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Syria

Kevin Collier/dailydot/Hacktivists operating under the Anonymous banner say they’ve gotten more than 5,000 Twitter accounts affiliated with the Islamic State knocked off the site since Friday. We report that more than 5500 Twitter account of #ISIS are now #down! #OpParis #Anonymous #ExpectUs — #OpParis (@opparisofficial) November 17, 2015 Anonymous’s anti-ISIS campaign is part of a broad attempt to make using the Internet harder for members of the terrorist group […]

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, the most deadly violence to strike France since World War Two, world leaders are convening on Sunday and Monday for the G20 summit in Turkey. The meeting, whose agenda now includes the attacks and their aftermath, will also focus on the migrant crisis in the Middle East and Europe, and could thus become one of the most important G20 summits since […]

Arab countries’ political, social and economic realities affect their nationals’ dreams. We spend a third of our lives sleeping. What if we can unlock the mystery of what happens in our subconscious minds when we’re asleep? Are our dreams connected to one another? Does our local environment influence what we dream? What if we had a tool that can analyze hundreds of thousands of people’s dreams to […]

Gunmen and bombers attacked restaurants, a concert hall and a sports stadium at locations across Paris on Friday, killing at least 120 people in what a shaken President Francois Hollande called an unprecedented terrorist attack. A Paris city hall official said gunmen systematically slaughtered nearly 100 people attending a rock concert at the Bataclan music hall. Anti-terrorist commandos eventually launched an assault on the building, killed the […]

|By Matein Khalid| I was in a pensive-philosophic mood last week as I decompressed from a trip to a hauntingly beautiful post Soviet country in the Caucasus, the land that produced Koba from Gori and Prince Pyotr Bagration, the fallen hero of Tsar Alexander’s imperial guard at Borodino. Yet Georgia gave me time and perspective to think about the financial firestorms on Wall Street, Marounuchi, the Gulf […]

|By Matein Khalid| Saudi Arabia has fascinated me since I first met Hani AZ Yamani as a teenage student all those years ago at Wharton. Hani’s father was Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, legendary Saudi Oil Minister (1962-86) under Kings Faisal, Khalid and Fahd. Sheikh Yamani managed the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, survived a terrorist assault in Vienna by Carlos the Jackal, midwifed the birth of Saudi […]

| By Yaroslav Trofimov| Despised by some, admired by others, the U.S. has been the Middle East’s principal power for decades, providing its allies with guidance and protection. Now, however, with Russia and Iran thrusting themselves boldly into the region’s affairs, that special role seems to be melting away. As seasoned politicians and diplomats survey the mayhem, they struggle to recall a moment when America counted for […]

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — Another landmark structure in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra has been deliberately destroyed by Islamic State militants, according to local antigovernment activists and Syrian officials. The building involved this time was a set of triumphal arches, erected in the second century. Since seizing Palmyra from government forces in May, Islamic State fighters have destroyed some of the most beautiful and historically significant monuments in […]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi security forces arrested a Syrian man accused of plotting attacks and his Filipino accomplice in a raid on an illegal explosives factory in Riyadh, the Interior Ministry said Saturday, according to the state news agency SPA. The ministry said the two people arrested in Wednesday’s raid belonged to a “deviant group” — a term used by Saudi authorities to refer to Al […]

Two large bombings in Shiite-majority neighborhoods in Baghdad killed at least 18 people on Saturday. The larger attack took place in the Kadhimiya neighborhood, where the police said a suicide bomber set off his explosives at a checkpoint. At least 11 people were killed, including at least four civilians, and more than 36 people were wounded. In the second attack, a suicide bomber set off explosives on […]

MOSCOW — Russia widened its bombings in Syria on Friday, striking Islamic State territory for the first time, but showed no hint of heeding Western demands to avoid attacks on fighters pushing to oust Syria’s weakened, Kremlin-backed president. The Defense Ministry said its warplanes had bombed seven targets in overnight raids including a command post and training camp near Raqqa, the northeast Syrian city that the Islamic […]

An old tank sits on the Israeli side of the border with Syria in the Golan Heights.  The 400-plus square miles of the Israeli-controlled Golan, on the northeast border with Syria, is both strategic plateau and lush agricultural terrain yielding prize apples, cherries and beef. It also serves as a vast playground that drew three million tourist visits last year. Uriel Sinai for The New York Times […]

Middle East Members of the Iraqi security forces outside the Turkish embassy in Baghdad. “Our 16 workers have just been received by our Baghdad ambassador,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey said on Twitter. By CEYLAN YEGINSU September 30, 2015 ISTANBUL — Sixteen Turkish construction workers abducted four weeks ago by a Shiite militia in Iraq were released on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey said in a statement […]

Middle East A vehicle at a base controlled by rebel fighters from the Ahrar al-Sham insurgent group that activists said was targeted by Russian airstrikes near Idlib, Syria, on Thursday. By ANNE BARNARD and ANDREW E. KRAMER October 1, 2015 BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a second day of raids in Syria, Russian warplanes carried out a new round of airstrikes on Thursday that once again — contrary to Moscow’s assertions — appeared […]

The Syrian civil war, now in its fifth year, involves multiple countries with overlapping and at times conflicting agendas. Competing visions of how to manage the conflict, which has led to a major global refugee crisis as well as the rise of the Islamic State, dominated discussions at the United Nations General Assembly this week. But despite days of meetings and diplomatic maneuvering, the crisis has only […]

UNITED NATIONS — Over the last four years, as four million Syrian refugees poured into neighboring countries and slipped inexorably into poverty, António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said he had pleaded in vain with world leaders to take their plight more seriously. But suddenly, at the United Nations General Assembly this week, leaders of the world’s most powerful countries want to meet with […]

OBAMA HAS TO WORK WITH PUTIN TO DEESCALATE   By Arun Srivastava   By sending troops in support of the Assad regime…

UNITED NATIONS — President Obama called upon a conclave of world leaders on Tuesday to fight violent extremism with not only weapons, but also ideas, jobs and good governance, a strategy he has long advocated. There are few signs that it is succeeding. Military pressure, Mr. Obama said at a United Nations summit meeting, will be insufficient to vanquish groups like the Islamic State, also known as […]

INTERNATIONAL. What started as a civil war in Syria nearly five years ago has now evolved into an international crisis unmatched by any other since World War II. The global community now has a solemn obligation to end this humanitarian disaster, but it cannot do so unless all the powers affected by the conflict set aside their differences in order to end the suffering of millions of […]

Middle East By THOMAS ERDBRINK September 27, 2015 President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Monday. Thomas Erdbrink, the Tehran bureau chief for The New York Times, looks at what message Mr. Rouhani has for international leaders and how it might be received. What’s different from the last time President Rouhani spoke to the General Assembly? Mr. Rouhani, Iran’s leader since […]

Middle East Secretary of State John Kerry with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, on Sunday. By MICHAEL R. GORDON September 27, 2015 The Iraqi military announced Sunday that it had agreed to share intelligence about the Islamic State with Russia, the Syrian government and Iran, an agreement that caught the Obama administration off guard. The Iraqi military said in a statement that the new agreement was necessary because […]

Middle East Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the United Nations on Saturday. By MICHAEL R. GORDON September 26, 2015 UNITED NATIONS — Secretary of State John Kerry sought on Saturday to draw Iran into the search for a political solution to the Syrian conflict as he began a week of diplomacy over the brutal fighting there. “I view this week as […]

WASHINGTON — Nearly 30,000 foreign recruits have now poured into Syria, many to join the Islamic State, a doubling of volunteers in just the past 12 months and stark evidence that an international effort to tighten borders, share intelligence and enforce antiterrorism laws is not diminishing the ranks of new militant fighters. Among those who have entered or tried to enter the conflict in Iraq or Syria […]

AMMAN, Jordan — Mohammad Smarat sat gazing at the few plants sprouting outside the entrance of the white stone hospital here, recalling how he had collapsed in a sea of green fields after getting shot. He had been helping farmers pick tomatoes near his home in Dara’a, Syria, when a stray bullet shattered his left hip joint. Though he had obeyed his father’s orders not to join […]

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