The trainer paced the grounds of a mountain enclave in southwestern Syria, shouting at dozens of new recruits as they drilled sprints between barricades made from old car tires. “You have to practice as if it’s real,” screamed the instructor, Fadi Azam. “Want me to start shooting at you instead to make it real?” he…
A delegation of Syrian Druse made a rare visit to Israel over the weekend for a pilgrimage to a shrine as Israel seeks to extend its influence inside Syria after the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad. Both Israel and Syria have sizable minorities who belong to the Druse sect — an Arabic-speaking religious minority…
Syrian security forces were deployed across a predominately Druse town on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, early Sunday, two days after a gunfight between government officers and armed men from a local neighborhood left one person dead and several others wounded. A tense calm has returned to the town, Jaramana, after the deadly clash…