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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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Exploring Syrian civil society as well as grassroots and international social initiatives that deal with everyday civilian life in Syria.
Follow via RSSLast week, more than 700 civilians were evacuated from Homs, an outcome of concessions between opposition and government delegations made during peace talks in Geneva.
As the security situation in Syria deteriorates, the way editors choose to cover the story changes. For Foreign Policy’s David Kenner, it has meant more coverage from the borders, and an “ethical, legal and moral” refusal to send writers into the country.
Since 2005, Guardian correspondent Martin Chulov has covered crises across the Arab world, but none, he says, are as “emotionally exhausting” as the Syrian civil war.
As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and Noor, a 30-year-old woman who lives in a regime-held neighborhood of Hama, about the hardships of life in the city.
HOMS – Nearly 600 days have passed since the Syrian government laid siege to neighborhoods in Homs. Now residents of those areas hope that concessions made this week in Geneva conference will help the approximately 250 families who need to be evacuated.
Today, polling veteran Craig Charney launched a new report, Syrian Perspectives on Transitional Justice, looking at the views of Syrian civilians still living in the country. .
Rami Jarrah is one of Syria’s original media activists and organizers. In 2011, he spent time in Syrian government detention before fleeing to Cairo and then to the U.K., where he has continued to be one of the conflict’s most vocal activists.
Rania Abouzeid
This post originally appeared on the European Council on Foreign Relations website.
DAMASCUS – Last December, Alaa was laid down on an interrogator’s bed, her hands tied and her legs spread apart.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida affiliate that’s dominating the fight in Syria, has imposed its own conservative rule of law in Raqqa and other eastern areas.
Robin Yassin-Kassab
Our car turns through the crowded alleyways of single-storey breezeblock houses; it is foggy with coal smoke on this icy morning. This is the poorest quarter of Reyhanli, a Turkish town just across the Syrian border, and it’s crammed with Syrian refugees.
Yesterday, the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) released its latest report, “Syria’s Socially Mediated Civil War.”.
BASRA AL-SHAM, DARAA — Maan, a Syrian musician, was turned back at the Jordanian border in April 2011 after an arduous journey from his hometown of Basra al-Sham.
Rebels groups that have banded together against Al Qaida, led by the Syrian Islamic Front, made “sweeping advances” this week.
The city of Amuda, in northeastern Syria, has become famous as the provenance of one of the Syrian conflict’s deadliest smuggling accidents: in September, 43 of its residents drowned while trying to reach the coast of Europe.
Liz Sly is the Washington Post’s Beirut bureau chief, and one of dozens of reporters whose work covering the country has been impacted by security issues that have made travel for Western journalists extremely dangerous.
Safouh T. / Illinois Tech
Twenty-five years ago people from both Eastern and Western Germany gathered and hugged each other after the fall of Berlin Wall.
With record snowfalls and rising fuel costs, Syrians in rebel-held areas are turning to dangerous, cheaper options like locally processed gas as a way to heat their homes and stores.
DUBAI – In 2010, Jaber al-Azmeh was just another commercial photographer in Damascus, working mostly with local ad agencies. Now the 40-year-old is one of the best known of a group of Syrian artists working to chronicle their country’s conflict.
Syrian government air raids continued to pound Aleppo over the past week, killing more than 500 people, according to human rights groups.
GAZIANTEP — The divisions between the Syrian regime and rebel factions are not only reflected on the battlefield, but also in the classroom, with school curricula ranging from Baathist textbooks to Quran classes.
Medecins Sans Frontieres
Hospitals in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo are overwhelmed with patients injured in an ongoing wave of airstrikes that have already killed more than 100 people, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.
ALEPPO — Earlier this month, as fighting escalated here and government forces continued their aerial bombardments, Abu Ahmad searched for the remains of relatives who had been killed in an air raid.
On Nov. 22, seven of the largest non-extremist fighting brigades in Syria came together to form the Islamic Front.
Mohammad, 25, is a Syrian soldier who supports the rebel opposition from his barracks in Bashar al-Assad’s army.
DAMASCUS — For women from conservative Syrian communities, war has had an unexpected consequence: the freedom to ignore longstanding conventions and traditional gender roles, and they have begun to rely on themselves. .
Elizabeth Dickinson
In the months after protests first erupted in Syria in 2011, a soft-eyed native of Deir al-Zour province did two things – one he is proud of and another he deeply regrets.
DAMASCUS COUNTRYSIDE — As she cooks rice on the stove in her home in the suburb of Douma in eastern Ghouta, Um Khaled recalls the fateful night her husband and son were taken from her.
BEIRUT — When Syrian rebels first captured Raqqa in March, seizing the northern city from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime seemed enough for them. They didn’t interfere with citizens’ private lives, said Amir, a Syrian from the city.
ALEPPO — With the emergence of opposition-held districts and territories held by the Free Syrian Army, newly “liberated” zones became a shelter for media activists and journalists — a place where they could work freely, away from Syrian intelligence.
Many teachers are among those who have fled Syria as the country’s conflict worsens. But in the Damascus suburbs, a group of activists are working to fill the knowledge gap with a new education center. .
TARTUS — In a small village on the Syrian coast, a shopkeeper in her 60s tends to her customers. She wears the shimmering black abaya prevalent in the countryside, wisps of gray hair protruding from her headscarf.
Mohammed al-Khatieb
ALEPPO — It is nearly impossible to find a picture without him smiling in it. Now Abdelqader Saleh, Tawheed Brigade commander, is gone.
DEIR EZZOR — Abed Rahman al-Khodor is known across this eastern city for his perseverance in providing the most basic edible essential, bread, to its most vulnerable residents.
This week, the Wall Street Journal launched Borderlands, an interactive multimedia platform using video and text to track uprooted Syrians now living on or near the Turkish border.
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.
Faisal al Yafai
After so much bloodshed and such utter devastation in Syria, much needs to be reconsidered.
Syria Untold
While the Syrian revolution may have been gradually co-opted by Islamic rhetoric on media outlets, Syrian activist Ayman Ghojal still manages to find a place for his niche atheism.
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.
Antoun Issa
As preparations for Geneva II again falter, with one Western diplomat telling Al-Monitor that it will likely be delayed until “at least January,” a debate has emerged over the role Syrian civil society can play in any peace process.
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