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 various ethnic and religious groups that make up the social fabric of Syrian society and, in some cases, are armed players in the war.
Follow via RSSThousands of Yazidis have now made their way from Sinjar to Hassakeh, either staying there or using the Kurdish-controlled Syrian province as a passage to the Iraqi city of Dohuk.
The photograph shows a young boy holding a decapitated head and was published by Australian media. The incident has drawn attention to the ranks of Westerners joining jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.
Meet the Lebanese organization that is providing Syrian women with training in embroidery and crochet workshops, allowing them to sell the products and earn livable wages.
We look at how the Syrian Army can respond to the challenge from ISIS.
New America Foundation’s Leila Hilal describes how local councils have tried to manage and rebuild Syrian communities.
Fouad Massoum was elected as Iraq’s president while the jihadi group the Islamic State destroyed Christian shrines and imposed Islamic dress on women in the country’s north.
As the global spotlight shifted to Gaza, the past month has been particularly deadly in Syria. Why?
Marah lives in a city under siege. She was 15 years old when the uprising began. This is the ninth in her series of memoirs of living in the midst of Syria’s war.
YPG fighters weigh their options, including a Kurdish coalition and cooperation with the Nusra Front, ahead of ISIS’s likely advance through eastern Syria.
Qamishli festival aims to bring the arts back to Syria.
Insights on the state of Syria’s Christian community and damage seen on the overland journey between the capital and other regime-held areas of the country.
News Deeply Contributor
Human Rights Watch says the Lebanese government forcibly returned three dozen Palestinians to Syria this week, putting them at “grave risk.”.
We speak with a fighter from the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), an all-female fighting unit established by the PYD.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
Traditionally, a ‘dhimmi’ in Islam is a Jew or Christian who agrees to live under the authority of an Islamic state, agreeing to pay a ‘jizya’ (poll tax) and enduring a number of discriminatory conditions in return for ‘protection’ from the state.
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.
The PYD, a Syrian Kurdish militant group, has established its own autonomous government in the largely Kurdish province of Hassakeh. .
Plans to remove the Syrian government’s chemical weapons cache by transporting them from Damascus to ships off the coast of Latakia province have missed deadlines throughout December and January. .
TARTOUS — Political and sectarian divisions created by Syria’s three-year conflict have affected most everyone in the country, even families far removed from the front lines.
JDEIDET ARTOUZ—Abu Nidal, 65, is not used to rising early in the morning to the sound of a ringing phone.
Aaron Y. Zelin and Phillip Smyth
As the conflict in Syria continues to spread throughout the Levant and adopt a broader sectarian tone – Sunni Salafis on one side and Iranian-backed, ideologically influenced Shiite Islamists on the other – it is important to know how the main actors have cast one another.
In November, Buzzfeed correspondent Mike Giglio traveled to Syria’s Kurdish areas, reporting on what life was like for residents and Kurdish fighters as extremists moved into the area.
DAMASCUS — The child was very happy with where he lived and with the republic to which he belonged.
DAMASCUS COUNTRYSIDE — “Why doesn’t Santa Claus come to our neighborhood and give us presents?” asks Sarah, a nine-year-old resident of Jdaidet Artouz in rural Damascus.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Fadel al-Kifa’ee
The small town of Yaroubiya in northeastern Syria (Hasakah governorate) on the border with Iraq recently came to the media’s attention in light of the takeover of the locality by the YPG, a Kurdish militia affiliated with the Democratic Union Party (PYD).
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.
Today, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on atrocities committed against civilians by rebel forces in coastal Latakia province.
Cale Salih
The mainstream Syrian political opposition failed for nearly two years to draw in the Kurdish National Council (KNC), a muddled coalition of 16 Syrian Kurdish political parties.
Al-Waer is the largest district in Homs, home to tens of thousands of displaced people. Today, it is increasingly isolated from the rest of the city, surrounded by the army, island-like. Residents like this humanitarian volunteer, who asked to remain anonymous, are fearful of what is to come. .
Below is the full transcript of our interview with Joshua Landis*, a Syria scholar head of the Middle East Studies Department at the University of Oklahoma.*.
Matthew Barber
Ma’loula (or Maaloula) is one of those unique places you may be lucky to visit—or perhaps were lucky to have visited, were you fortunate enough to have been in Syria before the conflict began.
The White House is pressing its campaign to convince Americans to support a Syria strike. The Obama administration advanced its message this past week with media appearances, impassioned speeches, congressional hearings, closed door briefings and personal calls to key members of Congress, soliciting their support.
The famous black stonework in Syria’s third city of Homs bears witness to the coexistence of Christians and Muslims over the ages. Nothing but ancient walls separate churches from mosques. Sometimes, those walls are even shared.
These days in Ersal are tense. This pro-rebellion village, in Lebanon’s northeast Bekaa Valley, has been under pressure since the Syrian army, working with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, seized the neighboring Syrian city of Qusayr in early June.
Thomas McGee
The last week has seen a large output of articles in the international press on clashes between Islamists and Kurdish groups in the Northern regions of Syria.
Cale Salih
On March 21, 2013, the day of the Kurdish New Year, Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan announced a historic ceasefire and peace process plan to end the 30-year-old conflict between Ocalan’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and the Turkish state.
Sectarian tension is on the rise in Syria and its neighboring countries, fueled by a civil war that has hardened religious lines – most prominently, a violent Sunni-Shiite divide. .
On June 23, Father Francois Murad, 49, “died when he was shot inside his church” in the Christian village of al-Ghassanieh, near Jebel Akrad in Latakia province.
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.
Hassan Hassan
The following post first appeared on Hassan Hassan’s site.
Have a story idea? Interested in adding your voice to our growing community?
Learn more