This is a bad time to be a Syrian. Will the two sides tearing your country apart meet in Geneva…
Continue reading →Tag Archives: The State of Syria: Past
Outsiders have not improved life in either Syria or Iraq
This month Iraq and Syria are both noting, but not celebrating, anniversaries of violence that transformed the two societies.
Continue reading →The last thing Syrians need is more arms going to either side
Russia and Iran are providing weapons and ammunition to Syria’s President Assad, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar deliver arms through…
Continue reading →There is no ‘noble war’ that will justify this bloodshed
After the terrible bloodletting on the battlefields, the fever began to die down. People looked war in the face with…
Continue reading →Aleppo: How Syria Is Being Destroyed
This year, Aleppo will produce no soap. The late-medieval souks in which craftsmen fashioned blocks of the famous olive oil…
Continue reading →The colonial-era division of spoils draws a map of Syria’s uncertainty
Syrians used to tell a joke about a survey that asked “what is your opinion of eating meat?” This was…
Continue reading →Syria’s refugees pay a cruel price as the conflict keeps spreading
A Syrian friend of mine complained, rightly, that both sides in the country’s civil war have had a hand in…
Continue reading →Syria can be preserved by the subtle route of compromise
In the past week, Syrian opposition groups have issued two contrasting appeals to the international community. On Saturday 28 July,…
Continue reading →The Country That Is the World: Syria’s Clashing Communities
The population of Syria is so inharmonious a gathering of widely different races in blood, in creed, and in custom,…
Continue reading →Syria: The Citadel & the War
Archaeologists believe that human beings settled on the hilltop that became Aleppo – some 225 miles north of Damascus –…
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