By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Trump administration is making noise about striking Syria, on the grounds that Damascus is planning to use poison gas again. Trump’s Neoconservative ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, tweeted: Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but […]
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Bashar al-Assad
Russo-US dog fights over Syria?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Yara Bayoumi at Reuters reports on the complicated minuet being danced by Russia, the Syrian Air Force, and the United States. The Syrian Air Force was bombing positions of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US euphemism for the leftist Kurds of the YPG. The US Air […]
Syria’s forgotten pluralism and why it matters today
By Andrea Williams | (The Conversation) | – – The Syrian Civil War has been raging for six years. It has killed nearly half a million people and left over 12 million, about half of Syria’s total population, without a home. A few weeks ago, a devastating chemical attack brought this conflict back into the […]
Syria: to Assad & Kurds go the Spoils; Sunni extremists have Lost
By Mehmet Ozalp | (The Conversation) | – – The devastating gas attack in Syria, attributed to the Assad regime, and the swift US missile response is a game-changer for all parties involved in the Syrian conflict. This is a complex war, but it helps to look at the key players in three interlocking layers. […]
Russia’s not Leaving: Syria is about old-Fashioned Sphere of Influence, not Oil
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Russia is not going to yield its sphere of influence in Syria to Donald Trump or anyone else. Russia has all but won the Syrian War as we speak. There is no longer any feasible pathway for the rebels to take the capital of Damascus. The […]
Will the US missile strike be the turning point in Syria’s shifting war?
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 […]
Al-Sadr: Russia, America and al-Assad should all get out of Syria!
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday issued a broadside demanding that Russia and the United States withdraw from Syria and that strongman Bashar al-Assad resign as president. Al-Sadr’s stand against al-Assad is unusual among Shiite movements. The Lebanese Shiite militia, Hizbullah, has entered Syria to […]
Washington’s Supreme Hypocrisy on Chemical Weapons and Civilian Deaths
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 […]
Has Trump deferred to Russia in Syria?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Elizabeth Palmer reported from Ankara last Thursday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had difficult and inconclusive discussions with Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan concerning Syria. After the meeting he said publicly, that the “longer-term status of President (Bashar) Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.” […]