Syrian pro-government forces recaptured the rebel-held town of Rabiya in the western coastal province of Latakia on Sunday, Syrian state television and a Britain-based monitoring group said.

The advance was backed by Russian air strikes and was directed partly by Russian officers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It would likely allow pro-government forces to push right up to the Turkish border, the monitor said.

Earlier this month, pro-government forces recaptured Salma, another town in Latakia's northern countryside, in one of the most significant gains since Russia intervened in the war.

"It is the second most important base for (rebel) fighters in the northern Latakia countryside" after Salma, which was retaken on Jan. 12, Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-latakia-idUSKCN0V208S

(CNN)Syrian government troops and allied militias regained control of the last major rebel-held stronghold in the western province of Latakia on Sunday, state-run SANA and a UK-based monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that over the last two days, Syria's military and loyalist militias, backed by Russian airpower, surrounded the rebel-held town of Rabia and took control of the surrounding villages.

Rabia is approximately 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the Turkish border in the province of Latakia -- a stronghold of support for Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. The province is also home to Hmeymim airbase, a newly expanded airbase being used by Russian jets in support of the regime.

Syrian state media quoted a military source as saying that engineering units were combing the area to deactivate bombs and mines planted by the rebels.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/24/middleeast/syria-government-retakes-rabia/index.html

When Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah confirmed in May 2013 that Hezbollah had joined the Syrian Civil War on the side of Pres. Bashar Al Assad’s embattled government, it marked a major political and military shift for the Lebanese Shi’ite militia.

For the first time in decades, Hezbollah is now focused on fighting other Muslims rather than its sworn enemy, Israel. This new endeavor is also unique in that Hezbollah is fighting primarily in another country. Hezbollah has staged terrorist attacks in other countries before, but in Syria it’s operating more or less as a traditional army rather than a guerrilla and terror group.

While committing to a foreign conflict is an unprecedented move for Hezbollah, it was not completely unpredictable. Hezbollah draws much of its financial and military support from Syria and Iran, so it makes sense that it would want to do everything it can to ensure the Assad regime remains in power.

Also, the prospect of sharing a border with Islamic State — should the Sunni militant group defeat the Syrian government’s forces and other factions fighting for control of the country — would be troubling for Hezbollah and other Shi’ites in Lebanon. Islamic State’s particular brand of extremist Sunni Islam casts Shias as apostates.

http://warisboring.com/articles/hezbollah-may-come-out-of-the-syrian-civil-war-stronger-than-ever/

Long, some things I would quibble with or frame differently, but overall really good stuff. I don't know what to excerpt.

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FIVE YEARS on from the start of the war, the debate at home is now ripping our political parties apart, turning that historic foreign policy paradigm upside down. Classic partisan divides no longer apply, because Republicans and Democrats are debating – not one another but among themselves – the merits of isolationism and interventionism, the real extent of American power and the costs of inaction.

That paradigm – with Bush on the one extreme and Obama on the other – has been challenged by the realities of the Middle East. In both parties, their own colleagues running to be their successors now acknowledge a simplicity to their doctrines they vow not to replicate.

The US government “too often has a tendency to swing between these extremes. The pendulum swings back, and then the pendulum swings the other way.” That was Hillary Clinton, speaking with The Atlantic magazine in 2014.

Republican and Democratic leaders alike look at the Middle East and they say this: We tried absolute intervention, invasion, in Iraq; an indefinite military presence in Afghanistan; leading from behind to intervene lightly in Libya; aggressive back-channel diplomatic intervention in Yemen; political rhetoric and the pulling of purse strings in Egypt; total passivity in Syria. We now may be past the age of neat guiding principles. Syria, beyond all other cases, has defied all of our rules and expectations.

http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/On-the-Syrian-crisis-442283

DAMASCUS, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army wrested complete control over the town of Rabiah, the second most important rebel stronghold in the coastal province of Latakia, a week after the military forces captured the town of Salma, the the number one most important rebel bastion in that area near Turkey, state news agency SANA reported.

Rabiah enjoys special significance as it contains, and surrounded by, many military camps of the armed rebel groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, and the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) group.

For the rebels, the town was an important logistic base along with Salma in the northern countryside of Latakia.

The FSA also confirmed the loss of Rabiah, saying in a statement that the Syrian forces backed by the Russian air force controlled the town. It added that the town had fallen after intense battles between the regime forces and the rebels.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-01/24/c_135040819.htm

Russian air strikes in Syria are coming closer and closer to the Turkish border in Latakia in the northwest, and there are rumors that Russia is looking at establishing an airbase at Qamishli in the largely Kurdish northeast of Syria. Turkey risks having Russia as a neighbor all along the Syrian border to Turkey’s south, as well as beyond the Black Sea to its north.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference, “We have said this from the beginning: we won’t tolerate such formations (in northern Syria) along the area stretching from the Iraqi border up to the Mediterranean. . .”

Over on the Mediterranean side, Russian air strikes have enabled the Syrian Arab Army of the Bashar al-Assad regime to move back into northern Latakia Province, taking a large number of villages in the far northern areas of Turkmen Mountain and Kurd Mountain.

The strategic city of Rabia was surrounded on three sides by government troops.

http://www.juancole.com/2016/01/turkey-russia-tensions-spike-as-russia-moves-into-northern-syria.html

The lead negotiator in the Syrian opposition said on Sunday it was coming under pressure from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to attend peace talks in Geneva this week in order to negotiate over its demands.

The opposition has said it will only attend the talks on condition of a halt to government bombardments, the lifting of blockades and a release of detainees.

Negotiator Mohamad Alloush said there would be "a big response" to the U.S. pressure, without giving further details. Asked if the peace talks would go ahead this week, he said "we leave this to the coming hours".

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-opposition-idUKKCN0V20TF?rpc=401

LATAKIA, Syria – Displaced by months of heavy airstrikes in the country's north, Syria's Turkmen minority – who, as their name suggests, are closely aligned with and related to the Turks – are stuck between a war zone and the closed Turkish border.

Some 20,000 Turkmen villagers in northern Syria have fled their homes since November, when Russian war planes began heavily targeting the area. Now, as winter sets in and Russian airstrikes continue unabated, displaced villagers in shoddy tents across the country's north are waiting for a solution.

“I am not used to such a life. The cold is piercing into my bones," said Abu Muhammad, 54, who left the Turkmen village of Ateira with his family in early December. "We fled the Russian bombing, but now our village is controlled by the regime. Who knows how long we will have to stay here."

On November 24, Turkish fighter jets downed a Russian plane along the Turkey–Syria border, claiming the plane had violated Turkish airspace. Shortly thereafter, Turkmen militants shot down a Russian helicopter that had come to rescue the downed plane's flight crew.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/turkmen-displaced-syria_us_56a2b1c8e4b0d8cc109a3a56

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Syrian army on Monday, Jan 25, recaptured from insurgents a strategic town in the southern province of Deraa after fierce fighting, securing its supply routes from the capital to the south, a monitoring group said, according to Reuters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting is now outside the western parts of the town of Sheikh Maskin, which lies at a crossroads linking the provinces of Suwaida, Quneitra and Damascus to the southern part of the country. It also links eastern and western Deraa.

"The town is very important for both sides. They have both fought fiercely. Now by taking it, the regime has cut off the rebels links between eastern and western Deraa," said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, which tracks the violence in the country through a wide network of local sources.

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The army launched its offensive against insurgents in Sheikh Maskin late last month and was supported by dozens of air strikes carried out by Russian and Syrian warplanes.

http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/204571/