On September 20, the first deputy director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Sergei Smirnov estimated that 300-400 Russian citizens are participating in the conflict in Syria. “They will come back and that, naturally, is posing a serious danger,” the Russian security official said in... MORE

Following Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem’s September 9 visit to Moscow at the invitation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (https://kommersant.ru/doc/2275019), the issue of the involvement of Chechens in the Syrian war once again came to the fore.At a press conference, Muallem insisted that his... MORE

The agreement between Russia and the United States to destroy the Syrian arsenal of chemical weapons was signed in Geneva last weekend on September 14, after several days of strenuous negotiations between delegations led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State... MORE

With Yemen in the midst of a political reconstruction, there are signs that the Zaidi Shiite insurgent group known as the Houthis is taking advantage of the ongoing turmoil to consolidate their de facto rule of the northern province of Sa’ada while making inroads in... MORE

Kata’ib al-Farouq al-Islamiya (KFI - Islamic al-Farouq Brigades) is a newly formed Syrian Islamist armed opposition group that constitutes an important faction within the powerful umbrella rebel organization Jabhat Tahrir Suria al-Islamiya (SILF-Syrian Islamic Liberation Front). This fighting group is currently growing in public visibility... MORE

Various reservations have been raised by the opponents of a military action in Syria by Western countries against the Bashar al-Assad regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons. Perhaps the most common of these objections was the one linked to the presence of jihadists... MORE

Considerable international media attention on the Syria crisis focused on the apparently deft handling of the diplomatic track by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Yet, Russian diplomacy, which succeeded in presenting Moscow as a critical player in the pursuit of a non-military option against Damascus, also... MORE

During the last week (see EDM, September 12), the diplomatic dance around Syria has acquired the intensity of a whirling dervish, but the civil war continues very much as usual. This disconnect answers perfectly the ambitions of President Vladimir Putin, who has managed to make... MORE

Moscow was elated by the success of an unexpected diplomatic initiative this week on Syria that has postponed indefinitely a seemingly inevitable military assault by the United States. The strike would have been aimed at punishing the forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for using... MORE

In the telling of China’s official media, the proposed U.S. strike on Syria is a war in search of a pretext, yet another instance in a line of American aggression running from James K. Polk through George W. Bush and into the present administration (People’s... MORE