Syria’s New Leader Promised Democracy. Then He Excluded Women From Parliamentary Elections

A Syrian cleric from an electoral college casts his vote during the recent parliamentary elections in Syria. Hussein Malla/AP

BY KINDA AISAMARA, ELEANOR GORDON AND ELLIOT DOLAN-EVANS

Women’s political participation is often treated as a measure of a country’s commitment to equality and democracy.

Earlier this year, Syria’s new leader, President Ahmed al-Sharaa, described his country as moving in a “democratic direction” after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in late 2024. He said:

If democracy means that the people decide who will rule them and who represents them in the parliament, then, yes, Syria is going in this direction.

Yet, in Syria’s recent parliamentary elections, women only won six seats in the 210-member body. Exclusion was not merely reflected in the outcome, it was engineered into the very structure of the process.

A long history of marginalisation

Assad ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than two decades through widespread repression, war crimes and systematic violence against civilians.

Parliamentary elections were highly controlled, with Assad’s Ba’ath Party and its allies dominating every vote. Women held between 6% and 13% of seats from 1981 to the end of Assad’s tenure, according to estimates from a global organisation of national parliaments.

Although the parliament had little real power, it served to legitimise Assad’s rule through the appearance of a democratic process.

In December 2024, al-Sharaa’s Islamist-led coalition took advantage of the power vacuum created by the decline of Iran’s regional influence and the collapse of its allied armed groups to oust Assad and dissolve Syria’s symbolic legislature.

Al-Sharaa’s rise was initially hailed as a potential turning point toward political reform and reconciliation. However, early signs suggest that entrenched patterns of marginalisation – especially of women – are continuing to shape Syria’s politics.

How women (and others) were sidelined

The recent parliamentary elections in early October did not factor in the people’s will, nor were they permitted to vote. They weren’t involved in the process at all.

Instead, the elections were overseen by a government body called the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, appointed by al-Sharaa. Its composition was revealing: nine men and only two women.

The process was complicated and deliberately exclusionary. The Supreme Judicial Committee was tasked with forming electoral subcommittees around the country, which then reviewed applicants for individuals to be appointed to electoral colleges. Only those selected were allowed to participate in the voting process or nominate candidates.

Ordinary citizens had no direct role in the election.

Under this framework, the electoral colleges selected representatives for two-thirds of the parliament seats. Al-Sharaa will appoint the remaining third.

Unsurprisingly, women’s representation in the subcommittees was minimal. Drawing on raw figures published on the official Syrian election website, women only constituted about 11% of all subcommittee members (18 out of roughly 180 nationwide).

Even where women did have decent representation, no female parliamentarians were elected. In Damascus, for example, women comprised nearly a third of the registered applicants (44 out of 145) for the electoral college and a third of the local subcommittee members. Yet, not a single woman from the capital was elected.

Minority representation was also limited. Of the 119 members elected so far, only ten belong to religious or ethnic minorities, including Kurds, Alawites and Christians (who won just two seats). Christians are believed to make up 10% of Syria’s 24 million population.

Previous research on gender and political institutions has shown that exclusionary electoral structures tend to produce exclusionary outcomes. Syria’s case fits this broader pattern.

Syrian officials have explained women’s exclusion as a cultural matter. Mohammad Taha al-Ahmad, the head of the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, appeared on television to express “surprise” at the low number of female candidates, attributing it a society that traditionally views politics as the domain of men. He said the results also reflected alliances (based on established male networks) that formed among members of the subcommittees.

While such attitudes undoubtedly shape gender dynamics, they cannot by themselves account for the low participation of women in the election.

Women were constrained from the outset. Invoking “culture” shifts the blame away from the institutional barriers.

Ultimately, this was not a free or fair election. When women’s involvement is reduced to symbolic inclusion under state supervision, elections cease to be instruments of representation and become performances of legitimacy.

What can be done?

Reversing this pattern requires more than rhetoric. There must be institutional reform, including:

gender quotas that reserve a proportion of candidacies or seats for women, allowing them to gain political experience and visibility

increased funding, training and local networking initiatives to help women build community-based constituencies

reforming electoral processes to move toward more direct, transparent voting that limits alliances among elites and presidential control 

instituting new school curricula and civil society programs that normalise women’s participation in public life and challenge gendered perceptions of political leadership.

Until such reforms are enacted, Syria’s elections will continue to reflect not popular will, but the entrenched hierarchies of a state that governs through exclusion.

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‘We’ve Proved We Can Do Anything’: The Syrian Women Who Want A Say In Running The Country

BY RUTH MICHAELSON

The feminist activist Ghalia Rahhal recalls with wry laughter her visit to the “blue building” in Idlib three years ago, an office where the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) monitored civil society organisations such as hers. Her colleague at a women’s rights organisation was once called there to hear a list of issues they were banned from working on: child marriage, divorce, and anything related to gender equality.

Rahhal had already survived an assassination attempt in her home town of Kafranbel as well as the murder of her son in Aleppo, leaving her unfazed by pointed questions levelled at her by an official: we heard you were training women in the refugee camps about politics, about equality, he told her with suspicion.

Rahhal instead saw an opportunity for dialogue, wondering if she could capitalise on a chance to speak with the authority that back then ruled only the enclave of Idlib in Syria’s north-west. “Why are you angry that we are teaching them these things?” she asked him. “My goal is not to teach those women to fight you, it’s for women to become decision-makers. We can’t have a displacement camp full of women run by a man, to name just one example.”

She continued her work in secret, providing lectures and training to women so that they would be ready to participate in a transitional government if the opportunity ever presented itself. That opportunity suddenly and unexpectedly arrived last month, when former president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow as his fearsome regime crumbled.

The Islamist group HTS, which spearheaded the insurgency that ended Assad’s rule, is now the de-facto authority in Syria and has begun touting many of the same ideas it once chastised Rahhal for when she taught them to women displaced by Syria’s bloody civil war.

There is, so far, little clarity about how the new government will rule, particularly when it comes to women. Even so, many see this moment as one of boundless opportunity and say they are ready to dissent against any new authority wanting further control of their lives. Others, such as Rahhal, say they believe the transitional authority made up of HTS appointees simply doesn’t have the same means to crack down on women across the country in the same way they sometimes did when they ruled only a small mountainous enclave.

Many remain hopeful despite mounting unanswered questions, including how the reborn country might approach the sexual violence weaponised in Assad’s prisons, or whether thousands of exiled female activists, along with others who fled for fear of persecution over their gender expression or sexuality, could one day feel safe to return to the new Syria.

A few handpicked to serve in the transitional government have already drawn anger for their comments about women. Obaida Arnout, a spokesperson for the new authority, said women’s “biological and physiological nature” made them unfit for some government jobs.

And Aisha al-Dibs, the new minister for women, said she would not “give room” to any civil society organisations that disagree with her view, citing one “catastrophic” programme eight years ago that she claimed led to a rise in divorce rates.

Both statements sparked a fierce backlash, all of which appeared to chasten the new government. Days later, Maysaa Sabrine, a former deputy at the Syrian central bank, was appointed to head the institution, the first woman to do so in its history. Rahhal views this as part of a push-pull of draconian measures she said she was familiar with under HTS rule, with their repeal labelled as responsiveness to criticism.

Delal Albesh, who has run a centre providing vocational training for women in Idlib for years under HTS, said things in the city had improved and she hoped the new authority would take a similar approach nationwide. Her centre was one of a number of women’s empowerment facilities, providing opportunities to learn new skills so they could enter the job market or treat injuries caused by the Assad regime’s bombardments. She is now looking for an office in the capital, Damascus.

“Since many men were fighters, women didn’t sit back and wait – they worked,” she said. Women had taken on more roles across civil society, she said, particularly after the deadly earthquake that jolted northern Syria and southern Turkey in early 2023, killing an estimated 8,000 Syrians. Her organisation, Zumoruda, found that HTS’s pressure had eased after it registered with the local authorities, allowing it to expand its fieldwork and reach more women.

Her sister, Amina Albesh, who works with the Syrian civil defence group known as the White Helmets, said she didn’t want to talk politics as her organisation has long strived to remain neutral of any ruling authority. But she was confident that women would seize new roles in Syria.

“Many women lost their partners and have done a lot of hard work these past 14 years,” she said, estimating that 70% of the women living in Idlib had been working to provide for their families.

“They are tired,” she said. “But we are against all these statements that women can’t do this or that. We have proved we can do literally anything.” Both sisters said there had been few civil appointments open during HTS’s rule of Idlib, which they felt explained why no women had ever been appointed to leadership roles.

Rahhal remains sceptical about the transitional government’s promises of change. She described examining each new development from her exile in Berlin, comparing it with decisions that HTS took in the past, including when the group operated under the name Jabhat al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaida. Then, she said, their violations were blatant, including a convoy of cars arriving to raid the Mazaya women’s centre she co-founded.

A year prior, an unknown assailant had set Mazaya’s offices on fire, and Rahhal was the target of a car bomb. The activist doesn’t know who planted the bomb, and is still seeking justice for the murder of her son, the journalist Khalid al-Issa, who was killed by an explosive device hidden in his home in Aleppo in 2016. Rahhal believes that some of those involved in his murder could now be in power.

“In general, I don’t trust HTS because I still don’t know whether they are truly changing or they just claim to have changed,” she said. “Are they really changing ideologically, or just for their own interests?”

After she was questioned in the so-called blue building, she said, it didn’t end the pressure on women’s rights organisations, but things did shift. Just like when she was briefly detained by the Hisbah, a local authority for enforcing religious edicts, who accused her of not wearing appropriate clothing but was thereafter dissolved, her detention ended up “causing headaches” for HTS just as much as it bothered Rahhal’s group.

Pressure on women’s rights organisations had become “more politicised” before she left Idlib two years ago, she said. Imams aligned to HTS would preach against the women’s empowerment centres, accusing them of “spreading corruption”, and warning people to be careful around them. Women would be called in for warnings, she said, but the local authority run by HTS was also careful to foster supportive relationships with select female empowerment centres who they felt aligned with their aims.

Still, Rahhal continued her activities to train women to be ready for leadership roles in a future democratic society.

“They prevented this during their rule in Idlib, because without my doing these trainings in secret it would take many years to re-establish a space among women to discuss civil rights, transitional justice and equality,” she said.

“Because I did it in secret before, now I can build from this base – but their plan was to marginalise women so they don’t understand these things and get involved in government.”

She remains encouraged by a few statements from HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, but feels the real tests lie ahead. Rahhal is keeping an eye on those attending the national dialogue where al-Sharaa is expected to dissolve HTS, although preparations have so far proved opaque.

“I don’t want to see 300 versions of Aisha al-Dibs attending, I want to see real representation,” she said.

Rahhal does not expect an invitation, but feels attendance is more than symbolic. “This is the first step towards having real female representation, to make real change,” she said.

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Syrians, In A Triumph Of Hope, Turn The Page On The Horrors Of Assad

Syrians living in Essen, Germany, gather to celebrate following the collapse of regime control in the capital, Damascus, on Dec. 8, 2024. Hesham Elsherif/Anadolu via Getty Images

BY WENDY PEARLMAN

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

NORTWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Millions of Syrians are feeling hope for the first time in years.

The authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad fell on Dec. 8, 2024, after a 12-day rebel offensive.

Most commentaries on this stunning reversal of a conflict seemingly frozen since 2020 emphasize shifts in geopolitics and balance of power. Some analysts trace how Assad’s main backers – Iran, Hezbollah and Russia – became too weakened or preoccupied to come to his aid as in the past. Other commentators consider how rebels prepared and professionalized, while the regime decayed, leading to the latter’s collapse.

These factors help explain the speed and timing of the collapse of one of the Middle East’s longest and most brutal dictatorships. But these factors should not overshadow the human significance of Assad’s overthrow.

Assad’s fall in its revolutionary context

During the past two weeks, Syrians have rejoiced as symbols of Assad domination came down and the revolutionary flag went up. They held their breath as rebels freed captives from the regime’s notorious prisons. They shed tears as displaced people returned and families reunited after years of separation.

And then, finally, Syrians around the world poured into the streets to celebrate the end of 54 years of tyranny.

To appreciate the magnitude of this achievement requires historical context, one that I have documented in two books based on interviews with more than 500 Syrian refugees over the past 12 years.

My first book begins with stories of the suffocating repression, surveillance and indignities that characterized everyday life in the single-party security state that Hafez al-Assad established in 1970, and his son Bashar inherited in the year 2000.

It conveys tentative optimism as uprisings spread across the Arab world in 2011, blooming into exhilaration when millions of Syrians broke the barrier of fear and risked their lives to demand political change.

Syrians described participating in protest as the first time they breathed or felt like a citizen. One man told me that it was better than his wedding day. A woman referred to it as the first time she ever heard her own voice. “And I told myself that I would never let anyone steal my voice again,” she added.

It was not only the feeling of freedom that was unprecedented but also the feelings of solidarity as strangers worked together, of pride as people cultivated the talents and capacities necessary to sustain revolution, and, most of all, of hope that Syrians could reclaim their country and determine their own fate.

“We started to get to know each other,” an activist recalled of those heady days. “People discovered that they were photographers or journalists or filmmakers. We were changing something not just in Syria but also within ourselves.”

Hope eclipsed by despair

From their start in March 2011, nonviolent demonstrations met with merciless repression. That July, oppositionists and military defectors announced the formation of a “Free Syrian Army” to defend protesters and fight the regime. As this and other armed groups pushed the regime from large swaths of territory, new forms of grassroots organization and local governance emerged, indicating what society could accomplish if permitted the chance.

Still, as years passed, hope became eclipsed by despair.

The people I met described their despair witnessing the regime escalate bombardment, starvation sieges and other war crimes to reconquer areas from opposition control. Despair when Assad killed 1,400 people in a 2013 chemical attack, violating the United States’ purported “red line” but escaping accountability. Despair as hundreds of thousands of people disappeared into regime dungeons, condemned to a fate of torture worse than death. Despair as the number killed in Syria climbed by hundreds of thousands, and in 2014 the United Nations gave up counting more. Despair as over half the population was forced to flee their homes, and the word “Syria” became stuck, in minds around the world, to the words “refugee crisis.”

And then there was the despair as an entity called the Islamic State announced itself in 2013 and trampled on Syrians’ democratic aspirations in a newly horrific way.

“We don’t know where any of this is leading,” a rebel officer told me at that time. “All we know is that we’re everyone else’s killing field.”

Searching for home

With the help of external allies and the rest of the world’s inaction, Assad clawed back about 60% of the country by 2020 and penned the opposition in an enclave in the northwest.

Syria dropped from the headlines, even as regime bombing continued to kill civilians, economic meltdown plunged 90% of the population below the poverty line and the regime rotted into a narco state sustained by drug trafficking.

A woman I met during these years of stalemate summarized things bleakly: “The most important thing at this stage is to protect the last bit of hope that people have left.”

Meanwhile, millions of Syrian refugees, the lion’s share of them in the countries neighboring Syria, suffered poverty, legal precariousness and local populations who increasingly demanded their deportation.

The stories that I recorded gradually came to center on a different theme, which I made the focus of my second book: home.

For those compelled to flee, the word “home” connoted twin challenges: First, creating new lives where they might never have imagined stepping foot; and second, mourning old homes lost, destroyed or emptied of loved ones.

Many described the agony of reconciling their attachment to Syria with the sense that they were unlikely to see it again.

“You try as hard as you can to forget the homeland, but you can’t because it’s even more painful to be without any homeland at all,” a man lamented.

Finding home in refuge, in other words, was not only a matter of integration. It also meant finding a way to move forward when the hope for freedom in Syria, it seemed, could not.

This is why it is awe-inspiring to witness hope surge again. As I messaged Syrian friends and interlocutors this week, I was struck by how their jubilation echoed with stories that I used to record about 2011, but now on an even more astonishing scale.

Again and again, people said that their emotions were “indescribable” and “beyond words.” That they were simultaneously “laughing and crying.” That they “just couldn’t believe” that it – the it that they once did not dare voice out loud – finally happened.

Since Assad’s fall, many foreign governments and analysts have voiced foreboding warnings about the future. They need not; Syrians know better than anyone that the path ahead will not be easy.

For now, however, the role of those watching from afar is not to doubt, critique or speculate, but to honor this triumph of human hope.

Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous famously said in 1996, “We are doomed by hope, and what happens today cannot be the end of history.” Those who refused to give up over the long years of violence, oppression and disappointment were right. Syrian history is just beginning.

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Assad Leaves Behind A Fragmented Nation – Stabilizing Syria Will Be A Major Challenge For Fractured Opposition And External Backers

Bashar al-Assad (Wikipedia)

BY SEFA SECEN

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF

INTERNATIONAL AND GLOBAL STUDIES,

NAZARETH UNIVERSITY

The brutal 54-year reign of the Assad family in Syria looks to be over.

In a matter of days, opposition forces took the major city of Aleppo before advancing southward into other government-controlled areas of Hama, Homs and finally, on Dec 7, 2024, the capital, Damascus.

The offensive was all the more astonishing given that the 13-year civil war had largely been in a stalemate since a 2020 ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey.

Reports suggest President Bashar al-Assad has resigned and left the country. But what has he left behind and what happens next?

As an expert on Middle East security, I believe the opposition forces’ ability to maintain unity will be critical in the transition to a post-Assad Syria. Since the civil war started in 2011, the many opposition factions in Syria have been fractured by ideological differences and the interests of external backers – and that remains true despite their current victory.

Meanwhile, the rapid change of fortunes in Syria’s civil war poses serious questions for those countries that have backed one side or the other in the conflict. For Iran and Russia, the fall of their ally Assad will damage regional aspirations. For the backers of elements of the opposition – notably Turkey but also the U.S., both of which maintain a military presence in Syria – there will be challenges, too.

Fears of a ‘catastrophic success’

Iran, the U.S., Russia and Turkey have been crucial players throughout Syria’s civil war.

The recent opposition offensive came as Assad’s three key allies — Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — were stretched thin. Russia’s focus on Ukraine and Iran’s setbacks from Israeli strikes have limited their ability to provide Assad robust support, while Hezbollah appeared hesitant to commit additional fighters, as it had done previously.

Then, on Dec. 2, as opposition forces were on the move, Russia began withdrawing naval assets from its strategic Mediterranean base at Tartus, Syria. This erosion of external backing substantially undermined Assad’s capacity to regroup and mount an effective counteroffensive.

The U.S. will no doubt welcome this diminished Russian and Iranian influence in Syria. But concern in Washington has already been aired over a scenario of “catastrophic success” in which Assad is replaced by an Islamist group that many in the West see as terrorists.

It was members of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that spearheaded much of the opposition gains in Syria, fighting alongside the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.

And while Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has not directly targeted the U.S. troops stationed in the northeast – which is under the control of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces – instability and the potential for clashes between opposition factions and U.S. allies could increase the risks for the 900 Syria-based American personnel.

A fragmented landscape

The fact that different opposition groups have taken control of various once-government-held areas points to a crucial fact: Syria is de facto partitioned. The northwest is controlled by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army. The northeast is under the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by the United States.

Despite a shared goal of ousting Assad and the joint offensive on Aleppo, conflicts between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian National Army are frequent. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led by Abu Mohammad al-Golani aims to assert control over opposition-held areas, including those currently managed by the Syrian National Army.

And the Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintain complex, often conflicting relationships with the Syrian Democratic Forces, shaped by ideological, territorial and strategic differences. The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army frequently engages in direct clashes with the Syrian Defense Forces, which Turkey views as a terrorist organization and an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party it has been fighting in southern Turkey for more than four decades.

The opposition’s internal fragmentation may weaken its ability to bring stability to Syria in the long run.

Adjustment problems

Assad’s fall will have major implications for those countries that have a stake in the region.

Iran’s grand strategy of preserving the “Shia Crescent” — connecting Tehran to Beirut through Baghdad and Damascus and in the process countering Sunni Islamist factions — has failed.

For Washington, Assad’s departure doesn’t necessarily fit any hoped-for outcome.

The U.S. has prioritized balancing, containing and potentially diminishing Russian and Iranian influence in Syria. But until recently that did not mean the removal of Assad. The Biden administration had even hinted in early December that it would be prepared to lift sanctions on Syria if Assad severed ties with Iran and Hezbollah.

There was also talk of Assad’s government allying with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. But as city after city fell to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, it became increasingly unlikely that the Kurdish group would align with the weakening Assad forces – especially as Kurdish forces themselves made significant territorial gains.

Syrian Democratic Forces will need to adapt in response to the fall of Assad. This will be doubly true if, as many anticipate and President-elect Donald Trump has hinted at, the U.S. withdraws from Syria. Currently, the 900 U.S. troops are in eastern Syria, alongside a military base in Al-Tanf, located near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders.

Should American forces withdraw, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the autonomous region it administers — known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria — would need to negotiate their autonomy with both different factions of the opposition and Syrian neighbor Turkey.

A Kurdish and Islamist alliance?

The precarious role of Syrian Democratic Forces in the transition to the post-Assad era could make for a significant foreign policy headache for the U.S.

Given Turkey’s history of military incursions and campaigns against the Syrian Democratic Forces in northern cities like Afrin and Kobani, the Kurdish group may need to align with some factions of the opposition, likely Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, should the U.S. eventually withdraw.

Of late, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has largely avoided antagonizing the Syrian Democratic Forces. Indeed, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s efforts to rebrand and moderate itself are notable, especially given its origins as a Salafist group with ties to al-Qaida.

By adopting a range of policies like issuing an amnesty for Syrian army personnel, facilitating evacuation agreements and using the language of building an ethnically and religiously diverse governance structure, the Islamist group has attempted to soften its hard-line image and gain favor – or at least neutrality – from international stakeholders, like the U.S.

Yet skepticism about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s ultimate objectives persists.

Strategic calculations for Turkey

Turkey’s position on Syria now is equally complex. Turkey is home to 3.6 million Syrian refugees — the largest refugee-hosting country globally. A prolonged economic downturn and rising anti-refugee sentiment had pressured Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to signal a willingness to engage with Assad prior to the opposition offensive.

Turkey’s hope was that normalized relations with Syria would help facilitate refugee return and address concerns about a potential Kurdish state in northeastern Syria.

But Assad dismissed such overtures, and he intensified airstrikes on Idlib – triggering new waves of displacement near the Turkish border.

Turkey’s Syria policy is also closely linked to its renewed peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. These talks reportedly include discussions about the potential release of imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party leader Abdullah Öcalan – whose influence runs deep in Kurdish-led regions in northern Syria.

The chance for a new Syria

The apparent end of the Assad family’s rule after half a century of brutal oppression signifies a pivotal moment for Syria – offering an opportunity to rebuild the nation on foundations of inclusivity, pluralism and stability.

Achieving this vision depends on the opposition factions’ ability to navigate the immense challenges of transition. This includes fostering unity among diverse groups, addressing grievances from years of conflict and establishing governance structures that reflect Syria’s ethnic, religious and political diversity. That will be no easy task.

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Syria And Tunisia Restore Diplomatic Ties After A decade

FILE - Border customs officials inspect a truck loaded with United Nations humanitarian aid for Syria following a devastating earthquake at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, in Syria's Idlib province, on Feb. 10, 2023. A U.N. commission said Monday, March 13, that the international community and the Syrian government did not act quickly last month to help people in need in the rebel-held northwest of Syria in the first critical days after the earthquake hit. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria will reopen its embassy in Tunisia after the North African country announced the appointment of a new ambassador to Damascus, Syrian state media reported Wednesday.

Tunisia has become the latest Arab state to reestablish diplomatic ties with Syria, after cutting off relations a decade ago.

The move by Tunisian President Kais Saied to appoint a new ambassador was immediately approved and reciprocated by the Syrian government, a joint statement from the two countries’ foreign ministries read, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

The announcement is the latest step in a regional trend of rapprochement with the war-torn country, which has picked up pace since the deadly Feb. 6 earthquake in Syria and Turkey and the Chinese-brokered reestablishment of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Syria was widely shunned by Arab governments over Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters and later civilians in an uprising-turned-civil war that began in 2011. The breakdown in relations culminated with Syria being ousted from the Arab League. Tunis shut down its embassy in Damascus in 2012.


Earlier this year, Assad visited Oman and the United Arab Emirates, two nations that had backed fighters trying to topple his government. The Syrian government is reportedly in talks with Saudi Arabia to reopen their embassies in each other’s nations.

Saudi Arabia is hosting the next Arab League summit in May, where most states hope to restore Syria’s membership, the league’s secretary-general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, has said.

Rights Group: Canada Blocking Return Of Citizens From Syria

FILE - Kimberly Gwen Polman, a Canadian national, poses for a portrait at camp Roj in Syria, April 3, 2019. Canadian authorities are preventing Polman and a child under age 12, who is not related to Polman, who are detained in a camp in Syria from returning home for life-saving medical treatment, contradicting policies that allow such repatriations, Human Rights Watch, a prominent rights group said Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

BY ZEINA KARAM

BEIRUT (AP) — Canadian authorities are preventing a Canadian woman and a child detained in a camp in Syria from returning home to get life-saving medical treatment, contradicting policies that allow such repatriations, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch identified the two “gravely ill” Canadians as Kimberly Polman, 49, and a child under age 12. It withheld further details about the child, who is not related to Polman, including the name and medical condition, to protect their privacy.

There are nearly 50 Canadian nationals stuck in camps in northeastern Syria. Some of them have been held since even before the Islamic State group lost the last sliver of land in its self-declared caliphate in March 2019. More than half of the Canadians are children, most under age 7, HRW said.

They are among tens of thousands of women and children from about 60 countries being held by U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters in the camps. Many of them are wives, widows and children of IS fighters,

A few countries have agreed to repatriate their citizens but many others, including Canada, have refused to do so.

The Associated Press met with Polman earlier this month at Roj Camp, where she has been for three years. She looked tired and said she was suffering from kidney disease, high blood pressure and other problems. She said there is one doctor for almost 1,000 women and 3,000 children and no facilities to deal with specific illnesses.

“Women walk around here with conditions that would normally be hospitalized,” she said. “You just get used to being sick here all the time and you just kind of keep going with life, because it’s either that or a huge depression.”

“One day you will come into my tent (and) I will be rocking in a corner … and I am trying not to do that,” she said.

HRW said a former American ambassador who has taken several foreigners out of northeast Syria on behalf of their home countries told the rights group that in days of exchanges ending on Feb. 15, Canadian authorities refused his offer to escort Polman and the child to a Canadian consulate in neighboring Iraq.

“How close to death do Canadians have to be for their government to decide they qualify for repatriation?” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.

A message seeking comment from Canada’s embassy in Beirut was not immediately returned.

The families of the two Canadians have repeatedly implored government authorities to repatriate the woman and child and have sent them medical records attesting to their need for life-saving care.

“Canada should be helping its citizens unlawfully held in northeast Syria, not obstructing their ability to get life-saving health care,” Tayler said.

Despite the fact that Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria have called on countries to repatriate their citizens, Canada considers the repatriation of its nationals from Syria a security threat.

However, the Canadian government has said that if its citizens reach a consulate, it will assist them, including if they request repatriation, HRW said.

On Feb. 10, more than a dozen U.N. independent experts called on Canada to urgently repatriate Polman to treat life-threatening illnesses, including hepatitis, kidney disease, and an autoimmune disorder, HRW said.

Polman told the AP she contracted hepatitis four times while in the camp, as well as pneumonia, adding that her kidney disease was probably a result of dirty water.

___

Associated Press writer Samya Kullab contributed from Hassakeh, Syria.

Biden Says IS Leader Killed During US Raid In Syria

People inspect a destroyed house following an operation by the U.S. military in the Syrian village of Atmeh, in Idlib province, Syria, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022. U.S. special operations forces conducted a large-scale counterterrorism raid in northwestern Syria overnight Thursday, in what the Pentagon said was a "successful mission." Residents and activists reported multiple deaths including civilians from the attack. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

BY GHAITH ALSAYED, LOLITA C. BALDOR, BASSEM MROUE AND ZEKE MILLER

ATMEH, SYRIA (AP) — The leader of the violent Islamic State group was killed during an overnight raid in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, President Joe Biden said Thursday.

The raid targeted Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the militant group on Oct. 31, 2019, just days after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a U.S. raid in the same area. A U.S. official said he died as al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, as U.S. forces approached.

He is also known as Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla.

The operation came as IS has been trying for a resurgence, with a series of attacks in the region, including a 10-day assault late last month to seize a prison.

U.S. special forces landed in helicopters and assaulted a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen, witnesses said. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced people from Syria’s civil war.

First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women.

Biden said in a statement that he ordered the raid to “protect the American people and our allies, and make the world a safer place.” He planned to address the American public later Thursday morning.

“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS,” Biden said in a statement. He said all Americans involved in the operation returned safely.

The two-story house, surrounded by olive trees in fields outside Atmeh, was left with its top floor shattered and blood spattered inside. A journalist on assignment for The Associated Press and several residents said they saw body parts scattered near the site. Most residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The Pentagon did not initially identify the target of the raid. “The mission was successful,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a brief statement. “There were no U.S. casualties.”

Idlib is largely controlled by Turkish-backed fighters but is also an al-Qaida stronghold and home to several of its top operatives. Other militants, including extremists from the rival IS group, have also found refuge in the region.

“The first moments were terrifying, no one knew what was happening,” said Jamil el-Deddo, a resident of a nearby refugee camp. “We were worried it could be Syrian aircraft, which brought back memories of barrel bombs that used to be dropped on us,” he added, referring to crude explosives-filled containers used by President Bashar Assad’s forces against opponents during the Syrian conflict.

The top floor of the low house was almost totally destroyed; a room there had collapsed, sending white bricks tumbling to the ground below.

Blood could be seen on the walls and floor of the remaining structure. A wrecked bedroom had a child’s wooden crib and a stuffed rabbit doll. On one damaged wall, a blue plastic baby swing was still hanging. The kitchen was littered with debris, with a blood splatter on the wall where the door was blown off its hinges. Religious books, including a biography of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad, were in the house.

The opposition-run Syrian Civil Defense, first responders also known as the White Helmets, said 13 people were killed in shelling and clashes that ensued after the U.S. commando raid. They included six children and four women, it said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, also said the strike killed 13 people, including four children and two women. Ahmad Rahhal, a citizen journalist who visited the site, reported seeing 12 bodies.

The Pentagon provided no details on casualties in the raid.

The Observatory said the troops landed in helicopters. Residents and activists described witnessing a large ground assault, with U.S. forces using megaphones urging women and children to leave the area.

Omar Saleh, a resident of a nearby house, said he was asleep when his doors and windows started to rattle to the sound of low-flying aircraft at 1:10 a.m. local time. He ran to open the windows with the lights off, and saw three helicopters. He then heard a man, speaking Arabic with an Iraqi or Saudi accent through a loudspeaker, urging women to surrender or leave the area.

“This went on for 45 minutes. There was no response. Then the machine gun fire erupted,” Saleh said. He said the firing continued for two hours, as aircraft circled low over the area.

Taher al-Omar, an Idlib-based activist, said he witnessed clashes between fighters and the U.S. force. Others reported hearing at least one major explosion during the operation. A U.S. official said that one of the helicopters in the raid suffered a mechanical problem and had to be blown up on the ground. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the military operation.

The military operation got attention on social media, with tweets from the region describing helicopters firing around the building near Atmeh. Flight-tracking data also suggested that multiple drones were circling the city of Sarmada and the village of Salwah, just north of the raid’s location.

The U.S. has in the past used drones to kill top al-Qaida operatives in Idlib, which at one point was home to the group’s biggest concentration of leaders since the days of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The fact that special forces landed on the ground suggest the target was believed to be of high value.

A similar attack in Pakistan, in 2011, killed bin Laden.

The Islamic State group has been reasserting itself in Syria and Iraq with increased attacks.

Last month, it carried out its biggest military operation since it was defeated and its members scattered underground in 2019: an attack on a prison in northeast Syria holding at least 3,000 IS detainees. The attack appeared aimed to break free senior IS operatives in the prison.

It took 10 days of fighting for U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces to retake the prison fully, and the force said more than 120 of its fighters and prison workers were killed along with 374 militants. The U.S.-led coalition carried out airstrikes and deployed American personnel in Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the prison area to help the Kurdish forces.

A senior SDF official, Nowruz Ahmad, said Monday that the prison assault was part of a broader plot that IS had been preparing for a long time, including attacks on other neighborhoods in Kurdish-run northeastern Syria and on the al-Hol camp in the south, which houses thousands of families of IS members.

The U.S.-led coalition has targeted high-profile militants on several occasions in recent years, aiming to disrupt what U.S. officials say is a secretive cell known as the Khorasan group that is planning external attacks. A U.S. airstrike killed al-Qaida’s second in command, former bin Laden aide Abu al-Kheir al-Masri, in Syria in 2017.

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Baldor and Miller reported from Washington and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed reporting.

Syrian Kurdish Journalist Himbervan Kousa Arrested At Kuala Lumpur Airport

Himbervan Kousa. Image: Twitter

BY CPJ

Beirut, December 10, 2019 -- Malaysian authorities should disclose their reasons for holding Syrian Kurdish journalist Himbervan Kousa or release him immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On December 7, authorities at Kuala Lumpur International Airport arrested Kousa, a Syrian Kurdish freelance reporter based in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to news reports and a statement by the Syrian human rights organization Violations Documentation Center.

Malaysian authorities claim that Kousa is wanted by the Syrian government because of his work as a journalist, but have not disclosed any charges against him, according to those reports.

The Violations Documentation Center statement and a report by the Free Media Union, a Syrian journalists’ syndicate, expressed concern that Malaysian authorities could extradite Kousa to Damascus, where he could face government reprisal for his coverage. Malaysian law bars extradition for political crimes.

“We are very concerned about the arrest in Malaysia of the Kurdish Syrian journalist Himbervan Kousa and the lack of information about the reasons for his arrest,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Representative Ignacio Miguel Delgado. “We call on the Malaysian authorities to immediately disclose any charges against Kousa or release him immediately.”

Kousa was traveling from Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, to Stuttgart, Germany, and was making a flight connection in Malaysia when he was detained, according to those news reports.

Kousa has contributed to several Kurdish and Arabic news websites, including Al-Monitor, Rok Online, The Levant News, and the investigative journalist website Daraj.

CPJ emailed and called Malaysia’s Immigration Department and the Kuala Lumpur International Airport’s Immigration Office for comment, but did not receive any responses.

------------Committee To Protect Journalists

Turkey Says It Won't Bow To US Threat Over Its Syria Plans

Residents look on as members of the media work at the border between Turkey and Syria, in Akcakale, Sanliurfa province, southeastern Turkey, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019. Turkey's vice president Fuat Oktay says his country won't bow to threats in an apparent response to U.S. President Donald Trump's warning to Ankara about the scope of its planned military incursion into Syria. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

BY BASSEM MROUE, SUZAN FRASER

BEIRUT (AP) — Turkey will not bow to threats over its Syria plans, the Turkish vice president said Tuesday in an apparent response to President Donald Trump’s warning to Ankara the previous day about the scope of its planned military incursion into northeastern Syria.

Trump said earlier this week the United States would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on Syrian Kurdish fighters, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far.

The U.S. president later cast his decision to abandon the Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility.

Trump’s statements have reverberated on all sides of the divide in Syria and the Mideast.

In Ankara, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said Turkey was intent on combatting Syrian Kurdish fighters across its border in Syria and on creating a zone that would allow Turkey to resettle Syrian refugees there.

“Where Turkey’s security is concerned, we determine our own path but we set our own limits,” Oktay said.

Meanwhile, in the Syrian capital of Damascus, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad called on the country’s Kurds to rejoin the government side after apparently being abandoned by their U.S. allies.

Mekdad’s comments were the first Syrian reaction since Trump’s announcement on Sunday and as northeastern Syria braces for an imminent Turkish attack on Syrian Kurdish militias. Trump’s statement has infuriated the Kurds, who stand to lose the autonomy they gained from Damascus during Syria’s civil war, now in its ninth year.

“The homeland welcomes all its sons and Damascus will solve all Syrian problems in a positive way, away from violence,” Mekdad claimed in an interview with the pro-government daily Al-Watan.

President Bashar Assad’s government abandoned the predominantly Kurdish area in northern Syria at the height of Syria’s civil war to focus on more key areas where the military was being challenged by the rebels. The U.S. began working with the Syrian Kurdish fighters after the emergence of the Islamic State group.

The Syrian government “will defend all Syrian territory and will not accept any occupation of any land or iota of the Syrian soil,” Mekdad said about the expected Turkish incursion.

The Syrian Kurdish force has pledged to fight back, raising the potential for an eruption of new warfare in Syria.

“We will not hesitate for a moment in defending our people” against Turkish troops, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement, adding that it has lost 11,000 fighters in the war against the Islamic State group in Syria.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed predominantly Kurdish force that fought IS invited Trump to come see the progress the force and the U.S. made in northeastern Syria.

“We have more work to do to keep ISIS from coming back & make our accomplishments permanent. If America leaves, all will be erased,” he tweeted, referring to the Islamic State group by an alternative acronym.

Turkey, which considers Kurdish fighters in Syria terrorists and links them to a decades-old insurgency in Turkey, has already launched two major incursions into northern Syria over the past years. The first was in 2016, when Turkey and Syrian opposition fighters it backs attacked areas held by the Islamic State group west of the Euphrates River. Last year Turkey launched an attack on the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, leading to the displacement of some 300,000 people.

Also Tuesday, Iran urged Turkey not to go ahead with its planned an attack on Syrian Kurds, the Iranian state TV reported. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to express Tehran’s opposition to the anticipated Turkish operation.

Zarif urged Turkey to respect Syria’s integrity and sovereignty, the report said.

Iran, Turkey and Russia have been working together as part of the so-called Astana group on the Syrian civil war, talks that have run parallel to U.N. efforts to find a solution to the conflict.

Trump’s announcement threw the military situation in Syria into fresh chaos and injected deeper uncertainty into the region.

U.S. involvement in Syria has been fraught with peril since it started in 2014 with the insertion of small numbers of special operations forces to recruit, train, arm and advise local fighters to combat the Islamic State. Trump entered the White House in 2017 intent on getting out of Syria, and even before the counter-IS military campaign reclaimed the last militant strongholds early this year, he declared victory and said troops would leave.

In recent weeks, the U.S. and Turkey had reached an apparent accommodation of Turkish concerns about the presence of Kurdish fighters, seen in Turkey as a threat. American and Turkish soldiers had been conducting joint patrols in a zone along the border. As part of that work, barriers designed to protect the Syrian Kurds were dismantled amid assurances that Turkey would not invade.

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

Islamic State Expands Reach In Afghanistan, Threatening West

In this Thursday, May 30, 2019 photo, members of Farmanullah Shirzad's family who fled their village in Nangarhar province in late April as Islamic State group fighters swept through the area, are seen at their temporary home in the city of Jalalabad east of Kabul, Afghanistan. The Islamic State group has lost its caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but in the forbidding mountains of northeastern Afghanistan the group is expanding its footprint, recruiting new fighters and plotting attacks in the United States and other Western countries. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

BY KATHY GANNON

JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN (AP) — The Islamic State group has lost its caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but in the forbidding mountains of northeastern Afghanistan the group is expanding its footprint, recruiting new fighters and plotting attacks on the United States and other Western countries, according to U.S. and Afghan security officials.

Nearly two decades after the U.S.-led invasion, the extremist group is seen as an even greater threat than the Taliban because of its increasingly sophisticated military capabilities and its strategy of targeting civilians, both in Afghanistan and abroad. Concerns run so deep that many have come to see the Taliban, which have also clashed with IS, as a potential partner in containing it.

A U.S. intelligence official based in Afghanistan told The Associated Press that a recent wave of attacks in the capital, Kabul, is “practice runs” for even bigger attacks in Europe and the United States.

“This group is the most near-term threat to our homelands from Afghanistan,” the official said on condition of anonymity to preserve his operational security. “The IS core mandate is: You will conduct external attacks” in the U.S. and Europe. “That is their goal. It’s just a matter of time,” he said. “It is very scary.”

Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, sees Afghanistan as a possible new base for IS now that it has been driven from Iraq and Syria. “ISIS has invested a disproportionate amount of attention and resources in Afghanistan,” he said, pointing to “huge arms stockpiling” in the east.

A ‘PROVINCE’ OF THE CALIPHATE

The Islamic State affiliate appeared in Afghanistan shortly after the group’s core fighters swept across Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014, carving out a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic empire, in around a third of both countries. The Afghanistan affiliate refers to itself as the Khorasan Province, a name applied to parts of Afghanistan, Iran and central Asia in the Middle Ages.

The IS affiliate initially numbered just a few dozen fighters, mainly Pakistani Taliban driven from their bases across the border and disgruntled Afghan Taliban attracted to IS’ more extreme ideology. While the Taliban have confined their struggle to Afghanistan, the IS militants pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the reclusive leader of the group in the Middle East, and embraced his call for a worldwide jihad against non-Muslims. Within Afghanistan, IS launched large-scale attacks on minority Shiites, who it views as apostates deserving of death

The group suffered some early stumbles as its leaders were picked off by U.S. airstrikes. But it received a major boost when the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan joined its ranks in 2015. Today it counts thousands of fighters, many from central Asia but also from Arab countries, Chechnya, India and Bangladesh, as well as ethnic Uighurs from China.

The group has long been based in the eastern Nangarhar province, a rugged region along the border with Pakistan, but has a strong presence in northern Afghanistan and of late has expanded into neighboring Kunar province, where it could prove even harder to dislodge. The mountainous province provided shelter for Osama bin Laden for nearly a year after the Taliban’s ouster, and U.S. forces struggled for years to capture and hold high-altitude outposts there, eventually all but surrendering the region to the Taliban.

The area comprising the provinces of Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman was so dangerous that the U.S.-led coalition assigned an acronym to it in the years after the invasion, referring to it as N2KL. Militants launching shoulder-fired rockets from Kunar’s peaks downed a U.S. Chinook helicopter in 2005, killing 16 Navy SEALs and special operations forces in one of the deadliest single attacks of the war.

Ajmal Omar, a member of the Nangarhar provincial council, says IS now has a presence in all four provinces.

“Right now in Kunar, the right side of the road is Taliban, the left side is Daesh and the government is in the middle,” he said, referring to the group by its Arabic acronym. Speaking inside his heavily fortified home in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, he said neighboring Kunar would soon replace the Middle East as the IS group’s center of gravity.

“When they began in Afghanistan they were maybe 150 Daesh, but today there are thousands and thousands,” he said.

“The bad news is their acquisition of key terrain, height concealment, where they can have easy access to money, weapons, equipment . . .and from where they can plan, train, stage, facilitate and expedite attacks,” said the U.S. intelligence official. “I think expansion of territory in eastern Afghanistan is their number one military objective,” with the goal of eventually encircling Jalalabad, he said.

TURNING TO THE TALIBAN

It’s been nearly 18 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, which had harbored al-Qaida when bin Laden and his lieutenants were planning the Sept. 11 attacks. Now military and intelligence officials see the Taliban as a potential ally against a similar threat.

In recent months the Taliban have said they have no ambitions to monopolize power in a post-war Afghanistan, while IS is committed to overthrowing the Kabul government on its path to establishing a global caliphate. The Taliban and IS are sharply divided over ideology and tactics, with the Taliban largely confining their attacks to government targets and Afghan and international security forces. The Taliban and IS have fought each other on a number of occasions, and the Taliban are still the larger and more imposing force.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in recent months in a bid to end America’s longest war. The two sides appear to be closing in on an agreement in which the U.S. would withdraw its forces in return for a pledge from the Taliban to keep the country from being used as a launch pad for global attacks.

“One of the hopes of a negotiated settlement is that it will bring the Taliban into the government and into the fight against IS,” the U.S. intelligence official said. “They know the mountains, they know the terrain. It’s their territory.”

But a negotiated settlement could also prompt an exodus of more radical Taliban fighters to join IS. That process is already underway in parts of northern and eastern Afghanistan, where the Taliban have attacked IS only to lose territory and fighters to the rival extremist group.

Russia, which occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s before being driven out by U.S.-backed Islamic insurgents, has been sounding the alarm about IS for years, and had reached out to the Taliban even before the U.S. talks. During a visit to Kyrgyzstan last month, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu described Afghanistan as a “launch pad” for IS after the group was pushed out of Syria and Iraq.

Russia, like the United States, sees a peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government as the best way of countering the threat posed by IS, and Moscow has held two rounds of informal talks involving the Taliban, government representatives and other prominent Afghans.

But as peace efforts have stumbled in recent months, Russia has turned to more lethal means of containing the threat. Shoigu said Russia has sent heavy equipment, including helicopters and armored vehicles, to Kyrgyz forces, and has boosted combat readiness in its bases in the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

THREATENING THE WEST

Without an aggressive counterterrorism strategy, Afghanistan’s IS affiliate will be able to carry out a large-scale attack in the U.S. or Europe within the next year, the U.S. intelligence official said, adding that IS fighters captured in Afghanistan have been found to be in contact with fellow militants in other countries.

Authorities have also already made at least eight arrests in the United States linked to the IS affiliate in Afghanistan.

Martin Azizi-Yarand, the 18-year-old Texan who plotted a 2018 attack on a suburban mall, said he was inspired by IS and was preparing to join the affiliate in Afghanistan. He was sentenced in April to 20 years in jail.

Rakhmat Akilov, the 39-year-old Uzbek who plowed his truck into pedestrians in Stockholm in 2017, also had links with the Afghanistan affiliate, the intelligence official said. “During interrogation he said ‘this is my commander in Afghanistan and he is telling me what to do,’” he said.

Inside Afghanistan, the group is actively recruiting at universities, where it is more likely to find tech-savvy Afghans able to travel abroad, use social media and help plan sophisticated attacks, according to the intelligence official.

The group’s brutal tactics have been on vivid display inside Afghanistan for years. Suicide bombings have killed hundreds of Shiite civilians in Kabul and elsewhere, and residents who have fled areas captured by the group describe a reign of terror not unlike that seen in Syria and Iraq.

Farmanullah Shirzad fled his village in Nangarhar in late April as IS fighters swept through the area.

“I was terrified to stay,” he said. “When Daesh takes over a village, they kill the people, they don’t care about the children and they come into the homes and they take the women.”

Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.

Israel Says It Hit Iranian Military Sites In Syria; 11 Dead

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows missiles flying into the sky near international airport, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Jan. 21, 2019. In a very unusual move, the Israeli military has issued a statement saying it is attacking Iranian military targets in Syria. It is also warning Syrian authorities not to retaliate against Israel. (SANA via AP

BY ARON HELLER

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli jets struck a series of Iranian military targets in Syria early on Monday, the military said in a rare departure from its years-long policy of ambiguity regarding activities in neighboring war-torn Syria.

The military said the targets included munition storage facilities, an intelligence site and a military training camp. The strikes were in response to a surface-to-surface rocket that Iranian forces fired toward Israel on Sunday that was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system over a ski resort in the Golan Heights. That followed a rare Israeli daylight air raid near the Damascus International Airport.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday’s strikes lasted for nearly an hour and were the most intense Israeli attacks since May. It said 11 were killed in the strikes. The Russian military said four Syrian troops were among those killed. There were no further details on the casualties or their nationalities.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said the Iranian missile attack that prompted the strong Israeli response was “premeditated.” Iranian forces in Syria fired the mid-range surface-to-surface missile toward Israel from the Damascus area — a missile that had been smuggled into Syria specifically for that purpose, he said. Conricus declined to further identify the type of missile, but said it hadn’t been used in any of the internal fighting of the civil war and had “no business” being in Syria.

Israel only recently acknowledged carrying out hundreds of strikes in Syria in recent years. It previously typically offered only general warnings against allowing Iran to establish a military foothold in Syria and refrained from commenting directly for fear of triggering a reaction and being drawn into the deadly fighting.

Monday’s announcement went a step further, reporting the strikes in real time and detailing the targets.

Conricus would not confirm whether the measures marked an official abandonment of the policy of ambiguity, merely saying that it was a “retaliatory strike against active aggression by Iran.”

He said Israel had sent warnings to Syria ahead of the attack to refrain from attacking Israeli warplanes, but that Syria ignored those warnings and fired anti-aircraft missiles. He said Israel responded by destroying Syrian anti-aircraft batteries. The Russian military said that the Syrian air defenses shot down over 30 Israeli cruise missiles, a claim that was doubted in Israel.

The military said the Mount Hermon ski site has been closed.

Israel holds Syria responsible for allowing the Iranian forces to use Syrian territory as a base of operations against Israel. “Syria yesterday paid the price for allowing Iran to conduct attacks and to plan attacks from its soil,” he said.

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Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.

U.S. Hopes Israel Defies Russia To Hit Iran In Syria

BY TOM O'CONNOR

NEWSWEEK

Russia delivers the S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Syria in these images shared on October 2 by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Israel is not known to have conducted any major air operations in Syria since September's Il-20 downing, but has suggested it would continue to hit suspected Iranian targets there. Image: Russian Ministry of defense

The U.S. has expressed hope that Israel will defy a newly installed Russian missile defense system to continue bombing targets linked to Iran in Syria.

James Jeffrey, Washington's envoy to Syria, told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. was betting on Russia and Israel's strategic relationship to continue despite an international incident in September that resulted in the downing of a Russian military aircraft. The Il-20 surveillance plane was accidentally struck by allied Syrian anti-aircraft fire responding to an Israeli air raid against suspected weapons depot linked to Iran in western Syria, compelling Moscow to deliver modern S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to its Syrian partner in a rare public rift between the two.

"We are concerned very much about the S-300 system being deployed to Syria. The issue is at the detail level. Who will control it? what role will it play?" Jeffrey said, according to the Associated Press, echoing the concerns of other U.S. military and political officials.

"In the past, Russia has been permissive in consultations with the Israelis about Israeli strikes against Iranian targets inside Syria," he added. "We certainly hope that that permissive approach will continue."

Complicating the issue, Israel and Russia stand on two different sides of Syria's seven-year civil war. While Israel joined the U.S. and its other regional allies—such as Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia—in supporting a 2011 rebel and jihadi uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran came to the aid of their longtime Arab ally. Russia has attempted to balance its ties to archfoes Israel and Iran, but more than 200 Israeli attacks against suspected Iranian or pro-Iran positions in Syria have strained their ability to work together.

Russian-Israeli relations were openly strained when Moscow blamed Israel for Syria's accidental downing of the Il-20, claiming that the Israeli military did not give Russian forces a sufficient amount of warning prior to the surprise attack on what was said to be a warehouse containing weapons destined for Iran-backed militias in Latakia province. Though Israel has said it was justified in preventing alleged Iranian forward bases from being established in neighboring Syria, Russia sent the S-300 to reassure Syria's armed forces.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman have vowed to continue strikes. Newspaper Haaretz reported last week Israeli forces had conducted such operations in Syria since the Il-20 downing, citing a diplomatic source. Though no such mission has been reported, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov told a media briefing Thursday that "it is advisable for 'hot heads' to adequately assess the current situation in the region and refrain from provocative actions in the territory of Syria" after discussing efforts to integrate its new air defense.

Undeterred, Israeli Environmental Protection Minister and Russia-Israel Intergovernmental Commission co-chair Zeev Elkin called the S-300 deployment "a big mistake," because "the Syrian military does not always know how to properly use the equipment transferred to them," as reported by the state-run Tass Russian News Agency. He warned of "practical actions" that would "undoubtedly be taken" against the S-300 sites should Israeli aircraft be targeted on Israeli territory.

"I really hope that there will be no Russian specialists [at the S-300 sites]," Elkin told Russian media during a meeting of the Russian-Israeli Intergovernmental Commission of which he is a part. He also added that "Israel has been doing everything in its power" to safeguard Russia's forces in Syria in spite of his view that "the Iranians repeatedly use the Russian military as a human shield."

While even Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed the view the all foreign forces—including those of Iran—should eventually leave Syria, Moscow has generally resisted both U.S. and Israeli calls for Tehran's complete expulsion from the war-torn country at this stage. Russian air power and Iran-backed militias such as the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement have helped allow the Syrian government to regain much of the country it lost to insurgents and militants earlier on in the conflict.

Russia held a four-way summit last week alongside the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Turkey on Syria to discuss the status of Idlib province, the last region to be held by an Islamist-led insurgency whose fate is bound by a ceasefire deal between Moscow and Ankara. Following this summit, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin and presidential envoy to Syria Alexander Lavrentiev met Monday with Iranian Supreme National Security Council Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani and the Iranian foreign minister's senior assistant Hossein Jaberi Ansari, affirming their countries' joint stance.

"The results of the quadripartite summit (Russia-Turkey-France-Germany) in Istanbul on October 27, as well as the development of the situation in Syria, were reviewed," the Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement. "The urgent need to continue the decisive struggle against terrorism and to ensure a political settlement in the SAR [Syrian Arab Republic], based on respect for its sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity, was stressed."