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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.
We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].
Features, analysis and in-depth coverage from Syria Deeply’s network of on-the-ground and remote correspondents and individual voices from Syria.
Follow via RSSDr. Annie Sparrow is a critical care pediatrician and an assistant professor in global health at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Her interest in refugees, human rights and public health has taken her to Afghanistan, Somalia, Darfur and beyond.
HAMA – A wedding was once a magical day most Syrian girls dream of, but in wartime, many young women are settling for a ceremony that is a far cry from their imagined night, if they are able to wed at all.
This week saw Hezbollah doubling down in Syria, with leader Hasan Nasrallah pledging to keep up the fight to secure the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. It’s apparently serving him well, giving regime forces a boost in a bid to take back rebel-held parts of Damascus and Aleppo.
HOMS — A third winter is coming to besieged neighborhoods of Homs, which already suffer from daily bombardments and malnutrition.
DEIR EZZOR— On a pitch-black night, we wait in our taxi on the embankment. A fighter informs us there are wounded on the bridge, and that his comrades are trying to reach them. The official name of this deadly crossing — Siyahseyah Bridge — has been discarded; it is now called the bridge of death.
ALEPPO/GAZIANTEP — Every morning, Ibrahim takes his lunch box, leaves his modest apartment, and heads for work. Back in Aleppo, the 38-year-old was a lawyer of repute; here in Turkey, he is a laborer, struggling to keep his family out of the camps. .
Samar reaches for her phone and dials the number she has now memorized by heart. She waits, then gets the voice mail asking her to leave a message.
MANBIJ — Nine-year-old Mohammed begins each day at 6 a.m. with a trip to the local landfill in his northern Syrian town. There, he spends hours scavenging for combustible garbage, finally tethering up his bundle and trekking back home.
In Aleppo, where residents must dodge daily mortars and bullets, there is another, more mundane killer on the rise: death by electric shock.
ALEPPO—On the border between Syria and Turkey, dozens of Syrians wait for the right moment to cross through one of the illegal passageways. They navigate their way through rough terrain and hop through barbed wire, careful to move stealthily and avoid being caught.
As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and an English teacher in eastern Ghouta, which is under a regime-imposed siege that prevents any goods or people from entering or exiting.
HOMS - I still remember April 18, 2011, when it seemed all of Homs turned out for the funeral of 12 people.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) suffered two blows over the past week: the loss of the key northern town of Safira to regime forces, and the subsequent resignation of a respected commander, Colonel Abdel Jabbar Okaidi. .
On the outskirts of Ghazeh, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, tucked between apple orchards and cabbage farms, over 2,000 Syrian refugees have made three plots of farmland their home.
HOMS - Five hundred and ten days have passed since the siege began in Homs, taking a toll on civilians and fighters alike.Homs, dubbed “the capital of the revolution” by activists for its early role in the revolt, has since been two-thirds destroyed by air raids and shelling.
When Syri-Arts started in Beirut three months ago, its chairwoman, Nora Jumblatt, didn’t think she’d get such a big response.
ZAATARI CAMP, JORDAN - Amani turned 22 today. Two months ago she fled from the civil war in Syria and left her house in the capital of Damascus.
Plans for high-level Syrian peace talks have stumbled this week, with the U.S.-backed Syrian National Council undecided on whether to attend and how to engage the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
BEIRUT—Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) set fire to an Armenian church in Tal Abyad on Syria’s northern border with Turkey before dawn on Tuesday, activists and a human rights watchdog said.
In early October, the United Nations High Committee on Refugees (UNHCR) opened a new camp in northern Iraq, Darashakran, to deal with spillover from packed Domiz refugee camp. The influx comes after the border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Syria was opened to a flood of refugees in August. .
Fatima, a 27-year-old autistic woman shot dead by an army sniper in Aleppo, might have been just one more anonymous victim killed in the no man’s zone that separates the rebel and regime-held sides of this city.
Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that 22 people are suspected of having polio, most of them under age two and living in eastern Deir al-Zor province.
Syrian-American Samer Attar is an orthopedic surgeon on staff at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. In August, he spent two weeks working at a field hospital in Aleppo on a trip facilitated by the Syrian American Medical Society. ”.
Omar, 21, dropped out of university to join the Syrian revolution in March 2011 and has taken photos on the battlefield ever since.
On Monday, a suicide bomber from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) drove a car laden with 1.5 tons of explosives into a Syrian military checkpoint at the busy eastern entrance to the government-controlled city of Hama.
Students from Syria’s rebel-held areas are in limbo in their quest for higher education. The majority, fearing arrest and perilous commutes to campuses in neighboring cities, refuse to enter state-sponsored universities.
In a supposedly “liberated” area of Syria, a group of opposition journalists is still being forced to operate in secret.
Opposition activists in Moadamiyaa, a small town in rural Damascus, are asking the world to save them from what they call “the hell of Assad’s killing machine.”.
The long-awaited peace talks on Syria, known as Geneva II, now have a date: November 23, according to the head of the Arab League.
Al-Qaida-linked groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Jabhat al-Nusra have consolidated their power in Syria in recent weeks, particularly in the country’s north.
This week, the Turkish army shelled points held by extremist rebel groups across the Syrian border. It was a shift for the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Medecins sans Frontieres’ Declan Barry, a U.K.-based pediatric physician, spent July and August in a small town in the north Syrian mountains, treating the members of one community affected by the war.
American photographers Robert Fogarty and Ben Reece traveled to Jordan in September with the global humanitarian organization CARE, giving Syrian refugees felt-tip markers with which to write messages to world leaders on their arms and hands.
In the northern city of Raqqa, the condemned - some civilians, some soldiers, shabiha or alleged Assad collaborators - are brought blindfolded and handcuffed to the city square to be shot in the head in public.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer has been reporting from Syria since 2006. She was nominated for an Emmy this year for a piece from Moadimiyeh, in which she came under shell attack by Syrian forces.
In Homs, an anonymous rebel fighter sits at his position for hours, waiting for any movement from his enemy. His finger is on the trigger of his rifle and he times his breathing to make sure he hits his target. .
As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and a Hama-based medical student in his 20s who used the pseudonym Adam for security reasons.
On Sunday, six staff members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and one volunteer were kidnapped as their convoy traveled through northwest Syria.
Al Marj Settlement, Lebanon - Four million children are caught up in the war in Syria. Thirteen-year-old Rabia is one of them.
Yes, the U.N.-backed chemical weapons inspectors in Syria had only just started work on the ground when they won the Nobel Peace Prize this week.
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