WorldcrunchStay updated with comprehensive news on Syria from Worldcrunch. Discover insights on Syrian politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural landmarks with translations from top international sources. Highlights include Damascus, Syrian history, and cultural events.
-Analysis- ISTANBUL — The Geneva process for the Syrian crisis was launched with a stated commitment from Russia and the United States to find a political solution. But it will go nowhere if it can’t overcome the clashing desires of the various fighting interests. Certain international actors penned a temporary road map in Vienna back […]
-Essay- NEW YORK — In searching for an image that could help to illustrate the dreadful, complex and totally out-of-control situation in Syria, I stumbled upon an article in the Marginal Revolution that compares the events in Syria to the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Since Yugoslavia and Syria were both multinational countries, and […]
While residents in Madaya may have no way out, other besieged areas under government control are finding creative ways to carry on. In Eastern Ghouta, a well-known rebel-held area in rural Damascus, residents can access a network of tunnels to escape or t
Local organizations have been working day and night over the past two months to prepare Syrians for the winter cold. Nearly a dozen people died there last January due to a fatal combination of inadequate shelter and freezing weather.
Northeastern Syria’s autonomous Kurdish leadership has informed schools in the area that they must teach core subjects in Kurdish. While proud to embrace their ethnic heritage, some worry that the change could create new conflicts.
Thousands of Syrian women face not just grief but also fear and poverty after losing their husbands to war. They often endure strict control from their remaining family and are forbidden to work. Some make the heartbreaking decision to remarry.
ISIS has banned the use of newly pressed 500 and 1,000 Syrian pound notes. Some fear its the start of a currency switch, though others say it’s a way for some to profit on money exchanges.
Monica Maggioni, head of Italy’s Rai news service, recounts her meeting this week with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad inside his private Damascus villa: “He looks nothing like the defeated leaders of this era.”
-OpEd- PARIS — A majority of historians describe the Spanish Civil War, fought from 1936 to 1939, as a dress rehearsal for what came next, World War II. Will historians of the future be saying the same about the Syrian civil war? All you need to do is replace Nazi Germany and the Italian fascists […]
The strongest armed group in Douma, Syria, paraded caged detainees, including Syrian army officers and women and children, for several hours to try to deter future government attacks. Syria Deeply spoke with residents to get their reactions.
ALEPPO — Like many boys his age, Muhammad loves to draw. Already known for his artistic talents in his hometown of Aleppo, the largest and probably hardest-hit city in Syria, the 14-year-old boy now has something to show the world. When the armed conflict intensified in Aleppo in 2012, Muhammad, then a sixth-grader, was forced to quit school. After the Syrian government began to bomb his neighborhood in the city’s Salah al-Din district, Muhammad and his family moved into the cramped student dorms of Aleppo University. Seven months later they were able to return home, but unfortunately for children like […]
The terror group has made its Syrian headquarters in the northern city of Raqqa, where those doing business with it report mounting ISIS financial difficulties and flagging morale.
Hundreds of Syrian university degrees are reportedly being forged every day, putting the reputation of Syrian academics at serious risk. But counterfeiters say their only concern is helping their countrymen find a “safe way out.”
As students return to school this month in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, they won’t be heading back to the same classrooms they left last year. Instead, they’ll be studying in basements and other “secure areas” across the devas
An exclusive look at the evolution of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade through the words of members and locals in the Yarmouk Valley in southwestern Deraa.
BEIRUT — American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Barack Obama’s express desire to avoid one. The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended. […]
Moscow’s decision to enter the Syrian conflict with bombing raids may bring smiles to the Assad regime. On the ground, ordinary Syrians are paying the price.
-OpEd- PARIS — It’s a thorny issue that has experts divided. For some, a ground war is a trap and should not even be considered; only well-targeted, reinforced airstrikes will do the job. For others, it’s impossible to slay ISIS without hunting down its jihadists one by one, from street to street, hideout after hideout, […]
The bloody Syrian stalemate unites Russia and the West, in a shared urgency to defeat ISIS. But the Syrian dictator, also an ISIS foe, should not be seen as a lesser evil.
The staple crop is so strategic that it has been targeted from all sides in the Syrian Civil War.
BODRUM — When the photograph of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body spread around the world, the plight of Syrian refugees suddenly came into focus like never before. Yet Kurdi was just one of many who have died making the perilous journey to Europe, where they hope to attain asylum as the ongoing Syria civil war in their homeland continues to claim countless civilian lives. Turkey, which currently hosts some 1.8 million exiled Syrians, has increasingly become a departure point for a perilous sea journey toward Greece in flimsy rafts and ill-equipped boats to get inside European territory. Sayeed, a construction worker […]
The U.S. is actively trying to block new Russian military aid to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Moscow sees its best alternative is to team up with Tehran.
A French philosopher dissects the mix of reactions across society, and within our own individual psyches, when human misery arrives at our door.
As radical Muslims from the West head to Syria to fight for Islamist forces, other foreigners are joining the Kurdish forces against them. But how useful are these volunteers?
As part of 2011’s uprising against Assad regime, Alaa Arsheed fought for his country’s freedom before he was forced to flee to Beirut. Now safely in Italy, he plays to forget.
With ISIS terror reigning in Palmyra, where treasured Roman ruins are at risk, reflections on a fascinating if less ancient part of its history: the Zenobia Cham Palace Hotel.
Nearly one in five people in Lebanon is a Syrian national who fled the war, the world’s highest per capita refugee population. Like on the borders of Europe, they are largely unwelcome.
ALEPPO — With Syria’s civil war now its fifth year and showing no sign of ending, virtually all sides have been recruiting and training children to kill. Situated in the opposition-controlled outskirts of Aleppo, the Abdul Razzaq Military Academy is one of the most organized programs for preparing youngsters for the battlefield. Established by Sergeant Abdul Razzaq, a Syrian army defector, the academy’s instructors train some 150 children from surrounding areas on the grounds of an abandoned school in the village of Ehtemlat for two hours a day. Other than saying that the academy is “the achievement of his lifetime,” […]
A Turkish journalist travels with an Alawite fixer to Damascus to understand what life is like in the Syrian capital as war in the country rages. Life goes on, but it’s not all grim.
Syria Deeply had a rare opportunity to hear from Palestinians facing violence and starvation in the Yarmouk refugee camp in southwestern Syria.
Locals in the Syrian city of Idlib were happy when rebel forces overturned regime forces. But now the rebels are enforcing their own version of military rule.
The European Union’s failure to provide desperate asylum seekers with legal routes leaves them with no option but to risk their lives on smugglers’ boats.
Among the families in war-ravaged Syria are many being held together by women alone, as their husbands have left to try to cross into Europe and prepare a life for their families. The wait is long, and often futile.
QAMISHLI — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad“s smiling face beams down from a large billboard on the central artery of Qamishli, a city in northeast Syria. But further down the road towards the city’s eastern suburbs, what looks imposingly over the avenue is a portrait of a triumphant-looking Abdullah Ocalan, the anointed leader of Turkey’s Kurdish […]
Locals in the city of Palmyra speak out as ISIS threatens the treasured ancient ruins of their city, after destroying its notorious Assad regime prison that scarred so many.
As the conflict between Assad’s military and Syrian opposition forces escalates around the southern city of Daraa, religious minorities fear persecution from all sides.
-OpEd- Caliphate, Islamic State, ISIS, Sunnistan, Jihadistan … Whatever name we give it, an entity is emerging in the heart of the Middle East, a sprawling swath of territory located between Mosul and Baghdad (Iraq) in the east, and Aleppo and Damascus (Syria) in the west. Inside this zone, as borders are disappearing and populations […]
DEIR EZ-ZOR — As soon as ISIS fighters fully seized Deir ez-Zor, they made a number of draconian changes, one of which was to close schools. After a lengthy period, during which teachers were required to attend training courses in Islamic education, the schools reopened. The city’s schools are no longer housed in public buildings. Residents instead have volunteered their houses as classrooms and supplies, such as desks and boards, have been moved there from the schools. The curriculum has been modified — many subjects were omitted, while others were added — and the number of schools is limited, as […]
An Eastern European woman who wanted to be the wife of an ISIS fighter in Raqqa speaks to Syria Deeply about her motivations and experience.
Kurdish commanders have broken earlier pledges to stop the forced recruitment of children, saying it is necessary to protect individual homes.