CIA could begin shipping arms in the coming weeks after clearance from House and Senate intelligence committees The  CIA  could begin shipping arms to  Syria  in the coming weeks, after two US congressional panels cleared the way for the controversial transfer of...

UNTIL last month the leader of Ahrar al-Sham (the Free Men of Syria), a large Salafist rebel group, went by a  nom de guerre . Then on June 8th Hassan Aboud revealed his real name in an interview with Al Jazeera, the Qatari satellite television channel. Days later he attended a Salafist...

 Syrian Kurds made rapid advances in the north on Tuesday, expelling jihadists from a string of villages, as mistrust between Kurds and Arabs grows, a watchdog and activists said. Fighting hit a series of ethnically mixed villages in the northern province of Raqa on the border with...

 Bashar al-Assad had issued on Tuesday a legislative decree to establish an Islamic fund affiliated to  the Ministry of religious endowments,  called  (al-Zakat)to encourage the  charity in the holy month, the regime news agency (SANA) reported....