How Economic Misery Helped Fuel the Syrian War: Book review

Friday, May 15, 2020

Louis Proyect Ever since the civil war began in Syria in early 2011, the left has largely ignored the social and economic circumstances that led to a conflict…

Read More

Syria: The Evidence We Were Never Meant to See About the Douma Gas Attack

Monday, May 27, 2019

Robert Fisk. We like to take the Big Boys on trust. No longer do we believe in our meretricious little leaders with their easy lies and twitters: the…

Read More

Libya’s Incoming Strongman Haftar Will Send The Oil Out To Europe – And Keep Its Migrants In

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Vijay Prashad. The West and the Gulf Arabs have condemned Libya to the strongman. You can well imagine the tension when Libya’s beleaguered Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj met…

Read More

Book Review: Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Charles R Larson. Syria’s gut-wrenching civil war serves as the background to Khaled Khalifa’s award-winning new novel, Death Is Hard Work, though incidents in the story often appear…

Read More

We Crossed A Bridge and it Trembled: Book Review

Friday, March 1, 2019

Wendy Pearlman: We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, Custom House, 2017. Everyone talks about Syrians, but very few are actually talk to them. Perhaps that’s…

Read More

Three Years Later: The Evolution of Russia’s Military Intervention in Syria

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Joseph Daher. As it draws closer to the eve of September 30—when three years earlier Russian military intervention in Syria first began—it is telling that Russia’s influence in…

Read More

How the Assad regime has exploited “evacuation deals” to redirect Isis against the rebels

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Omar Sabbour. In September 2018, when the Assad regime was preparing to launch its (now on-hold) offensive against rebel-held Idlib in northern Syria, a rather surprising report emerged in the…

Read More

Overstating Climate Change in Egypt’s Uprising

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Jessica Barnes. The possible link between climate change and political upheaval in the Middle East has attracted increasing media attention and is generating a new wave of academic…

Read More

Idlib, Syria: Fire burn and cauldron bubble

Monday, September 17, 2018

Esen Uslu. Posted on Weekly Worker Sept 13, 2108. The forces of Bashar al-Assad and his allies, Iran and Russia, are poised to strike deep into Syria’s Idlib…

Read More

Lebanon is on a tightrope, balancing the Saudis, Iran and the West

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Robert Fisk. Posted on Zcommunications and the Independent September 4, 2018. Facing possible invasion from both Britain and Germany in 1940 and determined to remain neutral, the Irish government in Dublin asked one of…

Read More

The Syrian War in Five Sieges

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Patrick Cockburn. Posted on London Review of Books Vol 40, July 19, 2018. The road to Raqqa, once the de facto Syrian capital of Islamic State, looks surprisingly…

Read More

Women are at the forefront of challenging extremism in Idlib

Friday, July 6, 2018

Leila Al Shami. Posted on Leila’s Blog July 5, 2108. This was originally published at Chatham House. Here is a longer, un-edited version. In May, SMART News Agency,…

Read More

Syria’s New Housing Law Will Displace Tens of Thousands of Refugees, But Even That Won’t Help the Regime Win the War

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Robert Fisk. Posted on CounterPunch June 4, 2018. When wars end, the winners redraw the maps. That’s what the British and French did to the Ottoman Empire after…

Read More

Syria is not exceptional: interview with Joseph Daher | Part 2

Thursday, May 31, 2018

Joe Hayns & Joseph Daher. Posted on RS21 May 10, 2018. This is Part 2 of an interview with Joseph Daher, on revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.  In…

Read More

Israel and Iran on brink of full-scale war after unprecedented Syria bombardment in response to alleged Golan Heights attack

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Bethan McKernan. Posted on the Independent 10 May 2018. Israel has launched its most intensive attack on Iranian positions in neighbouring Syria since the civil war began in 2011,…

Read More

Writing about Violence: A Joint Reflection from Latin America and the Middle East

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Hiba Bou Akar , Roosbelinda Cárdenas This is a shortened version of an article that first appeared on MER284 This essay reflects on some of the challenges of…

Read More

The Southern Transitional Council and the War in Yemen: Consolidating Power in the Unified Southern Territories

Monday, April 30, 2018

Susanne Dahlgren Published MERIP April 26, 2018 In late January this year, an armed conflict erupted in Aden between troops under command of President ‘Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi…

Read More

Seven years after: what is next for Syria?

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Syrian playwright Mohammad Al Attar moderates a panel on seven years of the Syrian revolution featuring the great Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Thomas Pierret and Kristin Helberg. The 18th…

Read More

Turkish War Planes Strike Northern Syria As Assad Continues Bombing South

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Ellen Frances. Posted on Huffington Post on March 17, 2018. BEIRUT, March 17 (Reuters) – Thousands of civilians streamed out of their towns on Saturday to escape battles…

Read More

Syria’s war of ethnic cleansing: Kurds threatened with beheading by Turkey’s allies if they don’t convert to extremism

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Patrick Cockburn. Posted on the Independent and on ZCommunications 17 March 2018. Syrian Arab militiamen leading the Turkish attack on Afrin in northern Syria are threatening to massacre…

Read More

The War in Yemen and the Making of a Chaos State

Monday, March 5, 2018

Ben Watson Posted on the Atlantic February 3, 2018. A strange and worrisome silence settled over Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa after Houthi rebels seized power in broad…

Read More

Patterns of civilian and child deaths due to war-related violence in Syria: a comparative analysis from the Violation Documentation Center dataset, 2011–16

Friday, March 2, 2018

Posted on Lancet Global Health volume 6, number 1. Background Since March, 2011, the Syrian civil war has lowered life expectancy by as much as 20 years. We…

Read More

As my recent trip to Syria proved, wars can be at their most dangerous when they’re coming to an end

Friday, February 2, 2018

Robert Fisk. Posted on Independent February, 1, 2018. Debts will have to be paid for the casualties of this war, and some soldiers are becoming rather too over-confident….

Read More

The next Kurdish war is on the horizon – Turkey and Syria will never allow it to create a mini-state

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Robert Fisk. Posted on the Independent January 22, 2018.   Syria cannot countenance Kurdish presence on its territory and Turkey cannot tolerate a Kurdish enclave along its southern…

Read More

The Ossington Circle Episode 16: The Destruction of Syria and Solidarity with Max Ajl

Friday, December 8, 2017

Max Ajl and Justine Podur. Interview transcript posted on podur.org on April 29, 2017. In this episode of The Ossington Circle, academic, activist, and editor at Jadaliyya Max…

Read More

Socialist Action and Syrian Revolution Solidarity

Sunday, December 3, 2017

On November 4 Socialist Action is sponsoring a conference at Central Connecticut State University entitled “The Solution is Socialism.” This conference comes at a time in American history…

Read More

On the Concatenation in the Arab World: Editorial in New Left Review

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Perry Anderson Published in New Left Review March-April 2011 The Arab revolt of 2011 belongs to a rare class of historical events: a concatenation of political upheavals, one…

Read More

Book review: War of All Against All

Friday, November 24, 2017

Lindsey Hilsom Posted on New York Review of Books, 23 November 2017 The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh, with a foreword…

Read More

Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917–2017

Thursday, November 2, 2017

John Bellamy Foster Published in Monthly Review volume 69 number 3, July August 2017. The Russian Revolution of 1917 erupted on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of…

Read More

Syria War Diary: What Life Is Like Under ‘Moderate’ Rebel Rule

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Eva Bartlett. Posted on MPN News on August 23, 2017. Since the liberation of Aleppo, and the restoring of peace to Madaya and al-Waer, most Western media have…

Read More