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U.S. officials tasked with tracking Islamic State are seeing worrisome signs that the terror group’s core leadership is strengthening control over its global network of affiliates despite a series of key losses.

Specifically, the United States is raising concerns about the group’s General Directorate of Provinces, a series of nine regional offices set up over the past several years to sustain the group’s reputation and global capabilities.

As diplomats & journalists focus on Israel’s settlement expansion in the West Bank, there’s less attention on an expansion of segregation & racialised planning in the Galilee as the Israeli government intensifies historical policy, writes Ben White.

When the forces of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an armed Islamist group which is a successor to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, rolled into Afrin in northern Syria earlier this month, the primary reaction was one of confusion.

HTS had for some time functioned as an unwilling but significant part of the uneasy administration of the country’s north – much of which is administered with the help of Turkey and its intelligence services, the National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

The two most powerful armed, non-regime groups in Syria have made separate proposals to resettle millions of Syrian refugees in the Middle East in their respective territories.

These proposals are not insignificant since the two groups currently hold the vast majority of Syrian territory outside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s control.

Despite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad being welcomed back onto the international stage, all is not well at home.

His country is broken into three parts, which, at best, are in a state of uneasy coexistence and at worst are stuck in a low-intensity active conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Turkey’s new Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also touched upon bilateral relations and defense cooperation.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Turkey’s new Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also touched upon bilateral relations and defense cooperation.

President Erdogan’s new Cabinet so far reflects a shift to his reformist days — whether that plays out as such remains to be seen.

Turkey’s flailing economy topped the agenda as the country’s new Cabinet convened Tuesday under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the first time since he won a third presidential term on May 28.