Hassan, a 25-year-old prisoner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), looks depressed as he trades cigarettes with the 15 other men in his detention room in a makeshift jail in Aleppo province. He says he was headed to Aleppo central prison to deliver his cousin’s...

  Russian President Vladimir Putin set a condition that endangers the diplomatic initiative to eliminate  Syria ’s chemical weapons, saying it depends on the U.S. and other nations renouncing the use of force against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Putin’s remarks complicate...

A Russian proposal for Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control to avoid a Western strike would not stop bloodshed, the Gulf Arab states said on Tuesday. “We've heard of the initiative ... It's all about chemical weapons but doesn't stop the spilling of the blood of...

THE story is simple. Here in Syria, there is a regime that has been killing its subjects with impunity for the last 30 months. The notion that there is a mysterious civil war that is inextricably linked to the nature of the Middle East and its complicated sectarian divisions is far from the...