Such US drone strikes have been relatively common in Syria’s Islamist opposition-held northwest in recent years, but Monday’s targeted killing followed a lull over recent months. Agence France-Presse cited the head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying the strike killed two jihadi officials, one of Tunisian and the other of either...
Category: Syria
Post
Post
Bellingcat: The Implausible ‘False Flag’ Theory About a Syrian Chemical Attack
Last year I reviewed the evidence of the chemical attack in Douma, Syria and came away unconvinced by the “false flag” scenario advanced by some critics of U.S. policy. While the U.S. is known to mount “false flag” operations, the evidence from Douma does not support the claim that an attack was staged to blame...
Post
Turkish and Syrian Spymasters Meet in Moscow
One of the realities of the 21st century is that spies have replaced diplomats as leading geopolitical players. A case in point comes from Al-Monitor, a reliable Mideast news site. Under Russian mediation, the Turkish and Syrian intelligence chiefs met face to face in what was the first high-level Turkish-Syrian encounter since 2011, when Turkey’s...
Post
Douma Attack: Assad War Crime or ‘Managed Massacre?’
In the long-running nightmare of the Syrian civil war, the attack at Douma was a déjà vu atrocity with big consequences in Washington. On April 7, 2018, a working class neighborhood in greater Damascus suffered a chemical attack that killed at least 43 people. Six days later, President Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on...
Post
A No-Fly Zone Can Limit the Damage Caused By Turkey
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan anticipated strong criticism of Trump for withdrawing US troops and giving Turkey a green light to invade. Erdogan wasted no time after their phone call on October 8, launching air strikes the next day and deploying ground troops before Trump could change his mind. At this stage, the US should take...