They carved up the Middle East map with the stroke of a pen ... could be divided into an autonomous America-aligned Kurdish region, a small Alawite region on the Mediterranean Coast, and ...

As rebels in Syria make new advances against government forces, Newsweek has mapped the political stances of the rest of the region ... and outside of the Middle East, such as Russia and Iran.

They carved up the Middle East map with the stroke of a pen ... None of this is optimal, but this is the hand the region has been dealt. The Middle East has been such a basket case for so long ...