By Dilara Lorin 4,440 PEOPLE were killed in the earthquake in Turkey and Syria by the morning of 7 February. And the numbers continue to rise steadily. In addition, there are well over ten thousand people injured, some seriously. The humanitarian catastrophe affects the mass of the population in both countries, which are already suffering […]

IN JULY 2012, Kurdish armed forces took political control in the regions of Kobanê, Afrin and al-Hasakah in northern Syria. The transfer of power from the Syrian regime to the Kurdish organisations began during the Syrian Revolution of 2011. By July 2012, the regime had lost control of Homs, its third-largest city. On July 18, […]

Its lessons and legacy.

Open the borders to refugees, economic migrants, asylum seekers.

The Turkish-Russian agreement on the establishment of a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, which was negotiated in Sochi on 22 October, has fundamentally changed the balance of power in Syria

Turkish forces are pounding cities and towns in northern Syria/Rojava, including the region’s biggest city, Qamishli, as well as Kobane, still in ruins after the war to oust ISIS. Air raids and heavy artillery strikes have forced thousands of civilians to flee into arid open country where there is neither shelter nor food and water. […]

Donald Trump has just signaled a dramatic shift in US policy in northern Syria, betraying his erstwhile allies the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which the Kurdish YPG militia are the dominant force. The 60,000 SDF fighters had provided him – and Obama before him – with the boots on the ground that defeated the […]

By Katie Pelikanou THE SYRIAN regime is undertaking a thinly-veiled legal manoeuvre to punish the millions of refugees who have fled the civil war, and entrench the postwar sectarian redivision of Syria by repossessing their homes. The government of dictator Bashar Al-Assad enacted this law whilst the remnants of the Syrian army, along with Iranian […]

By Marcus Halaby “Why would Bashar al-Assad have gassed his own people when he was already winning the war?” This question is frequently asked by many in the West of a generally anti-war disposition, who see in it a repetition of the arguments made around Saddam Hussein’s alleged (and disproven) possession of weapons of mass […]

By KD Tait THE US, French, and British attack on the Syrian regime’s chemical warfare facilities, ostensibly in retaliation for the recent chemical attack in Douma, was little more than a cynical attempt by the Nato powers to avoid being made to look totally impotent by the Syrian dictator – whilst carefully avoiding a direct […]