Events in Syria have recently clearly taken a turn for the worse and there is an increasing amount of evidence that the Russian task force in Syria is being targeted by a systematic campaign of “harassing attacks”. First, there was the (relatively successful) drone and mortar attack on the Russian Aerospace base in Khmeimin. Then…
Bilateral relations are the most strained in decades over numerous issues, most notably: • for the July 2016 coup attempt Erdogan blamed on exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen living in America; • Washington providing heavy weapons to Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria; and • its plan to establish a 30,000-strong largely Kurdish YPG border security force…
The battle against Islamic State in Syria may be nearing its end, but the conflict in this war-torn country seems far from over. Competing factions and old rivalries have created a complicated, uncertain future for Syria. With so many different warring parties wrestling for control of Syria’s fate, it seems prudent to review the conflict’s…
Candidate Donald Trump may have promised to extricate us from Middle East wars, once ISIS and al-Qaida were routed, yet events and people seem to be conspiring to keep us endlessly enmeshed. Friday night, a drone, apparently modeled on a U.S. drone that fell into Iran’s hands, intruded briefly into Israeli airspace over the Golan…
Multiple reports indicate that Russian military contractors were among the dead in air and artillery strikes launched Wednesday by the US military in the northeastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor against forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The Pentagon unleashed devastating firepower against the pro-government fighters on the pretext that they were…
The first Turkish attempt to set up a military base in Syria’s Islamist-held Idlib failed. January a large Turkish military convoy crossed the border on the way to a strategic town of al-Eis. Two days later it withdrew back into Turkey never having reached its destination and suffering 1 dead and 2 wounded to a…
