Over the last two weeks, Obama administration officials have signaled - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not - that a worst-case scenario is emerging in Syria. Peace talks are at a virtual standstill. An emboldened President Bashar al-Assad has missed two deadlines...
There is reason for pessimism about this week’s conference in Geneva on the Syrian civil war. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has shown that he cannot be dislodged through force, and the rebels insist that they have no interest in any plan that does not involve his immediate departure...
An Al-Qaeda surge and Sunni-Shiite tumult spanning Iraq and Syria are testing eroded US influence and the logic of a foreign policy built on antipathy to Middle East entanglements. The return of jihadists to cities like Fallujah and Ramadi, fabled battlefields for US soldiers, has left...
A s Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt served a sumptuous dinner to a gathering of Lebanese notables here, the talk around the table was about who would fill the power vacuum in the region if America reaches a nuclear deal with Iran — and accelerates what’s...
It mystifies me how in spite of all the disasters that are happening in Syria, Syrians seem to have been taken with the news of the Etilaf’s president, Ahmad Jarba, slapping the SMC’s coordinator, Louay AlMokdad, across the face. For the purposes of this reflection, the incident...
For much of the last several months, news of the Syrian opposition has been vastly overshadowed by debate in the United States regarding a possible military response to the August 21 chemical weapons attacks in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta, which there is strong...
The strange thing about the crackup in U.S.-Saudi relations is that it has been on the way for more than two years, like a slow-motion car wreck, but nobody in Riyadh or Washington has done anything decisive to avert it. The breach became dramatic over the past week....
At a roundtable discussion this past weekend in the Aegean town where Herodotus was born, history-making events, on the scale of those he recorded, provoked sharp debate. At its annual roundtable in Bodrum, the Istanbul-based Edam Centre for Economics and Foreign...
This week, a Jordanian band went on a tour that included the Golan Heights, Nazareth, Haifa, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. But the popular music group which is rated as one of the top five in the region faced a concerted social media and online attack as having participated in a...
I've spent much of the last week in Antakya, an ancient city, known to Byzantine Christians as Antioch, which now serves as a bivouac for Syrian rebel fighters and a jumping-off point for journalists and humanitarian actors working in Syria, which lies 20...
Until a few weeks ago, Saudi Arabia was riding high. Its regional policies, based on countering revolutionary fervour and containing Iran, appeared to be bearing fruit. Egypt’s army ousted the Islamist president, to plaudits and generous funding from Riyadh; the Syrian...
A lot of Syrians still keep in mind the tragic story of 5-year-old girl who was raped by many men Aleppo in 2009; the incident had a tsunami amid State-run media that time where the top news was Bashar al-Assad visit to the girl with his wife Asma, in step to focus on the...
He who listens to some of the Syrian opposition leaders’ conditions for attending the Geneva II conference can tell how distant they are from the difficult political reality. One of them announced a list of demands and said those organizing the Geneva II conference must fulfill these demands if...
The situation inside Syria has just gotten a lot more complex. Syria's exiled opposition and the United States have invested heavily in propping up the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as a counterweight to radical groups that emerged as key players in areas liberated from Bashar al-Assad's rule....
Not every report to emerge from Syria is bad news for Bashar al-Assad. Yes, the world's jihadists may be flying from Accrington to Aleppo to fillet his soldiers with bullets. But it turns out Bashar has violent friends in far-off places, too. Since the conflict began in 2011,...
The falling of Al-Raqqa city has been a big loss to the Syrian regime, even if some observers think that the forgotten city has nothing to attract Damascus government we shouldn't forget that the main three dams that affiliate to the remote city – within Euphrates dam- considered the main...
This is an interesting letter issued by the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria ISIS about its battles in Azaz, Aleppo, against the Free Syrian Army's group, Asifat al Shamal (Northern Storm). Address: Aleppo, northern countryside, the emirate of Azaz On Wednesday,...
The majority of Palestinians in Syria live in 13 refugees camps, besides other clusters outside camps in Damascus like al-Tadamon, Kaboun, Rokn al-Din, Kafr Sooseh, al- Hajar al-aswad, Yalda, al-Moadamiyeh, Jdaydet Artooz Palestinians who live in gatherings outside...
Now that it seems unlikely the U.S. will hit Syria militarily, the rebels need a new strategy. Jamie Dettmer reports on the tough odds facing the opposition. President Obama’s acceptance of a Russian-brokered proposal to strip Syrian president Bashar al-Assad of his...
Brigadier General Salim Idris, Chairman of Rebels Joint Chiefs of Staff and Commander of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is widely considered a moderate figure within the Syria's armed opposition, besides his credibility among rebels'...
