December 21st, 20180WASHINGTON — President Trump has begun what will be a total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, declaring on Wednesday they have succeeded in their mission to defeat ISIS and were no longer needed in the country.
A decision to pull out completely, confirmed by U.S. officials, coincides with the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops finishing...
July 14th, 20180AMMAN/BEIRUT — The Syrian government raised the national flag on Thursday over areas of Deraa city that have been in rebel hands for years, a major victory for President Bashar al-Assad in the birthplace of the revolt against his rule.
Syrian state television said the army hoisted the flag near the post office, the only government...
April 12th, 20180WASHINGTON/LONDON - President Trump and his national security aides on Thursday discussed U.S. options on Syria, where he has threatened missile strikes in response to a suspected poison gas attack, as a Russian envoy voiced fears of wider conflict between Washington and Moscow.
Fears of confrontation between Russia, Syria’s big...
March 6th, 20180MOSCOW/BEIRUT - The Russian military has offered Syrian rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta, setting out a proposal to let the opposition surrender its last major stronghold near Damascus to the Syrian government forces, which rebels have so far rejected.
The Russian defense ministry said rebels could leave with their families and...
December 2nd, 20170GENEVA — The Syrian government delegation arrived in Geneva on Wednesday to participate in another round of U.N.-sponsored peace talks to bring an end to the Syrian Civil War, now in its seventh year.
All the previous rounds of U.N.-backed peace talks have failed to reach a peace deal, and have often been seriously hindered by the...
November 27th, 20170BEIRUT — A breakthrough in U.N.-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva this week seems hardly more likely than in seven failed earlier rounds as President Bashar al-Assad pushes for total military victory and his opponents stick by their demand he leave power.
U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Monday the Syrian government had...
November 21st, 20170MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to talk about the need to move from military operations to the search for a political solution to Syria’s conflict, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
Russia is actively trying to build an international consensus around a peace deal for Syria, over two years...
November 1st, 20170BEIRUT - An Israeli airstrike targeted a factory south of the Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday and the Syrian army responded by firing a surface-to-air missile at the aircraft, a commander in a military alliance fighting in support of Damascus said.
The commander told Reuters the airstrike had hit a copper factory in the industrial...
August 10th, 20170Young men who leave their homes to fight for terrorist groups in Syria mainly come from disadvantaged backgrounds, have low levels of education and “lack any basic understanding of the true meaning of jihad or even the Islamic faith”, according to a study for the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism.
The report, which was...
April 14th, 20170A CIA document recommended that the "U.S. should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad" through the orchestration of "simultaneous military threats against Syria." Three years later, that same conviction appeared in a memorandum that "explores alternative scenarios that could lead to the ouster of President...al-Assad...
April 12th, 20170NEW YORK - Russia blocked a Western effort at the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to condemn last week's deadly gas attack in Syria and push Moscow's ally President Bashar al-Assad to cooperate with international inquiries into the incident.
It was the eighth time during Syria's six-year-old civil war that Moscow has used its veto...
April 7th, 20170President Trump ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was allegedly launched, declaring he acted in America's "vital national security interest."
The deadliest chemical weapons attack in years in Syria killed dozens of people in the rebel-held northern Idlib province on Tuesday...
March 30th, 20171NEW YORK - The United States is no longer making removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a focus of its policy in the war-torn country, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday.
"Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," Ambassador Nikki Haley told a small group of reporters. "Our...
