Syria held elections in Kurdish-majority areas of the country on May 24, with some politicians and commentators criticizing them for not being representative. Days after the local elections,...
A dispute over Kurdish political representation and cultural rights is emerging as the primary fault line in the Syrian government’s process of integration with the Kurdish-run semi-autonomous region...
On May 19, a car bomb exploded near a Ministry of Defense building in central Damascus’s Bab Sharqi area. One Syrian soldier was killed, and 23 civilians were wounded, the official Syrian Arab...
Protesters in Hasaka in eastern Syria tore down a government billboard at the Justice Palace on May 7. The protests by local Kurdish residents came after the Syrian government changed the...
The Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued transitioning control of portions of Syria as US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it had carried out strikes on the Islamic...
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al Shaibani took part in a meeting of the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition in Saudi Arabia on February 9. Syria joined the coalition in November as its...
Damascus’ entrance into the energy market will require it to update its dilapidated infrastructure.
Syrian government forces began deploying to cities in northeastern Syria after an agreement between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the interim government on January 30. Syrian...
Syria has experienced another dramatic transformation. After a month of clashes that began in Aleppo and spread to eastern Syria, Damascus announced on January 30 that it had reached an agreement with...
Despite a US-mediated ceasefire, clashes continued between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria. On January 29, Syrian military drones carried...
The ongoing conflict between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) risks unleashing tens of thousands of ISIS-linked detainees, reviving a threat that the United States and the SDF...
2015 marked a change in the Syria policy of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He began to walk back his initial goal of toppling the Asad regime and turned towards Syria’s surging Kurdish forces....
On June 29, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in al-Sham (ISIS), was recorded on video speaking at the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, Iraq. (“Al-Sham” is the traditional Arabic...
Erdoğan is arguably negotiating with the Kurds mainly as a means of securing Kurdish parliamentarians’ votes to extend his rule as president
The Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates River in Syria has become a key point of conflict in the country’s post-Assad era. Since the fall of dictator Bashar al Assad’s regime on December 8, the dam has been...
After the fall of Bashar Assad‘s regime in Syria, the incoming Trump administration faces a complex set of challenges. Despite President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to reduce U.S....
Syria’s new leader Ahmad al-Sharaa – who also uses the nom-de-guerre Abu Mohammad al Jolani — has pledged to dissolve existing armed factions and integrate their fighters into a newly formed...
In a recent Foreign Policy article, Steven Cook and I highlighted how Turkey may be overplaying its hand in Syria. With events evolving rapidly, it seems that Turkish President Recep...
Turkey Denies Ceasefire With U.S.-Backed Syrian Forces: Turkey’s Defense Ministry denied on December 19 that it had agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal with the Kurdish-led...