The European Union has extended the mandate of its naval operation targeting migrant smuggling in the Mediterranean and tasked it with monitoring illegal oil trafficking from Libya. Operation Sophia, which has naval ships and aircraft monitoring the Mediterranean, aims to disrupt smuggling...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The number of Democratic Union Party (PYD) militia members, the main fighting component in the Syrian Democratic Forces killed have increased in recent weeks with the during the intensification of the fighting with the Islamic State forces inside al-Raqqah.  Tens...

( The Washington Post )- What did the CIA’s covert assistance program for Syrian rebels accomplish? Bizarrely, the biggest consequence may be that it helped trigger the Russian military intervention in 2015 that rescued President Bashar al-Assad — achieving the opposite of what the program...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Thousands of Syrian refugees in the Lebanese border town of Arsal still have mixed feelings of terror, anticipation and caution after the Lebanese Army’s operation on two refugee camps in the area in which 21 refugees were killed among them a child and 400...