Zeina Karam

The militant chatter spread like wildfire. Within minutes of news breaking about the deadly terror attack on a Paris newspaper this week, supporters of extremist Islamic groups extolled the suspects in the massacre as “lions of the caliphate” and praised the killings on social media.

Lawmakers in Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region Wednesday authorized peshmerga forces to go to neighboring Syria and help fellow Kurds combat Islamic State militants in the key border town of Kobani, providing much-needed boots on the ground.

Syrian President Bashar Assad is taking advantage of the US-led coalition’s war against the Islamic State group to pursue a withering air and ground campaign against more mainstream rebels elsewhere in the country, trying to recapture areas considered more crucial to the survival of his government.