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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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After the OPCW announces that half of Assad’s chemical weapons cache has been removed from the country via the post of Latakia, we check in on the challenges facing the rest – including the potential easing of Russia’s crucial pressure on the Syrian government.
To give you an overview of the latest news this week, we’ve organized the latest Syrian developments in a curated summary.
The head of its Arab States Unit says the organization has reached out to parties on all sides of the conflict.
Analysts say Thursday’s nationwide outage was the largest since May of last year, and one of a handful of major web outages since 2011. We look at who or what might have been responsible, and how Syria’s internet functions three years into the war.
After the Israeli army fires air strikes at Syrian army points over the Golan Heights cease-fire line, fears grow that the country will be pulled further into the three-year-old civil war. From Herzliya, our experts weigh in on that possibility.
The Syrian government is reportedly set to hold a presidential election before July of this year. How will that reshape the conflict, and what message will it send to the opposition and the international community? Our experts weigh in.
Just back from Damascus, Hersh discusses covering the conflict from the government perspective – the “other side” – and whether Assad’s attempt to create a pocket of normalcy in Damascus is paying off.
As prices for basic food items skyrocket across Syria, family breadwinners are seeing their wages cut or dropped entirely. We speak to Syrians who are working to make ends meet, from the countryside to central Damascus.
From Damascus, Abeer Etefa of the World Food Programme details the mechanics of food aid in Syria, from its arrival in the port of Tartous to its storage in one of five WFP centers across the country.
We take a look at the aftermath of government forces’ March 16 declaration of victory in Yabroud, the long-contested village in Qalamoun that functions as a rebel supply line and borders the M5 highway, Assad’s main artery from Damascus to Latakia.
Economic hardship, displacement and trauma caused by life in a conflict zone have taken their toll on Syria’s married couples, with more battling through divorce and fewer new marriages than before the war began.
To give you an overview of the latest news this week, we’ve organized the latest Syrian developments in a curated summary.
With power outages occurring in cities across Syria, some civilians are finding new ways to heat and power their homes, by using the natural resources around them – and even bomb craters. We report from East Ghouta.
After heavy rains hit this camp in Aleppo province, residents scramble to salvage their belongings and shovel away waste from makeshift sewage canals, saying they have been displaced from their homes once again - this time by Mother Nature,
Covering the refugee crisis from Lebanon, Jamjoom discusses rising sectarian tensions in Lebanon and the comparatively bad situation facing refugees there, as he watches children in the Bekaa Valley play in open sewage.
The global humanitarian organization announces that 1.2 million of Syria’s refugees are children, nearly half of them are under the age of five. Another three million are living inside the country as IDPs.
In an Atlantic Council policy brief, Faysal Itani and Caerus Senior Analyst Nathaniel Rosenblatt argue that before it can attempt to moderate negotiations, the U.S. needs to build more leverage with parties on both sides of the Syrian conflict,
Nawwar, who works with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, describes his work with the group in this mountainous region of southern Syria, where rebel fighting groups are fighting hand to hand with Hezbollah-backed government forces.
Mona, a college graduate in a rebel-controlled area of Assad’s homeland, is working to get displaced students back into a classroom. But she’s facing obstacles – namely how to get a makeshift school up to international standards.
A ceasefire agreement was reached on Jan. 6 in this Damascus town. But people are split on whether it’s effective. We speak with an Assad soldier and a civil activist, who share light on each side’s view of the government-negotiated truce.
This is a special week in our coverage of Syria’s crisis. In a grim anniversary, it marks the milestone of three years since the start of Syria’s uprising.
Attareens, traditional Syrian druggists, are becoming popular with Syrian cancer patients for whom modern treatment has run nearly dry. But doctors warn that their natural remedies might not be safe – or effective.
Teachers in Deir Ezzor province have created classrooms out of cellars in an effort to protect their students from aerial shelling. Here, we tell the story of three teachers struggling to continue their students’ education as war closes in.
As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and Abu Mehdi, an activist from the city of Hama.
Once their main source of income, olive growing has become a burden for the crop’s Syrian farmers. In a country famous for its home-grown olives and olive oil, farmers are now forced to shoulder the increasingly exorbitant expenses of producing olives before the crops ever hit the market.
When Um Ahmad talks about her sons, she shows a resigned remorse. “I don’t see them anymore,” she says about Ahmad, who chose to fight on the side of the government, and Mohammed, who became an opposition activist.
Anne Barnard reports on Syria and Lebanon for the New York Times, and has covered stories across the Arab world and Eastern Europe.
DAMASCUS – The Syrian flag isn’t just waving over the neighborhoods of Damascus: now it’s also painted on their storefronts. In the Syrian capital, shopkeepers say that government officials are compelling them to paint the Syrian flag on all shop doors in the city of Damascus.
Abu Khaled, a butcher, sets out every day at dawn to the cattle market before returning to his shop in the Adwi neighborhood of Damascus.
As the world watches and worries about an escalating crisis in Ukraine, Russia’s bold moves to protect its interests there are sparking comparisons with its role in Syria.
On Feb. 26, Syrian state media and activists reported that a Hezbollah-led offense in Ghouta, eastern Damascus, had killed 175 rebel fighters.
Hospitals have become a prime target in Syria’s war, struck by both Syrian government forces and by jihadi rebel fighting groups.
This week, fighting erupted in Syria’s majority-Kurdish northeast between the YPG, the official armed wing of the Kurdish Supreme Committee, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Ever since April 2013 the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has largely controlled the city of Raqqa.
KILIS – Abo Esmael, a 43-year-old originally from Mrrata in Idlib province, was once the owner of a land registry office in Tishreen, the Damascus neighborhood where he lived with his pregnant wife and five daughters.
Amer, a 24-year-old in Moadimiya, has vowed not to leave his hometown. But he says life in this besieged pro-opposition enclave near Damascus is getting harder.
ISTANBUL – In a deserted neighborhood on the outskirts of this city, 40 Syrian families have taken shelter in what once was a refuge for packs of stray dogs. .
CNN’s Arwa Damon has been covering the Syrian conflict since its start. Based in Beirut, she has reported extensively from across the Arab world. But this, she says, is a different story.
This weekend saw a breakthrough in diplomacy and practical action around Syria’s crisis, in the form of a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution on humanitarian aid.
This week, the Syrian National Coalition announced that it had removed the head of its Supreme Military Council and commander of the Free Syrian Army, Gen. Selim Idris, after he reportedly [clashed with members of the opposition in exile.
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