BEIRUT — Thousands of Sunni Muslims fled a Syrian coastal town Saturday, a day after reports circulated that dozens of people, including children, had been killed by pro-government gunmen in the area, activists said. The violence occurred as embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad made his second public appearance in a […]
BY AFSIN YURDAKUL | APRIL 28, 2013 FOREIGN POLICY SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN SYRIA — On a chilly morning in late March, I met the Free Syrian Army (FSA) Chief of […]
Syria has called on those of its citizens who have left the country due to the unrest that began nearly two years ago to return home. The Syrian Interior Ministry […]
by Bassem Mroue, Daily Star, Lebanon Story Summary Already grappling with severe fuel shortages and winter temperatures that drop below freezing, Syrians now must spend hours in line every day for gasoline or a few loaves of bread at soaring prices as President Bashar Assad’s regime faces mounting difficulties in […]
By Christoph Reuter DER SPIEGEL GERMANY After spending months reporting on the conflict, a SPIEGEL journalist has pieced together a realistic view of the situation on the ground, and reports that dictator Bashar Assad’s fall seems inevitable. But as the fighting grows more barbarous on both sides, he worries what […]
Source: Asia Times. THE ROVING EYE The rape of Syria is disaster capitalism in action, the terrain already prepared for profitable “reconstruction” once a pliable, pro-Western government is installed. With NATOGCC on one side and Iran-Russia on the other side, ordinary Syrians opposed to the ethnic-religious cleansing promoted by the […]
An eerie silence hangs over what was once a busy highway that cuts through the mountains and makes for Latakia city By Ruth Sherlock, Latakia province The Telegraph Abu Yassin, […]
Story Summary A video posted on the Internet shows Sunni Muslim rebels burning a Shiite mosque in north Syria — a sign that the country’s civil war is spiralling into […]
Source: Asia Times: By Victor Kotsev Amid significant rebel advances and indications that a partition of Syria might happen in the next months, the government army reportedly readied chemical weapons for use last week. The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance responded with harsh warnings and […]
By ANNE BARNARD THE NEW YORK TIMES BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s rebel fighters — who have long staked claim to the moral high ground for battling dictatorship — are losing crucial support from a public increasingly disgusted by the actions of some rebels, including poorly planned missions, senseless destruction, criminal […]
By AFP AL ARABIYYA NEWS Beirut A Greek Orthodox priest who tried to negotiate the liberation of a Christian doctor in Damascus province was found dead on Thursday, residents and […]
Turkey is funnelling weapons and armed men across the border into Syria How the government howled. With the help of a neighbouring state, “terrorists” were trying to destroy the government and its army, blowing up and murdering its supporters. “Terrorists” were crossing the international border, arms were being shipped over […]
Source: (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3.Sept. 2012). (please excuse the language: ‘google translate’ is being used from the original German article. Better translation to follow, Inshallah). The Syrian civil war can be seen through from the outside only with difficulty, because it constantly changes its face. There were four phases so far. […]
THE massacre town of Daraya in Syria is a place of ghosts and questions. It echoed with the roar of mortar explosions and the crackle of gunfire yesterday, its few returning citizens talking of death, assault, foreign “terrorists”, and its cemetery of slaughter haunted by snipers. The men and women […]
By Henri J. Barkey, WASHINGTON POST Henri J. Barkey is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University. Calls for a U.S. military intervention in Syria have dominated the conversation in conventional and social media. Two simple and effective arguments are being advanced. The first, and most compelling, is that […]
By Oliver Holmes REUTERS BEIRUT | Fri Jul 20, 2012 8:49am EDT (Reuters) – While President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels battle in several districts of Damascus, residents in the deserted heart of the Syrian capital fear they are at the eye of a storm that could strike soon. Friday […]
By Rami G. Khouri The Daily Star, Lebanon It must be depressing for Kofi Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy to Syria, to hear at every turn that the “Annan plan” for resolving the conflict is dead, and that country will soon plunge into a full-fledged sectarian civil war. My […]
By ABDUL RAHMAN AL-RASHID ARABNEWS Syrian political activist living in exile Michel Kilo believes that the available alternative after the downfall of President Bashar Assad is an internal war turning into a protracted regional one involving the two superpowers. This was what he wrote in his article in Asharq Al-Awsat, […]
By Safa A. Hussein The Daily Star, Lebanon Iraqis celebrated the Arab Spring that changed the regimes of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. But they are divided about the protests and uprisings in Bahrain and Syria. On the surface, it seems that this is merely a reflection of the sectarian divide […]
It is wrong to relate the current developments in Syria to the Arab Awakening in Egypt, Libya or Tunisia. Many tend to simplify the situation in Syria, making it merely a matter of the ruling system suppressing unarmed, united and peaceful opposition. I wish it were the case, as it […]