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Roundup: Prospects for a Military Strike on Syria
Is the U.S. headed to war in Syria?
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Follow via RSSIs the U.S. headed to war in Syria?
TRIPOLI, Lebanon / In the aftermath of twin car bombings that killed 47 and wounded hundreds on Friday, residents in this northern Lebanese city are picking up where the paralyzed state cannot. .
The following post is courtesy of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
After a possible chemical weapons attack left what activists say is more than 1,400 dead in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, U.S. President Barack Obama’s “red line” remains fuzzy.
Friday was a day of funerals in Lebanon in the wake of a deadly car bombing that struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, or Dahiyeh, a bastion of support for the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah.
The photos and video circulating of yesterday’s alleged chemical gas attack in the east Damascus suburb of Ghouta are haunting. In some, dead bodies, including those of children, are lined up shoulder to shoulder on the floor.
Earlier this month, a YouTube video showed members of al-Qaida affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) handing out Teletubby dolls to children in Aleppo, an attempt to curry favor among local residents.
Karen Leigh, Syria Deeply’s managing editor, rounds up her top reads of the weekend.
Earlier this month, Russia and the U.S. agreed to schedule long-delayed Syria peace talks in Geneva.
There’s a new sheriff in town in Raqqa, the first of Syria’s provincial capitals to be wrested from Assad’s grip: the al-Qaida affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
This week, Ahmed al-Jarba, head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), called for the creation of a unified Free Syrian Army operating under chief of staff Gen. Selim Idris.
In a joint effort with the Baker Institute at Rice University, we reached a range of voices inside Syria to get a diverse set of answers on the same question. Below is an excerpt of perspectives on the conflict in their country. .
Once controlled by the highly centralized government of Bashar al-Assad, Syria is now fragmented into sections practically controlled by various groups:
Fighting in Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, has been at a stalemate for months, with government troops holding the west, and the rebels largely controlling the east. The divide not only separates the combatants, but also families, some of whom continue to make the dangerous crossing.
As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and a 22-year-old man from a prominent Sunni family. He fled his home in Damascus more than a year ago.
On Tuesday, after 10 months of fighting, Syrian rebels captured Minnagh Air Base – one of northern Syria’s largest. Of those rebel forces, Islamist groups were among the most effective on the battlefield, raising their profile on the front lines.
According to the United Nations, the conflict in Syria has produced the gravest refugee crisis in the world since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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.
Over the weekend, fighting broke out in the Jabal al-Akrad Mountains surrounding Latakia City. Fighting started at dawn in the village of Salma, with rebels attacking Alawite villages.
Srdja Popovic is something of a hero to Arab revolutions. He was a founder and leader of the Otpor student movement that brought down the regime of Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Syria’s economy has been crippled by war. More than two years of unrest, violence and international sanctions have depleted the regime’s foreign reserves and led to soaring inflation. But the government hasn’t gone bankrupt.
When Syria Conflict Monitor (SCM) began in January 2012, the goal was to catalog the thousands of Free Syrian Army (FSA) videos used for recruitment purposes that were being downloaded to the Internet. .
This month’s strike on Krak des Chevaliers, the 12th-century Crusader castle, put UNESCO, historians and antiquities experts on edge.
For weeks fighting has raged in the rebel stronghold of Khaldiyeh, a neighborhood in the city of Homs. Experts have cited Homs’ strategic importance (and Khaldiyeh’s position as the city’s last major rebel stronghold) in calling the now hand-to-hand battle between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and regime forces “decisive.”.
While the revolt turned civil war rages across Syria, a group of activists are working to broadcast a new kind of revolution on the country’s FM airwaves – Radio al-Kul.
Every Saturday, a group of women in Salamia, a city in western Syria, meet to discuss the events of the past week in relation to the two-year uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad.
One of the longest-running debates surrounding the Syrian war is that of the international community’s ethical responsibility to Syria’s civilians – in short, does the long-running violence require the world to intervene?
RAS AL AYN, Syria / Like many of his countrymen, Abu Zechariah, a now-penniless farmer, spends his days trying to eke out a living. As war makes crop farming here all but impossible, he’s been forced to harvest another kind of crop — oil.
On Monday the U.S. Congress agreed to move ahead with a shipment of weapons to Syrian rebels. The deal comes after weeks of gridlock on Capitol Hill as lawmakers debated direct intervention in Syria.
*Laurent** Van der Stockt is a photographer who has covered conflict from Bosnia to Iraq to the Arab Spring. When it became nearly impossible for foreign journalists to legally enter Damascus, Van der Stockt, on assignment for French newspaper Le Monde, went to the city’s front lines.*.
On Wednesday, stray bullets from Syria struck homes and the police station in the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, killing two people, including a teenage boy.
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. .
Over the weekend, opposition Free Syrian Army fighters clashed with al-Qaeda backed extremist rebels in the Bustan al-Qasr district of Aleppo, where a single checkpoint links the rebel-occupied territory of the city’s east with the government-held areas to the west.
On July 8, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for a Ramadan ceasefire in Syria. Shorty after, both Iran and Turkey called for a stop to fighting for the month-long Muslim holiday. Neither the opposition or Syrian regime observed the calls. .
TRIPOLI, Lebanon / Nour and his fellow Syrians have been playing soccer, the universal sport, as long as they can remember. They never imagined they would be exiled to a sandy field in Lebanon, scoring goals to the sound of gunfire. .
As part of our series of interviews with journalists covering the Syria crisis, we reached out to Rania Abouzeid, whose extensive reporting from Syria has appeared in TIME, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy and on television with the CBC documentary “Syria: Behind Rebel Lines.”.
Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict.
On Saturday, Saudi-backed Ahmed Jarba was named leader of the Syrian opposition, defeating candidates allied with Qatar.
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.
QALAAT AL-MADIQ, HAMA PROVINCE / Just a few years ago, Syrian students in this Sunni town had to pledge allegiance to Baath party principles and express loyalty to Bashar al-Assad.
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