WorldcrunchA photograph of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, covered in dust and blood after an Aug. 17 airstrike in the Syrian city of Aleppo wrenched our hearts, and reminded us that the country’s civil war is not just some geopolitical football. Omran was lucky to survive. Tens of thousands of other children have not, including Omran’s own […]
This summer, I was arrested in Turkey. It was the wrong time, and I was in the wrong place — visiting the predominantly Kurdish eastern regions of the country. For the first four days I was held in a cell in a police station, before being transferred to a deportation center. I had come as an activist, trying to document the Turkish military’s actions on the eastern part of the country, where a veritable war has been waged on the Kurdish population. My own story of the events leading to the detainment is, however, for another day. Now, I want […]
The humanitarian drama of the besieged city deepens. The people are simply not able to trust the alliance between Assad, Russia and Iran. And the West just looks on.
While many of us are immersed in the Olympic drama in Rio or enjoying a summer vacation escape, a photograph from Aleppo has brought a jarring reminder of the horrific war still raging in Syria. The image shows a dazed five-year-old boy, covered in dust and with an open head wound, sitting in an ambulance […]
Spread between Syria and Iraq, the Saudi-financed tribal army engages the Islamic State head-on.
Women in the government-controlled province of Latakia must decide between love and danger if they are to marry men from opposition-held areas in Syria.
Die Tageszeitung, July 25 The Monday edition of Berlin-based daily Die Tageszeitung shows how, in the span of just a few days, Germans are suddenly faced with terrorism and attempted mass killings. With a photograph of survivors exiting from Friday’s deadly attack in a Munich shopping center, the newspaper asks how to react to any […]
Aleppo’s al-Madina souk, the world’s largest covered historic market, was a highlight on our visit to what was then a bustling, cosmopolitan and altogether very pleasant city. It has been sad to watch from afar as so much of it has been devastated during the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
PARIS — Arnaud Danjean, member of the European Parliament for the French opposition party Les Républicains, spoke to Les Échos about the aftermath of the Nice attack and France’s ongoing fight against terrorism. Les Échos: Every attack evokes a feeling of powerlessness, especially in the wake of one as “low-cost” as the one in Nice, […]
Hanging bunches of dates, a parked motorcycle, leisurely locals: This was part of what I saw in Palmyra, beyond its famous ruins, during a visit to Syria long before the civil war sadly changed the beautiful scenery.
Regular shelling from all sides has made it too dangerous for students to go to school in the Syrian city of Aleppo, so a group of volunteer teachers decided to open their own.
-Analysis- The “caliphate” of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will not last. His self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), announced two years ago, is on the defensive. It will vanish as quickly as the morning mist on the Euphrates River. But what about jihadism, Islamist terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Syria — all factors that feed this Middle […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Little is known about the financing of terror. Where does it come from? What part did it play in the Paris shootings and Brussels bombings? Are we able to fight it effectively? We are, on all counts, poorly equipped to deal with this challenge. In France and our neighboring countries, there is […]
PARIS — Should Palmyra be rebuilt? And under what conditions? No sooner had Syrian forces and the Russian Army freed the “pearl of the desert,” a spectacular Greco-Roman city with traces of Eastern influence, from the yoke of the Islamic State (ISIS), then the debate over how to restore it to its former glory was […]
Forced conscription for what many describe as “someone else’s war,” has led to widespread exodus and shuttered up draft-dodging for much of Syria’s adult male population.
In Syria and its neighboring countries, an underground network of organ traders has sprung up, preying on the thousands affected by the five-year-long war by offering them desperately needed cash for nonessential organs.
How a former fighter lost both his brothers: one to Bashar Al-Assad’s forces and the other to the Islamic State
Violence, poverty and displacement have affected millions of Syrian children. In the besieged Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, many are foregoing their education and turning to selling wares in the streets to help support their families.
Whether it’s about Syrian refugees, Syria or Iraq, the truth is sometimes better left unsaid. It all depends on the country in which it is said. One thing is certain: In these troubled times, censorship and self-censorship are thriving.
SABRATHA — It’s just past 10 p.m., and Omar, Mohammed and Isa are driving on the Mediterranean coast highway that links the Libyan capital of Tripoli with the Tunisian border. In the distance, flares of burning natural gas emanating from the Mellitah oil terminal light up the pitch black night. The three men, all in […]
SAO PAULO — João left Brazil to study abroad and expand his horizons thanks to the national program Science Without Borders. He intended to return home afterwards, but something unexpected changed the script: While he was studying in Europe, his dreams, his ambitions and his beliefs changed as Islamic militants tried to recruit him for […]
Following the plan by the EU and Turkey to turn back refugees, many are looking for alternative ways to reach Europe. A new path to the continent starts on the other side of the Atlantic — in South America — and continues through far-flung French terr
Ahmad Derwish, an ISIS soldier imprisoned in Syria, offers a rare glimpse into the realities on the ground for the jihadist organization.
After gains by regime troops, with Russian air support, calm and nightlife have returned to the capital. And locals are back to betting on Assad’s survival.
Joachim Gerhard’s two sons joined the terror group ISIS, severed ties with home and may very well be dead. None of that will stop this German father’s quest to bring his boys home.
The dangerous sea and land crossings that Syrian refugees are making to Europe have been well-documented. Less well known are the equally perilous journeys people take to leave Syria itself.
Even as ISIS loses ground in Syria and Iraq, its jihadists are bringing the war to Europe’s capitals in minutely planned terror attacks. It is a scenario driven by a new kind of criminal profile.
HOSTAGES HELD ON HIJACKED PLANE IN CYPRUS A Cairo-bound commercial jet that was re-routed to Cyprus this morning was hijacked over what appears to be a personal matter involving a woman, The Guardian reports. The hijacker is reportedly still holding seven hostages in the plane that landed at the Cypriot city of Larnaca 7:50 a.m. […]
Syria Deeply looks back at some of the history and evolution of the country’s revolutionary art over the past five years of war, including political graffiti, digital art and other mediums that have become part of the uprising’s language and culture.
Moscow is quietly working toward a federal future for war-torn Syria, with a central government but the nation divided into three different ethnic zones. It’s a nod to Kurdish ambitions and lessons from the Balkans.
The internationally brokered ceasefire had a rocky start. While the first 24 hours passed relatively quietly, Russian and Syrian government air strikes picked up again on Sunday, with airplanes targeting towns and villages controlled by the Free Syrian Ar
When we drove from France to Syria in 1972, Hafez al-Assad — Bashar’s father, who ran the country until 2000 — had been in power for two years. You can see his portrait hanging behind this old pots and pans seller in one of the Old City of Aleppo’s covered souks. I imagine all of […]
Many locals in Lebanon’s capital are firm Hezbollah and Assad loyalists, seeing the Islamist militia that supports the Syrian regime and fights ISIS on the ground as their ultimate protector against the civil war raging across the border.
-Analysis- PARIS — Could the trap of the Syrian crisis break up NATO? This question, which carries potentially grave implications for the security of the West, might sound overblown. After all, NATO’s unfailing cohesion eventually brought down one of the most formidable war machines of all time, the Soviet Union. Still, the spreading corrosive capacities […]
In the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, tourists can no longer take photographs or roam under the 3rd-century Arch of Triumph. The terrorists of the Islamic State blew it up in October last year using dynamite.
The siege of Madaya began in July, but global pressure on the Syrian government to allow humanitarian access didn’t begin to build until nearly 30 people had died of starvation. Why did it take so long?
GENEVA — War is reshaping Syria, causing massive displacements of populations that, even more than the rising casualty numbers, have shifted the roles played by the country’s principal ethnic and religious communities. Some groups have emerged strengthened, others weakened, now and perhaps forever. These demographic gains and losses will carry more weight in the long […]