By Jesse Rosenfeld (The Nation)-  The rattle of tracer fire jolts a cellphone camera resting in the gun hole of an upper-level apartment on a shelled-out east Aleppo street. Moments after the Hezbollah fighter has fired incendiary ammunition into the neighborhood below, it’s enveloped in...

(The Guardian)- President Trump told a group of senators this week that the US military was “doing very well” in Iraq. “The results are very, very good,” Trump said. The families of the hundreds of innocents who have been killed in US airstrikes since Trump became president might disagree....

Six long years ago, on March 15, 2011, Syrian people flooded the streets to demand their right to live free and dignified lives. They demanded freedom of expression and assembly. And they wanted to be able to advance economically without having to prove their allegiance to the oligarchy of...

(Wall Street Journal)- Hundreds of Islamic State loyalists in recent days have fled the group’s de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa, where emptying streets and a lack of water and electricity point to the extremists’ crumbling control. Raqqa residents said Islamic State’s feared religious...

(Al-Monitor)- As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was declaring in February that after taking over al-Bab, Turkey would proceed to Manbij and then to Raqqa, Al-Monitor was meeting in Manbij with Adnan Abu Amjad, general commander of the Manbij Military Council. The day of the meeting,...

By Ismail Ayoub (Zaman Al Wasl)- American Special Forces executed a tactical airdrop in Tabaqa airbase using Osprey v22 helicopters, the most sophisticated in the world. As a result of the attack, American and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) took control of the airport from Islamic State...

(News Week)- In a recent interview with Al-Mayadeen television, Hezbollah’s number two, Sheikh Naim Qassem, insisted that “Hezbollah would be the one deciding when to leave Syria, “which will take place when the party is guaranteed that ‘Syria as a resistance’ will remain.” Qassem...

  (Zaman Al Wasl)- No celebrations reported by the sixth anniversary of the Syrian revolution in eastern Syria since the oil-and-ethnic rich region has been turned into a battering battleground between regime forces, Kurdish militias and ISIS and turned into The Revolution's flag...

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday it had asked for more time to respond to a request from lawmakers for evidence about President Donald Trump's allegation that then-President Barack Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 election campaign. Earlier this month, without offering...

With the world relapsing into old rivalries, disinformation is emerging as the continuation of war by other means. Propaganda has always been used by authoritarian states to control populations at home — but technological advances are allowing them to also neutralize enemies abroad. None has...

(Middle East Eye)- The announcement earlier this week by the head of Iran's Martyrs Foundation that 2,100 combatants had been killed in Syria while "defending the shrine," has placed the extent of Iran’s human sacrifice into sharp relief. The term "defending the shrine" (Modafeaaneh Haram),...

(Al-Jazeera)- Six years into the carnage in Syria, atrocious crimes run rampant, with savage abuses committed against all groups in the devastated country, and the murderous regime, abetted by powerful allies, is still in power. The United Nations Security Council remains in a deadlock and...

By Abdullah Ghadawi (Zaman Al Wasl)- Members of the opposition's negotiating committee disagree among themselves about how to evaluate the results of the fourth round of the Geneva Peace Talks. The disparity in their positions appeared clearly as some consider the talks resembled those that...

(Al-Monitor)- On Feb. 21, Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, gave a speech at the Sixth International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada in Tehran, during which he called for the need to unify fronts between Palestinian factions...

THE MORNING PLUM: We keep hearing that President Trump will roll out the new version of his travel ban any day now. The White House delayed it earlier this week, because Trump advisers reportedly thought it could step on the good press he’d earned from his speech, thus inadvertently...

(Al-Monitor)- It’s become customary not to expect much from the Syria peace conferences. The warring parties argue around same mutual claims, often stick to maximalist positions and frequently seem more interested in trying to project a sympathetic image to outside observers than in discussing...

(Washington Post)- Sitting 7,000 miles from the fuss and frills of Sunday's Academy Awards, it was Raed Saleh, dressed in a simple T-shirt, who delivered one of the most powerful messages of the night. In a short acceptance speech — posted online after a documentary about his Syrian...

(Al-Monitor)- The major political slogan of the Bolshevik Party leading up to the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution and the uprising itself, “All Power to the Soviets!” is now relevant to Syria. The long-lasting civil war in Syria killed centralized government stone dead and caused a...

(Al-Monitor)- All Palestinians have been focused on Hamas’ internal elections, which started Feb. 3 in Gaza and ended with Yahya Sanwar at the head of Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza. Sanwar succeeds Ismail Haniyeh, who is competing to replace Khaled Meshaal as the political bureau head at...

(Al-Monitor)- There are strong signals coming from Amman that Jordan is calibrating its strategy on Syria in light of recent political and military developments. At the heart of this shift lies Jordan’s readiness to chart a more independent course in dealing with the regime of Syrian President...