Aid cuts have deepened a water and sanitation crisis impacting hundreds of internal displacement camps in northwestern Syria, where humanitarian organizations have long provided essential services.
Following an initial burst of activity when the regime fell and displaced people returned, markets in Reef Dimashq are faltering and facing new challenges.
A photo of Syrian Minister of Justice Mazhar al-Wais shaking hands with Judge Ammar Bilal—the former chief prosecutor at the Assad regime’s infamous Counter-Terrorism Court—ignited a firestorm on Syrian social media last week.
It took years for Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri to move from outward support for the Assad regime to cautious criticism and finally open opposition. With the new authorities in Damascus, he is taking an adversarial stance from the start.
Syrians who lived in areas run by the Turkey-backed opposition Syrian Interim Government (SIG) before Assad fell last year face challenges related to the recognition of their official documents by the country’s new authorities.
An SDF-Damascus agreement is underway in Aleppo’s Kurdish neighborhoods, which could serve as a proving ground for the success of a broader agreement in northern Syria.
Three weeks on, little tangible progress has been made towards implementing the SDF-Damascus agreement, which faces a range of internal and external challenges.
Syrian-Palestinians gathered in Yarmouk to commemorate the revolution and regime siege of the camp on Friday, then joined a demonstration in Umayyad Square to denounce Israel’s incursion and attacks in southern Syria.
Umm Muhammad prepares an iftar meal for her children in Kafr Nubl, the southern Idlib town she and her husband returned to after the Assad regime fell. Many families—including her children—have not returned due to extensive destruction and poor services.
Dealing with the legacy of Syria’s prisons and security branches as atrocity sites is a collective moral responsibility and part of the fight for memory, “the last bulwark against repeating the past,” Nour al-Khateeb writes.
