Author: M Barbu

Mahsa Amini, or Jina Amini, the name of a Kurdish woman killed by the Iranian morality police on Sept. 16, has echoed across social media in support of the protest movement that is posing the biggest challenge to the clerical rulers in years.

To Iranian law enforcement, Amini was just a nameless member of an ethnic minority that has been oppressed for decades. Little did they know that her death at the hands of one of its units would spark a massive uprising with the potential to topple the regime itself.

“[T]his relationship [between the US and Saudi Arabia] should be based on reciprocity. If Washington is looking for its own interests, as with the Iran nuclear deal or the cancellation of the [Iranian-backed] Houthi group’s designation as a terrorist group, Saudi Arabia also has the right to seek its own interests….” — Rami Al-Khalifa, Syrian author, Elaph, October 12, 2022.

After Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the jihadi faction that runs the northwestern province of Idlib, moved into Afrin, Turkey stands to gain.

With the world’s attention focused on Ukraine, a potentially transformative development in northern Syria went largely unnoticed. On Oct. 13, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the jihadi faction that runs the northwestern province of Idlib and is by far the most powerful of all the Sunni rebel groups in Syria, moved into Afrin, the Kurdish-majority enclave that was occupied by Turkey in 2018. It did so at the expense of rebel factions operating under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army (SNA) and with the help of other factions also allied with the SNA. The latter include the Sultan Suleyman Shah Division, the Hamza Division and Ahrar al-Sham, which all have close ties to Ankara.