2 October 2019
How a scion of the Assad regime's inner circle placed flattering profiles of himself in Western publications, and what this bodes for the future of online media.
Commentary
Since the end of the Cold War, terrorism has come to be seen as the world’s principal political “evil,” in a manner that ignores or even rewards violence carried out by states, even when that violence reaches the scale of genocide, writes Yassin al-Haj Saleh.
A young member of Syria's Türkmen minority, living as a refugee in Istanbul, writes of the fears sparked by the Turkish government's new crackdown on Syrians, and his broader disappointment at the breakdown of communal relations between Turks and Syrians, brought on by xenophobes left and right.
A Syrian doctor says the UN’s plan to stop attacks on hospitals in Syria has failed. If it can’t be fixed, it should be abandoned.
Using videos of Western-style parties in Syria, the Assad regime has sought to portray itself as a defender of liberal modernity against benighted "terrorist" opponents. Yet these crude and dishonest propaganda efforts only underscore the oppression at the heart of Assad's state, writes Robin Jones.
Like many genocidal regimes before it, the Assad regime is now formally engaged in a pseudo-academic re-writing of history. A genocide researcher outlines how a credible and rigorous study of the Syrian conflict might instead be approached.
Iran has little incentive to help the Assad regime resolve its acute oil crisis, while any help from Moscow will come at a steep price, argues Salam Alsaadi.
Our writer asked seven U.S. Democrat presidential candidates about their policy proposals for Syria. Only one, Elizabeth Warren, had anything to say.
44 years ago this month, Lebanon descended into civil war. In the first of a three-part series, Joey Ayoub draws on the work of James Baldwin to explore the "Othering" that resulted from that war and its aftermath, which is now a central component of Lebanese identity.
From the xenophobes who demonize them to the well-meaning friends who assume they must be devout conservatives, Syrian refugees in the West face stereotypes from all sides. Worse, some have begun internalizing and turning these prejudices on their compatriots, writes a Syrian in Paris.
As the costs of Assad’s Pyrrhic “victory” become clearer, even die-hard loyalists are increasingly speaking out about economic and other woes. The regime’s response makes clear it will not tolerate even this highly watered-down form of dissent.
In his thirteenth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, Yassin al-Haj Saleh pays tribute to those who have given time and energy to promoting her cause.