5 February 2020
After last week’s arrest in France of a former “Army of Islam” spokesman, Orwa Khalife recounts the gruesome history of the militia, from kidnappings in the Damascus suburbs to ethnic cleansing in the Turkish border zone.
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Moayad Hokan
From their numerous “observation posts” dotted across northern Syria, Turkish troops watch idly as Assad and Russia butcher and displace thousands of civilians. Why are they there at all?
Blaming everyone but itself, the Assad regime is fundamentally incapable of remedying the depreciation of the Syrian pound, which has lost over 40% of its value in 2019.
Over 400 Syrians have been killed trying to cross the border into Turkey in recent years. A writer with personal experience traversing the border charts its transformation from an open door to a deadly sealed fortress.
Military service, chants for Bashar, and pretending not to recognize friends in the street: A Homs resident describes life after the regime's recapture of opposition territory.
A young Damascus resident questions the value of the cultural initiatives sponsored by international NGOs in the regime-held capital.
The thriving trade in possessions and even infrastructure looted by the Syrian regime isn't just a symptom of economic crisis and a wider moral breakdown following the war; it points to the ever-worsening criminality that awaits the country's future under Assad.
A former inmate at ISIS’ Tabqa prison recounts the physical and psychological horrors visited upon the women, children, and even babies trapped therein.
The story of a Tartous café frequented by the city’s disillusioned youth offers a ground-level look at the hopes that drove the revolution and the fractures that tore the country apart.
Yassin al-Haj Saleh explores the emergence of the Islamic State and its three main layers of identity and formation, from Afghanistan, to Iraq and eventually, Syria.