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Welcome to the archives of Syria Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on May 15, 2018, and transitioned some of our coverage to Peacebuilding Deeply, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on the Syrian conflict. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors contributors.
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Features, analysis and in-depth coverage from Syria Deeply’s network of on-the-ground and remote correspondents and individual voices from Syria.
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When barrel bombs fall on opposition-held neighborhoods across Syria, the White Helmets rush in. The selfless work of the Civil Defense volunteer force is well known, but the individuals who risk it all on a daily basis are not. Syria Deeply met with a young volunteer in Aleppo to hear his story.
From the U.S and Russia to Saudi Arabia, it seems like everyone has a stake in Syria’s civil war these days. But as world powers redouble efforts to find a political solution to Syria’s nearly five-year-long civil war, conflicting interests over the fate of Assad threaten to bedevil the entire process.
Marah, a teenage girl from one of Syria’s besieged cities, shares her stories of life in the war. She recently moved to Damascus to continue her education, deciding to focus her college studies on prosthetics, which she hopes to use to help heal the injured in her country’s conflict.
In a live streamed conversation, Syrian journalist Rami Jarrah spoke with The Syria Campaign to talk about daily life in Aleppo, the hardest hit city in Syria’s civil war. Jarrah said that despite the current international focus on ISIS, Russian airstrikes currently pose the greatest threat to Aleppo’s civilians.
Driven from their homes by fighting, often with children to care for and with no husband to provide protection, women bereaved by the civil war have severely limited choices in seeking security – especially when local tradition means that many Syrian men are opposed to marrying widows.
As controversy continues in the United States around the resettlement of Syrian refugees, Syria Deeply asked a former U.S. ambassador to Syria to help us make sense of the U.S.’s stance toward refugees coming from the war-torn country and whether or not increased restrictions serve American interests.
As the war in Syria continues, residents in Damascus say more and more young men are being detained at government checkpoints throughout the capital, in what some fear may be part of a campaign to replenish Bashar al-Assad’s diminished fighting force.
Marah, a teenage girl from one of Syria’s besieged cities, shares her stories of life in the war. She recently moved to Damascus to continue her education, deciding to focus her college studies on prosthetics, which she hopes to use to help heal the injured in her country’s conflict.
As Saudi Arabia’s Syrian opposition talks wrapped up on Thursday, Syria Deeply asked our community of experts – including Hassan Hassan of Chatham House and Ryan Crocker, the former US Ambassador to Syria and Lebanon – how likely it was that the Riyadh group could successfully represent the Syrian opposition in negotiations with the Assad government.
A collaborative project between academics and the general public is conducting surveys within Syria and among the growing refugee population to get a sense of how Aleppians envision postwar reconstruction in the city hardest hit by the five-year civil war.
Despite fleeing far from airstrikes and gunfire, many Syrian refugee children find they can’t get away from the effects of the war. A group of therapists and volunteers in Turkey are working to help traumatized youngsters whose “ability to trust, to daydream and to be creative has been shut down”.
Green rooftops are popping up across Damascus in neighborhoods under government siege. With no sign of the blockade letting up and no available agricultural land, residents in the rebel-held areas of the capital are making use of open roofs, sunlight and seeds to feed their families.
Marah, a teenage girl from one of Syria’s besieged cities, shares her stories of life in the war. She recently moved to Damascus to continue her education, deciding to focus her college studies on prosthetics, which she hopes to use to help heal the injured in her country’s conflict.
According to a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Southern Front, this week’s Saudi-held opposition conference is a “positive step” toward unifying the fractured elements of Syria’s opposition so that they can work together to remove Bashar al-Assad from power.
In a video recently published by The Syria Campaign, a French journalist held prisoner by ISIS for 10 months said that ongoing international efforts to destroy the Islamic State by bombing the militants into oblivion will only work to push more people into the extremist group’s hands.
A state-building manual used by Islamic State administrators confirms the complexity and breadth of the group’s efforts to create a functioning state, albeit one ruled by terror. In life under Islamic State, however, many civilian services seem to be suffering.
Up until this month’s double suicide bombing in Beirut, there had been a relative lull in spillover violence from Syria’s civil war across the border. But as ISIS steadily supplants Islamist extremist groups in Lebanon with strong ties to rebel factions fighting in Syria, the lull in bloodshed might not return soon.
While the West focuses on the fate of Assad and the defeat of ISIS, radical Islamist ideologies are gaining ground throughout the Syrian opposition. Syria Deeply spoke with Hassan Hassan about the country’s increasingly entrenched jihadist presence and its consequences for political transition.
What do we know of the 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters David Cameron said “do not belong to extremist groups” and are able to work in coordination with the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS? Does the figure include Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) or Ahrar al-Sham? Analysts investigate.
Turkmen have been involved in Syria’s civil war since the beginning of the uprising, but the group has only recently come to prominence due to Russia’s military intervention. Aligned with Turkey against Assad and Russia, and too moderate to join with ISIS, the minority militia is getting hit from all sides.
Marah, a teenage girl from one of Syria’s besieged cities, shares her stories of life in the war. She recently moved to Damascus to continue her education, deciding to focus her college studies on prosthetics, which she hopes to use to help heal the injured in her country’s conflict.
Northeastern Syria’s autonomous Kurdish leadership has informed schools in the area they must teach core subjects in Kurdish. But while many of the area’s residents are proud to embrace their ethnic heritage, some worry about whether the change is sustainable in such a chaotic political environment.
ISIS has banned the use of newly pressed 500 and 1,000 Syrian pound notes, and while some residents fear this could be the beginning of a currency switch throughout the jihadist-controlled territory, others told Syria Deeply it’s a ploy by the upper echelon of ISIS to make a quick buck.
Marah, a teenage girl from one of Syria’s besieged cities, shares her stories of life in the war. She recently moved to Damascus to continue her education, deciding to focus her college studies on prosthetics, which she hopes to use to help heal the injured in her country’s conflict.
While debate over deploying large numbers of U.S. troops to Syria and Iraq is certain to intensify after the attacks in Paris, the ‘quagmires’ of Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to deter a large-scale U.S.-led ground war against Islamic State militants on Obama’s watch.
ISIS controls most of Syria’s oil fields and crude is the militant group’s biggest single source of revenue. Here we follow the progress of a barrel of oil from extraction to end user to see how the ISIS production system works, who is making money from it, and why it is proving so challenging to disrupt.
More than 100,000 Syrians have left their homes in Aleppo Province over the last month, but they haven’t joined the masses heading to Europe. Most have found shelter in tents and unfinished buildings nearby, but as the nights grow colder and international aid organizations struggle to meet the displaced’s needs, they’re trying to organize themselves.
While both Syrian and Russian state media may have us believe their recent push to recapture government territory lost to rebels over the past year is succeeding, analyst Aymenn al-Tamimi says the situation on the ground in Syria might not be as promising as Assad and his backers hoped.
Marah, a teenage girl from one of Syria’s besieged cities, shares her stories of life in the war. She recently moved to Damascus to continue her education, deciding to focus her college studies on prosthetics, which she hopes to use to help heal the injured in her country’s conflict.
Less than one-third of the 700,000 Syrian school-aged children who have entered Turkey over the last four years are attending school, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch over the weekend. Most students are barred from studying due to language barriers and economic hardships.
As water cuts in Aleppo reach an all-time high, the Red Cross and its local partner organizations are asking for help in publicizing a GPS-enabled map that gives users the ability to pinpoint themselves in relation to a network of restored water wells throughout the city.
Working as a policeman before the uprising, Abu Luay quickly defected as the government’s crackdown on peaceful protestors grew steadily more violent. After fighting with various opposition groups for nearly a year, he put down his weapons to create a DIY-electricity project in his besieged hometown.
Marah, a teenage girl from one of Syria’s besieged cities, shares her stories of life in the war. She recently moved to Damascus to continue her education, deciding to focus her college studies on prosthetics, which she hopes to use to help heal the injured in her country’s conflict.
Amnesty International has accused the Syrian government of reaping major profits from a widespread and systematic practice of enforced disappearances, vanishing tens of thousands of people over the past four years and extorting their relatives for information about their fate.
The strongest armed group in Douma paraded caged detainees, including Syrian army officers and women and children, for several hours on Sunday throughout the besieged city, in attempt to deter future government air strikes. Syria Deeply spoke with a handful of the city’s residents to get their take.
From war-torn homes to near permanent refugee status, Syrian children in Lebanon are living in a situation of never-ending insecurity, award-winning film-maker Mani Benchelah tells Syria Deeply. His film provides an intimate view into the lives of a generation whose world has been turned upside down.
Syria Deeply reached out to some of our foremost experts on Syria and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East to get their take on the U.S. decision to send a group of special forces troops into the war-torn country. Is it too little too late? Should we be worried about mission creep?
Zaina Erhaim has taken the road less traveled. In London pursuing her M.A. when the revolution in Syria began, she chose to go against the stream of refugees fleeing the violence and return to use her skills as a journalist to help her country and her people.
President Barack Obama authorizes the first sustained deployment of U.S. Special Forces in Syria to help out “local ground forces” in their fight against the Islamic State. The announcement came as key backers of Syria’s rival sides met in Vienna to find a political solution to the conflict.
Amid a renewed diplomatic push in Vienna that includes the United States, Iran, and European and Middle East powers, deep divisions remain over Syrian President Assad’s future.
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