While generally well-intentioned, the concept of solidarity involves an unequal power relationship between those offering and receiving it. A preferable state of affairs would be partnership, placing Western activists and their counterparts elsewhere on equal footing.
Two days after rebels reached a deal with Russia to end fighting in southern Syria, Moscow and the Assad regime are already back on the offensive. Meanwhile, Daraa’s tens of thousands of displaced civilians scramble west toward Quneitra, where the bloodshed may soon follow them.
Three former ISIS fighters now undergoing “anti-extremism” courses at a center north of Aleppo tell our reporter the Assad regime’s brutality and slick video propaganda were among the top reasons they joined the world’s most reviled jihadist organization.
An Al-Jumhuriya colleague in south Syria currently fleeing Russian and Assad regime bombing tells of her ordeal over the past few days, and the bleak prospects for the coming ones.
Despite a US green light for Russia and the regime to bomb at will in Daraa Province, rebels have thus far refused to surrender after several bloody days of Russian air strikes, regime barrel bombs, and yet more waves of civilian displacement.
A military defector recounts his remarkable journey from the Assad regime’s army to a rebel brigade in Homs—via Palmyra prison—to exile in Idlib and, finally, menial labor in Turkey, where he still searches for the dignified life he hoped the revolution would bring him.
The Assad regime is much more than a mere dictatorship—understanding it, and its horrors, requires updating our conventional thinking about murderous states, argues Yassin al-Haj Saleh.
Russia, Iran, and Turkey have now clearly delineated their zones of control in northern Syria, and are looking next to re-open the international highway extending from Turkey to Jordan.
From colonial France’s bombing of Syria in the 1920s to Assad’s massacres today, international law has always been stacked against non-state actors, protecting even the bloodiest regimes and denying their victims justice.
Russia hints it will press Iran to leave Syria, in line with recently renewed Israeli and American demands. But serious doubts remain as to whether a forced Iranian withdrawal is even possible, let alone likely.
It's impossible on any day, but especially a day like this year’s Nakba Day, to ignore the inherent bond between the Palestinian and Syrian causes.
There was a real opportunity after last month’s chemical atrocity to amass a powerful international coalition against Assad, Russia, and Iran—an opportunity the West squandered, argues James Snell.
