Monthly Archives: September 2015

U.S. military opens a new front in the hunt for African warlord Joseph Kony

The Washington Post reports: U.S. Special Operations forces have opened a new front in their hunt for the African warlord Joseph Kony, moving closer to his suspected hideout in a lawless enclave straddling Sudan and South Sudan, according to military officials and others familiar with the operation.

As their mission stretches into a fifth year, however, U.S. troops have turned to some unsavory partners to help find Kony’s trail. Working from a new bush camp in the Central African Republic, U.S. forces have begun working closely with Islamist rebels — known as the Seleka — who toppled the central government two years ago and triggered a still-raging sectarian war.

The Pentagon has not previously disclosed its intelligence sharing and other forms of cooperation with the Seleka. The arrangement has made some U.S. troops uncomfortable. [Continue reading…]

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How Edward Snowden inadvertently helped Vladimir Putin’s internet crackdown

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan write: In the 1990s the global nature of the Internet meant wires. When a user got connected, he could send his e-mail or visit a website anywhere in the world. In the 2000s the Internet meant the rise of global platforms that allowed users to share the same social networks, email services, search engines, and clouds. The Internet became more of a common ground for people from Argentina to Russia — they used the same Facebook, the same Twitter. That also meant that the information users exchanged was stored inside systems located far from the users — systems that could not be readily controlled by nations, their leaders, or their secret services. Most of the servers were located in the United States.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, this was intolerable. In his mind the solution was simple: force the platforms — Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Apple among them — to locate their servers on Russian soil so Russian authorities could control them.

The challenge was how to do it.

The Kremlin obviously needed a pretext to put pressure on the global platforms to relocate their servers, and Edward Snowden’s revelations provided the perfect excuse to start the offensive. The members of the Russian parliament chosen by the Kremlin to define Internet legislation rushed to comment on his revelations. Legislation forcing global platforms to store Russians’ personal data in Russia was soon adopted, and came into force on Tuesday [Sept. 1], sending Western tech giants scrambling to comply. Russian censors announced plans to blacklist websites including Wikipedia, Github, the Wayback Machine, and BuzzFeed. Snowden had no say in the matter. [Continue reading…]

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Ad industry may gripe about adblockers, but they broke the contract – not us

By Andrew McStay, Bangor University

The latest version of Apple’s operating system for phones and tablets, iOS9, allows the installation of adblocking software that removes advertising, analytics and tracking within Apple’s Safari browser. While Apple’s smartphone market share is only around 14% worldwide, this has prompted another outpouring from the mobile and web advertising industry on the effects of adblockers, and discussion as to whether a “free” web can exist without adverts.

It’s not a straightforward question: advertising executives and publishers complain that ads fund “free” content and adblockers break this contract. Defenders of adblocking point out that the techniques used to serve ads are underhand and that the ads themselves are intrusive. Who is right?

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West ‘walking into abyss’ on Syria

Charles Lister writes: IS remains a potent force in Syria and must be countered, but it will not be marching on Damascus anytime soon, contrary to some uninformed fear mongering. Al-Qaeda also poses a pressing and more long-term threat, perhaps more so than has been acknowledged. But at the end of the day, the root cause of the entire Syrian crisis is Assad and his regime.

While an unenviable challenge, it remains the international community’s moral and political responsibility to find a solution in Syria that ensures the best chance of a sustainable peace. This means genuinely engaging with Syrians of all stripes, including the armed opposition and incorporating their views into a potential solution.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Syrian armed opposition is not divided, but has in fact spent much of the past year focused on developing a clear and unified political vision. These are all groups composed of and led by Syrians and which explicitly limit their objectives to within Syria’s national boundaries – not IS and roughly a dozen Al-Qaeda-linked factions.

Simply put, this amounts to a core of roughly 100 factions. Amid the threat of being excluded from determining their country’s future, dozens of the most powerful of these armed groups are now negotiating the establishment of a single “political office”.

Western governments are ignoring the armed opposition at our own peril. [Continue reading…]

Hassan Hassan writes: The Russians will help the regime to secure and fortify its bases, but not to claw back lost territories. The problem for the regime is not firepower but ground forces capable of pushing back incessant rebel attacks, something that Hizbollah and Iranian fighters are better equipped to provide in the Syrian terrain. Hizbollah has made successive gains against the rebels in some areas but it also suffered defeats or impasse, including in areas where it has a strategic depth, notably near the Lebanese border. A Hizbollah-led three-month offensive in Zabadani, for example, failed to clear a few hundred rebel fighters, compelling Iran to negotiate a truce with the militants.

The idea that Russian fighters will enable the regime to reclaim territory is a fantasy. Russia also has little to offer against ISIL in eastern Syria, except perhaps to reinforce three airbases under attack by ISIL in Deir Ezzor, Aleppo and Homs. Moscow will bolster the regime’s capabilities to defend itself in key towns and cities, but nothing more.

Western officials are therefore greatly misguided to signal a softening towards Mr Al Assad in the wake of the Russian intervention. They should recognise they are fast losing any shred of credibility among the opposition. [Continue reading…]

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Putin has checkmated Obama in Syria

Hisham Melhem writes: President Obama’s epic failure in Syria brought Putin out of the cold and now Putin is trying to bring Bashar Assad out of the cold and into a Russian led coalition to fight ISIS and other radical Islamists like Jabhat al-Nusra, with the promise to the Europeans that this new coalition will help alleviate their Syrian refugee crisis, the very crisis Putin had helped in creating by his considerable lethal support of the Assad regime. If there ever was a deal made in hell this would be it.

Putin the arsonist is fading away, and Putin the fireman is emerging as the indispensable leader to fight Islamist terrorism in Syria, and to save Western Europe from those refugees storming its ramparts and trying to enter its rapidly closing gates. Every Russian move and every Iranian decision in Syria scream loudly that the two states are as committed as ever to the survival of the Assad regime.

Before his arrival in New York, Putin confirmed his intentions to support Assad in an interview with Charlie Rose of the “60 Minutes” program on the CBS television network when he was asked if he was planning to “rescue” Assad. “Well, you’re right.” Then he warned that the destruction of “the legitimate government” in Syria would create chaos and disintegration as was the case in Libya and Iraq, in a clear jab against American interventions in those two states. “And there is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism. But at the same time, urging them to engage in positive dialogue with the rational opposition and conduct reform.”

The false narrative of the Obama administration, and some European countries and a growing number of analysts that confronting ISIS, al-Nusra and other Islamists is the urgent priority now, has played into Putin’s narrative and is beginning to reflect a very disturbing shift towards rehabilitating Assad.

Assad’s regime is the most brutal military machine in Syria, responsible for the killing of more than 95 percent of civilians, according to human rights organizations. Syrians in the main are fleeing the country because of the depredations of the Assad regime. The United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura said it explicitly that it is “totally unacceptable that the Syrian air force attacks its own territory in an indiscriminate way, killing its own citizens. The use of barrel bombs must stop. All evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of the civilian victims in the Syrian conflict have been caused by the use of such indiscriminate aerial weapons.” [Continue reading…]

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In Baghdad, Russia catches the U.S. by surprise — again

The New York Times reports: For the second time this month, Russia moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict and left the United States scrambling, this time by reaching an understanding, announced on Sunday, with Iraq, Syria and Iran to share intelligence about the Islamic State.

Like Russia’s earlier move to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad by deploying warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria, the intelligence-sharing arrangement was sealed without notice to the United States. American officials knew that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad, but they were clearly surprised when the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command announced the intelligence sharing accord on Sunday.

It was another sign that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was moving ahead with a sharply different tack from that of the Obama administration in battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, by assembling a rival coalition that includes Iran and the Syrian government. [Continue reading…]

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Defecting jihadists help reveal why they signed up to ISIS

By Sarah Marsden, Lancaster University

They say disillusionment is the gap between expectation and reality. If the conclusions of a report just published by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence are anything to go by, it’s a gap that’s causing an increasing number of Islamic State fighters to defect.

Based on the accounts of 58 people who left IS between January 2014 and August 2015, the report draws attention to a range of factors associated with both joining and leaving ISIS.

The report revealed three broad motivations for joining IS in the first place: they opposed the brutality of the Assad regime in Syria and saw a need to protect fellow Muslims; they believed in establishing an Islamic state governed by Sharia law; and they were drawn by the promise of material goods and adventure.

But these motivations are also part of why they leave. The infighting among Sunni groups and the comparative neglect of the battle against Assad is an important cause of defection. There is also concern over the amount of violence directed at Sunni Muslims – including the mistreatment of hostages, civilians and fellow fighters. The corruption of local commanders displaying un-Islamic behaviour is another driver. And some of the defectors were disappointed when the promised utopia of luxury goods and cars failed to materialise. They soon realised that living conditions were much harder than they had imagined.

We should be cautious about the conclusions we draw from accounts of such a small number of defectors. Potentially tens of thousands of people have travelled to Syria to fight. Those willing to speak publicly about their experience are, as the ICSR report acknowledges, unlikely to be entirely representative, are certainly not comprehensive, and may not be wholly truthful.

But these findings do offer valuable insight into an issue we know little about. Since IS emerged, much time has been spent trying to work out why people from all over the world are joining. However, while increasing efforts are being directed at understanding how and why people leave militant groups, our knowledge remains, at best, incomplete.

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Why Obama’s drone war has failed in Yemen

Jillian Schwedler writes: The narrative that the West, and especially the United States, fears the Muslim world is powerful and pervasive in the region. The U.S. intervenes regularly in regional politics and is a steadfast ally of Israel. It supports Saudi Arabia and numerous other authoritarian regimes that allow it to establish permanent U.S. military bases on Arab land. It cares more about oil and Israel than it does about the hundreds of millions in the region suffering under repressive regimes and lacking the most basic human securities. These ideas about the American role in Middle East affairs – many of them true – are among those in wide circulation in the region.

Al-Qaida has since 1998 advanced the argument that Muslims need to take up arms against the United States and its allied regimes in the region. Yet al-Qaida’s message largely fell on deaf ears in Yemen for many years. Yes, it did attract some followers, mostly those disappointed to have missed the chance to fight as mujahidin in Afghanistan. But al-Qaida’s narrative of attacking the foreign enemy at home did not resonate widely. The movement remained isolated for many years, garnering only limited sympathy from the local communities in which they sought refuge.

The dual effect of U.S. acceleration in drone strikes since 2010 and of their continued use during the “transitional” period that was intended to usher in more accountable governance has shown Yemenis how consistently their leaders will cede sovereignty and citizens’ security to the United States. While Yemenis may recognize that AQAP does target the United States, the hundreds of drone strikes are viewed as an excessive response. The weak sovereignty of the Yemeni state is then treated as the “problem” that has allowed AQAP to expand, even as state sovereignty has been directly undermined by U.S. policy – both under President Ali Abdullah Salih and during the transition. American “security” is placed above Yemeni security, with Yemeni sovereignty violated repeatedly in service of that cause. Regardless of what those in Washington view as valid and legitimate responses to “terrorist” threats, the reality for Yemenis is that the United States uses drone strikes regularly to run roughshod over Yemeni sovereignty in an effort to stop a handful of attacks — most of them failed — against U.S. targets. The fact that corrupt Yemeni leaders consent to the attacks makes little difference to public opinion. [Continue reading…]

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Taliban fighters overrun Kunduz as Afghan forces retreat

The New York Times reports: The Taliban were close to overrunning a major Afghan city for the first time in years on Monday, as their fighters took control of several government buildings in Kunduz, an important provincial capital in the north, and raised their flag in at least one neighborhood, officials and residents said.

The offensive was the second time this year that the insurgents have made a run for Kunduz in an effort to carve out more territory in the north and take a major city, which would be a huge blow to the struggling government of President Ashraf Ghani. The Afghan security forces, largely on their own this year, have been stretched thin across the country as they try to fend off Taliban assaults in several provinces.

Offices, schools and most of the roads out of Kunduz remained closed on Monday, with the Taliban setting up checkpoints on some roads. On Twitter, Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, urged Kunduz residents to stay in their homes until the fighting was over. Still, families were seen fleeing the city via a thoroughfare that bypasses the airport, which remained open.

By early afternoon, the militants had taken control of several government buildings, including the compound of the provincial council, and the Departments of Agricultural and Rural Development, according to Amruddin Wali, the deputy head of the provincial council. Small groups of Taliban fighters could be seen in the west of the city walking around freely and interacting with residents. [Continue reading…]

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What most people get wrong about political Islam

Shadi Hamid writes: Political scientists, myself included, have tended to see religion, ideology, and identity as “epiphenomenal” — products of a given set of material factors. These factors are the things we can touch, grasp, and measure. For example, when explaining why suicide bombers do what they do, we assume that these young men are depressed about their own accumulated failures, frustrated with a dire economic situation, or humiliated by political repression and foreign occupation. While these are all undoubtedly factors, they are not — and cannot be — the whole story.

But the role, and power, of religion in the modern Middle East is more mundane than that (after all, the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not think about becoming suicide bombers). “Islamism” has become a bad word, because the Islamists we hear about most often are those of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Most Islamists, however, are not jihadists or extremists; they are members of mainstream Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood whose distinguishing feature is their gradualism (historically eschewing revolution), acceptance of parliamentary politics, and willingness to work within existing state structures, even secular ones. Contrary to popular imagination, Islamists do not necessarily harken back to seventh century Arabia.

Why do Islamists become Islamists? There are any number of reasons, and each Brotherhood member has his or her own conversion story or “born-again” moment. As one Brotherhood member would often remind me, many join the movement so that they can “get into heaven.” To dismiss such pronouncements as irrational bouts of fancy is tempting. But, if you look at it another way, what could be more rational than wanting eternal salvation?

Islamists aren’t just acting for this world, but also for the next. Muslim Brotherhood and Brotherhood-inspired organizations aim to strengthen the religious character of individuals through a multi-tiered membership system and an educational process with a structured curriculum. Each brother is part of a “family,” usually consisting of 5 to 10 members, which meets on a weekly basis to read and discuss religious texts. For many members, it is quite simple and straightforward. Being a part of the Brotherhood helps them to obey God and become better Muslims, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of entry into paradise. This belief doesn’t mean that these more spiritually-focused members don’t care about politics; but they may see political action — whether running for a municipal council seat or joining a mass protest — as just another way of serving God. [Continue reading…]

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Long after 9/11, a pervasive climate of Islamophobia persists across America

The Guardian reports: Aya Beydoun wants to be president of the United States. On paper, the 17-year-old already is not an implausible future occupant of the White House.

She’s an ambitious, articulate, near straight-A student, planning to use a college law degree as a stepping stone to politics. She already chairs her high school politics club.

Her problem – at least according to Ben Carson, one of the leading presidential candidates in the current Republican field – would be that she is Muslim.

Aya’s voice quivers when she mentions Carson, a former paediatric neurosurgeon who studied at the University of Michigan just a few miles from her home.

The teenager was at home last Sunday, watching the TV with her mother, Wanda, whose parents came to America fleeing the Lebanese civil war in 1970, when the pair heard Carson’s incendiary remarks.

In his trademark quiet, civil voice, Carson, who is currently trailing only Donald Trump in the Republican polls, said on NBC News on Sunday that Islam is incompatible with the US constitution and he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation”.

Beydoun said: “I see a lot of awful things in the media; people dying, discrimination, politicians being disgusting, but this really hit home because that was me he was talking about.”

“I’m educated enough to know that what he’s saying is absolutely against the constitution, but what about all the kids in my area who don’t know that? Now they’re going to think that maybe they have to lie or keep their religion a secret, maybe they can never fulfil their dreams.”

Carson’s comments did not emerge from a vacuum. They marked just the latest example of an increasing tolerance for Islamophobia in the Republican presidential race, as views historically associated with the Tea Party fringe have been thrust to the mainstream. [Continue reading…]

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After eight futile years, Shell has given up drilling for oil in the Arctic

Quartz reports: After eight years and $7 billion of work, including some humiliating seafaring blunders and the black eye of the environmental spotlight, Shell has abandoned a high-stakes effort to find oil in the Arctic sea near Alaska.

The oil giant appears to have decided that, while global warming is melting a lot of northern ice, thus potentially opening up huge oil reserves, the Arctic is still an extraordinarily tough, risky, and expensive place to work.

The drilling effort in the Chukchi Sea may mark a close to an Arctic oil fever ignited in 2008, when the US Geological Survey issued a report saying that some 13% of the world’s remaining oil lay in the north — perhaps as much as 90 billion barrels of oil. Given that a 1-billion-barrel field is known as a supergiant, and that oil prices at the time were closing in on $100 a barrel, oil companies drooled over the prospects. Climate change even seemed to be co-operating, making the northern sea routes passable to drilling vessels and supply ships. [Continue reading…]

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Greg Grandin: Henry of Arabia

Why do I always seem to be writing about Henry Kissinger?   

I once listened to the man who helped prolong the Vietnam War for half a decade declare that its “tragedy” lay in the fact “that the faith of Americans in each other became destroyed in the process.” I later took to the (web)pages of the New York Times to suggest that perhaps “the pain endured by millions of survivors in Vietnam who lost family, the pain of millions who were wounded, of millions who were killed, of millions driven from their homes into slums and [refugee] camps reeking of squalor” was a greater tragedy.

Then there was that book review for the Daily Beast on the forgotten genocide in Bangladesh. Wouldn’t you know that Kissinger was completely wrapped up in it? He and his boss President Richard Nixon, in fact, conspired to support “Pakistan’s fiercely anti-communist Muslim military ruler in the face of his 1971 mass murder of mostly Hindu Bengalis who were seeking political autonomy and, ultimately, their own independent nation.” Frightening as it may seem, during this episode Nixon proved to be the voice of reason as Kissinger apparently pushed to escalate the conflict into a showdown with the Soviets. 

Earlier this year, in the pages of The Nation, I found myself writing yet again about the former national security adviser and secretary of state, this time for his role in Rory Kennedy’s Oscar-nominated documentary, Last Days in Vietnam:

“Kissinger — architect of the secret, murderous bombing of neighboring Cambodia and top adviser to a president who resigned rather than face impeachment — is given carte blanche to craft his own self-serving version of history and to champion another former boss, President Ford, as a humanitarian.”

Of course, Kissinger’s name and handiwork also show up in my book on American war crimes in Vietnam, Kill Anything That Moves. And here I am again writing about the man, an activity that’s starting to look almost obsessive, so let me explain. One day in the early 2000s, I found myself on a street in New York City watching as Kissinger was hustled away amid a sea of roiling vitriol. “War criminal,” shouted the protesters. “You’ve got blood on your hands, Henry.” It wasn’t quite clear whose blood they were referring to. It might have been that of Cambodians. Unless it was Vietnamese. Or Laotians. Or Chileans. Or Bangladeshis. Or East Timorese. From one corner of the world to another, Kissinger seems to have had a hand in a remarkable number of untoward acts of state. 

And as TomDispatch regular Greg Grandin suggests today, that’s only the beginning of a grim list of nations. Just as the United States was extricating itself from its long debacle in Indochina, Grandin points out, it was embarking on what would become another festering fiasco. If George W. Bush blew a hole through the Greater Middle East, Henry Kissinger lit the fuse. Today, we’re still dealing with the hellacious fallout of Kissinger’s in-office foreign policy machinations and out-of-office wise-man advice as the Greater Middle East hemorrhages lives and refugees.

This revelation and a raft of others figure in Grandin’s latest book, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, which paints a stunning portrait of that consummate political chameleon and offers answers about how and why the world is so destabilized and why so much of it can be traced, at least in part, to the United States and its senior statesman, Henry the K. Andrew Bacevich calls Grandin’s book a “tour de force” and Publisher’s Weekly says ardent Kissinger foes will be “enthralled,” so pick up a copy after you’re done reading about the CEO emeritus of Debacle, Inc. Nick Turse

Debacle, Inc.
How Henry Kissinger helped create our “proliferated” world
By Greg Grandin

The only person Henry Kissinger flattered more than President Richard Nixon was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. In the early 1970s, the Shah, sitting atop an enormous reserve of increasingly expensive oil and a key figure in Nixon and Kissinger’s move into the Middle East, wanted to be dealt with as a serious person. He expected his country to be treated with the same respect Washington showed other key Cold War allies like West Germany and Great Britain. As Nixon’s national security adviser and, after 1973, secretary of state, Kissinger’s job was to pump up the Shah, to make him feel like he truly was the “king of kings.”

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Jihadis see wide-ranging ceasefire deal brokered by Iran and Turkey as a historic victory

Hassan Hassan reports: Syrian Islamist rebels linked to al-Qaida have struck a wide-ranging ceasefire deal with Bashar al-Assad’s regime. If it holds, the agreement will in effect cede sovereignty of the city of Idlib, create a de facto no-fly zone, and freeze the conflict in several hotspots.

The 25-point deal was brokered by Iran, acting for Damascus, and by Turkey, representing the rebel coalition Jaish al-Fateh, which includes the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra. The deal, which urges UN monitoring and implementation, covers 14 towns in the north and south of the country, where intense fighting along sectarian lines had devastated the ranks of all those fighting, taken a bloody toll on civilians left in the area and ravaged towns and infrastructure.

The accord may not hold, especially now that Russia is scouting targets in the ceasefire zone and after reports that renewed clashes erupted between the two sides when pro-regime forces fired into Taftanaz, a town north of Idlib specified in the deal. But the deal itself and the circumstances that led to it are worth pondering.

If it holds it will be a remarkable development in the Syrian conflict. Rebels are claiming the deal as a strategic triumph at a time when Russia is sending extra forces to help prop up Assad’s regime, and western voices that once called for the president’s ousting are apparently softening. It also follows a three-month offensive by pro-Assad Hezbollah forces to clear Al-Zabadani, a southern city near the Lebanese border. It suggests that, even as the tide of foreign opinion is turning towards him, Assad is so hard-pushed he is willing to accept unpalatable realities on the ground in return for military breathing space.

Sources from Jabhat al-Nusra said terms were seen as favourable to Jaish al-Fateh. The jihadi coalition’s chief cleric, Abdullah al-Muhaysini, also heralded the deal as a historic victory for the anti-Assad forces.

Most important, the agreement prohibits the regime from flying helicopters or planes in certain areas controlled by Jaish al-Fateh in Idlib, even to drop aid and ammunition to fighters on the ground. That deprives Damascus of the air power that has been perhaps its biggest advantage over rebel forces, sowing both death and fear around the country. [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s move into Syria upends U.S. plans

The Washington Post reports: Russia’s expanding military intervention in Syria has the potential to tilt the course of the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leaving U.S. policies aimed at securing his departure in tatters and setting the stage for a new phase in the four-year-old conflict.

Exactly what Russia intends with its rapidly growing deployment of troops, tanks and combat aircraft in the Assad family heartland on Syria’s northern coast is difficult to discern, according to military experts and U.S. officials, who say they were not consulted on the Russian moves and were caught off guard by the intervention.

Already, however, the Russian activity has thrown into disarray three years of U.S. policy planning on Syria, derailing calculations about how the conflict would play out that may never have come to fruition and now almost certainly won’t.

Foremost among those was the expectation, frequently expressed by officials in the Obama administration, that both Iran and Russia would eventually tire of supporting the embattled Syrian regime and come around to the American view that Assad should step down as part of a negotiated transition of power. The conclusion of the nuclear talks with Iran in July further raised hopes that Washington and Tehran would also find common ground on Syria.

Instead, the arrival of hundreds of Russian marines, sophisticated fighter jets and armor at a newly expanded air base in the province of Latakia appears to signal a convergence of interests between Moscow and Tehran in support of Assad.

The intervention has given the regime a much-needed boost at a time when government loyalists had been losing ground to the opposition, and it has been broadly welcomed by Syria, Iran and their allies. [Continue reading…]

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