5 March 2020
The shameful scenes this week on the Greek-Turkish border, where at least two have died, underscore the need to offer long-term stability to Syrians’ lives, in contrast to the extreme temporariness of their current existence.
Turkey
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.
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?
In his fourteenth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes that he now identifies with his late mother, paying tribute to mothers around the world who bear the anguish of disappeared loved ones.
Scores killed; hundreds of thousands displaced; a politician summarily executed; and US forces replaced by Assad's: Al-Jumhuriya assesses the first week of Turkey's "Operation Peace Spring" in northern Syria.
After 24 hours of confusion and contradiction, it now appears any hypothetical Turkish operation in northeast Syria will be much more limited than first thought.
For each husband killed in Aleppo, there is a widow struggling to provide for her surviving family. Our writer heard dozens of these women’s stories first-hand; an experience that sent him into an "abyss" of drugs and mental disturbance.
A quick English summary of our Arabic news coverage this week.
A quick English summary of our Arabic news coverage this week.
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 quick English summary of our Arabic news coverage this week.
A quick English summary of our Arabic news coverage this week.