France is escalating its military mission in the Central African Republic, airlifting troops and equipment to the capital Bangui ahead of an anticipated UN-backed intervention.
Celebrations of Muharram, the Shi’ite holy month highlighted by the Ashura festival, saw sectarian violence that left several dead across Pakistan.
Elements of Washington wonkdom are calling for the break-up of Syria into ethno-sectarian mini-states, and see the separatist contagion spreading to the rest of the Middle East.
As the Free Syrian Army now battles jihadist rebels as well as the regime, the two biggest jihadist factions are fighting each other for control over oilfields in Syria’s north.
Syria does not recognize the International Criminal Court, so an ICC case against Bashar Assad can only be launched by the Security Council—where Russia holds a veto.
Syria’s Christians are becoming propaganda fodder in an international war of perceptions, with atrocities carried out by the jihadist Nusra Front being attributed to the FSA.
Armenians, Circassians, Mandaeans and other small ethnicities in Syria are being uprooted by jihadist terror, and increasingly see the Assad regime as the lesser evil.
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.
Muslim Brotherhood supporters unleashed their rage on Coptic Christians, with several churches, homes, and Copt-owned businesses attacked throughout the country.
