Worldcrunch
BENGHAZI — They call it the “Café of the Displaced,” and it’s always full. “It’s because my customers followed me here,” says Ahmed, a smile on his face as he pours a clever blend of coffee, cream, cocoa powder and sugar. Everybody’s known Ahmed for years. And they know his story, which is also the […]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/Me_6ixAVhOQ expand=1] OneShot — Mother’s comfort, 2004 (©Andrea Bruce/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
-Analysis- PARIS — With his new sweeping round of protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum, it looks like Donald Trump has decided to extend to the economic field the “madman strategy” he had already applied to the Korean Peninsula. That was the take last week from former CIA Director David Petraeus. Developed by the Nixon-Kissinger […]
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 […]
Basic health care services are hard to come by.
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 […]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/MMZ-KML_DwA expand=1] OneShot — War amputees soccer players, 2002 (©Pep Bonet/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video.
KRASNOHORIVKA — The sound of canon fire has become more distant of late in Krasnohorivka. But the war continues to haunt Lioudmila Sidonnka. The young mother’s stories are those of soldiers running in all directions, of smoking tanks, never-ending detonations, nights spent in her building’s basement, houses on fire. Little wonder that so many residents […]
The sale and trade of women in Syria is not a wanton and senseless consequence of war. It is a consequence of a war economy in which nearly all warring parties and even civilians use women to secure profit, weapons, access or leverage in negotiations.
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 […]
SIRTE — If it were theater, it would be bad theater. Too incongruous, too unreal. The stage — buildings in ruins all along the boulevard — just doesn’t fit the happiness on the people’s faces. Some are busy decorating their cars with ribbons for a wedding. Others are drinking coffee or shopping. The cars are […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — After more than half-a-century of fighting, Colombia’s FARC guerillas have surrendered their weapons and officially transformed themselves into a formal political party. But still, the U.S. government apparently isn’t satisfied. “The FARC hasn’t followed through on the issue of drugs,” the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker, said matter-of-factly in a recent […]
The success of the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany in this week’s parliamentary elections has prompted comparisons to the rise of Nazism. There are in fact similarities, but also key differences. An overview.
Ammar Abd Rabbo covered two Assad presidencies from the inside, but his view changed when the Syrian civil war started.
-Analysis- Is there ever a good time to hold an independence referendum? Of course the answer to that question, from Kurdistan to Catalonia, depends on whom you ask. For those looking to declare a new nation based on ethnic, economic or political claims, there’s no time like the present to take destiny into your own […]
With each passing day, war with North Korea seems to draw closer. Kim Jong Un continues to test his arsenal; Donald Trump issues new threats and nicknames his nemesis “Rocket Man“; Kim responds in kind, saying the U.S. president’s speech yesterday at the United Nations was “the sound of a dog barking.” Some say the […]
AQAP, the local al-Qaeda branch, is determined to learn from its mistakes. They’ve learned that they can’t go too quickly and spill too much local blood.
PARIS — European nations are bracing themselves for the return of their citizens who had left to fight the wars in Syria and Iraq. “The EU member states most affected expect a slow but gradual rise of returnees,” noted a recent Radicalization Awareness Network (RAN) report submitted to the European Commissioner for Security, Julian King. […]
-Analysis- WASHINGTON, D.C. — A military confrontation with North Korea may now be “inevitable,” says Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) The United States is “done talking” about North Korea, tweets U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. President Trump threatens “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” then says maybe his language “wasn’t tough enough.” The North Koreans return verbal fire, talking of using “absolute force” to hit the U.S. territory of Guam and even “turn the U.S. mainland into the theater of a nuclear war.” In this moment of heated, belligerent rhetoric, planners in and out of government are diving […]
Kurdish-led forces advance with hopes to recapture the ISIS capital. Together with Arab and foreign fighters, they share a common enemy. But what happens when ISIS is gone?
-Analysis- To win back Mosul, the Iraqi armed forces paid with their blood. But the difficult victory — obtained with the help of the international coalition — also marks a rebirth. Against all odds, the Iraqi army, federal police and anti-terror units have all been successfully rebuilt. Back in 2014, the Iraqi troops had fallen […]
-Essay- Does anyone even read Henry David Thoreau anymore? Today, July 12, marks the 200th anniversary of the American poet and philosopher’s birth. And much is being said and written about him — not all of it flattering. His work is “anecdotal,” some say. Or “irrelevant,” “juvenile” even. To answer the initial question, I do. […]
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.
-Analysis- The recapture of Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces, with the support of the international coalition led by the United States, is a real achievement. ISIS has seen its biggest military conquest reversed, and its dream of an Islamic caliphate destroyed. But none of this means that the biggest terror organization the world has […]
Though brother fights brother on opposite sides of the war in eastern Ukraine, some people manage to bridge the gap that divides them.
Sadly, the wall-sized master work says as much about the world’s current horrors as it did about the first-ever air raid on civilians 80 years ago.
-Analysis- “This bull is a bull and this horse is a horse,” Spanish-born painter Pablo Picasso once said of his iconic 1937 painting Guernica. Eighty years later, the horrifying depiction of the Spanish Civil War bombing of a Basque town — history’s first attack from the air on a civilian population — stands as one […]
-OpEd- When U.S. President Donald Trump recounted last week’s bombing of Syria to a Fox News journalist, the first direct U.S. assault on the regime of the war-torn country, he shared an anecdote — in vivid detail — about eating chocolate cake with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-A-Lago estate. Trump: “I was sitting […]
The deadly Palm Sunday attacks in Egypt are just the latest example of a steady effort to remove Christianity from the Middle East. It is long past time to take action.
-Essay- VALENCIA — As a British national living in Spain, it is strange to (still) be an EU citizen and yet start to feel unwelcome in this “European home.” All this thanks to Brexit, that nasty little gnome doggedly making its way through the disbelief of millions. Born in Iran and with nearly 40 years […]
BAGHDAD — A continuous flow of cars, scooters, and three-wheeled vehicles pour onto the avenues of Sadr City, Baghdad’s massive Shia district, where roundabouts honor the memories of martyrs killed at the front-lines. Ahmed Houcham el-Alabiad, 29, rides his bike on the wrong side of the road until he reaches home, a shack located in […]
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish’s three daughters were killed by an Israeli air strike in 2009. For the past seven years, the Palestinian doctor just wants an apology from Israeli officials.
MOSUL — Leila Khaled hadn’t felt well that morning. It was the end of August, when the Iraqi summer sun had hit the walls and windows hard, like the wind in the middle of a powerful storm. Mosul was still in the clutches of ISIS. The war was still far away; it was being raged […]
As the bombs continue to drop on parts of Syria, doctors struggle to give basic medical care to women, which then has ramifications for children.
MOSUL — Ziyad loaded his wife and three children in the big German sedan that used to serve as his taxi between Baghdad and Mosul. That was in June 2014. The jihadists had just captured Iraq’s second-largest city and Ziyad, built like a late-career wrestler, with a big smile and spoiled teeth, was fleeing towards […]
-Analysis- NEW YORK — Investors are ignoring Donald Trump’s trade rhetoric at their own peril. That’s the warning coming from a rising cohort of erstwhile Trump bulls who’ve gone weak in the knees as the president turns his sights on allies from Mexico to Japan and Australia. It isn’t enough, they say, that the post-election rally that added more than $3.5 trillion to global equities and sent high-yield debt to the best start to a year since 2012 has stalled. According to them, the administration’s pledges to protect U.S. industry and redefine currency relationships could ignite a trade war with […]
The arrival of Russia-friendly Donald Trump in the White House has heightened concerns that Moscow is ready for its next move after Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
Well that was quite a first weekend. After Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday, an estimated two million people took to the streets worldwide to protest against the controversial new president, who continued his open warfare with the American press — and some would say, with the truth itself. Now, he faces a first work week […]
‘We wondered how we should react until they told us they’d been wounded by the regime forces and had nowhere else to go …’
This is part of a Syria Deeply series “Bags and Belongings,” in which we ask refugees what they packed in their bags and what they left behind. Here we meet Mustafa Awad, a Syrian badminton coach from the northwestern city of Idlib who recently arrived in Athens with his wife and three children. Read the first installment here. ATHENS — We come from Idlib, a city that was once so beautiful it was nicknamed the Green, but is now known as Red Idlib from the amount of blood spilled over it. We love peace and quiet, but the war forced […]