Syria

Umayyad Square in Damascus
Solving the Syrian Conflict

Europe needs to be more actively engaged to help bring about peace in Syria, writes Michel Duclos.

Bassel Khartabil
The Agony of Syria's Prisons

Bassel Khartabil was an influential internet figure and activist in the Syrian revolution. Imprisoned, his wife Noura Ghazi Safadi clung to hope that he would survive.

A video still from a speech given by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIL, on July 5, 2014, in his first public appearance as the leader of the militant group, at a mosque in Mosul, Iraq.
Assessing Russian Claims About Al-Baghdadi's Death

Despite claims by the Russian military, there are a number of good reasons to believe the leader of ISIL is not dead, writes Amir Musawy

A Russian Su-25 crew at the Hmeymim airbase in the Latakia governorate in western Syria.
Russia's Involvement in the Syrian Conflict

Once perceived as a mere spoiler, Russia has become an agenda-setting power in the Middle East. Now that the US have pulled out politically, expectations are even higher. Can the Russians handle them?

A pro-regime protest in Damascus in 2012.
Polarisation in the Syrian War

Why is it that both regime supporters and armed Islamist rebels can play so successfully on Syria's sectarian problems? On takfir and takhwin, two concepts of domestication that look flagrantly alike.

Keep pushing: Syrians help to get an old car started on a ferry across the river Meuse.
Syrians in Europe

200 Syrians spend five days hiking in the Netherlands, following in the footsteps of Frans van der Lugt, a priest murdered in Homs in 2014. What brings these people from different European countries together?

An Israeli gun boat passes through the Straits of Tiran near Sharm El Sheikh
Helmut Mejcher Interview

Despite Israeli commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War, what was a strategic victory from a military standpoint created many of the political problems that contemporary Israel still grapples with, argues historian Helmut Mejcher.

A Kurdish wedding
Syrian and Kurdish Émigrés in St Petersburg

Kurdish migrants in Saint Petersburg are watching the situation in the Middle East carefully, not least because a new influx of Syrian migrants could disrupt their settled way of life.