Syria

Here is my essay for this week’s Tomdispatch.com . Check out the great Tom Engelhardt’s introduction at that site, where he reminds us of the eerie similarity of today’s Washington strategy toward the Middle East, of intensive bombardment, to that of Nixon-Kissinger in Southeast Asia. For people of my generation, it raises the sad question […]

Democracy

Syria’s Parliamentary Election Results look Alarmingly like Iraq 2005, which produced a Civil War

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Syria’s parliamentary elections on October 5 raised alarm flags for me on several grounds. First, they were not conducted on the basis of a direct vote. Sixty “constituencies” were established to elect 121 members of the People’s Assembly of Syria (only 119 were actually elected). Another 70 members will be […]

Israel

Syria: Israel Forcibly Displaces Villagers in Occupied South

Human Rights Watch

Forced Displacement is a War Crime; Homes Razed, Syrians Detained and Unlawfully Transferred to Israel Israeli forces occupying parts of southern Syria since December 2024 have carried out a range of abuses against residents, including forced displacement, which is a war crime. Other abuses include homes seizures and demolitions, denial of access to livelihoods and […]

Featured

Why is Israel Playing Spoiler in the New Syria?

Mohammed Samaana

Belfast (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Last week, Israel launched the latest of some 300 raids into Syria in the past few months. Some such incursions, as with a major set of airstrikes on Syria in July shows its determination to be a destabilizing factor in the region. Israel claimed that it carried out […]

Climate Crisis

In Syria, Women are Bearing the Brunt of Climate Breakdown

Middle East Monitor

by Zahra Zaman ( Middle East Monitor ) – Syria had been embroiled in a protracted conflict and plagued by authoritarianism for decades. While the brutal regime of Bashar al Asad has collapsed, the ordeal is far from over for Syrians as they are now confronted with the rapidly accelerating threat of climate change looming […]

Alawites

Understanding the Violence against Alawites and Druze in Syria after Assad

The Conversation

By Güneş Murat Tezcür, Arizona State University (The Conversation) – In July 2025, clashes between the Druze religious minority and Sunni Arabs backed by government-affiliated forces led to hundreds of deaths in Sweida province in southern Syria. Israel later launched dozens of airstrikes in support of the Druze. This eruption of violence was an eerie […]

Druze

Israel is exploiting the Vacuum left by southern Syria’s sectarian Clashes and a weak State

The Conversation

By Rob Geist Pinfold, King’s College London (The Conversation) – Several days of bitter sectarian fighting in the south of Syria brought the fledgling government in Damascus dangerously close to direct conflict with Israel, after Israeli warplanes launched strikes against government buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on July 16. The United Nations and a […]

Syria

Women, Key Players in Syria’s Revolution, are being Marginalized

The Conversation

By Kinda Alsamara, The University of Queensland; Eleanor Gordon, Monash University, and Elliot Dolan-Evans, Monash University (The Conversation) – The end of the oppressive Assad regime in Syria in late 2024 has been broadly welcomed on the global stage – underscored by the fact the United States and European Union have now lifted sanctions against […]

Donald Trump

Between Two Enemies: Syria’s Silence in the Israel-Iran Conflicts

Daanish Faruqi

( Aljumhuriya ) – Even as a ceasefire has, for now, calmed tensions between Israel and Iran, Trump’s decision to officially join Israel’s war effort has been illuminating on a multitude of fronts. In particular, it revealed how quickly Iran was able to cultivate global support for its sovereignty and multiple calls for restraint, particularly […]