Jabhat al-Nusra

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Brown University Watson Institute Costs of War Project has put out a report concluding that the US-led “War on Terror” has displaced 37 million people. While there are parts of the report I agree with, some of the argument seems to me flawed. Let me explain why that is, […]

Bashar al-Assad

Trump Supports Turkey against Putin-backed Russo-Syrian Campaign to Finish off Rebels in Idlib

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump called Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday and appeared to back Turkey against Russia and Syria with regard to the current Syrian Arab Army campaign in west Aleppo province and the province of Idlib. The Turkish press said that Trump thanked Erdogan for his efforts to avert a humanitarian […]

al-Qaeda

Is an al-Qaeda Front dominating 3 Million People in North Syria?

AFP

Throughout its numerous iterations, HTS has not altered its ideology and is still widely thought to maintain links with Al-Qaeda

Bashar al-Assad

Rescuers say cannot keep up with air strikes battering Syria’s Ghouta

contributors

Middle East Monitor | – – Rescuers in Syria’s eastern Ghouta said the bombing would not let up long enough for them to count the bodies, in one of the bloodiest air assaults of the seven-year war. Warplanes pounded the rebel enclave on Saturday, the seventh day in a row of a fierce escalation by […]

Bashar al-Assad

Will the US missile strike be the turning point in Syria’s shifting war?

contributors

By Harout Akdedian | (The Conversation) | – – The US has struck the Syrian airbase used to launch a suspected sarin gas attack against Khan Sheikhun that killed more than 80 civilians. US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cited the chemical attack as the reason for their country’s first direct […]

Bashar al-Assad

Washington’s Supreme Hypocrisy on Chemical Weapons and Civilian Deaths

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Army in Idlib is an atrocity and the pictures of dead children tug at the heart. But the outrage of American politicians inside the beltway about it draws on the myths of American exceptionalism and Alzheimer’s of the […]

Bashar al-Assad

Why Russia and Regime want all of Aleppo before Trump is sworn in

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In the past two days, the Syrian Arab Army and its Shiite militia allies (Hizbullah from Lebanon and others from Iraq) has taken a third to forty percent of the Eastern Aleppo pocket. The northeast zone of the pocket has collapsed, with rebel fights apparently declining […]

Bashar al-Assad

Monsters to Destroy: Top 7 Reasons the US could not have forestalled Syrian Civil War

Juan Cole

by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The interventionist temptation, muted since the Iraq imbroglio, is now returning. Sec. Clinton’s team are already talking about taking steps to remove Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from office as soon as they get into the White House. An excellent and principled NYT columnist called the non-intervention […]

Bashar al-Assad

Looming Aleppo Battle indicts both sides of Civil War for breaking Cease-Fire

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The only thing worse than the new hero status of now-covert al-Qaeda operative Abu Muhammad al-Julani and his Army of Syrian Conquest (ASC) is the news that he plans to subject all of Aleppo. Aleppo is Syria’s largest city, or at least it used to be, […]