Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the language of authority has changed in Syria. Yet these new titles (“Emir,” “Branch Emir” or “Sheikh of the group”) do little for the core demands for which Syrians rose up: freedom, dignity and justice.
Tag: assad
As he launches the unprecedented attacks against Iran, much seems to be going Netanyahu’s way, from the decimation of both Hamas and Hezbollah leaders to the toppling of the Assad regime and softening of Gulf states. But a closer look shows a much more ambiguous picture across the region.
While Tehran has denied any involvement in Syria, elements affiliated with the ousted Assad regime in Syria say Iran is helping their fight to topple the government of President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
We had believed that Bashar al-Assad’s downfall would be a chance to come together and heal the wounds of the victims’ families. It was not to be. The regime had left roots too deep and the new rulers failed to learn the lessons of our neighbors.
Supporters of the Assad regime rallied around the slogan “Assad forever.” But we have now seen what happens the day after “forever.” Egyptian writer Ezzat el-Kamhawi considers what that means for Syria and the region.
Palestinians must engage in deep domestic dialogue to end their division and agree on a set of principles to address the towering challenges they face, including their ties with Syria’s new rulers.
The demands have changed in the days following the liberation. The call, “release the detainees,” is no longer enough. It has turned into a cry demanding the truth. But in central Damascus, one woman’s request can never be answered.
Iranian officials are still wondering how its dear ally Bashar al-Assad fell so fast, and why his military was lost before the rebellion even started.
Syria is the latest in a series of Indian foreign policy disasters. But can the government’s clear lack of vision on that front explain the flagrant haplessness of the Indian state on the global stage?
After meeting Bashar al-Assad, then heir to the Syrian dictatorship, then Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said he feared for the country’s future.
Whatever the official explanations given in Tehran over Bashar al-Assad’s downfall, Iran’s thuggish regime must have noticed that no amount of terror and torture can assure a hated regime’s permanence.
Events have moved very quickly in the past week in Syria, with the demise of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Amid questions over how the country will be run and fears of more conflict, experts parse the national and international influences at play.
The direction of Syria’s new rulers remains uncertain, but examples of transitions in Iraq, Egypt, Libya or Tunisia after the fall of their dictators highlight the pitfalls to avoid. Will Syria be able to escape them?
Since he fled in the cover of the night to Russia with his wife and three children, Bashar al-Assad’s entourage and extended family have expressed their anger and humiliation at his deception. He also betrayed his regional allies who went out of their way to protect his regime for years.
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, there are many questions about the future of Syria. Yet the regional and international powers who planned his collapse did not consider the Syrian people or their future in their calculations. Syrians may be out of Assad’s frying pan, but they’ve been thrown into a fire of armed fundamentalist groups.
The overthrow of the Assad regime is about more than just Russia’s boasting rights as a major power. It will have consequences on the war in Ukraine, and Russian expansion in Africa. Indeed, it may be proof that it is not a major power.
As the Assad regime was crumbling, the sight of the prisoners being freed had its own impact on so many people, including exiled Syrian writer Ruqayyah Al-Abbadi, who knew them from the inside.
While the Islamic Republic of Iran mulls an official response to the fall of its Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad, Iranian politicians are already voicing their anger at the “backstabbing” conduct of two key powers, Turkey and Russia. Could Tehran be the next to get left to fend for itself?
We must first recognize the joy of the Syrian people at the fall of a brutal regime that ruled for more than half a century. Yet, there’s also major geopolitical stakes in this highly sensitive region, with its losers — Russia and Iran — and its winners, foremost among them Erdogan’s Turkey. And a ton of uncertainty.
Luna al-Shibl, a media advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was killed in a car crash in Damascus. But many didn’t believe the official account of her death given the Syrian regime’s long history of targeting opponents inside and outside Syria.
Syria is positioned to return to the geopolitical fold in the Arab world, but the political structure inside the country is still fractured, facing protests from its citizens and the need to call in the Russian air force and Iranian backers.
The Arab League has readmitted Syria, ending the regime’s ten-year isolation. This is a defeat for the West — and an admission by the Arab states that there is no way around Assad.
In Turkey, resentment against Syrian refugees is growing. And President Erdogan – once their patron – is now busy seeking good relations with the man the Syrians fled, the dictator Bashar al-Assad.
-Analysis- BERLIN — World politics is currently dominated by “strongmen,” those leaders who see themselves anointed to negotiate “deals’ among themselves to chart the world’s destiny. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran, has stifled the Syrian people’s rebellion against Bashar al-Assad, allowing his Damascus regime to regain almost complete control […]
We should not be proud of of the insufficient response against the Damascus regime, but total inaction would be even worse.
Better than nothing? Too little, too late? Settling their own scores? The people on the ground in Syria have no false illusions as to what’s at play with Western attacks in response to reports of the use of chemical weapons.
-OpEd- Tensions are reaching a bursting point over Syria! Just as Saddam Hussein’s (hypothetical) possession of weapons of mass destruction led U.S. President George W. Bush to invade Iraq, the (alleged) use of lethal gases on Douma, a district in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta controlled by Islamists, now allows Donald Trump to announce harsh reprisals. Once […]
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Syria, How Did It Come To This?
-Analysis- PARIS — The Syrian population continues to endure various armed conflicts. Despite all the attention this war gets from international, political and humanitarian organizations, it is now more than seven years since it began — and Syria is suffering from three open wounds. On April 9, at dawn, the Tayfur air base, located between […]
-Analysis- BEIRUT — More than 12 million Syrians have been displaced since 2011 — that is more than half of Syria’s pre-war population. And most want nothing more than to return home. Yet the situation in the country remains too unsafe at the moment. Whole cities have been destroyed, and many areas are cluttered with land mines and unexploded explosives, posing further challenges to the safe, voluntary and sustainable repatriation of refugees to Syria. Yet despite these risks, a small number of refugees do return to Syria each month. While this may seem like a positive development, research by the […]
BEIRUT – Russia’s proposal for a partial truce in the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus is not a “humanitarian pause,” but a “humanitarian posture,” says Dr. Annie Sparrow, a critical-care pediatrician and public health professional. In Syria Deeply’s latest Deeply Talks, Sparrow and Mohamed Katoub, advocacy manager for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), spoke with our editors about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the besieged Damascus suburbs. (Listen to the full audio here) Last week, Moscow called for daily, five-hour cessations of hostilities to allow for aid deliveries and medical evacuations. However, it usually takes a convoy between eight […]
There are times when silence speaks louder than words, and right now — with the new escalation of violence in Syria, where airstrikes in a rebel enclave have killed at least 335 people since the beginning of the week — is one of them. That’s why the United Nations Children’s Fund reacted to the reports […]
Last month, on the same day that President Vladimir Putin declared victory over the so-called Islamic State, the militant group launched a surprise offensive against government forces in Deir ez-Zor province, killing up to 31 pro-government fighters in a three-day span. “In just over two years, Russia’s armed forces and the Syrian army have defeated the most battle-hardened group of international terrorists,” Putin told Russian forces on Dec. 11 during a visit to Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Syria. Just hours later, ISIS began to attack government positions north of the town of Boukamal, a former key stronghold for the […]
The so-called Islamic State has been driven from most of its territory in Syria, but the fate of the thousands of civilians captured by extremists remains largely unknown, writes Chatham House fellow Haid Haid, whose cousin was kidnapped by ISIS.
DAMASCUS — It is across an immense desert, between oil fields and Mesopotamian archeological sites overlooking the Euphrates, where Syria’s future may be decided. The question, as Damascus makes more and more ground against ISIS and jihadists fighters, is the following: After seven years of a devastating war will the nation remain united? Or will […]
HOMS – Akram al-Khoule and his 7-year-old son hold hands as they stare at the once familiar primary school building, now demolished, looted of its contents and stripped of its identifying markers. “This is where my children studied,” al-Khoule says in a melancholy voice. Al-Khoule returned to the Homs district of al-Khalidiye this year, after being displaced to the coastal Syrian city of Tartous for six years. He is one of 600,000 Syrian refugees and internally displaced people who are estimated to have returned to their hometowns this year – many of whom now face a barrage of problems trying […]
The Lebanese ‘Party of Hope’ calls for the immediate expulsion of more than one million Syrian refugees.
Ammar Abd Rabbo covered two Assad presidencies from the inside, but his view changed when the Syrian civil war started.
Teachers and volunteers in a rural Daraa town are braving bullets and airstrikes to rescue books from beneath the wreckage and stock a new public library.
The New Times The past ten days have taken the U.S.-Russia relationship to a new low, as Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin “collided in Syria,” this week’s Russian magazine The New Times reports. After months of accusations that Trump and Putin were in cahoots, tensions between Washington and Moscow are suddenly running high, one […]
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That’s A Long Time In Geopolitics
By now, that famous Harold Wilson quip “A week is a long time in politics’ can also just as well be applied to geopolitics. Last Monday, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was enjoying the diplomatic courtesies and photo ops of a White House meeting with Donald Trump, as the world’s attention was mostly focused on […]