The Islamic State has been showing renewed vigor in Syria, attracting new fighters and increasing the number of its attacks last year, according to the United Nations and U.S. officials, further raising the threat of instability in a country that is already volatile after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. The group is still nowhere…
In the Syrian capital, Damascus, the country’s new leader has hosted a national unity conference and welcomed foreign dignitaries as crowds gather at cafes, speaking out freely for the first time in decades. But 400 miles away in northeastern Syria, a region beyond the control of the Damascus government, battles that have been going on…
No international body is searching for hundreds of Yazidi women and girls still held captive by the Islamist terrorists. Instead, their fates depend on a ragtag army of activists, relatives and armchair detectives. Feb. 16, 2025 The investigator’s eyes dart between the two photographs. In one, a young girl, maybe 10, is wearing a colorful…
President Trump’s funding freeze has thrown into confusion the future of a Syrian desert camp holding thousands of Islamic State members and their families, the camp’s director and people familiar with it said, describing it as a potential security threat in the region. The camp, Al Hol, which houses some 39,000 people, has been whipsawed…
President Trump’s sweeping executive order to halt foreign aid threatens to freeze a U.S. program supporting security forces inside a notorious camp in the Syrian desert that holds tens of thousands of Islamic State members and their families, Syrian and U.S. officials said. The order has also wreaked havoc on another U.S. organization in Syria…
When Hamas militants led a deadly cross-border raid on Oct. 7, 2023, they triggered a war with Israel that has devastated Gaza. They also set off shock waves that have reshaped the Middle East in unexpected ways. Powerful alliances were upended. Long-established “red lines” were crossed. A decades-old dictatorship at the heart of the region…