Pro-regime forces recaptured the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra from ISIS over the weekend, dealing a blow to one of the terrorist group's most strategically and symbolically valuable strongholds in Syria.

But analysts say that the victory, while significant, serves the dual purpose of buying time and legitimacy for embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad as his country enters its fifth year of civil war.

That, in turn, constitutes a significant blow to Syria's revolution — and a boon for the jihadists who thrive off Syrians' discontent with the regime.

"The capture of Palmyra is an invaluable opportunity for the Assad regime and Russia to now proclaim themselves as capable and willing partners in the fight against ISIS,"Syria expert Charles Lister, a fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote on Monday in a daily briefing.

He added, however, that a "sustainable long-term battle against terrorism in Syria will only be possible" with Assad gone.

"ISIS continues to benefit from the widespread disenchantment Syrians feel to their political system and leadership," Lister wrote.

And the same goes for Al Qaeda.

"By proclaiming itself specifically as a revolutionary movement fundamentally opposed to the Assad regime, Al Qaeda has sealed its future in part to that of Bashar al-Assad. Should one remain, the other will invariably survive also," he said.

Many experts have noted that Assad's latest victory against ISIS — aka the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh — at Palmyra will make him only less likely to accept a political transition that results in his ouster. The regime said as much in a statement released immediately following Palmyra's capture.

"This achievement proves that our brave army, aided by the friends, is the only effective force capable of fighting terrorism and eradicating it," it said, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency.

Fred Hof, a former special adviser for transition in Syria under then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told Business Insider that the assault on Palmyra "marks the beginning of phase two of a Russian military offensive designed to rehabilitate Assad."

"Phase one aimed to save Assad from military defeat at the hands of nationalist rebels and to bolster the regime's position in Geneva peace negotiations," Hof said by email. "Phase two aims to rehabilitate Assad internationally, using ISIS as a foil."

ISIS has been battling anti-Assad rebels for control over territory in eastern Syria for more than two years, as pro-regime forces bolstered by Iran-backed proxy militias have been focused on regaining territory in Aleppo and Damascus, as well as Latakia further west.

"We must not forget that the Assad regime purposefully ignored ISIS gains in Syria for nearly 18 months — April 2013 to August 2014 — as they proved an effective counterweight to the mainstream opposition," Lister said.

'It feeds into Assad's narrative'

The regime's assault on Palmyra comes just more than a week before world powers are due to resume peace talks in Geneva.

"Now there is a convergence of interests worldwide about the fact that ISIS really needs to be confronted,"Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, told Reuters on Monday. "It feeds into Assad's narrative about Syria being a bulwark against Islamic State."

Even before civil war broke out in 2011, analysts accused Assad of building and maintaining a jihadist presence in Syria in order to legitimize his own hold on power, sending them to fight against Americans in Iraq when they became too much for Assad's government to handle.

Middle East analyst Kyle Orton wrote on Tuesday:

Assad provided the essential context for the emergence of IS. From the outset of the uprising, Assad, Iran, and Russia devoted an enormous amount of resources to a global disinformation campaign to present a line on which Assad has staked his survival — Syria is a binary choice between the dictatorship and a terrorist opposition. Assad then worked to make it come true.

To that end, when Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in the war on Assad's behalf last September, Russian warplanes targeted Western-backed rebels in the country's north and west while largely sparing ISIS's heartland in the east.

Adding to Assad's apparent momentum is the cessation of hostilities currently in place between the government and moderate rebel groups. The terms of the truce have allowed the regime to target groups it deems "terrorists" while rebels remain bound to the ceasefire.

"I fear one thing: that the period of the truce will allow the Assad regime to gobble up what remains of Syria by liberating areas that are controlled by Daesh (Islamic State) and Nusra,"a member of the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee — a coalition of mainstream rebel groups — told Reuters.

On Monday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the White House was "encouraged that there is a sense of momentum now in the political process that we haven't seen before."

In the end, Hof noted, those who aim to "appease the Syrian dictator" in the hopes that he will solve their problems will be disappointed: "What they will find is that Syria will continue to hemorrhage human beings so long as this brutally corrupt regime remains in place."

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Syrian Army units have taken back the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State. The units are now also trying to extend their control to include al-Qaryatain, to the south west of Palmyra, and Sukhnah, to the north east.

There are indications that the damage done to the ancient world heritage site which lies just outside Palmyra has been much less than feared. It may even have been limited to the destruction of two or three individual ruins – certainly important in their own right but just a small part of a huge complex that stretches over scores of hectares.

It is already becoming clear that the entire operation would not have been possible without considerable air support from Russia. It also gives the lie to president Vladimir Putin’s claim that the Russian air force has largely completed its operations.

Despite very public proclamations that Russian pilots have been withdrawn from Syria, the reality is that operations continue. Only about a third of Russian front-line strike aircraft have been withdrawn so far – and the size of the Russian helicopter force has actually been increased.

There is clear evidence that Russia has been directing its most recent airstrikes at opponents of the Assad regime in north west Syria, rather than targeting IS. This is not surprising given that IS has scarcely been involved in the opposition to Assad. One major effect of the Russian campaign has been to strengthen the regime as a prelude to a negotiated settlement. This would have significant Russian involvement which, from Moscow’s standpoint, would ensure that post-war Syria would have considerable Russian influence.

Now that Putin has seen that policy reasonably on track, the Russian forces have had time to turn their attention to supporting Assad’s advance on Palmyra, an IS outpost since May 2015.

Its loss was a major symbolic blow. Within a short time, IS fighters made a great show of wantonly destroying ancient ruins in the town.

In taking the city back, Putin can now claim to be doing the west’s job for it. The Palmyra triumph is further proof of Russia’s power and influence – a message that will go down very well with domestic audiences. Russia Today is already reporting that experts from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg have offered their services in the restoration process.

Assad, meanwhile, will now say that he has been right all along in his claim that he has been facing a terrorist threat for the past five years. He will remind the world that he has been fighting terrorists rather than genuine protesters and that he, and only he, can defeat IS in Syria. What makes it even sweeter for him is that western capitals, including Washington, have welcomed the retaking of Palmyra from IS.

This is an extraordinary change for the west to digest. Less than four years ago, Barack Obama was on the point of bombing the Assad regime, and now he is giving a guarded welcome to the Syrian advance.

Where next for IS?

The loss of Palmyra is a setback for IS – particularly since it also has had to cede control of the important city of Ramadi in Iraq. But we should be careful about saying that IS is beginning to face defeat.

For one thing, it took five months for Ramadi to fall, and there are reports that IS paramilitaries are still active in and around the city, harrying Iraq troops. The Iraqi government has done little to engage with the country’s Sunni minority, meaning there is still support for IS. The radical group appeals to people who fear the consequences as the largely Shi’a national army and its Iranian-backed militia associates take over large Sunni towns and cities.

IS now also has at least 5,000 paramilitaries in northern Libya, and is preparing to expand its war with western states with the influence gained there.

Meanwhile, the west mistakenly assumes that recent attacks in Europe are a sign that IS is facing defeat in the Middle East  and suddenly feels the need to show force. But it is now becoming clear that these attacks had been planned for some time. They may even have been developed as a tactic as long as two years ago.

The idea that IS was fixated on controlling territory to establish a caliphate may have been a misreading of its strategy. A second element as important as territorial presence seems to be its determination to take the war to the “far element”, a determination reinforced by the 20-month coalition air war in Syria.

Brussels, Paris and probable future attacks – which will almost certainly include incidents in Russia – are aimed at exacerbating community tensions and heightening anti-Muslim bigotry to Islamic State’s advantage. As the group is restricted in Syria and Iraq, so it expands the war elsewhere, seeking to weaken its enemy from within.

With all this in mind, the retaking of Palmyra is still significant, but it is part of a much more complex process.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - When Vladimir Putin announced the withdrawal of most of Russia's military contingent from Syria there was an expectation that the Yauza, a Russian naval icebreaker and one of the mission's main supply vessels, would return home to its Arctic Ocean port.

Instead, three days after Putin's March 14 declaration, the Yauza, part of the "Syrian Express", the nickname given to the ships that have kept Russian forces supplied, left the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk for Tartous, Russia's naval facility in Syria.

Whatever it was carrying was heavy; it sat so low in the water that its load line was barely visible.

Its movements and those of other Russian ships in the two weeks since Putin's announcement of a partial withdrawal suggest Moscow has in fact shipped more equipment and supplies to Syria than it has brought back in the same period, a Reuters analysis shows.

It is not known what the ships were carrying or how much equipment has been flown out in giant cargo planes accompanying returning war planes.

But the movements - while only a partial snapshot - suggest Russia is working intensely to maintain its military infrastructure in Syria and to supply the Syrian army so that it can scale up again swiftly if need be.

Putin has not detailed what would prompt such a move, but any perceived threat to Russia's bases in Syria or any sign that President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow's closest Middle East ally, was in peril would be likely to trigger a powerful return.

Russia operates an air base in Hmeymim and a naval facility at Tartous. Putin has said Russia will keep both and that they will need to be well protected.

"Since the main part of the force de facto stayed there, there is no reason to reduce the traffic," said Mikhail Barabanov, a senior research fellow at the Moscow-based CAST military think tank. "Supplies for the Syrian army remain significant as well."

Moscow has not revealed the size of its force in Syria, nor has it given details of its partial withdrawal.

Reuters has calculated that around half of Russia's fixed-wing strike force based in Syria flew out of the country in the days after the partial draw down was made public. The precise number of planes Russia had was secret, but analysis suggested it had about 36 fixed-wing military jets there.

On Monday, state TV showed three heavy attack helicopters being flown out of Syria along with some support staff.

Naval Firerower

But an examination of shipping data, official information, tips from maritime security sources and photographs from bloggers of Russian ships passing the Bosphorus strait en route from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, shows no signs that the "Syrian Express" is being wound down.

A Reuters analysis of the same data shows Russia is also likely to have replaced any warships that have left the Mediterranean with new ones, ensuring its naval firepower there remains undiminished. That means its ships are within easy reach of Syria's coast and can protect cargo vessels. It also gives Moscow the option of firing cruise missiles from the sea.

Russia appears to have more than a dozen military vessels in the Mediterranean, including the Zeleniy Dol warship equipped with terrain-hugging Kalibr cruise missiles which are accurate to within three meters, according to Russian state media and the database of Bosphorus Naval News, a Turkish online project.

Moscow is likely to maintain that strength, said CAST's Barabanov.

"Russia doesn't have too many ships that it can keep in the Mediterranean. The role of the force was to ensure the activity of the 'Syrian Express' and to demonstrate it to the West and, later, to Turkey."

The Russian defense ministry did not reply to questions about what the Russian navy was doing in the Mediterranean or whether there were plans to reduce its presence.

Russia's military ships and most auxiliary vessels are not shown in publicly available databases. But most of its ships are seen and photographed when they pass the Bosphorus on their way from Russia to the Mediterranean or vice versa.

In most cases it is impossible to track military shipments to destination ports however, meaning data is only partial.

Low in the water

Since Moscow began to scale back in Syria, Russia has sent two landing ships, which are typically used to transport troops and armor - the Caesar Kunikov and the Saratov - to the Mediterranean along with the Yauza, an auxiliary cargo vessel.

The Saratov looked loaded when it passed the strait on Thursday going south toward Syria. Its load line was visibly lower than on March 14 when it was photographed going the other way, toward Russia.

At the same time, two warships - the Alexander Otrakovsky and the Minsk - and the Dvinitsa-50, an auxiliary vessel, were photographed by Turkish bloggers passing the Bosphorus en route back to Russia.

At least two of the returning ships, the Alexander Otrakovsky and the Dvinitsa-50, looked unloaded on their way back.

Photographs show that the Otrakovsky, a large landing ship, sat higher in the water on its return to Russia compared to March 2 when it crossed the strait in the other direction. It was not clear if it carried troops or equipment.

The load line of the Dvinitsa-50 was also high above the water when it was photographed in the Bosphorus on March 20 on its way back to Russia.

It seems unlikely that Russian troops or equipment were on board any of the returning ships. None of them looked like they had heavy cargo onboard.

Non-military cargo traffic between Russia and Syria also shows no signs of flagging.

Four cargo ships involved in the supply operation called at Syria in the two weeks before Putin announced the draw down.

A fifth, the Alexander Tkachenko, a Russian ferry, previously photographed with military trucks onboard, probably called there too.

Reuters shipping database showed it was approaching Syria, but then suddenly disappeared for a few days before re-appearing en route back to Russia. The only explanation for this is that it turned off its transponders for that period for some reason.

Five cargo ships, including an oil tanker, arrived in Syria in the two weeks following Putin's announcement.

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This week, representatives of Western-backed Syrian opposition delegation in Geneva told Russian state media that President Bashar al-Assad had a surprising new ally on the Syrian battlefield: militia units from North Korea. 

"Two North Korean units are there, which are Chalma-1 and Chalma-7," Asaad az-Zoubi, head of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) to Syrian peace talks in the Swiss city, reportedly told Tass news agency on Tuesday.

In any other context, the presence of soldiers from the internationally isolated and geographically distant country North Korea might seem absurd. However, the civil war in Syria has emerged as a mini-world war over the past five years, with foreign fighters from at least 86 countries believed to be fighting there.

The Syrian regime headed by Assad is already known to have the support of a number of international partners, including Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. And this isn't the first time that there have been reports of soldiers from the Hermit Kingdom being involved in the conflict.

In 2013, Rami Abdulrahman, director of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), told Saudi-owned Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat that a small number of North Koreans were in Syria, to provide logistical and planning support. 

"The exact number of the officers is not known, but there are definitely 11 to 15 North Korean officers, most of whom speak Arabic," Abdulrahman said, according to a translation published by South Korean outlet Chosun Ilbo. Abdulrahman's report was followed up the next year by another from Jane's Defence Weekly, which reported that North Korea was assisting helping Syria improve its missile capabilities.

These reports are hard to confirm, but many experts believe they are credible: North Korea and Syria have had a military relationship for decades and there's little sign it's been shaken recently.

"The North Koreans have been involved with Syria since the late-1960s," says Joseph S. Bermudez Jr, a contributor to 38 North, an analysis website affiliated with the U.S.-Korea Institute at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. That involvement included providing advisers and air defense troops immediately after the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel, Bermudez says, and stretches to the modern era, when North Korea is believed to have provided technology used to help build the secret al-Kibar nuclear site in Syria, which was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in 2007.

"Syria is one of North Korea's longest standing and deepest political and military relationships," Andrea Berger of the Royal United Services Institute adds. In a report published last year, Berger had described how the relationship was originally based upon military training but eventually graduated to weapons sales, including ballistic missiles and chemical weapons.

Remarkably, the relationship between North Korea and Syria does appear to have survived to the present day, Berger noted, despite U.N. sanctions on North Korea which should, in theory, curtail them: It may even have thrived, with state media in both countries loudly publicizing the regular high-level meetings between Syria and North Korea.

Bermudez says that since the Arab Spring began, there have been a number of reports that small teams of North Korean soldiers were providing logistical support to the Syrian regime. However, he notes that some more recent seem to suggest North Korean soldiers are actively playing a role in fighting in Syria. "While I can't confirm these reports," Bermudez says, "it would not be out of character for North Korea to do so, as they historically have provided small 'regime support' forces to countries in crisis in Africa."

Berger agrees. "Military to military cooperation between the two countries, including on-the-ground presence of North Korean troops, would be in keeping with the history of their bilateral relationship," she says.

(Bermudez also notes that the reference to North Korean units being named "Chalma" could be a reference to the Kalma airfield in North Korea.)

Not everyone is so sure. Philip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland who studies groups allied to the Syrian regime, says that he has also recently seen a number of vague reports about North Koreans fighting for Assad in Syrian news sources that are sympathetic to the regime. However, he wasn't sure of their accuracy. "Often, they would confuse Afghan Shia Hazara fighters for 'Chinese' or 'Koreans,' Smyth says, referring to an Afghan minority known to fight alongside the Syrian regime.

North Korean authorities have denied any military involvement in the past, with state news agency KCNA writing in 2013 that "foreign media" were "floating misinformation."

But with North Korea increasingly cash-strapped, analysts have noted that it has increasingly sent citizens abroad to earn foreign money. These citizens often work in conditions that Marzuki Darusman, the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, has referred to as "forced labor." For Pyongyang, perhaps the Syrian war is a payday.

This article was written by Adam Taylor from The Washington Post and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Thursday that a report by the al-Hayat newspaper on an agreement between Russia and the United States on the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was not true.

The newspaper reported that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had told several Arab countries that Russia and the U.S. reached an understanding on the future of Syria's peace process, including Assad's departure to another country at some unspecified stage.

"Al-Hayat published information which does not correspond to reality," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists.

"Russia is advantageously different from other nations because it does not discuss the issue of the self-determination of third countries either through diplomatic or other channels."

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ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has illegally returned thousands of Syrians to their war-torn homeland in recent months, highlighting the dangers for migrants sent back from Europe under a deal due to come into effect next week, Amnesty International said on Friday.

Turkey agreed with the EU this month to take back all migrants and refugees who cross illegally to Greece in exchange for financial aid, faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership talks.

But the legality of the deal hinges on Turkey being a safe country of asylum, which Amnesty said in its report was clearly not the case.

It said it was likely that several thousand refugees had been sent back to Syria in mass returns in the past seven to nine weeks, flouting Turkish, EU and international law.

"In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Director for Europe and Central Asia.

Turkey's foreign ministry denied Syrians were being sent back against their will. Turkey had maintained an "open door" policy for Syrian migrants for five years and strictly abided by the "non-refoulement" principle of not returning someone to a country where they are liable to face persecution, it said.

"None of the Syrians that have demanded protection from our country are being sent back to their country by force, in line with international and national law," a foreign ministry official told Reuters.

But Amnesty said testimonies it had gathered in Turkey's southern border provinces suggested the authorities have been rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women, and children almost daily since the middle of January.

Many of those returned to Syria appear to be unregistered refugees, though the rights group said it had also documented cases of registered Syrians being returned when apprehended while not carrying their papers.

Amnesty also said its research showed the authorities had scaled back the registration of Syrian refugees in the southern border provinces. Those with no registration have no access to basic services such as healthcare and education.

Under the deal with the EU, Turkey is supposed to be taking in migrants returned from Greece on April 4, but uncertainty remains over how many will be sent back, how they will be processed, and where they will be housed.

The aim is to close the main route by which a million migrants and refugees poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before heading north, mainly to Germany and Sweden.

"The large-scale returns of Syrian refugees we have documented highlight the fatal flaws in the EU-Turkey deal. It is a deal that can only be implemented with the hardest of hearts and a blithe disregard for international law," Amnesty's Dalhuisen said.

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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - French, Germans and Britons make up the highest number of foreign fighters in the Syrian rebel ranks from European countries, but Belgium is the largest contributor in proportion to its population, a Dutch study shows.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is acknowledging that "civilians have been killed that shouldn't have been" in past U.S. drone strikes, but says the administration is now "very cautious" about taking strikes where women or children are present.

Asked at a news conference about an increase in the number of people targeted in several drone strikes against extremist targets in Libya, Syria and Somalia, Obama said the "legal architecture" around the use of drone strikes in the past hasn't been precise.

But in the last several years, he says, the administration has worked hard to prevent civilian deaths.

He says the U.S. has to take responsibility when it is not acting appropriately.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian troops have identified 45 bodies so far in a mass grave found in the city of Palmyra after it was recaptured from Islamic State, a military source told Reuters on Saturday.

Syrian government forces backed by heavy Russian air support drove Islamic State out of Palmyra last Sunday, inflicting what the army called a mortal blow to militants who had dynamited the city's ancient temples.

The communal grave, on the north-eastern edge of Palmyra, is the only one found so far in the city by the Syrian forces, the source said. It held the bodies of both civilians and Syrian army members captured by Islamic State.

Syrian state news agency SANA said on Friday the grave contained many women and children and some of the bodies had been beheaded.

In May last year, as Islamic State took control of Palmyra, the hard-line Islamist militants were reported by Syrian state media to have killed at least 400 people in the first four days of control.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the five-year-old Syrian conflict through a network of sources on the ground, said that Islamic State had killed a number of people at an earlier time and buried them on the outskirts of the city.

The Observatory reported on Saturday that fighting between Syrian forces and Islamic State around Qaryatain to the west of Palmyra.

It also reported Russian and Syrian air strikes in the same area and to the east of Palmyra around the town of Sukhna.

Attacks by government forces against Islamic State positions to the around Palmyra are aimed at moving east across the desert to Islamic State-held Deir al-Zor near the Iraqi border, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said.

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Islamic State militants retreating from Palmyra laid thousands of mines that they planned to set off simultaneously as the army moved in, a Syrian officer told Reuters in the ancient city after its recapture from the jihadist fighters.

The officer said main streets and side roads in Palmyra had been rigged with explosives weighing up to 50 kg. More than 3,000 had already been safely detonated since government forces, backed by Russian jets, retook the city on Sunday, he said.

He did not say why the Islamic State fighters failed to set off the explosives before pulling out, but his assertion echoed comments from Syria's antiquities chief, who said the militants intended to dynamite a greater area of the city's 2,000-year-old ruins than they already had.

The officer, who did not give his name, said the bombs left behind were linked so they could go off together.

"All the government buildings are rigged in a network connected to the Daesh leadership headquarters," he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "The idea was that as we enter it would all go off at once, not just bomb by bomb. And there are a really huge number of bombs."

Islamic State's defeat in Palmyra was not only a significant military victory for President Bashar al-Assad, opening up the country's central desert to government forces and their allies. It also cast the Syrian army as an effective fighting force against jihadists bent on cultural vandalism and wanton killing.

A military source told Reuters on Saturday troops had identified 45 bodies in a mass grave in Palmyra, including civilians and Syrian army members captured by Islamic State.

Parts of Palmyra have been cleared, including the road from Homs. But Syrian soldiers -- soon to be joined by Russian de-mining experts -- are still working on defusing or detonating explosives.

"We cannot leave them there. We are dealing with 90 percent of them by exploding them because they are buried firmly in the ground, cemented in the asphalt," the officer said.

Civilians, most of whom fled before Syrian and allied forces began the offensive, cannot return until de-mining is complete.

Smoke could be seen rising from some parts of the modern, residential city of Palmyra, which lies next to the 2,000-year-old ruins, during a visit by journalists on Friday.

But few people were to be seen and no shops were open. Residential areas had been damaged and traces of explosions could be seen on the ground.  

Graffiti on ruins

As well as a network of bombs, Islamic State left traces of their 10-month rule in Palmyra. Graffiti was evident on some of the ancient stones. "Remaining", it read, part of the Islamic State motto of "remaining and expanding".

On a stone among the remains of the Temple of Bel was scrawled: "No shooting without the permission of the Emir."

A signpost on a road through the ruins, now bent at 90 degrees to the ground, tells travelers in the group's trademark black and white colors to "Respect God".

"When we show humility, God will deliver us," the sign says, above a passage from the Koran which says: "God made you victorious at the (battle of) Badr when you were but a humble (force)," referring to a battle from the early Muslim era which the ultra-hardline group looks back to with reverence.

The ancient Roman amphitheatre, where Islamic State shot dead around 20 men as it took over the city last May, appears unscathed.

The Temple of Bel, an imposing monument before it was blown up last year, has been reduced to a couple of columns and a heap of rubble, although antiquities chief Maamoun Abdelkarim says it is not totally beyond repair.

Other structures blown up by Islamic State include Palmyra's triumphal arch, three funerary towers and the temple of Baal Shamin. Before serious renovation can take place, officials say, the area needs to be made fully safe.

Moscow has sent de-miners to help with the clear-up, and Russian military servicemen will start defusing mines in Palmyra in a few days, Russian news agencies reported on Saturday, citing the defense ministry.

The first batch of specialists has left Russian airbase Khmeimim in western Syria. The convoy, consisting of more than 20 vehicles, will be guarded by Mi-24 and Mi-28 helicopters.

The de-miners will deal with more than 180 hectares of territory, Russia's defense ministry has said, citing initial estimates. The aim is to clear the historic part of the ancient city as well as residential areas.

SEE ALSO: ISIS reportedly left a mass grave behind in Palmyra

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Syrian rebels and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have mounted an offensive against Syrian government forces and on Saturday took a strategic hill south of Aleppo from government control, a monitoring group said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the offensive began on Friday, and Syrian government and allied forces were fighting to take back control of the territory and repel further attacks.

A fragile "cessation of hostilities" truce has held in Syria for over a month as the various parties try to negotiate an end to Syria's five-year-old civil war.

But the truce excludes Islamic State and Nusra Front, and air and land attacks by Syrian and allied forces continue in parts of Syria where the government says the groups are present.

Friday's attack began with three suicide bombings carried out by Nusra Front south of Talat al-'Iss hill. Rebel and Nusra Front forces then took control of the hill, the Observatory and a Nusra Front statement said.

Nusra Front said in the statement it ambushed government forces as they withdrew toward the town of Hadhar to the east.

The Observatory said the fighting has so far killed dozens of regime forces and at least 16 rebels and Nusra Front members.

Live footage broadcast on pro-opposition Orient News TV on Saturday showed the hill provides a vantage point across a wide area. It also lies near a main highway linking Aleppo to Damascus, Syria's capital, to the south.

"This is the dividing line, the front position of the Syrian army in the southern (Aleppo) countryside," a Syrian military source told Reuters.

"In south Aleppo, armed groups in coordination with Nusra Front attacked some military positions ... in the direction of Talat al-'Iss and the surrounding areas. Of course this is a clear breach of the truce," the source said.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington, editing by Larry King)

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Two Syrian women worked with the Swedish news organization Expressen to secretly film what life is like in Raqqa, the Syrian city ISIS has claimed as its capital. Their videos show the horrible violence they witness every day, and demonstrate how severely their freedoms have been limited.

The footage was part of a short documentary piece by Expressen.

Story and editing by A.C. Fowler

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MMAN (Reuters) - Islamist rebels shot down a warplane on Tuesday in an area south of the city of Aleppo where insurgents are battling the Syrian army and allied militias, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The monitor said a plume of smoke was seen as the plane caught fire before it fell in the Talat al-Iss highland, where al Qaeda-affiliated rebels have come under heavy bombardment by Syrian and Russian planes since they captured the area this week.

The fate of the pilot was not known nor the type of aircraft and whether it was Russian or Syrian, the British-based monitor said.

Videos downloaded on social media also showed footage of the plane and pictures of the wreckage of a burnt plane surrounded by rebels.

Aerial supremacy has been a major advantage for the Syrian army that has been battling insurgents seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Foreign-backed rebels have long demanded anti-aircraft weapons to offset the impact of devastating aerial raids by Syrian forces and since September Russian planes, but their backers have been wary of delivering weapons that could fall into the hands of hardline groups.

A fragile "cessation of hostilities" truce has held in Syria for over a month as the various parties try to negotiate an end to the five-year-old civil war.

But the truce excludes Islamic State and Nusra Front, and air and land attacks by Syrian and allied forces continue in parts of Syria where the government says the groups are present.

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While interviewing Hezbollah militants, you’d expect enthusiasm and some kind of zeal on their part towards the “existential” or “sacred” battle they’re fighting in Syria. You’d assume they’re participating in the war to protect the “resistance” or Lebanon from extremists and a “Zionist conspiracy” to destroy the Party of God.

They do assert that during the first round of interviews. However, the more they talk, and the more comfortable they get, you start to sense that they are not entirely confident about that line you hear in Hezbollah officials’ speeches and statements. You eventually realize that money plays a major part in their involvement.

The most noteworthy part is that most of these young men come from the poorest neighborhood of the southern suburbs of Beirut (Dahiyeh), where unemployment and low levels of education are more common than in the rest of Dahiyeh. 

That was certainly not the case before Hezbollah entered the war in Syria.

Winning the Narrative

Hezbollah’s power did not come from its weapons alone. Nor was it primarily founded on social services and Iranian money. These were tools to maintain its control and influence, which grew through decades of building a narrative of allegiance. Hezbollah prevailed because it has won the narrative, by linking three pillars of a Lebanese Shiite identity: the resistance, the collective memory of the battle of Karbala and Iran’sWilayat al-Faqih.

Lebanese Shiites’ identity was gradually rebuilt to link their collective history of Karbala and the Israeli occupation of the South. Kul Youm Karbalaa (Every day is Karbala) became the slogan that defined the daily lives of the Shiites in the South, because it embodied all of these elements: fighting injustice, remembering Karbala and a deep Shiite identity affiliated with Hezbollah’s Wilayat al-Faqih.

As I grew up in the South, I encountered this narrative every day. It changed the way people dressed, the way they socialized and celebrated religious occasions, even the way they celebrated births and mourned deaths. It escalated to fierce rhetoric during conflicts and wars, and went back to social and cultural conduct between conflicts. Although this narrative was imposed on us by the Party of God, people accepted it. They related to its purpose, the vibes of its power and the way it accentuated our communal identity.

People wanted it; they even needed it to survive. The enemy was clear, the history was common and the purpose was well defined.

The dream of many of my relatives, neighbors and friends as we grew up was to join the “resistance” or help it in any way possible. There were more volunteers knocking on Hezbollah’s doors than young men seeking employment. Many wanted to fight for free, and die for free. But Hezbollah paid anyway, because they knew that it was the best way to structure its army and maintain commitment.

Turning Corporate

That devotion and eagerness to belong and sacrifice is no longer sensed. Hezbollah fighters who talked to me did not show the motivation or passion that I used to see in young men’s eyes when I lived in the South. These eyes were empty, anxious and very tired. They refer to their missions in Syria as “the job”, and it’s not even a job they seem to enjoy.

“I am just waiting for my contract to expire and then I’m out,” Mahdi (25 years old) told me. He – like all others – sign a two-year contract that specifies the salary (between $500 and $1200) and the package of benefits they receive. The thing is that they have to complete the two years. They cannot just give notice and leave whenever they want to. “And they don’t pay compensation packages to martyrs’ families as they used to,” Mahdi added, saying that each family of a martyr used to receive forty thousand dollars, but that this was halted almost two years ago.

The fighters interviewed by NOW come from very poor families. Most of them never finished school, and the only alternative for them is unemployment. “But you need to understand that I’ve lost many friends in Syria and it is not going to be easy for me to leave the battle, even if I’m tired and disappointed. It would feel that I’ve betrayed my friends,” Mustafa (23 years old) told me. “I would never be able to forgive myself.”

The loyalty of Mustafa is toward his “martyr” friends, not the party or the ideology. He also fights because he needs to, not because he wants to. Mahdi, on the other hand, wants to leave the battle – or the job as he refers to it – because he is exhausted of the hierarchy and the expectations of his bosses. “If I leave before my contract is expired, I will be taken to Hezbollah’s military court and eventually will spend the rest of my contract in their jail in Dahiyeh. I’d rather wait.”

Mahdi’s main complaint is that when he joined Hezbollah he thought he’d come back with a victory that would provide him with an office or technical job and secure his future. “Instead, I feel like I took a job at a company where I am required to give everything, including my life, and there are no guarantees for the future beyond these two years.” And victory? He smiled.

Resistance became a matter of perspective

In fact, many Hezbollah members and supporters have realized in the past few years that they have become the mercenaries of Waliyat al-Faqih in Iran’s war in the region. They will have to go wherever they are required, be it Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Yemen. The new rhetoric of sectarian regional war has cost Hezbollah its depth in the Arab world. But most importantly, Hezbollah lost its narrative.

For more than thirty years, Hezbollah’s narrative was built on a very clear purpose and specific target. The result was liberating land and gaining political power. However, the “resistance” today is a matter of perspective. The narrative is no longer well-defined or evident. The “enemy” fluctuates too often and allies are mostly strategic or temporary. The US is no longer the “great Satan,” and the Putin – the partner in Syria and ally against imperialism – is also coordinating with Israel.

“We are invaders,” says Mustafa, “this is our role now. Yes, I have many questions, but war is too complicated and I have a family to support.” 

The “resistance” has gone corporate and the old beliefs of liberation and freedom are now replaced with ambitions for promotion and better status. It is going to be extremely difficult for Hezbollah to come back from this.

Hanin Ghaddar is the managing editor of NOW and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. She tweets @haningdr 

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Like other foreign and domestic actors, Hezbollah has seized on the Syrian civil war to improve its position in the country and the surrounding region. 

Stratfor has collected information from diplomatic sources and from sources close to Hezbollah to monitor and track the establishment of Hezbollah bases in Syria.

According to those reports, Hezbollah's attempts to expand and solidify its control in Syria will only increase in the future.

Now, satellite imagery adds to these predictions by enabling us to take a closer look at a Hezbollah base near the Syrian town of Qusair, where Hezbollah has built up significant defensive positions since conquering the area in June 2013.

The base near Qusair, like other anticipated defensive positions in Syria, is part of Hezbollah's future strategy in the country. The base will play a significant role in protecting the militant group, and Lebanon as a whole, from the threats they may face if Syrian President Bashar al Assad is deposed.

Alongside the base, Hezbollah has focused on securing the Lebanese border, building up a large earthen berm on the stretch of the border near Qusair. The group has also cleared the area around the base to enable it to better observe and defend the area along the Syrian side of the border. Moreover, sources report that Hezbollah has dug tunnels from the base back to Lebanon.

Along with its patron Iran, Hezbollah recognizes that Syria's war is an opportunity to establish a strong position near the country's border with Lebanon. According to one source close to Hezbollah, the group intends to stockpile artillery weapons, such as Katyusha rockets, mortars and howitzers, at the base near Qusair.

It also plans to move a number of its approximately 60 T-72 main battle tanks there. Additionally, sources say there are as many as four separate munitions factories at the base.

Sources also connect the base and other future installations to Hezbollah's plan to maintain a permanent presence of 3,000 fighters in Syria, even after it withdraws from the fighting there. The bases could end up hosting a significant portion of the fighters. At the same time, the bases will provide a location for Iranian involvement and military presence in Syria.

According to an Iranian diplomatic source, ranking officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) frequently inspect the positions near Qusair, treating the base as an Iranian asset. The position could also serve as a location for interaction and training between IRGC and Hezbollah operatives.

The presence of Iranian officers indicates another reason for Hezbollah to build bases in Syria. Sources close to the group have said that there are long-range missiles at Qusair. While satellite imagery does not confirm this, the sources have referred specifically to the presence of different types of Iranian ballistic missiles, including the Shabab-1, Shahab-2 and Fateh-110.

Any of these missiles could be used to strike Israel, and Hezbollah has previously been suspected of having them in its arsenal. While these missiles could prove crucial in the event of a large-scale Israeli ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, they are not beyond the reach of the Israeli Air Force. Indeed, Israel has already struck Hezbollah arms stockpiles in Syria on several occasions.

Notably, imagery does not show significant underground facilities at the base capable of protecting this weaponry.

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Greece is currently home to over 50,000 refugees, all fleeing the Syrian Civil War.  A new EU deal now permits the Greek government to deport its refugees through Turkey.  Here's one man's response in protest.  

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq are netting between $150 million and $200 million per year from illicit trade in plundered antiquities, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations said in a letter released on Wednesday.

"Around 100,000 cultural objects of global importance, including 4,500 archaeological sites, nine of which are included in the World Heritage List of ... UNESCO, are under the control of the Islamic State ... in Syria and Iraq," Ambassador Vitaly Churkin wrote in a letter to the U.N. Security Council.

"The profit derived by the Islamists from the illicit trade in antiquities and archaeological treasures is estimated at U.S. $150-200 million per year," he said.

The smuggling of artifacts, Churkin wrote, is organized by Islamic State's antiquities division in the group's equivalent of a ministry for natural resources. Only those who have a permit with a stamp from this division are permitted to excavate, remove and transport antiquities.

Some details of the group's war spoils department were previously revealed by Reuters, which reviewed some of the documents seized by U.S. Special Operations Forces in a May 2015 raid in Syria.

But many details in Churkin's letter appeared new.

The envoy from Russia, which has repeatedly accused Turkey of supporting Islamic State by purchasing oil from the group, said plundered antiquities were largely smuggled through Turkish territory.

"The main center for the smuggling of cultural heritage items is the Turkish city of Gaziantep, where the stolen goods are sold at illegal auctions and then through a network of antique shops and at the local market," Churkin wrote.

Turkish officials were not immediately available for comment on the Russian allegations. Russian-Turkish relations have been strained ever since Turkey shot down a Russian plane near the Syrian border last November.

Churkin said jewelry, coins and other looted items are brought to the Turkish cities of Izmir, Mersin and Antalya, where criminal groups produce fake documents on their origin.

"The antiquities are then offered to collectors from various countries, generally through Internet auction sites such as eBay and specialized online stores," he said. Churkin named several other Internet auction sites that he said sold antiquities plundered by Islamic State.

EBay did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

"Recently ISIL has been exploiting the potential of social media more and more frequently so as to cut out the middleman and sell artifacts directly to buyers," he said.

 \

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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As regime forces continue to beat back ISIS in Syria, the country's embattled president is using the gains to his advantage to convince the West that he's a viable partner in the fight against terrorism.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad retook the ancient city of Palmyra last month, and have since driven ISIS fighters out of the town of al-Quryatain.

Assad's focus on ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh), which he claims to have been fighting all along, likely comes as a result of the partial ceasefire between rebels and the regime.

But despite his claims to be fighting terrorists in Syria, Assad's forces have, until now, mostly focused on eliminating the moderate opposition that challenges Assad's rule.

Now, as a tenuous ceasefire continues, Assad is using regime gains against ISIS to push his message to the West of being the best partner in the war on terror. But experts say Assad has been a major driver of extremism in Syria — as he massacres civilians and refuses to step down, the moderate opposition becomes more and more radical.

Strategic security firm The Soufan Group noted on Wednesday that Assad's "role as a fundamental catalyst for extremism in Syria is being increasingly overlooked" as he sees some success against ISIS.

The firm wrote that Assad will "likely walk away as one of the biggest winners from the ceasefire." The regime's recent gains all play into Assad's master plan to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the West.

"Given that the defeat of the Islamic State is the overarching goal of the US-led coalition, continued success against the group will only further serve to entrench Assad's position in the future of Syria," The Soufan Group notes.

By focusing on ISIS rather than moderate rebels, Assad has "sculpted a position for itself as an increasingly effective, yet uncomfortable, bedfellow with the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition," the firm wrote.

"With each successful operation against Islamic State-held territory, the Assad regime compels the international community to afford it more legitimacy," it said.

US leaders have repeatedly called for Assad to step down, and many experts agree that peace in Syria will be difficult to achieve with Assad as part of the equation.

"The Assad regime staying in power is not the solution," Charles Lister, a fellow at the Middle East Institute who has written a book on the insurgency in Syria, said at an event in Washington, DC, on Friday. "It's not the solution for Syria, and it's certainly not the solution for defeating terrorism on Syrian territory."

The challenges are both military and political.

On the battlefield, moderate rebels, which are often outgunned by the regime and jihadist forces, are likely to become increasingly weakened. As long as they're having to fight a battle on multiple fronts — against both the regime and extremist groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria — they'll be spread too thin to succeed and fighters may defect to extremist groups that have more power and resources.

On the political side, rebels who took up arms to protest Assad's treatment of Syrians are unlikely to accept a solution that would allow him to remain in power.

And Sunni extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS will continue to push a narrative of Sunni oppression to gain recruits — the Assad family belongs to a sect of Shia Islam and has been ruling over the majority Sunni population of Syria for decades. Many jihadist fighters in Syria have cited Assad's atrocities as a major motivation for joining extremist groups that fight the regime.

"The solidification of Assad's position threatens to undermine the possibility of any lasting peace," The Soufan Group said.

It added: "While some members of the US-led coalition may be willing to acquiesce to the survival of the Assad regime if it leads to the defeat of the Islamic State, the disparate rebel groups ... will not accept an outcome to the conflict that maintains the status quo."

Rebel commanders have made similar assessments. Ahmad al-Soud, the founder and commander of the US-backed Free Syrian Army group known as Division 13, told Business Insider that Assad must leave power before terrorism can be defeated in Syria.

"As long as there's no decision yet by the US to remove the regime, that is the reason for all of this" fighting, al-Soud said through a translator last month. "... As long as the Assad regime is still around, you're still going to have different extremist groups in Syria and they're not going to leave, we're not going to be able to get them out."

Still, even if the US were to push for a political solution that saw Assad leaving power, ousting the authoritarian ruler wouldn't be easy. Russia and Iran are both allies of the regime, and they haven't seemed willing to pressure Assad to step down. And their position is even less likely to change now that Assad can point to his forces' victories against ISIS.

The Soufan Group explained:

The regime's recent military victories against the Islamic State fundamentally alter Assad's position at the negotiating table, providing the Syrian government with far greater bargaining power. Assad will likely use the momentum against the Islamic State as leverage to attempt to persuade the US-led coalition to treat the Syrian government as a partner against the Islamic State — which has already been evidenced in the Russian invitation for the US coalition to participate in mine-clearing efforts in Palmyra.

And even if the US never sees Assad as a legitimate partner, but the regime's success against ISIS coupled with the current terror climate in Europe "make the notion of tacit cooperation with Assad somewhat more plausible," according to the firm.

The note continued: "Given that the defeat of the Islamic State is the overarching goal of the US-led coalition, continued success against the group will only further serve to entrench Assad's position in the future of Syria — regardless of whether the US-led coalition directly coordinates efforts to combat the Islamic State with Assad or not."

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The news that criminal gangs have penetrated refugee communities from the area hit by the Nepali earthquake and are offering their children for sale as domestic servants in the UK and other wealthy destinations is shocking, but not surprising. This kind of transaction is happening all over the world.

For those concerned about the emergence of modern forms of slavery, it is a commonplace that the numbers of adults and children trafficked into sexual or labor exploitation, including domestic servitude, is huge and growing.

Compared with the 200 years of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, during which around 14 million black Africans were forcibly trafficked across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the Americas, there are now probably in excess of 30 million adults and children at any one time who could be regarded as modern slaves. At this order of magnitude, there remains considerable doubt about precise numbers.

Although international conventions have emerged since the creation of The League Of Nations, and slavery is now illegal in most states, this brings problems of its own. Unlike the Transatlantic Slave Trade, managed as an international enterprise, the modern slavery business is hidden and conducted, not in the open by states, but covertly by criminal gangs. It is now the second or third most profitable global trade, after the drugs and arms trades, depending on how you count turnover.

These gangs exploit the increasing mobility and vulnerability of labor to move people to where modern slaves might be put to work, whether as domestic servants, picking vegetables, packing meat products, working in brothels, farming cannabis or even being available for organ harvesting.

States are waking up slowly to this trade; cases are increasingly (although still in small numbers) being brought before the courts. However, despite legislation addressing the modern slave trade, most professionals whose job should include spotting the victims of trafficking and forced labor, and the vast majority of the public, remain unaware of this trade in human beings, having little understanding of how to spot a victim.

Some cases achieve a very high media profile, although the public, through misreporting or misunderstanding, often don't understand the significance of what they are reading. One such case was that of the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers in the UK in 2004 in which 23 Chinese workers drowned when they could not run faster than the incoming tide in a notoriously dangerous coastal area in Northern England. For most people, however, the issue came to be understood as an issue of illegal immigration given that the workers were smuggled into the UK before they were trafficked into forced labor.

Another was the case of Victoria Climbie, a little girl from West Africa, brought to the UK allegedly to improve her life chances, but who ended up being beaten to death by adults who imprisoned her. This became a case primarily of child cruelty and professional incompetence. The fact that she had been trafficked into the UK was lost sight of.

Border Agency officials are getting wiser now but this has not stopped the flow of children and young adults being trafficked into the UK and other so-called "developed" countries. Even where Border agencies are suspicious of the stories told by unaccompanied children or by those bringing them across borders, and children are taken into care, many still escape from care homes rapidly and are found later as prostitutes on the streets of cities, or disappear into private domiciliary settings.

One such case recently highlighted was of a 13-year-old girl brought to a northern UK city and incarcerated in domestic servitude for 15 years, beaten and abused by older adults, until she was accidentally discovered by a professional worker investigating, ironically, some other form of wrongdoing.

In situations of chaos, as with the migrant exodus from Syria, gangs find easy pickings amongst children separated from parents. There is now considerable concern that as many as 10,000 or more children who have either come unaccompanied or been separated from their carers have fallen into the hands of trafficking gangs.

The case of the Nepali children raises specific, pressing issues even in this grotesque context. It is common for children in poorer countries to be trafficked across borders (as Nepali girls are into India for prostitution), or within countries (as with Ghanaian children, sold into working for fishermen on the Volta Lake) often under the misapprehension that they are going to a better life. Parents and guardians, often driven by extreme poverty, collude in this trade by accepting "cash for kids".

Within the UK, the issue of domestic servitude – the final destination for some of these children – was the focus of heated debate as the Modern Slavery Act became law. Home Secretary Theresa May might say that the act is designed to stop modern slavery but at present the government is colluding in a system of domestic servitude whereby diplomats and rich businesspeople bring domestic workers with them on their own passports.

Current visa arrangements mean that if a servant (who may in time be one of these sold children) protests their actual conditions of employment − abuse, severe exploitation and rape − they face deportation to perhaps being re-trafficked. A fundamental review of this provision has told the home secretary that current arrangements are highly exploitative. Perhaps she should deal with this issue first before wringing her hands over the plight of these children.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State fighters have kidnapped 300 cement workers in an area northeast of Damascus where the militants launched an assault against government forces this week, Syrian state television said on Thursday.

The workers and contractors of Al Badia Cement company were taken from near the town of Dumeir and their employer had lost all contact with them, state TV quoted the industry ministry as saying.

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