Young Syrians returning from Lebanon to AANES-held northeastern Syria, like those heading for regime areas, face the threat of conscription for “self-defense duty.”
Women in Hasakah city face harassment and exploitation by NGO-contracted water providers and private sellers who take advantage of their need for water.
While some humanitarian organizations target informal displacement camps where 150,000 people have languished for years in Syria’s northern Raqqa province, the response falls short of what is needed, particularly for widows.
Hasakah residents who cannot afford costly cooking gas rely on the babur, a traditional kerosene stove, risking death or injury because locally available fuel is impure and highly flammable.
Finding few other options, many women and girls in the Deir e-Zor countryside spend their days in the fields as hourly farmworkers, facing difficult conditions for meager pay.
People displaced from Afrin to Aleppo city’s Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods bury their loved ones in wooden coffins rather than traditional shrouds, hoping to bring them home one day, even after death.
US support for the SDF in 2023 clashes in Deir e-Zor has provided Iran with a critical opportunity to expand its influence in Syria, researcher Ömer Özkizilcik writes.
Syrian-Turkish normalization would be a worst-case scenario for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which has called rapprochement a “great conspiracy” against the Syrian people.
For journalists, northeastern Syria is a minefield of unspoken red lines. While the AANES says it is committed to freedom of the press, restrictions have proliferated in recent years.
After facing major local, regional and international pushback—including a Turkish threat to invade northeastern Syria—the AANES postponed municipal elections scheduled for this week until August, citing “internal” reasons and "the demands of the political parties and alliances participating."
