Aleppo's bloodiest week
By Edward Dark, Syria Pulse @ Al-Monitor.com, Dec. 26, 2013

ALEPPO, Syria — Aleppo has seen its bloodiest week since the Syrian conflict began more than 32 months ago. I’d even venture to say it's the bloodiest in its entire recent history, a grotesque carnival of mayhem, death and carnage, perpetrated against the hapless and helpless citizens of this long-suffering ancient city. A thousand waves of invaders and marauders this city must have seen as countless civilizations upon its land rose and fell, but this recent episode is of such ferocious barbarity and bloodletting that it surely must rank somewhere at the top of its list of all time historical traumas [....]

Iraq-Syria
By Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Blog, 29 Dec., 2013

The Iraq war is not over; it never really ended. It just spilled into a new war, the war in Syria. We may one day speak of Iraq-Syria the way that we speak now of ‘Af-Pak’.

In response to a wave of attacks by the al-Qaida group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the United States is supplying Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s embattled government with Hellfire missiles and drones. The Obama administration also wants congressional approval to lease (and eventually sell) six Apache helicopter gunships to the Iraqis [....]

In effect, the American government is arming a Shia-dominated state aligned with Iran and Assad, in order to fight Sunni extremists who want to bring down not only Maliki but Assad, too, an aim they share with Western-supported Syrian rebels. Or to put it differently: the American government is fighting Sunni extremists in Iraq, while its allies, notably Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are arming the same Sunni extremists in Syria.

Incoherent? Yes. But the question is whether this incoherence reflects the contradictory goals of stabilising Iraq and weakening Assad, or indicates a shift in American policy. The doctrine of counter-terrorism was the pillar of American policy in the Middle East from 11 September 2001 until the Arab revolts of 2011. It is now making a comeback in Washington, thanks to the resurgence of al-Qaida, militia rule in post-Gaddafi Libya and the fall of the Morsi government in Egypt [....]