When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moscow recently to discuss the deepening crisis in Syria, he brought with him the hope that the severity of events in the Middle East would finally be sufficient to spur Russia to reconsider its rigid support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and plans for a new multilateral More »
Israel in early May reportedly carried out its heaviest attacks on targets in Syria since the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad began in March of 2011, hitting a military convoy and several military installations near the capital, Damascus. The air strikes were the first direct military intervention by Israel since several of More »
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Moscow has yielded a proposal for a Syria “peace conference,” to be held as early as the end of this month. This is significant in at least two ways: the Russians and Americans both still prefer a negotiated transition (often misleadingly referred to in the press as More »
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, an American physician and president of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), has just returned from his sixth mission to Syria. While there, he visited half a dozen hospitals where doctors claim they have treated patients for exposure to chemical nerve agents. VOA reporter Cecily Hilleary reached him by phone in More »
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad argued in an interview aired on the state al-Ikhbariya television station last earlier this month that his country faces a choice between submitting to “a new colonization” by the West or to the “dark” forces of extremist Islamism. Europe and the United States will pay the price for weakening the More »
The United States is not known for subtlety. This is perhaps unsurprising for a nation buffered by oceans and in possession of the world’s largest military and economy. That kind of power carries weight, and that kind of weight does not always allow the United States to be light on its feet. At the More »
Syria has become the land of bad options. The Obama administration has reason to hesitate in intervening, particularly when outsiders call for unilateral U.S. miracles. Low levels of initial violence can easily escalate into far more serious conflict. No one can predict who will gain power if Assad falls, and the same U.S. and More »
Syrian American Shiyam Galyon lives in Houston, Texas. She recently traveled to Syria as part of a humanitarian relief project distributing food and medical supplies in rebel-controlled Aleppo and its suburbs. Galyon is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where she had been active in several campaigns to help the needy. More »
Sami of Qusayr, by his own account an English lecturer, gave up teaching at his university to support Syria’s revolution. When government forces began to vacate local schools they had seized he agreed to resume teaching, not to university students but to 11th-graders. Read his story below. Middle East Voices’ “Syria Witness” series features personal More »
The debate in Washington about Syria has picked up a bit lately. The Obama administration is stepping up its aid to the rebellion and the civil war will no doubt be on the President Barack Obama’s agenda when he meets with a parade of regional leaders at the White House starting this week. Although many members More »
On the back of fresh supplies of weapons and the provision of logistics and training support through Jordan, rebel forces have made substantial gains in the south against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in recent weeks. However, the dynamic among those rebel groups fighting under Islamist banners has been shaken up after an informal alliance More »
As the conflict in Syria continues to escalate, there are increasing calls for the international community to step up its involvement. Ambassador Frederic Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and the Obama administration’s special advisor for the Syrian transition in 2012, spoke with VOA’s Carol More »
Duhok, Kurdistan Region, Iraq — Somehow the children who had toys to play with were a more depressing sight than those with none at all. I watched as a girl, about three or four years old, dragged a pathetic block of now-grey polystyrene through the dust by short string, as if taking a pet for More »
The International Committee of the Red Cross reports an increase in indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Damascus and says people are fleeing the Syrian capital in greater numbers. Reuters separately reports that March was the most violent month in Syria’s now more than two-year-old conflict, with 6,000 people killed, The total estimated death toll More »
A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University, Tammam Azzam, abandoned a successful decade as a promising painter to escape the dangers of the Syrian war. He settled into a small apartment in Dubai with a computer and some PhotoShop software to embark on a new artistic mission: to vividly convey More »
In Syria, much of the heaviest fighting between government forces and rebels seeking to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad occurs on terrain with landmarks of immeasurable historical value . Videos and the global media report revolutionary brigades seeking shelter in medieval castles, flames destroying Aleppo’s shops dating back to medieval times (pictured More »
Four days before the opposition Syrian National Coalition elected Ghassan Hitto interim prime minister, he was directing humanitarian aid to areas of Syria now under the control of rebel forces. Prior to his election, Hitto, a 50-year-old U.S.-educated technocrat, spoke to senior reporter David Arnold about the dire situation inside Syria. He said that most More »
For the better part of 40 years, the Syrian border has been the quietest of Israel’s frontiers. Notwithstanding Israel’s 1973 capture and subsequent annexation of Syrian territory in the Golan and Bashar al-Assad’s ongoing support for terrorist organizations targeting the Jewish state, the border has been tranquil since the signing of the 1974 armistice. More »
Twenty-seven European Union foreign ministers left a meeting in Brussels this week bitterly divided on whether forces trying to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should receive outside military assistance. VOA’s Susan Yackee spoke on the subject with Chatham House Syria expert Christopher Phillips (audio below). Susan Yackee: The European Union has come More »
“It is time for an uprising of women in the Arab world,” writes Hanin Ghaddar, managing editor of NOW News in Lebanon in the second annual publication to mark International Women’s Day by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program. Last year, Haleh Esfandiari, the program’s director, asked a diverse group of women from business, More »
