CIA secretly providing training for Syrian rebels: report
The CIA and US special operations forces have been training Syrian rebels for months, since long before President Barack Obama announced plans to arm the opposition, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
Putin warns on arming Syrian rebels as conflict widens
Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned the West on Friday against arming Syrian rebel forces, which he said included “terrorist” groups, and warned that a swift exit by President Bashar al-Assad risked creating a dangerous power vacuum.
US military presence in Jordan expands to 1,000 troops
The US military has expanded its presence in Jordan to 1,000 troops, officials said Friday, in a show of force amid a raging civil war in neighboring Syria. “The total comes to about 1,000,” up from about 250 personnel that have been in place for months, a US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
…Buck Sexton has been on a “fact-finding” mission in the Middle East all week, traveling everywhere from Syrian refugee camps to Egypt’s famed Tahrir Square. …“There are so many more refugees, so much more violence,” he said. “This thing [in Syria] is far from over, and the notion that we could end it even if we wanted to is kind of a fantasy.”
A major uptick in sectarian violence which has killed about 2,000 people since April 1 has sparked fears that Iraq is heading for a full-scale civil war that could draw in powerful regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia. There are already signs that the current conflict is starting to merge with the bitter fighting in Syria, creating a war zone from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.
It’s not hard to find stereotypes, caricatures and outright bigotry when talk in the Middle East turns to the tensions between Islam’s two main sects. Shi’ites are described as devious, power-hungry corruptors of Islam. Sunnis are called extremist, intolerant oppressors.
Syrian death toll tops 100,000
More than 100,000 people have been killed since the start of Syria’s conflict over two years ago, an activist group said Wednesday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the death toll in the conflict through a network of activists in Syria, released its death toll at a time when hopes for a negotiated settlement to end the civil war fade.