In September 2013 I wrote about how the battle between the Taliban and the Pakistani government lay in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi. If that urban centre burned, the whole country might as well burn with it. Up till now the government’s offer of talks exposed the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as unreasonable and illogical, but the government persisted – one unable and the other unwilling to accept the idea that perhaps […]

omb. The next morning, they detonated it as three rebel explosive experts and four assistants met inside, turning the villa to rubble in seconds. The operation late last month in Syria’s western Qalamoun region was carried out by fighters from Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, several Lebanese officials close to the militants have told The Associated Press. The Shiite group has sent hundreds of its fighters into Syria to shore up […]

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri exhorted his fighters to find out who killed his chief representative in war-torn Syria, where militants have had a strong presence and strong rivalries amid the country’s civil war. Two suicide bombers in Aleppo killed Khaled al-Suri in February when they blew themselves up inside a compound used as a headquarters. Al-Zawahiri, in a recorded message posted on a militant website and uploaded on YouTube, […]

Alma Abdulrahman is lying gaunt and unable to move anything below her diaphragm in a hospital bed in Amman. Some bedsores have become so deep she’s having surgery tomorrow. Screws hold together her upper vertebrae, and cigarette burns pock her right shoulder. Her voice fades in and out, hoarse from either weakness or morphine. Six months earlier, she was paralyzed when a regime soldier struck her in the neck with […]

BRUSSELS — The European Union said its member states within days will be able to send weapons to help Syria’s outgunned rebels, seeking to pressure President Bashar Assad’s regime ahead of planned peace talks mediated by the United States and Russia. Though no EU country has any such plans now to send arms, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the decision “sends a very strong message from Europe to the […]

he United States believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria, two U.S. officials tell CNN. U.S. and Western intelligence agencies are reviewing classified data showing Israel most likely conducted a strike in the Thursday-Friday time frame, according to both officials. This is the same time frame that the U.S. collected additional data showing Israel was flying a high number of warplanes over Lebanon. One official said the United States […]

On Monday, November 12th 2012, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) recognized the newly formed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the ‘legitimate representative’ of Syria.[1] A day earlier, Syrian dissidents and activists alongside Western diplomats met in Doha, Qatar and agreed upon forming this new coalition with the aim of representing the full spectrum of the opposition. Mouaz al-Khatib, a Damascus imam, was chosen as the president […]

Syria is one of the oldest places where civilization has thought to have started. Its capital, Damascus, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Throughout history it has seen many changes, violent and otherwise. Today it is comprised of a number of ethnic groups, mostly Arab, though a reasonable number of Kurds, Armenians are also present. There have also been a number of Iraqi refugees and […]