Free Republic

As winter approaches, the conditions in the already deprived Druze villages of southern Syria are only expected to deteriorate further. Efforts for Damascus and Jerusalem to reach a security pact are reported to depend on the Syrian Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham government’s willingness to allow a humanitarian corridor into the province of Sweida, where a crisis has unfolded after months of massacres, attacks, and blockades by HTS and state-backed Bedouin groups. Members of the community told The Jerusalem Post that over 2,500 people were murdered in the violence, 291,000 people displaced, and more than 250 abducted, including women and children. Homes...

The US and its allies patrol the seas, looking to stop proliferation of nuclear technology and to enforce sanctions against rogue nations, especially on arms trafficking. In the case of the latter, one of its allies clearly needs a little more work in preventing trafficking — on their own ships: US troops boarded a German-owned freighter in early October and found eight containers full of ammunition, allegedly headed to Syria from Iran. The shipment is in violation of a UN weapons embargo and has become a source of chagrin in Berlin.