Since the war in Syria entered a new phase in late September with the entry of the Russian air force, we’ve brought you quite a bit of footage depicting the desolation wrought by five years of bloody combat between government forces and the mishmash of rebels battling for control of the country (see here and here).
As Bashar al-Assad put it in an interview with Die Presse, “much of Syria’s infrastructure is destroyed.”
The Prime Minister of Iraq has issued a scathing attack on Turkey, claiming that they are faking their fight against ISIS. Haider Al-Abadi says that Turkey currently view their Kurdish population as a greater problem than ISIS, and that their vow to fight Islamic Militants alongside the West in Syria is a complete bluff. Cnbc.com reports: “The Turks are telling us otherwise, (that) they’re eager to fight Daesh. But I’m telling them frankly, I’m not seeing evidence of that. I hope to see more evidence of that,” Al-Abadi said.
Islamic State militants are sheltering their senior officials and high-value prisoners at Syria’s biggest dam by Lake Assad on the Euphrates, believing that U.S. forces will not go near them in fear of unleashing a giant flood that could potentially kill thousands. High-value prisoners and senior Islamic State officials are being held at the Tabqa Dam, safe in the knowledge that there are no ground troops capable of dislodging them before they unleash a deluge that could “mean that there’s no electricity for all of eastern Syria”, according to Virginia Tech associate professor Ariel Ahram.
Via The New York Review of Books,
The following is a revised version of an interview between George Soros and Gregor Peter Schmitz of the German magazine WirtschaftsWoche.
Gregor Peter Schmitz: When Time put German Chancellor Angela Merkel on its cover, it called her the “Chancellor of the Free World.” Do you think that is justified?
China is “at the center of a clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran,” WSJ wrote on Tuesday, as Xi Jinping marks his first visit to Riyadh as President.
To be sure, Xi’s trip to the Mid-East comes at a critical juncture. The Sunni and Shiite communities exist in a perpetual state of strife, but Riyadh’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr threw gasoline on a fire that’s already being fueled by fighting in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.