The fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024 revealed the ongoing significance of multiple foreign fighter organizations in Syria, groups that proved instrumental in Hayat Tahir al-Sham’s (HTS) campaign for Damascus. Among them were two primarily ethnic Uzbek fighter groups that originated in Central Asia: the Imam …

Slovakia’s intelligence chief, Pavol Gaspar, is facing allegations of academic fraud after an investigation by the daily Sme found that his 2011 law thesis on corruption was largely plagiarised. The thesis, written at the private Pan-European University in Bratislava, lifted about two-thirds of its content verbatim from four published sources, …

Syria’s transitional government is cracking down on the production of Captagon — an illicit synthetic stimulant that flourished under the sponsorship of the Bashar al-Assad regime until its fall in December. But production and trade of the drug are continuing, particularly in parts of Syria not yet under the control …