The death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi serves as a symbolic full stop to the many civil wars that have engulfed Syria in the past eight years, although Baghdadi was not personally in charge of anything by the time he died. The outcome of all those wars was already becoming clear, and it is …
Russia and its Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad win, the Kurds lose, and the United States pull out. It has been a hectic 48 hours on the Turkish-Syrian border. After a phone call with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 7 October, Donald Trump abruptly abandoned America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. As US troops pulled out …
Last Wednesday Donald Trump said: “It should be announced, probably some time next week, that we will have 100% of the (ISIS) caliphate.” Well, it is next week now, and by the weekend Trump will probably have made exactly that announcement. He will be right, too: ISIS as a major threat has been defeated for …
The Kurds are like Kleenex. You use them, and then you throw them away. The Kurds of Syria are now frantically digging trenches around their cities and towns just south of the Turkish border, because Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan said on Monday that President Donald Trump gave a “positive response” to his plan for …
In weeks of heavy fighting, Syrian government forces have taken back about a quarter of the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta enclave, but you won’t have heard much about that. Whereas you will have heard a great deal (unless you are trapped down a coal-mine) about the “massive bombing campaign” that has allegedly killed 500 innocent people …
On Sunday it was revealed that the Syrian army has made a deal to help the Syrian Kurds (who are technically rebels) fight off the Turkish invasion of Afrin, a chunk of Syrian territory on the north-western border with Turkey that has been held by the Kurds since 2012, And the Russians are allegedly brokering …
Late last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin met the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Syria, allegedly to discuss a final peace settlement in the Syrian civil war. On Monday he was in Syria to announce a partial withdrawal of Russian troops from the country because they had inflicted a “total rout” on the jihadist militants …
I don’t remember which navy I was in when I first heard the term “silly buggers”, but the meaning was clear. It included some sensible exercises like “man overboard” drills, but the heart and soul of the game was high-speed manoeuvres by ships traveling in close company. These sometimes got quite exciting, because ships don’t …
“The office of the President of the Reich is unified with the office of the Chancellor. Consequently all former powers of the President of the Reich are demised to the Führer and Chancellor of the Reich Adolf Hitler. He himself nominates his substitute. Do you, German man and German woman, approve of this regulation provided …
The Sunni-Shia civil wars in Iraq and Syria are both nearing their end, and in both cases the Shias have won – thanks largely to American military help in Iraq’s case, and to a Russian military intervention in Syria. Yet Russia and the United States are not allies in the Middle East. At least not …