The battle for the Syrian city of Al-Qusayr, which came under regime artillery fire May 19, is actually part of a larger battle for the highly coveted Homs governorate. As we noted in 2012, the battle has wide-reaching ramifications for the Syrian rebels since Al-Qusayr sits along a major transit point for rebel supplies and reinforcements coming in from Lebanon. But it is equally important to loyalist forces. If the Syrian regime loses control of the...
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Syria yet again suffers an internet outage, cutting its citizens off from the rest of the online world. According to Internet monitoring firm Renesys, internet in the country has been down since Wednesday, 7:01 UTC (12:01 a.m. PDT). Confirmation U.S. based Renesys confirmed in a tweet that BGP (border gateway patrol) is down, inbound trace routes are failing, and DNS severs and government web sites are down. Another tweet from the state-run Syrian news...
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SALT 2013 has kicked off, and besides for the VIP dinners with the elite, there is also some investment news. John Paulson sat down for a one on one conversation. Paulson started off with a discussion on gold, a commodity which ‘lost him’ 27% in the month of April. Below are some informal notes from the talk with John Paulson. John Paulson: 5 interesting points 1. Gold only constitutes 2.8% of John Paulson’s total AUM, so the press...
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The internet became unavailable across Syria just after 13:00 EST yesterday. A tentative report from the BBC suggests that the country’s citizens can now access the internet once again, though there is still a lack of explanation about what caused the blackout in the first place. The news that the internet had been cut in the country led to fears about the safety of its populace, who have been locked in civil war for more...
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One feels sympathy for U.S. President Barack Obama. Whatever he does in Syria, he is doomed. Had he intervened a year ago, as many pundits demanded, he might presently be in the midst of a quagmire with even more pundits angry athim, and with his approval ratings far lower than they are. If he intervenes now, the results might be even worse. Journalists often demand action for action’s sake, seemingly unaware that many international...
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The civil war in Syria, one of the few lasting legacies of the Arab Spring, has been under way for more than two years. There has been substantial outside intervention in the war. The Iranians in particular, and the Russians to a lesser extent, have supported the Alawites under Bashar al Assad. The Saudis and some of the Gulf States have supported the Sunni insurgents in various ways. The Americans, Europeans and Israelis, however, have for the most part avoided...
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Reports have been circling in Western media since late yesterday that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in the war between government forces and opposition rebels. US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, said that he has not seen the report proving the use of chemical weapons, but if Syria is using chemical weapons that would represent the crossing of a “red line.” “Red Line” rhetoric has become a popular trope among important politicians...
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Given the fact that in the two years that the Syrian Civil War has been raging, at least 70,000 people have died. It’s difficult not to simply laugh at the efforts of the Syrian Electronic Army as they takeover Twitter accounts of international news services. The pro-Assad ranting that has accompanied these attacks in a few cases is comparatively harmless. While the U.N. says that 70,000 have perished in this war, many believe this...
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Recent media and human-rights activist reports claim that the South Caucasus countries of Georgia and Azerbaijan are playing an indirect role in supplying diesel fuel, weapons and cash to the embattled government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Government employees deny the charges to EurasiaNet.org, but key details about the alleged shipments remain unclear. A March 7 report by Human Rights First, a US-based non-profit organization that “works to identify and disrupt” Syrian government supply...
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Israel is in the process of watching a peace treaty unravel. I don’t mean the one with Egypt, but the one with Syria. No, I’m not crazy. Since Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in 1974, the Israelis have had a de facto peace agreement of sorts with the al Assad family. After all, there were clear red lines that both sides knew they shouldn’t cross, as well as reasonable predictability on both sides. Forget about the uplifting...
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)’s official weather and Arabic Twitter accounts were hacked by the supporters of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Hackers controlled the accounts for almost three hours on Thursday and posted comical, anti-Semitic and political tweets, according to The Telegraph. “Syrian Electronic Army”, as the hackers identified themselves, used the BBC weather Twitter account to post a series of attacks on the countries that oppose Assad regime, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, Saudi Arabia and...
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