accused of one of Syria’s worst atrocities in 1982, and then exiled after a falling out with his brother’s regime, Rifaat al-Assad may again be eyeing power, and with Moscow’s help.
SYRIA SUMMIT BEGINS IN VIENNA Envoys from 17 countries are gathered in Vienna for the broadest peace talks since the beginning of the Syrian war, a summit nevertheless marked by the notable absence of both the Syrian government and its opposition, The Guardian writes. The U.S., France, Turkey, Russia and China are among the participants, […]
As students return to school this month in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, they won’t be heading back to the same classrooms they left last year. Instead, they’ll be studying in basements and other “secure areas” across the devas
KERRY, NETANYAHU MEET IN GERMANY U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Berlin today for talks about ongoing violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Kerry called for an immediate end to all incitement and violence after three weeks of deadly attacks. Netanyahu also called for a de-escalation but blamed […]
U.S., RUSSIA REACH DEAL ON SYRIA CAMPAIGNS Washington and Moscow officials signed an agreement yesterday to regulate flights over Syria in a bid to avoid potential clashes in the skies between U.S. and Russian aircraft as the rival countries engage in separate operations against jihadists, The New York Times reports. But the deal doesn’t include […]
NATO READY TO TO “DEFEND” TURKEY NATO is prepared to send troops to Turkey to defend its ally against any threats along its southern border, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a press conference before a meeting with defense ministers in Brussels today, Reuters reports. His comments come after Russian jets operating in Syria violated […]
ISTANBUL — The program to train and equip the “moderate opposition” in Syria, as long planned by the United States alongside Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, ended in utter failure. What led to this global diplomatic fiasco that has left the future of Syria looking so grim? The chain of problems began with the most […]
NATO WARNS RUSSIA ON INCURSIONS IN TURKISH AIRSPACE Nato has strongly condemned Russian violations of Turkey’s airspace, after Ankara reported two incursions in two days. The rising tensions between Moscow and the West come as Russia has launched air raids in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ISRAEL RAZES HOMES OF PALESTINIAN MILITANTS Israel’s government […]
TURKEY AIRSPACE VIOLATION AN “ERROR,” RUSSIA CLAIMS The violation of the Turkish airspace by a Russian warplane over the weekend was a “navigation error,” Moscow has told Ankara, according to Turkish military sources quoted by Hürriyet. Two Turkish F-16 jets intercepted a Russian SU-30 hundreds of meters into Turkey’s airspace, near the Syrian border, for […]
U.S. SAYS RUSSIA TARGETING REBELS, NOT ISIS Russia’s intervention in Syria has elicited anger from U.S. officials who are accusing Moscow of aiming at the region’s Western-backed rebels — not ISIS fighters, as the country claims. The New York Times reports that Russia’s participation in the civil war is an effort to help Syrian President […]
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Russian Air Strikes Shake Up Syrian Conflict
Al-Akhbar, Oct. 1, 2015 “Toward a new Middle East,” reads the front page of the Thursday edition of Lebanon’s Arabic-language daily Al-Akhbar, together with a picture of a Russian aircraft ready for take-off, as Moscow hits targets in Syria for a second day. On Wednesday, Moscow launched a series of airstrikes against what it said […]
Russia’s decision to send troops into Syria in defense of its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, is now at the center of a major diplomatic standoff between Moscow and the West. But the move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to send military support to combat ISIS insurgents is also a sign of concerns at the military […]
NEW MOVES ON SYRIAN WAR CHESSBOARD The diplomatic deadlock over how to end the bloody civil war in Syria is growing deeper by the hour. The upper house of the Russian Parliament has voted unanimously in favor of allowing the use of Russian troops in Syria, paving the way for the Russian air force to […]
The bloody Syrian stalemate unites Russia and the West, in a shared urgency to defeat ISIS. But the Syrian dictator, also an ISIS foe, should not be seen as a lesser evil.
A Turkish journalist travels with an Alawite fixer to Damascus to understand what life is like in the Syrian capital as war in the country rages. Life goes on, but it’s not all grim.
QAMISHLI — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad“s smiling face beams down from a large billboard on the central artery of Qamishli, a city in northeast Syria. But further down the road towards the city’s eastern suburbs, what looks imposingly over the avenue is a portrait of a triumphant-looking Abdullah Ocalan, the anointed leader of Turkey’s Kurdish […]
MAJDAL AL-SHAMS — Anger is boiling over in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where local Syrian Druze on Monday attacked an ambulance and killed a wounded Syrian opposition fighter seeking medical treatment from the Israeli military. The fighter was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) in Quneitra and the Golan, according to that group’s Facebook page. The RCC is a coalition of different armed factions in Syria, many of which are hardline Islamist groups. The Druze, an offshoot sect of Shia Islam, are spread across the map of the Middle East, particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. In the […]
“We were exposed to hunger, electrocution, beating and insults. We got sick, we got lice and scabies, and were often strip searched, which was the worst part.”
Led by new Saudi King Salman, an alliance of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey is aiding rebels, including jihadists, in new victories against Syrian President Assad’s regime.
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Nepal Toll, Philly Train Crash, Cannes Opens
RESCUE OPS RESUME AFTER SECOND NEPAL QUAKE EPISODE Rescue teams have resumed their quest to find survivors in devastated Nepal, after yesterday’s 7.3-magnitude earthquake. It came less than three weeks after an even more violent one that destroyed part of the impoverished country and killed more than 8,000 people, AFP reports. Reports say at least […]
To gauge the ways the civil war has affected all of Syria, a look at seven cities on the fourth anniversary of the first uprising against the regime. A chronicle of death and life going on.
Countless displaced by the war in Syria include those forced to move from one part of the country to another. Misery tends to follow.
Syria’s tangled web grows even more intricate. Hezbollah is key to Assad’s strategy, moderate rebels avoid ISIS and al-Nusra at all cost, and Israel helps the Free Syrian Army.
Turns in the war in Syria, as well as shifting resources and alliances across the Muslim world, mean tensions are easing between Israel and both Hamas and Hezbollah.
AL-HALBOUNI — Adel, a teenager, worked with his father at their small shop near al-Halbouni, not far from Damascus. By age 17, he had dropped out of school to support his family, as their financial situation grew desperate after years of war. Adel wasn’t a supporter of Syria’s government, but that didn’t prevent him from being forced to fight on its behalf. He was arrested at one of the army checkpoints in the town of Qudsaiya in the Damascus countryside, then sent off to battle. “We were on our way to work,” Adel’s father recounts. “We got stopped at a […]
REYHANLI — At the beginning of this year, Jamal Maarouf was regarded as the new white knight of the Syrian insurrection. Over the course of just a few days in January, Maarouf and his men drove ISIS jihadists out of northern Syria’s Idlib province. Armed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, the leader of […]
From the Israeli side of the border, a view of how the whole of the Middle East seems to be maneuvering.
A Syrian activist from the northern countryside talks about keeping alive the anti-regime, non-Islamist revolution amid the constant threat of shelling and the spectre of ISIS.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees enemies everywhere: Assad, Kurds, but not the murderous Islamist radical group just across the border in Syria.
A steady stream of Syrians are joining the National Defense Force, a loyalist reserve force set up in 2012 by President Bashar al-Assad. For many it’s the only way to make a living.
Complaints about Ankara’s inaction have come from the West and Kurds. But Turkey’s regional ambitions may very well push it into Syria to crush ISIS. The risk could be huge.
One slipped away, the other killed his way out of ISIS after witnessing too much brutality from the jihadist group. But as they tell their dramatic stories, sharp differences emerge.
-Analysis- One year since taking office, Iran President Hassan Rouhani and his government are confronted with an extremely unstable geopolitical situation across the Middle East. Tehran had long been seen as the main beneficiary of the 2003 U.S. intervention in Iraq, but it must now face unexpected difficulties in its neighboring country and former sworn […]
For fear of an Iran-led rise of Shia, authorities from Riyadh to Ankara fed the radicalism that now eyes them as the primary target.
CAIRO — Since the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared a caliphate, much has been written about the movement — but still more remains unclear. How seriously should we take their rise? How does ISIS define Islamic law, and how would it be implemented? There are also more basic […]
A year after a chemical attack killed nearly 1,000 civilians in the Syrian rebel stronghold of eastern Ghouta, new fears that the Islamist radical group is building its own chemical stockpile.
Four years into Syria’s conflict, cannabis has become an unlikely key source of financing for a number of groups in the opposition-held north. It’s used mostly to buy weapons. Jabal al-Zawiya in the province of Idlib is a mountainous area close to the Turkish border. Once famous for growing olives, it is now used to grow pot. Farmers here say the plant grows quickly, and yields higher revenues than olives. Most villages in Idlib province are living off the spoils of goods smuggled between Syria and Turkey, and many basic commodities available for purchase here now come from Turkey, too. […]
ISTANBUL — The Syrian regime today presents itself to the international community as a partner in “fighting terrorism,” and Bashar al-Assad is happy to leave his enemies on the northern front (where the Nusra, Islamic Front, Free Syrian Army, and YPG fight ISIS) to wear each other out. The proposed anti-terror partnership would function just […]