Syria

The Observer reports: Syria’s embattled leader Bashar al-Assad has used a rare interview – carried out amid the sound of artillery fire resounding through his presidential palace in Damascus – to warn the United States and Russia that their efforts to bring about talks will do little to halt the civil war laying waste to [...]

The Times of Israel reports: Underlining growing concerns over friction between Jerusalem and Damascus, the highly-respected former head of the Israeli army’s Military Intelligence hierarchy on Friday compared current Israeli-Syrian tensions to the strains that presaged the 1967 Israel-Arab war. He also said Moscow, by continuing to stand by President Bashar Assad, was signaling to [...]

The New York Times reports: The black flag of jihad flies over much of northern Syria. In the center of the country, pro-government militias and Hezbollah fighters battle those who threaten their communities. In the northeast, the Kurds have effectively carved out an autonomous zone. After more than two years of conflict, Syria is breaking [...]

The National reports: It was some six months ago that Syrian rebel commanders met US intelligence officers in Jordan to discuss the status of the war and, the rebels hoped, to secure supplies of the sophisticated weapons they need to overthrow President Bashar Al Assad. But according to one of the commanders present at the [...]

Time magazine reports: The video starts out like so many of the dozens coming out of the war in Syria every day, with the camera hovering over the body of a dead Syrian soldier. But the next frame makes it clear why this video, smuggled out of the city of Homs and into Lebanon with [...]

John Kampfner writes: As Turkey threatens reprisals for bombings that have left up to 50 dead, Syria’s war is already sucking in the wider Middle East. But the one country on which all sides would previously rely for leadership is paralysed with indecision. The most striking aspect of the Syrian imbroglio, as I have discovered [...]

Reuters reports: Syria’s rebels are fragmented into hundreds of armed groups who control swathes of the north, while government forces appear to have consolidated their hold on the capital, a senior Red Cross official said on Monday. Marianne Gasser, who left Syria 10 days ago after completing a term as head of the International Committee [...]

The Los Angeles Times reports: At least 42 people were reported dead Saturday in a pair of car bombings in the southern Turkish town of Reyhanli, the latest apparent example of spillover violence from the conflict in nearby Syria. More than 140 people were injured, with at least 20 in critical condition, according to Turkish [...]

Efraim Halevy, the former chief of Mossad, writes: In October 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin telephoned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to inform him that peace was at hand between Israel and Syria. Two weeks later, Rabin was dead, killed by a reactionary Jewish Israeli fanatic; the peace agreement that Rabin referenced died not long [...]

Andrew J. Bacevich writes: As you contemplate the ongoing violence in Syria, here are the three things to keep in mind. First, the United States undoubtedly possesses the wherewithal to topple the regime of Bashar Assad. On this score, the hawks are surely right. Whether acting alone, with allies, or through proxies, Washington over the [...]

Hassan Hassan writes: The details of the human carnage in western Syria over the weekend, in which hundreds of civilians were slaughtered apparently by pro-regime militias, remain shrouded in mystery. But sufficient testimonies, pictures and videos point to a deliberate act of sectarian cleansing in the Alawites’ heartland. It is remarkable that the regime’s media, [...]