Syria
Swimming Toward LA
Syrian triathletes Ehab Khallouf and Adnan Zaki are chasing qualification for the 2028 Olympic Games. Under Assad, they were routinely denied visas to compete abroad. Now, with a new federation president pushing reform and travel possible again, the qualification window is finally cracking open.
Capturing the Butcher of Tadamon
Amjad Youssef hid for over a year in a village in rural Hama, Syria, slipping between his family home and the forested peaks above it, until intelligence officers tracked his nighttime movements and arrested him in his bedroom.
Assad’s Cousin Stands Trial in Damascus for Crackdown That Sparked Syria’s Uprising
Fifteen years after his security forces tortured a group of schoolboys in Daraa and ignited Syria's uprising, Atef Najib, Bashar al-Assad's cousin and the regime's former political security chief in the south, appeared in a Damascus courtroom on Sunday.
How Syria’s Revolution Was Misunderstood, by Its Rulers and the World
Syria’s revolution was first crushed, and then misread. Five recent books on the long uprising and its surprising aftermath show how elites, ideologues and foreign observers alike failed to see the people at its heart.
Life Under Israeli Occupation in Syria’s Quneitra
Over a year after the collapse of the Assad regime, Israeli forces have moved deep into and beyond the demilitarized buffer zone established by the 1974 disengagement agreement. Residents in Quneitra describe the quiet calculus of accommodation under the occupiers.
The Dangerous Quest of Syria’s Desert Truffle Hunters
In the desert around Deir ez-Zor, hunting for truffles is both a lifeline and a death trap. Communities devastated by Syria's civil war depend on the seasonal harvest of the culinary delicacy to survive, but the steppes remain laced with landmines.
In Search of a Story for Syria
With the recent reincorporation of northeastern Syria under central rule, the existential risk of national dissolution that Syrians feared seems to have passed. But stitching up the bonds between communities will be a longer and more difficult task than defeating separatist militias.