In a claim convenient to Russian war propaganda, a group of Tatars calling themselves the Crimean Jamaat reportedly pledged loyalty to Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise.
The Syrian regime says Russian air-strikes hit "ISIS dens"—but a look at the map indicates the strikes were nowhere near ISIS territory, and targetted rebel forces hostile to ISIS.
China is reported to be sending warships to Syria to augment the Russian build-up there—as word emerges of a Uighur jihadist group allied with the Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
The Nusra Front fired hundreds of missiles into beseiged Alwaite villages in Syria, while ISIS claimed responsibility for suicide blasts that targeted Shi'ite areas of Baghdad.
The latest edition of the English-language ISIS magazine Dabiq includes a tirade against Qaeda-aligned forces in Libya, amid an internecine war of jihadist factions.
Amid signs of an escalating Russian intervention in Syria, the opposition government-in-exile issued a statement pledging to "defeat any foreign occupation."
As Turkey continues to bomb Kurdish anti-ISIS fighters in Iraq, violence is quickly spreading within Turkey itself—with bombings and armed clashes from Istanbul to the Kurdish east.
The Pentagon announced that Muhsin al-Fadhli, a longtime al-Qaeda operative from Kuwait, was killed in an air-strike in Syria, where he was leading the so-called "Khorasan Group."
Druze villagers in the Golan killed a wounded Syrian fighter seized from an IDF ambulance—in mistaken belief he was from Nusra Front, which has massacred Syrian Druze.
Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front acknowledged that its followers were responsible for a massacre at a Druze village, which was quickly condemned by other rebel factions.
In Episode 23 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the assassination of Raed Fares, a courageous voice of the civil resistance in besieged Idlib province, last remaining stronghold of the Syrian Revolution. The resistance in Idlib, which liberated the territory from the Bashar Assad regime in popular uprisings seven years ago, is now also resisting the jihadist forces in the province, expelling them from their self-governing towns and villages. Their hard-won zones of popular democracy face extermination if this last stronghold is invaded by Assad and his Russian backers. As Assad and Putin threaten Idlib, Trump's announced withdrawal of the 2,000 US troops embedded with Kurdish forces in Syria's northeast is a "green light" to Turkey to attack Rojava, the anarchist-inspired Kurdish autonomous zone. The two last zones of democratic self-rule in Syria are each now gravely threatened. Yet with Turkey posing as protector of Idlib, the Arab revolutionary forces there have been pitted against the Kurds. The Free Syrian Army and Rojava Kurds were briefly allied against ISIS and Assad alike four years ago, before they were played against each other by imperial intrigues. Can this alliance be rebuilt, in repudiation of the foreign powers now seeking to carve up Syria? Or will the US withdrawal merely spark an Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria? Weinberg calls for activists in the West to repudiate the imperial divide-and-rule stratagems, and demand survival of liberated Idlib and Rojava alike. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo: NYC Syria Peace Vigil Group)
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic stressed the need for greater information and accountability to be provided to the families of missing persons and detainees. The report charges that the Syrian regime is still carrying out mass public arrests and detentions, many leading to torture and eventual death, while families are induced to pay bribes to learn the whereabouts of their loved ones. Many families did not learn of their relatives' whereabouts at all until May, when information was provided in bulk by the Interior Ministry. The Commission notes that even after this information was disclosed it was obfuscated, with causes of death being listed as "heart attack" or "stroke"—while many individuals died on the same day. The Commission infers that mass executions may have occurred in some of these facilities, many of them on military bases. (Photo of hunger strikers at Syrian prison via Foreign Policy. Credit: Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images)
