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What Brezhnev Era Soviet Military Thinking Can Tell Us about Syria Now
Prof. Mark N. Katz
Prof. Mark N. Katz
This post first appeared on Mark N. Katz’s blog.
Dear Deeply Readers,
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].
Exploring the government in Syria, including the Baath Party and the Assad family’s inner circle, and the various foreign and domestic forces fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad.
Follow via RSSProf. Mark N. Katz
This post first appeared on Mark N. Katz’s blog.
Originally from Homs, Dr. M. Zaher Sahloul is based in Chicago, where he practices critical care medicine and serves as the president of the Syrian American Medical Society. Over the past year, he has made seven trips to Syria. The last was to Aleppo, one month ago.
On Thursday, the White House announced that it would, for the first time, supply military aid to Syrian rebels. Details were not announced, triggering speculation that the aid would be anything from a no-fly zone (favored by U.S. Senator John McCain, arguably the staunchest supporter of Western military intervention in Syria) to the anti-aircraft weapons that top the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) wish list in the ongoing fight against the Syrian air force.
Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict. Each week Syria Deeply monitors the online conversation in English and Arabic, pulling out the highlights in a feature called the Social Media Buzz.
As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and a 24-year-old teacher and university student in Homs who wished to be identified only as “SA.” Last week, all eyes were on the battle over the strategic city of Qusayr, but for SA the biggest worry was the changing demography of Homs amid a new wave of arrests – and a census.
Yazan Homsy is a university graduate trapped in the besieged area of Homs. He spends his days photographing daily life amid destruction and scavenging for food to share with his neighbors. With nowhere to go, the people of the besieged districts have been drawn together by their harsh circumstances. .
AYN AL-ARAB (KOBANI), ALEPPO PROVINCE / After losing one-third of his weight and sustaining multiple beatings over five months in prisons run by Syrian intelligence agencies, Mohammed Sheikh Nabi, a member of the Kurdish party Azadi, said he’d been certain he would die.
Hassan Hassan
The following post first appeared in The National.
Once, the artist Tammam Azzam woke each morning and walked the busy streets of Damascus until he reached his studio. There, he’d paint – landscapes, or whatever came to mind. Now he operates from a financial complex with takeout sushi and the Ritz-Carlton a stone’s throw away, working where he finds space.
Joyce Karam / Al-Arabiya
The following post first appeared on al-Arabiya.
Twenty thousand residents of Wadi al-Jouz, a destitute neighborhood of the hard-hit city of Hama, have lost their homes. This was not the result of bombings or gun battles, but an unlikely culprit in a time of war: urban planning.
Brown Moses
This post originally appeared on the Brown Moses Blog.
Tuesday marked the third consecutive day of a major offensive against Qusayr, located just across the border in Homs province. On Sunday, 28 elite Hezbollah fighters were killed and over 70 wounded in the fighting, catalogued by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. [Syrian] rebels suffered casualties twice as high, losing 50 men to air raids, shelling attacks and fighting, Three civilian women and an elderly man were also killed in the assault.
Brown Moses
The following post first appeared at the Brown Moses Blog. .
As a regular feature, inspired by your questions about the Syria conflict, we’ve rounded up answers from some of the top minds in our network. If you’d like to submit a question for us to tackle, send it to [email protected].
AYN AL-ARAB (KOBANI), ALEPPO PROVINCE – Aladine Hamam, a member of the Azadi party, spent almost two months in jail this year, accused of being a Turkish agent and with setting up an armed group that doesn’t answer to the PYD, the predominant political party. His case highlights the divisions among Kurds on the future of the ethnic group in Syria and the unchecked power of the PYD (or Syrian Democratic Party) in Kurdish-controlled territories. .
Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict. Each week Syria Deeply monitors the online conversation in English and Arabic, pulling out the highlights in a feature called the Social Media Buzz.
In Syria today, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces stand accused of massacring Sunni families en masse. The more gruesome images and video<wbr>s speak to a brutal campaign of sectarian cleansing that has managed to shock even veteran Syria watchers.
Amal Hanano is a well-known Syrian writer and blogger, as well as an associate editor of Syria Deeply. Here she explores this week’s destruction of the Umayyad Mosque, the architectural pride of her hometown of Aleppo.
As a regular feature, inspired by your questions about the Syria conflict, we’ve rounded up answers from some of the top minds in our network. If you’d like to submit a question for us to tackle send it to <[email protected]>.
Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict. Each week Syria Deeply monitors the online conversation in English and Arabic, pulling out the highlights in a feature called the Social Media Buzz.
Baraf Barfi
Barak Barfi is a Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, where he specializes in Arab and Islamic affairs. He recently returned from Aleppo. Barak writes often for publications including The International Herald Tribune, The New Republic, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic, and is a regular guest on CNN, Fox News Channel, France 24 and other international networks. He is based between the U.S. and the Middle East.
In Bashar al-Assad’s April 16 speech he blamed the Syrian conflict on the West and said it “would pay” for the turmoil. We asked two expert minds on Syria for their reaction to the speech. .
AFRIN, ALEPPO PROVINCE – After completing his prayers around 1 a.m. on April 13, Yasser fell asleep with his wife, two young children, and sister, who all shared a bed in a modest home in Sheikh Maqsood, the Kurdish-majority frontline neighborhood in Aleppo.
As a regular feature, inspired by your questions about the Syria conflict, we’ve rounded up answers from some of the top minds in our network. If you’d like to submit a question for us to tackle send it to <[email protected]>.
HREITAN, ALEPPO PROVINCE – Air strikes and ballistic missile attacks from Scuds and other large rockets are now daily events in Syria. The victims and damage are tallied in spreadsheets, and only a small portion of the details make the news, because this kind of carnage is no longer new. It’s expected.
Omar, a carpenter from Tal Rifaat in Aleppo province, was arrested near his town and transported to the feared Air Force Intelligence headquarters in Aleppo by a military helicopter. Syria Deeply’s senior editor Mohammed Sergie (@msergie) spoke to Omar about his experience.
Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict. Each week Syria Deeply monitors the online conversation in English and Arabic, pulling out the highlights in a feature called the Social Media Buzz.
As a regular feature, inspired by your questions about the Syria conflict, we’ve rounded up answers from some of the top minds in our network. If you’d like to submit a question for us to tackle send it to <[email protected]>.
“The weather is bad, so no MiGs today, ” says Abdu, my driver, as two French journalists and I roll into Aleppo under heavy fog. The bad weather will likely protect us from jets, but not from Scud-like weapons – the tactical ballistic missiles, first developed by the Soviet Union, which have now rained down for weeks on this besieged city.
The deaths of veteran Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remy Ochelik (killed in a February 2012 rocket attack in Homs) proved watershed for citizen journalists in this war-torn Syrian city.
As part of our series of interviews with journalists covering the Syria crisis, we spoke with National Magazine Award-winning journalist and Vanity Fair contributing editor Janine Di Giovanni, who has reported extensively from Syria for the New York Times, the Guardian and other publications. Here, she discusses what it’s like to be a woman – and mother – covering the war. “Your feelings are more raw,” she says.
As a regular feature, inspired by your questions about the Syria conflict, we’ve rounded up answers from some of the top minds in our network. If you’d like to submit a question for us to tackle send it to <[email protected]>.
Moaz al-Khatib, the leader of the Syrian opposition coalition, has resigned in a statement posted to his Facebook page. The former Damascus cleric, who has led the Western-backed coalition since its creation in November, said he was resigning his post to “work with freedom.” The following transcript of the statement was provided to Syria Deeply by Hassan Hassan, a columnist for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi.
As a regular feature, inspired by your questions about the Syria conflict, we’ve rounded up answers from some of the top minds in our network. If you’d like to submit a question for us to tackle send it to <[email protected]>.
Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict. Each week Syria Deeply monitors the online conversation in English and Arabic, pulling out the highlights in a feature called the Social Media Buzz.
Renowned composer and pianist Malek Jandali grew up in Homs City and was one of the first Syrian creative artists to support the protests from abroad. Jandali’s parents were attacked by state security forces and have since found refuge in the United States, where their son holds citizenship. Here, he discusses the new political role of Syrian artists.
AL BARA, Idlib Province – As Syria’s neighboring countries grapple with a million refugees who fled from violence, a far greater number of internally displaced Syrians have moved away from the front lines to await the conflict’s conclusion. Life is anything but easy.
KAFRANBEL, Idlib Province—For almost two years, Kafranbel, a small town in Idlib, has enthralled Syrians with its witty banners and cartoons, delivering a message of peaceful defiance that made it an icon of the revolution. But today its residents are split: on one side, ardent supporters of a democratic Syria, on the other, those who seek an Islamic state led by extremists such as Jabhat Al Nusra.
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