If we confine our choices to leaders with broad appeal in the Arab and Islamist mainstream — excluding both al-Qaida and Kurdish leaders — we get the following five, listed in order. Hassan Abboud 1. Hassan Abboud,  the general...

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,...

    Syrian opposition started printing a revised Syrian curriculum in Istanbul, where all information related to the Assad regime has been omitted. The revised books will be distributed to displaced Syrian students in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Qatar as well as...

  Six weeks ago, a two-man delegation arrived in secret in Damascus: civilians from Aleppo who represented elements of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group largely composed of fighters who deserted the regime’s army in the first year of the war. They came under a guarantee of...