In Raqqa, Damascus Returns as the Rojava Project Recedes
A Jan. 18 agreement between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces may signal the end of Kurdish-led administration in Syria’s northeast. While thousands of residents celebrated what they called Raqqa’s “liberation,” Kurdish neighborhoods emptied, and symbols of Kurdish self-rule were removed.
Iran’s Protest Movement and Diaspora Politics
Following weeks of nationwide protests fueled by economic collapse, internet blackouts and a deadly crackdown, Iranians face a country in ruins. From the streets of Rasht to the Iranian diaspora abroad, the question now is not only whether the regime can survive, but what might come after it.
The White Helmets’ Search for Syria’s Disappeared
Between 100,000 and 300,000 people are still missing in Syria. One year after Bashar al-Assad was ousted, families are searching for their loved ones with the help of the White Helmets, while a new national commission seeks to build the infrastructure to trace, exhume and identify the disappeared.
Inside the System That Built the Modern World
Historian Sven Beckert joins Faisal Al Yafai on The Lede to discuss his new book, “Capitalism: A Global History.”
Sri Lanka’s Civil War and the Limits of Literature
As new mass graves are exhumed in Sri Lanka, a journalist who spent years embedded with the Tamil Tigers surveys the works dealing with the country’s civil war and asks whether, between myth and memory, fiction and nonfiction, a narrative can ever be complete.