Patrick Cockburn's "briefing" to the House of Commons opposing British air-strikes on ISIS was a shameful betrayal of the Syrian democratic resistance—denying its very existence.
A growing split between secular and Islamist elements of the FSA is unfortunately mirrored by a breach between Kurds and Ankara-backed Arab and Turkmen forces.
After Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane over Syria, Vladimir Putin openly accused Ankara of backing ISIS—echoing a charge Kurdish forces have been making for months.
The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling on all member states to fight to eradicate ISIS, calling it "a global and unprecedented threat."
Several PKK sympathizers have been arrested in connection with the Ankara suicide blasts—but the Turkish left charges that the ruling AKP collaborated with ISIS in the attack.
The US and Russia each groom their own rival proxy forces to fight ISIS and the Nusra Front—which in turn pledge to turn Syria into "another Afghanistan."
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."
