Syria’s defence minister visited Jordan on Sunday to discuss stability on their mutual border, the first such meeting since the Syrian conflict erupted a decade ago when the two neighbours supported opposing factions, officials said.
Jordanian army head Lieutenant General Yousef Hunaiti met Syrian Defence Minister and Chief of Staff Ali Ayyoub over the Deraa situation and to discuss issues such as the fight against terrorism and drug smuggling in the area to retake the last rebel bastion in southern Syria, and after reestablising control this month over Deraa, a city south of Damascus, in a Russian brokered deal that averted an all-out military assault led by Iranian-backed units of the army.
Jordan had for years supported mainstream Western-backed rebels who controlled southern Syria until a campaign by the Syrian army in 2018 aided by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias retook the province.
Three Turkish soldiers were killed Sept. 11 in a bomb attack in Idlib, the last stronghold of Turkish-backed and Islamist opposition in northwest Syria — and Turkey responded by hitting US-backed Kurdish groups in northeast Syria. It’s a war within a war.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan has been trying to stave off an all-out attack. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, a massive strain on its economy.
Turkey “assumed that HTS’ suppression of other jihadis would fulfill its commitments to Russia to eliminate terrorist groups, yet HTS has reinforced its de facto emirate in Idlib, and dozens of radical…
54 Kurdish migrants stranded in Syria would be returned to the region this evening through Turkey.
Ankara had reportedly deported the Kurdish migrants to Syrian territory because they claimed they were Syrians, thinking that the Turkish authorities would turn a blind eye as they attempted to migrate to Europe.
Turkey sent the migrants to the city of Azaz in northern Aleppo, an area under the control of the Turkish government and its Syrian opposition allies.
The Kurds reportedly spent several days in harsh conditions in the area. They then appealed to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to help them return to the region.
Recognizing the loneliness and isolation experienced by many survivors and families affected by terrorism, he said the COVID-19 pandemic and related movement restrictions have further limited their ability to connect with loved ones.
Spotlighting the International Day’s 2021 theme in his official message, the UN chief said “connection” is a crucial healing agent for many terrorism survivors, helping them to feel heard and seen.
“Today we say to all victims and survivors of terrorism: you are not alone,” he said.
The International Day comes on the heels of a Security Council debate on the ongoing threat posed by terrorist groups…
At least 30,000 former members of Iraq’s Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces-PMF) are to be reinstated and receive their salaries, the paramilitary coalition announced Monday.
The announcement, which came weeks before the country’s October 10 parliamentary elections, follows months of demonstrations by ex-members whose jobs had been terminated.
The Hashed decision to reinstate former members, observers added, is a direct message to Kadhimi, who has been struggling to restore the government’s control over the security file, something that the Hashed does not accept and sees as a threat to the militias’ influence.
What do you think about this Hashed move?
The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, has said that Turkey is working with the UNHCR on a plan to repatriate refugees to Syria.
In spite of Cavusolgu’s remarks, the UNCHR’s overall policy towards returning migrants to Syria is that the country is still too dangerous to send refugees back to. Responding to the foreign minister’s comments, the UNHCR spokesperson in Turkey, Selin Unal, said that only a political solution in Syria would allow people to return. She added that refugees should have the right to voluntarily return in “safe and dignified conditions.”
Turkey is now turning against migrants and sending them Syria even if it is not safe to go back.
The four coordinated attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 killed nearly 3,000 people, including more than 340 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers. Some 25,000 people were injured in the attacks, perpetrated by Islamist terrorist group al-Qaida.
Two decades later, Americans are assessing new threats, like cyberterrorism and domestic extremism, while reflecting on the tumultuous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Do you think 9/11 changed the world?
It made it clear that terrorism is a clear and present danger. The most deadly attack against America since WWII was not launched by a great power or any country, but by a small group of super-empowered terrorists.
Unprecedented drought — driven by climate change and exacerbated by upstream irrigation — is wreaking havoc on some of the world’s oldest river-fed farmlands in Iraq and Syria.
In Syria, the drought is the worst in 70 years — a crisis even more severe than the 2006–2009 drought that occurred in the years before the Syrian Civil War, a coalition of aid groups warned in August.
In Iraq, they said this summer was the second-driest season in 40 years.
Does Turkey really has nothing to do with this drought?
Global terrorism did not start on 9 11. For decades before that Britain and America have been colluding with radical Islamism groups even terrorist groups to promote very basic foreign policy objectives. Incredibly what happened after 9 11 was not that Britain in America stopped conniving with islamist groups. If anything they stepped up their support for those radical Islamism groups the official story is Britain and the us have been engaged in a war against terrorism and a war against Islamic extremism. But the reality is that Britain and the u.s …
U.S. officials are looking into reports that in the frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul, older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as “brides” or otherwise sexually abused.
Washington warns that some young Afghan girls had been forced into marriages in order to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. Multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families. Those girls had been sexually assaulted by their “husbands”, have been raped by older men they were forced to marry in order to escape Afghanistan.
