Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad. How drought, foreign meddling, and long-festering religious tensions created the tragically splintered Syria we know today. William R. Polk first wrote for The Atlantic during the Eisenhower administration, with a report in 1958 about tensions in Iraq. Soon after that, he was recruited from a teaching position at Harvard to work on the State Department’s Policy Planning staff in the Kennedy administration. In the years since, he has written and taught extensively about international affairs, especially in the Middle East.
Earlier this year, Polk wrote a series of very widely read dispatches for our site about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Syria. Now he offers an updated report on the grim prospects in Syria. Geographical Syria Syria is a small, poor, and crowded country. Except for a narrow belt along the Mediterranean, the whole country is subject to extreme temperatures that cause frequent dust storms and periodic droughts. The Syrian Heritage French Syria Syrian Independence. Regions/Syria. Home - Syria in Crisis.
On October 2, the Turkish parliament voted to authorize Turkey’s government to order a military intervention in Syria and Iraq, if and when that becomes necessary to protect the nation. Until now, Turkey has stayed out of the U.S. -led international coalition bombing extremists from the so-called Islamic State, an al-Qaeda splinter group also known as ISIS or ISIL, in neighboring Iraq and Syria. Furthermore, it refuses to intervene in support of Kurdish militants in the Kobane enclave in northern Syria, even as their defenses are overrun by Islamic State forces and refugees pour across the Turkish border. This has to do with the fact that the Kurdish fighters in Kobane are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, Turkey’s primary adversary, which is even now involved in violence against the army.
But the Turkish decision is far less dramatic than it seems. Iraq Since 2007, Syria Since 2012 However, no intervention ever came. New Resolution, New Targets. Syria in Crisis. Is Turkey Going to War? While Turkey is likely to lend assistance to the U.S. -led campaign against the Islamic State, the recent parliamentary vote won’t trigger any military action by itself. For Turkey, the top priority is not to join the campaign but to leverage it for other purposes. What Is the “Khorasan Group” and Why Is the U.S. The Syrian Army Closes in on Homs The rebel stronghold in the Old City of Homs, which has withstood nearly two years of government siege and shelling, is close to falling. Interview with Former UN Peace Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi. Syria's News Smugglers: They go where professional journalists won't.
On the Ground With Syria's News Smugglers They go where professional journalists won't From Antakya, the seat of the Turkish province of Hatay, it is a 40-minute drive to the town of Reyhanli, the last ten minutes of which follow the jagged line of the Syrian border. The border is protected by high watchtowers and barbed wire, but the towers are frequently unmanned, and making your way east on Route D420, you can see Syrian refugees—men, children, and women with babies strapped to their chests—slipping easily between the gaps in the fence.
Reyhanli was, until recently, a sleepy backwater. Even the natives complained of feeling bored there. The area is shaped like a sunburst—a tightly-coiled town square and a series of progressively diffuse lines wandering out into the patchwork farmland. But as the Syrian civil war approaches its third bloody year and the refugee count soars, Reyhanli has been transformed. Photographs by Bradley Secker Wassim, a journalist with the Syrian Media Center. Dispatches: Syria – The Dark Stories Children Tell. Nearly three years ago, when I first traveled to Syria to interview children about the worsening events in their country, they all had a story to tell. Those stories were awful—16-year-olds detained and tortured in dark government cells , and boys who sustained serious bullet wounds in anti-government protests. But these days, children with just one story are the lucky ones.
Yesterday, the United Nations secretary-general released his first report focused solely on the children affected by the armed conflict in Syria. It outlines some of the major abuses children have faced in the Syrian conflict: being recruited by armed groups; being killed and maimed due to the unlawful use of weapons by government forces like chemical weapons, cluster bombs, ballistic missiles, air strikes, and incendiary weapons; being victims of sexual violence; having their schools and hospitals attacked and occupied by armed men and starved and made ill by the denial of humanitarian access. The Future of Syria | Refugee Children in Crisis. Syria: Executions, Hostage Taking by Rebels. *Update: In response to Human Rights Watch’s report "You Can Still See Their Blood", the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces sent this letter on October 11.
The Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army sent this letter on the same day. On October 14 Ahrar Al Sham sent this response. * (New York) – Armed opposition groups in Syria killed at least 190 civilians and seized over 200 as hostages during a military offensive that began in rural Latakia governorate on August 4, 2013, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 105-page report, “‘You Can Still See Their Blood’: Executions, Indiscriminate Shootings, and Hostage Taking by Opposition Forces in Latakia Countryside,” presents evidence that the civilians were killed on August 4, the first day of the operation. “These abuses were not the actions of rogue fighters,” said Joe Stork, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. My mom was here in the house with me. Syria Comment - Syrian politics, history, and religion.
Syria Video - a powerful web service that maps Syrian war video by town and province - Syria Comment. Syria Video – a powerful web service that maps Syrian war video by town and province Posted by Joshua on Sunday, March 31st, 2013 Syria Video Syria Comment Announces a new web service: Syria Video, which can be found at Syria Video is a web application that maps and aggregates Syrian war videos by tracking a large number of YouTube channels. The channels have been identified as reliable and tied to specific towns or regions of Syria. Syria Video collects all new videos released on these channels and attempts to identify their location in Syria and then displays them in chronological order. Syria Video is our first attempt to bring order to the online Syrian war-sphere and has the potential to provide valuable insight to the conflict. The Syrian government has tried to exploit the fog of war to gain advantage over its opponents by barring foreign journalists, restricting what Syrian journalists can report, and attacking its own citizen journalists.
Watching Syria's War. Syria. Syrian Blood Tests Positive for Sarin Gas, U.S. Spies Say | Danger Room. A U.S. Army chemical weapons crew takes samples from an M55 rocket. Photo: U.S. Army Updated 4/26/13 4:58 p.m. The U.S. intelligence community has uncovered strong evidence that chemical weapons have been used in Syria. In March, the Assad regime was accused of using chemical weapons during an attack on the city of Aleppo. “This is more than one organization representing that they have more than one sample from more than one attack,” the source tells Danger Room. What’s clear is that the samples are authentic, and that the weapons were almost certainly employed by the Assad regime, which began mixing up quantities of sarin’s chemical precursors months ago for an potential attack, as Danger Room first reported.
“It would be very, very difficult for the opposition to fake this. The U.S. military initially tests for evidence of nerve gas exposure by looking for the presence of the enzyme cholinesterase in red blood cells and in plasma. When sarin binds to cholinesterase it loses a fluoride. New Al-Qaeda Generation May Be The Deadliest One.
Veteran jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar speaks in this undated still image taken from a video released by Sahara Media on Jan. 21, 2013. Belmokhtar has claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaeda for the Algerian hostage-taking. (photo by REUTERS/Sahara Media via Reuters TV) Author: Bruce Riedel Posted January 24, 2013 The dramatic attack in Algeria this month on a natural gas facility underscores the emergence of a new generation of al-Qaeda across the Arab world, "al-Qaeda 3.0" or the movement's third generation. Summary⎙ Print Al-Qaeda has exploited the chaos and turmoil of revolutionary change in the Arab world to create operational bases and new strongholds, writes Bruce Riedel.
Despite Osama of bin Laden's death, al-Qaeda has exploited the Arab Awakening to create is largest safe havens and operational bases in more than a decade across the Arab world. The first generation of al-Qaeda was the original band in Afghanistan created by bin Laden in the 1990s. أطفال الزبداني و شجرة الميلاد 25\12 YouTube - S.N.N - Message from a Baniyas protester to the international media in English 4-26. Ali Ferzat self-portrait today. That's the spirit! Pleas. Syria: Razan Ghazzawi Charged, Bloggers Continue Campaign. FREEBASSEL - HOME. #FastforBassel Campaign Launched for Syrian Netizen Facing Military Trial. This post is part of our special coverage Syria Protests 2011/12.
Bassel Khartabil, also known as Bassel Safadi, is on military trial in Syria, where he is denied a lawyer. The open source software engineer and Creative Commons volunteer has been in jail since March. Supporters around the world have just launched a #FastforBassel campaign on Twitter to raise awareness about his case. Spearheaded by Mauritanian activist Naser Weddady, the campaign is likely to gain a lot of momentum, as more people sign up to fast for a day to draw attention to Safadi's grave situation and press for his release. On Twitter, Weddady first announced he would fast for Safadi in a tweet: @weddady: I will be fasting on December 19th in solidarity with Bassel Safadi. Bassel Khartabil (Safadi). Soon, Lebanese blogger Mohamad Najem said he would fast too.
@weddady: . Next a Doodle was up for those interested in fasting in support of Bassel to sign. Najem writes: For more information, please check out freebassel.org. Exiled cyber-activist refuses to be silenced - SYRIA. Interactive: Tracking Syria's defections - Syria Defections. Syria: Scores Killed in Bakery Attacks (***VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED) Cluster Bombs Dropped in Syria. Raw: Syrian Forces Shell Border Town. The ultimate assault: Charting Syria’s use of rape to terrorize its people. By Lauren Wolfe/Director — July 11, 2012 Zaynab, 16, comes from the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs, Syria. An honor student, Zaynab stopped attending classes after soldiers kidnapped, raped, and killed some of her schoolmates in January, she told the photographer.
She’s currently in Lebanon. (Matilde Gattoni) A woman swathed in black squares her shoulders and calmly looks into a camera. “This is my message to the world,” she says. The still-unidentified woman posted the video to YouTube on February 11, 2012. To step back from the red dots on our map and try to understand the sexualized violence of Syria’s war, our team of doctors, activists, and journalists has taken the 81 stories we’ve gathered so far, from the onset of the conflict in March 2011 through June 2012, and broken them down into 117 separate pieces of data on everything from rape to the consequences of sexualized violence, such as depression, HIV, and pregnancy.
Jackie Blachman-Forshay contributed research. Combining Crowdsourced Satellite Imagery Analysis with Crisis Reporting: An Update on Syria. Members of the the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) Satellite Team are currently tagging the location of hundreds of Syrian tanks and other heavy mili-tary equipment on the Tomnod micro-tasking platform using very recent high-resolution satellite imagery provided by Digital Globe. We’re focusing our efforts on the following three key cities in Syria as per the request of Amnesty International USA’s (AI-USA) Science for Human Rights Program.
For more background information on the project, please see the following links: To recap, the purpose of this experimental pilot project is to determine whether satellite imagery analysis can be crowdsourced and triangulated to provide data that might help AI-USA corroborate numerous reports of human rights abuses they have been collecting from a multitude of other sources over the past few months.
The point is to use the satellite tagging in combination with other data, not in isolation. Like this: Like Loading... Save Syria's Disappeared. Petition To Uncover Fate Of Tal Al Mallohi. Name not displayed, Sweden Aug 14, 14:39 Mrs. rita vekemans, Belgium Aug 09, 14:40 the days of human abuse are over! Send a green star Sonja Jo, Syrian Arab Republic Jul 29, 19:32 Free Tal Immediately and Unconditionally, please! Send a green star Name not displayed, Syrian Arab Republic Jul 28, 17:10 you have to release her Name not displayed, HI Jul 28, 14:56 Name not displayed, CA Jul 28, 09:54 Mr.
Jul 28, 08:20 Freedom for our daughter Tal al Mallohi send a green star Mr. Jul 27, 09:14 send a green star Name not displayed, QC Jul 25, 15:34 Jul 24, 13:46 Mr. mohamed altayeb, Kuwait Jul 24, 13:39 please help us to take our freedom send a green star Name not displayed, Portugal Jul 22, 00:45 Name not displayed, Iran, Islamic Republic Of Jul 21, 14:24 Name not displayed, NY Jul 21, 08:09 Mr. Jul 20, 16:38 Tal your freedom is that of a whole people. send a green star Name not displayed, FL Jul 20, 15:27 Name not displayed, United Kingdom Jul 20, 07:57 Jul 18, 03:33 Mr. mazen alaly, Kuwait Jul 16, 23:55 send a green star Ms.
Mrs. Telecomix : Syria - - News From The Ground - Syrian Internet Is Off The Air. Syria – Traffic Graph – Google Transparency Report. People have been unable to access certain Google products and services at some point in more than 30 countries. Causes for these disruptions vary, and include network outages and government-mandated blocks. Review current disruptions below or browse all documented disruptions. This list is not comprehensive. Learn more. YouTube June 13, 2014–Present Duration: 90 days Google Sites inaccessible. YouTube March 23, 2009–Present Duration: 1998 days Google Sites partially accessible YouTube June 13, 2009–Present Duration: 1916 days YouTube September 17, 2012–Present Duration: 724 days ACCESS to the Website named be BANNED pursuant to Article 8 of the Law no 5651. International hacktivists help Syrian citizens circumvent Internet censorship | Environment & Development | Deutsche Welle | 18.08.2011 | Rights & Liberties.
Syria's torture machine | World news. Between bursts of machine-gun fire and the crump of explosions – unmuffled in crisp mountain air – the starry sky above the Syrian frontier offers ethereal distraction. It's 3am and the town of Tal Kalakh, less than two miles to the north – just inside the Syrian Arab Republic – is under sustained attack, its residents reportedly refusing to hand over a small band of defectors who have holed up there, trying to bolt for Lebanon to join the insurgents. All around are mountains among which ancient armies have battled for millennia. And below, in besieged Tal Kalakh, a western outpost in the restive governorate of Homs, the Syrian army is once again hard at work, killing its own people.
Tal Kalakh has felt the full force of violent repression many times since the Syrian revolt erupted back in March. One day, Tal Kalakh will doubtless appear on the revolutionary roll of honour. For now, this town of 80,000 people doesn't even merit a mention in my guidebook. Syria's Torture Machine. Al Jazeera reports on torture inside Homs. Syria 'tortures activists to access their Facebook pages' SYRIA: Young boy's fury spells trouble for Bashar Assad's regime | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times. Syria: Homs military attacks continue say activists. Carnage in Homs district as tanks open fire: video. داني عبد الدايم على CNN - مجزرة الخالدية في حمص 2. Syria: Crimes Against Humanity in Homs. Blue Coat Acknowledges Syria Used Its Gear for Internet Censorship Amid Arab Spring. Syria Crackdown Gets Italy Firm’s Aid With U.S.-Europe Spy Gear. Obama Demands Reforms in Syria During UK Visit | Middle East. More than 5,000 killed in Syria, report says.
The Delegation to Nowhere! 'Deadliest day' in Syria uprising - Middle East. Syrian Troops Open Fire on Protesters in Several Cities. Syria: Government Crackdown Leads to Protester Deaths. Massacres Galore, but who’s watching? And does anyone give a damn? Reports: Syrian security forces shelling Homs - Middle East. Syria: Violence in the dark - Features - Al Jazeera English | Rights & Liberties. The Dark Closet - By Daniel Nassar. Syrian army units 'clash over crackdown' - Middle East. Mutiny in the Syrian army? Syrian soldiers shot for refusing to fire on protesters | World news. Seeing Syria through the sniper's sights - Features. Egypt backsSyria regime, receives sharp criticism.