The conflict in Syria leaves western powers with no good choices, and their agony is intensified by Islamist advances in west Africa. The search for intelligent security responses goes on.
Two other fault lines, unrelated to the sectarian issue, need to be taken into account in order to understand the multi-dimensional Syrian conflict.
People whose lives have been decimated by conflict should receive as much assistance as we can give them. Yet Palestinian refugees from Syria, escaping the same violence, destruction and dangers and seeking the same protection, relief and refuge as their Syrian counterparts, are being excluded on
The Syrian issue was at the forefront of this year's annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with different countries proposing a range of potential ways forward.
Turkey’s cooperation with the Gulf states, reportedly establishing a secret shared command centre in southern Turkey to coordinate rebel attacks, may be designed to contain the influence of others and control which groups get arms. But Turkey’s recent regional resurgence in the Middle East is at r
If history offers a lesson it is that no one group in Lebanon can eliminate or subdue the other. The challenge is devising a working solution that benefits, and is accepted by, all major Lebanese communal components.
The Israeli government has taken advantage of the unstable political and security conditions in Syria and in the town of Jibata al-Khashab to extend its control within Syrian territory.
A novelist, filmmaker and journalist makes his way to the Turkish-Syria border with the help of his Turkish left friends and contacts, to investigate the refugee camps and military camps where he says Syrian and non-Syrian fighters are undergoing training. The locals he meets seem to confirm their
Residents in cooperation with local battalions of the Free Syrian Army have managed to find a modus vivendi which allows them to attain a high degree of acceptance of political differences; a shining example.
Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi is a veteran Arab and international diplomat and one of the symbols of the traditional Algerian political structure. As the UN-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria he is on a near impossible mission.
The only way to turn the tide against the Assadist forces is by both equipping the FSA with heavier weaponry, and providing the FSA with greater support in the form of eventual intervention by aerial and some ground forces.
In the closing pages of his book, Starr describes a social system constructed on a lack of law and order, which is designed to instil fear. In this current crisis which is also an identity crisis, the author ponders the fate of the Syrian silent majority and the role they have to play.
