Day 1,210: Women who like jihadists, and other news from Syria

Today is Day 1,210 of the Syrian conflict, the headlines dominated by the story of twin British teenage girls, "star pupils," who ran away two weeks ago to Syria. The current theory is that they have joined their brother, thought to be an ISIL fighter. Not much more is known, but it's thought that a number of women have gone to Syria to marry jihadists. Here's an NBC story on the trend. And here's an earlier post on the Denver woman who met a man claiming to be an ISIL fighter online and fell for him — in case you thought this was just a British thing.

The day was ushered in by reports of rebels attacking a Sunni village and firing at civilians, killing 14. It's not clear which rebel group was involved, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that the rebels accused the villagers of "cooperating" with the Assad regime. To break this down for those who haven't been following the conflict, this is a surprising story for a couple of reasons: (1) The Assad regime is largely Shia (Alawite, to be specific), not Sunni, so a Sunni village would be unlikely to support Assad in this sectarian climate. (Then again, stranger things have happened.) (2) The jihadists who've gotten a reputation in the Western media for shooting up towns are Sunni, themselves — it's not clear why they'd target a Sunni town. So what's not being said in the writeups, in part because it's impossible to know if this is actually the case, is that it's possible the "moderate" rebels the West likes to praise have just killed a bunch of civilians. It's also possible, however, that Sunni extremists did it, regardless of the sectarian considerations. (Again: stranger things have happened.) Finally, it's also possible that almost none of this happened as anyone said it did. In this conflict, it's probably not beyond any of the groups to use an attack perpetrated by their own members to stain the reputation of a different group.

In other news, the opposition leadership group known as the National Coalition has elected a new head in Turkey. Hadi al-Bahra was the chief negotiator at those useless Geneva II peace talks, and it's not clear whether he'll have any more power in his current position: neither ISIL nor the Nusra Front — the extremist opposition groups who are the biggest players in the fight right now — recognize the National Coalition.

Also, just a day after Attorney General Eric Holder urged European governments to do more to keep their citizens out of the Syria fight, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has proposed travel bans for any French citizens believed to be trying to travel to the Syrian frontlines. As the Wall Street Journals' Stacy Meichtry points out, the EU's Schengen Agreement means such a ban would be completely useless: Currently, people can move freely between EU countries. If they can't fly out of France, they'll just fly out of somewhere else.

Finally, a leaked Foreign Office paper says that UK firms sold the Syrian government the ingredients that were used to make sarin gas. No good news today.

The conflict continues.