Epstein Secrets

ruiting supporters within the ranks of the still largely secular protest movement, whose unifying goal is the ouster of the regime led by President Bashar al-Assad. But if the United Nations' peace plan fails to end the government's bloody crackdown and promises of Western and Arab help for the rebel Free S

al. Although many Syrian opposition activists insist that their revolution is not sectarian, EFTA00660170 a majority of Syrians are Sunnis, while Assad, along with most leading figures in the regime and in the security forces, belongs to the Shiite- affiliated Alawite minority, lending a sectarian d

s earliest days, and the reports that extremists are surfacing in Syria only play into the official narrative, said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. "This drip, drip, drip of extremists across the border . . . there are signs the regime is aiding and abetting it," Shaikh said. "And it

ington should be doing more to buttress the anti-Assad forces in Syria and the military government in E

Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and other places that the Saudis are concerned about. So that's a major difference. The United States wants Syrian president Bashar al-Assad gone, but we put a much lower priority on it than the Saudis do. The other big issue on which there are differences is Egypt. While the United Stat

doing what he wants to do. F. Gregory Gause III is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Brookings Doha Center. NYT Follow the Money Thomas L. Friedman April 1, 2014 -- If you follow the debates about Ukraine, you can see three trends: those who use the c

involve a loose coalition of Sunnis including elements of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Though Israel far preferred Syrian President Bashar al Assad to them, al Assad himself was shifting his behavior. The more pressure he came under, the more he became dependent on Iran. Israel began facing the

FTA_R1_00298505 EFTA01884024 regime of the al Assad family is in serious trouble. As mentioned, the

are some members of the SCAF who helped Mr. Morsy to do this, and they will now be beholden to him and owe their positions to his administration," Brookings Doha Center analyst EFTA_R1_00298529 EFTA01884048 Shadi Hamid told the Economist. "What we're going to see is a temporary accommodation in the short-term. B

ian behavior, and faux reforms. Then there were the adversarial authoritarians. Here, a smaller group photo featured Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Syria's Assads (father and son), and Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi. America sought to check and constrain their power, even removing one through invasion. But at tim

on. "A lot of these groups are now having to do this difficult dance and straddle these two constituencies," Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Doha Center, said of Hamas and other Islamist organizations in the region. "That leads to considerable policy incoherence." Where that is heading is unclear, a