Syria has been the subject of international attention this week due to the recent strike by US, UK and French forces on chemical facilities operated by Syrian President Assad’s forces. Russia, Syria’s ally on the UN Security Council, has put out several statements condemning actions by Western forces, including hinting at an upgrade of Syria’s […]
Trump’s interventionism while staying the course on his approach to immigrants and refugees reveals the fundamental incoherence of his worldview.
Neither a Putin-Assad hegemony nor an inclusive transitional government of a united Syria are solutions after Aleppo. Partition is the solution.
Immediate speculation following the coup attempt says that Turkey is likely to move further away from the West. But Ankara has deep ties with Europe and is an important member of NATO.
The Syrian government has been exerting a great deal of influence on the actions of the UN aid agencies in Syria. It has leveraged foreign aid workers need for its permission to enter Syria into access to supplies for its supporters while denying vital food and medical aid to civilians trapped in areas outside its control.
ISIS has abandoned its blitzkrieg-style land grab. Improvised explosive devices, suicide vests, and car bombs have once again become the order of the day.
The ancient city of Palmyra has been the stage for mass executions, the destruction of cultural heritage, battles between ISIS and Syrian government forces, and now in an absurd turn of events, a concert put on by Russia’s Mariinsky Theater Orchestra.
The multiplicity of Kurdish national movements throughout the Middle East adds an additional layer of complexity in the fight against ISIS.
In quick succession, the set of ISIS attacks in Paris, Sharm el-Sheikh and Beirut suggest that the group has crossed a threshold for international terrorism.
Akın Ünver sits down with Reza Akhlaghi of the Foreign Policy Association to discuss Turkey’s current foreign policy challenges and the situation in Kobane.
Mark Dubowitz is executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan policy institute, where he leads projects on Iran, sanctions, nonproliferation, and countering electronic repression.
Syrians lined up today to vote in what was billed by government and allied media outlets as the first multi-candidate election under the Assad family rule. In the run up to the June 3 polls the regime of Bashar al-Assad undertook a savvy public relations campaign to present the incumbent as the sole guarantor of […]
When President Obama took to the stage to address West Point’s Class of 2014 on Wednesday morning, the leader of the free world sought to lay out a vision for a post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan American foreign policy. In doing so, he also looked to address his domestic and international critics — those who have pointed […]
Merely a day after the Syrian civil war entered its fourth year the Assad regime scored a major victory against rebels in the town of Yabroud. Located in the Qalamoun region, a mountainous area near the Lebanese border, Yabroud had served as a crucial gateway for the transit of rebel supplies and fighters into the […]
After less than half an hour of joint session talks on Saturday, February 15, the second round of the Geneva II conference on Syria has abruptly ended. In a press conference shortly after, joint United Nations-Arab League negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi apologized to the Syrian people for the almost complete failure of the negotiations, “I am […]