Eurasia

With forces from the Assad regime deploying in their old lands, Syrians are afraid to go back home.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday that his government’s ultimate goal was to restore state authority over Kurdish controlled areas in northeast Syria after an abrupt U.S. troop withdrawal but he expected it to happen gradually.

Turkey and Russia launched joint patrols Friday in northeastern Syria, under a deal that halted a Turkish offensive against Syrian Kurdish fighters who were forced to withdraw from the border area following Ankara’s incursion.

Saad al-Hariri resigned as Lebanon’s prime minister on Tuesday, declaring he had hit a “dead end” in trying to resolve a crisis unleashed by huge protests against the ruling elite and plunging the country deeper into turmoil.

What remains of ISIS — the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — is yet to acknowledge the death of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who died in a raid by US forces in northern Syria on Saturday.

Iran and Russia on Tuesday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to maintain a military presence near oil fields in northeastern Syria, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying any exploitation of resources would be illegal.

It is a country unto itself, and nobody knows what to do with it. In a barren prison camp in northern Syria – tens of thousands of ISIS members are running what feels like a mini caliphate – abiding by the rules of the extremist terror group, and abiding by …

The day after anti-government protests erupted in Iraq, Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani flew into Baghdad late at night and took a helicopter to the heavily fortified Green Zone, where he surprised a group of top security officials by chairing a meeting in place of the prime minister.

A group of men shouting Hezbollah and Amal Movement slogans attacked protesters and overrun a sit-in blocking a major highway before chasing the demonstrators down the hill to Martyrs’ Square and destroying the 13 day-old sit-in.

BEIRUT – Hundreds of Lebanese supporters of the militant Hezbollah group, some wielding sticks, attacked a protest camp set up by anti-government demonstrators in central Beirut, burning some of its tents and dismantling others Tuesday.