My column* this week in The National discusses the carnage in the Syrian coastal area of Banias over the weekend committed by pro-regime militias, probably led by a Turkish man called Mihraç Ural. Ural is known for activists in the area. He leads a militia, called the Syrian...

Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the leader of Al Qaeda franchise in Iraq, dropped a bombshell Monday by announcing that Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusrah and the Islamic State of Iraq were to be united under a new name “Islamic State in Iraq and Sham [Levant] (ISIS)” – which can also be called Al...

In this video, Syria’s Sunni cleric Sheikh Saeed Ramadan Al Bouti gives his last religious seminar in a mosque in Damascus. At 20:10 , a bomb goes off .  In the beginning of his lecture, he says this lesson marks the 200 th lesson in a series about...

 There seem to be some important developments with regard to the Syrian opposition and regional patronage over the past few days. Saudi Arabia appears to have taken over from Qatar in dealing with the Syrian opposition, as great powers begin to agree on general principles for a...