ISIS Flees Border Town of Azaz
Reuters reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has been driven from Azaz, three miles from the Turkish border, after months of rebel infighting there.
The fighting “has hampered efforts to get humanitarian aid into Syria and help tens of thousands of refugees who fled there to escape bombardment by government forces in Aleppo province,” the wire says.
ISIS, “which took Azaz five months ago from rival opposition fighters, has fought other rebels who control the border post with Turkey. A car bomb last week at a makeshift camp on the Syrian side of the border killed five refugees.”
Rami Abdulrahman, head of the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said ISIS “withdrew at dawn to strongholds east of Aleppo city. He said the group was suffering heavy losses in Azaz.”
Christians Fleeing Syria Return to Turkish Homeland
Reuters reports on the flood of Syrian Christians who were forced to flee the country in the early 20th century and are now returning as refugees to their ancestral homeland in Turkey.
“While most Christian refugees are in Lebanon or Jordan, countries with which they share linguistic or cultural ties, several thousand have come to Turkey. For many it is a reversal of their ancestors’ flight around a century ago, when World War I and the subsequent building of the post-Ottoman Turkish state made Turkey a hostile land for millions of Christians,” writes Ayla Jean Ackley.
“The sectarian strife that has rent apart Syria’s delicate multi-ethnic fabric has spawned a severe humanitarian crisis and driven 2.5 million refugees into neighboring countries. Turkey has taken in 700,000 mostly Sunni Muslim refugees.
“The United Nations does not register Syrian refugees by religion so cannot give an exact figure for Christians who have left, but estimates vary between 300,000 and 500,000, says Mark Ohanian, director of programs of the International Orthodox Christian Charities, which works inside Syria.
“Their flight has been driven in part because Christians, seen as largely supportive of President Bashar al-Assad, have been targeted by rebels in some parts of Syria and feel threatened by increasingly hardline Islamist fighters.”
Syria Civil War ‘Horrors’ Lead U.S. Human-Rights Report
The BBC reports that a top global human-rights report released by the U.S.”has singled out Syria’s civil war as a tragedy that ‘stands apart in its scope and human cost.
“The US said a chemical weapons attack in Syria that it says killed 1,429 was ‘one of many horrors’ in the war. The annual state department review also noted the increased crackdown elsewhere on protesters and civil society groups. It saved its harshest condemnation for the government of Syria, where well over 100,000 people have been killed and millions more forced to flee since March 2011.
“It cites the 21 August 2013 chemical weapons attack on Ghouta, an agricultural belt around Damascus, as one of ‘many horrors in a civil war filled with countless crimes against humanity, from the torture and murder of prisoners to the targeting of civilians with barrel bombs and Scud missiles.’”
Ukraine’s Non-Effect on Russia’s Syria Policy
Al-Monitor analyzes the effect the crisis in Ukraine will have on Russia’s Syria policy. Russia is the key ally and financial backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“When combined with resulting historical, cultural, social and economic ties, Ukraine’s future is an existential or near-existential matter for Russia – and Syria’s is not. Accordingly, the mere fact that Ukraine’s government and top opposition leaders had found acceptable terms was not enough for Moscow.”
With Ukraine now in the spotlight, “Russia’s Syria policy is likely to remain largely on autopilot.”
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