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Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent 19 January 2003 Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago. Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years. Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to...

President authorises navy ship to transport 30 fighter jets & attack choppers to the Med in bid to rid the world of death cult

Obama retreats from Putin in Syria — again By Editorial Board July 2 at 4:46 PM FOR SEVERAL years, the Obama administration’s Syria policy has been stuck in a cycle of failure. Secretary of State John F. Kerry negotiates deals with Russia to end the fighting or create a new government in Damascus, while warning that if they are not respected by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the United States will consider other options, such as stepping up support for Syrian rebels. In every case, the Russian and Syrian regimes have betrayed their commitments, continuing to...

MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/. The deck aircraft of the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier will participate in delivering strikes against militants in Syria from an eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea in October 2016 - January 2017, a military-diplomatic source in Moscow told TASS on Saturday. "The General Staff has prepared a plan for involvement of the deck aircraft in delivering strikes on terrorist groups in the Syrian Arab Republic, where the crews will practice taking off the carrier to deliver strikes on ground targets." Thus, the source said, in autumn-winter, the strikes will be delivered both by the crews located at...

The Obama administration has proposed a new agreement on Syria to the Russian government that would deepen military cooperation between the two countries against some terrorists in exchange for Russia getting the Assad regime to stop bombing U.S.-supported rebels. The United States transmitted the text of the proposed agreement to the Russian government on Monday after weeks of negotiations and internal Obama administration deliberations, an administration official told me. The crux of the deal is a U.S. promise to join forces with the Russian air force to share targeting and coordinate an expanded bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch...

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL07.01.16 2:20 PM ET Mastermind of Istanbul Airport Attack Had Been Georgian Informant, Official Says Akhmed Chatayev is blamed for planning the deadly attack in Turkey, and an official says he was on the government payroll before returning to jihad. ODESSA, Ukraine — Sometimes the world of terror and counterterror is amazingly small. The day after at least 43 people were killed and more than 235 injured in a terrorist attack on Istanbul’s international airport, Turkish officials announced the arrest of the alleged mastermind behind the attack: Akhmed Chatayev, an ethnic Chechen from Russia who,...

FREED TO KILL One-armed ISIS warlord behind Istanbul massacre ‘was due to be sent to Russia on terror charges… but court ruled it breached his human rights’ Chechen extremist Akhmed Chataev is thought to control as many as 130 ISIS militants BY FIONN HARGREAVES 1st July 2016, 4:49 pm A ONE-ARMED ISIS militant who masterminded the Istanbul airport terror attack had his extradition to Russia refused because of his refugee status. Akhmed Chataev was arrested in Bulgaria in 2011 for terrorism offences. But due to a ruling by a Bulgarian judge, the Chechen warlord could not be sent back because...

ussia and Turkey will “coordinate” their policies over Syria, the countries' foreign ministers said on Friday, in a major diplomatic realignment that could be a major blow for the Western goal of ousting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The announcement came after the United States acceded to long-standing Russian policies by offering a military alliance with Moscow against jihadist groups in Syria, another realignment towards Vladimir Putin's stated goals in the country.

President Barack Obama is expected to disclose as early as Friday the number of civilians killed in U.S. military and CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Africa since he took office and will issue an executive order that makes protecting civilians a more integral part of planning U.S. military operations, according to activists and other individuals familiar with the report. The White House is to disclose the casualties with a range of numbers indicating that an estimated 100 civilians have been inadvertently killed by 500 drone strikes since 2009. The estimate is said to cover drone strikes in Pakistan,...

The U.S. accepted more than 2,300 Syrian refugees in June alone, sending the fiscal year total soaring past the 5,000 mark and putting the government on track to surpass resident Obama’s goal of 10,000 by the end of September, but raising questions about screening out potential terrorists. ... more than 99 percent are Sunni Muslims. Just eight identified themselves as Christian, eight identified as a non-Sunni form of Islam, and one reported having no religious affiliation. Those numbers have drawn criticism because the percentage of Sunni Muslims is far greater than that of the Syrian population as a whole, which...

Before dawn Monday, four suicide bombers killed five and wounded at least a dozen in the Lebanese Christian town of al-Qaa. Later that night, as townspeople prepared to bury their dead, four more suicide bombers hit. The attacks underscored just how endangered are Christians who live in today’s Muslim world. As the United States debates how many Mideast refugees to accept and who should get priority, the answer is staring us in the face: Those most in need of refuge are Christians and Yazidis who live among Muslims. On June 19, a suicide bomber killed three people as he detonated...

Good ol' Barack Obama. So deeply do he and his administration love America, that they felt secure enough in their own patriotism to appoint an America-hating radical to the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism (SCVE). After all, they undoubtedly reasoned, what possible harm could such an individual do in that kind of a setting? Perhaps you've heard of her—a young woman named Laila Alawa, born to Syrian parents who immigrated to the United States when the girl was ten. Soon after she became a U.S. citizen in April 2015, Ms. Alawa wrote: “I will always be...

Donald Trump on Wednesday night said that “a lot” of the Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. are members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The U.S. military’s efforts to confront the Islamic State in Syria suffered another setback Wednesday after the militants routed the only group to have survived intact an ill-fated Pentagon program to train and equip moderate rebels last year. The U.S.-backed New Syrian Army said it was forced to withdraw its forces to its base at Tanf near the Jordanian border after launching what to have been a poorly conceived offensive aimed at capturing the strategically important eastern Syrian town of Abu Kamal on the Syrian-Iraqi border. Islamic State claims published by its Amaq news agency that its fighters had killed...

It seems to be a regular feature of the U.S presidential election cycle: Candidates from both parties solemnly pledge to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, only to sidestep the issue upon taking office. Shouldn't the selection of a capital city rest solely with the people of the country who reside there? Donald Trump believes it should. As president, he would recognize the right of the Israeli people to choose their capital city (a choice, incidentally, that has remained unchanged throughout 3,500 years of uninterrupted Jewish presence in Israel). That choice is Jerusalem. Ever since King David established Jerusalem as the...

Istanbul governor: 28 killed and 60 wounded We have just received an update on the casualties from the attack from Istanbul's governor. At least 28 people have died, with approximately 60 more wounded.

A pair of recently-overhauled Mi-25s of the SyAAF — serial numbers 2820, left, and 2830 — during a military exercise in late 2011. Syrian Ministry of Defense photo For three weeks starting in early June 2016, the Damascus suburb of Darayya was exposed to merciless aerial bombardment carried out primarily by Mil Mi-25 — NATO code name “Hind” — gunship helicopters belonging to the Syrian Arab Air Force. The Hinds dropped no fewer than 564 bombs over this period, underscoring the Mi-25’s reputation as one of Syria’s worst terror weapons. The Mi-25 is often described as a “downgraded” variant of the classic Mi-24 gunship. It’s a big, heavy,...

Jihadist Capital Of The Balkans The government estimates that more than 300 Kosovars have traveled to the Middle East to wage jihad, or Islamic holy war. That makes this predominately Muslim country of under 2 million people, which unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, Europe's biggest contributor per capita of IS foot soldiers. IS Recruiter One product of the radicalization in Kacanik is Lavdrim Muhaxheri, a 25-year-old IS recruiter who fights in Syria. He has been described as one of IS's top leaders. Last year, Muhaxheri sent shockwaves around Kosovo when he posted photos on Facebook of himself...

Hezbollah to send more fighters to Syria's Aleppo Lebanese ally of Syrian government acknowledges heavy losses but vows to fight on as "retreat is not permissible". The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement has said he will send more fighters to Syria's Aleppo area, a battleground where it has suffered heavy losses fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebel groups. Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that thousands of Hezbollah's Sunni foes had recently entered Syria via the Turkish border with the aim of taking over Aleppo and its surrounding countryside. "We are facing a new wave...of projects of war against Syria...

A new wave of suicide bombings hit outside a church in a Lebanese village on Monday evening as residents were preparing for the funerals of victims of a multiple suicide attacks earlier in the day, security sources said. In the latest violence, the suicide bombers riding motorcycles blew themselves up in the centre of the predominantly Christian village of Al-Qaa in eastern Lebanon, the source told AFP. One struck in front of a church and the two others in front of the municipality building. Medical sources quoted by Reuters said at least 15 people had been wounded in the attack.