The popular meme "I didn't join the army to fight for al-Qaeda in Syria" is a betrayal of Syria's secular civil resistance—which continues even now to exist and struggle for freedom.
Jihadist forces of the Nusra Front launched an assault on the ancient Christian village of Maaloula, which is on the UNESCO tentative list of world heritage sites.
At least 47 are dead following an Iraqi military assault on Camp Ashraf, a refugee settlement inhabited by exiled members of Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen Khalq.
The fearful synergy of regional sectarian war and Great Power rivalries holds the menace of the looming Syria intervention setting off a new global conflagration.
A Salafist group opposed to the Assad regime attacks Israel, which “retaliates” by bombing the pro-Assad PFLP-GC, while presumed Shi’ite militants blow up Salafist mosques in Tripoli.
At least 25 Egyptian soldiers were killed by militants in an ambush on their convoy in the Sinai peninsula—the scene of daily attacks on security forces since the coup.
Up to 20,000 refugees have crossed from Syria into Iraqi Kurdistan, fleeing fighting between Kurdish militias and Salafist factions led by the Nusra Front.
The closing of the US embassy in Yemen has coinicided with drone strikes and clashes in Marib province, and a gun-battle between rival factions in the capital Sanaa.
Sectarian violence has killed at least 200 in Iraq since the start of Ramadan, and Hezbollah has launched an Iraqi wing to fight al-Qaeda’s networks in the country.
A rocket strike near an important Shi’ite shrine in Damascus sparked protests throughout the Shia world, while Kurdish militias fight jihadist forces in northern Syria.
Troops fired on protesters in the Sinai, and militants retaliated with armed attacks on police. A new Salafist network, Ansar al-Sharia in Egypt, pledges to resist the new regime.
The Free Syrian Army boasts of receiving new weapons shipments that could “change” the course of the war—amid revelations that the US has been arming them secretly for a year.
