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  • Australia to rescue families of ISIS fighters from Syria

    Canberra is set to rescue dozens of Australian women and children of ISIS fighters from refugee camps in Syria, following a secret mission by the country’s security intelligence agency, media reported on Monday. The government did not immediately confirm reports that 16 women and 42 children of dead or jailed ISIS fighters who have been held in camps for three and a half years would be repatriated. “The Australian Government’s overriding priority is the protection of Australians and Australia’s national interests, informed by national security advice,” a spokesperson for Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said in emailed comments.

  • Kurds fear ‘everything will change’ if Syria, Turkey reconcile

    A decade into their experiment in self-rule, Syria's Kurds fear an apparent rapprochement between Damascus and their foe the Turkish government could cost them their hard-won way of life. Before Syria's conflict broke out, the country's roughly two million Kurds were not permitted to learn the Kurdish language in school or celebrate their cultural occasions. A year after Syria's uprising began in 2011, government forces withdrew from swathes of the north – paving the way for a Kurdish-led "autonomous administration" to run its own institutions, including schools where Kurdish was taught.

  • Russia Increasing Aggression Over Syria As Ukraine Losses Mount

    “Some of the personalities of Russian leadership that [are] in Syria right now, some of those Russian general officers frankly failed in Ukraine,” said Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, commander of the 9th Air Force, which includes Central and Southwest Asia. “Now they are in Syria, and my assessment is they are trying to make a name for themselves again and regain favorable standing within the Russian armed forces,” Grynkewich said at the annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “Frankly it’s a bit concerning where we have forces on the ground and armed Russian aircraft that fly over them.”

  • Erdogan wanted to meet Syria’s Assad, Turkish Media says

    Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had expressed a wish to meet President Bashar al-Assad if the Syrian leader had attended a summit being held in Uzbekistan, a report in Turkey's pro-government Hurriyet newspaper said on Friday. But, he noted Assad was not attending the summit. The report came after four sources told Reuters Turkey's intelligence chief held multiple meetings with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus in recent weeks, a sign of Russian efforts to encourage a thaw between states on opposite sides of Syria's war.

  • Tribal spies in Syria help U.S. win drone war against Islamic State

    With Islamic State's last battle-hardened forces holed up in remote areas, the United States is turning to the aid of tribesmen burning to exact revenge for the atrocities unleashed by the group when it ruled over swathes of Syria and Iraq.

  • Russia condemns Israel missile strikes on Syria

    Israel struck Iranian targets in a series of strikes in August; 14 near Al-Assad's ancestral home region and also close to Russia's main Syrian bases on the Mediterranean coast, regional intelligence and Syrian military sources said. Israel has spoken out against Moscow sending troops into Ukraine and bilateral tensions have grown in recent months.

  • 3 U.S. service members injured in Iran-backed rocket attacks in Syria

    Three U.S. service members were injured in rocket attacks in Syria carried out Wednesday by suspected Iran-backed militants, according to U.S. Central Command, the latest in a slew of attacks on American personnel that U.S. officials said were directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Rockets landed at two separate sites in northeastern Syria starting at roughly 7:30 p.m. local time, the command said late Wednesday in a press release. Several rockets struck inside the perimeter of Mission Support Site Conoco, followed by additional rockets that landed in the vicinity of Mission Support Site Green Village.

  • Accountability in Syria

    Syria presents a real conundrum when it comes to the question of accountability. There are no options internally. The Assad regime is unlikely to put its own agents on trial for the many abuses for which they are responsible and have been documented as being responsible. Then, we have to turn to the international level or to courts in other jurisdictions. At the international level—as I discuss in my book, and as is obvious—the UN Security Council has been largely foreclosed from really implementing any forms of coercive measures at all against Assad.

  • Russia is forming an alliance of pariah states in the Middle East. It might put Israel in an awkward situation in Syria.  – Atlantic Council

    Along with Russia’s growing isolation, which dictates closer military and economic integration with countries like Iran and North Korea, tensions between Moscow and Jerusalem have been growing since before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

  • US Drone Strike Kills Leader of ISIS In Syria

    An American drone strike killed the leader of the Islamic State in Syria on Tuesday, U.S. Central Command announced. The strike in northwest Syria killed Maher al-Agal, the leader of the terrorist group’s Syria branch and a senior official within the broader Islamic State, U.S. officials said. The strike also “seriously injured” a second senior ISIS official.