Communities and local armed groups in Syria’s southern Suwayda and Daraa provinces are taking the fight against drug traffickers and smugglers into their own hands. With Damascus and Hezbollah profiting from the trade, they face an uphill battle.
In Syria’s southern Suwayda province, suspected Jordanian airstrikes hunt drug traffickers and kill civilians. Regime-linked gangs operate with impunity and smugglers ferry drugs over the border. Local armed groups fight back. How did we get here?
To obtain records from Syrian public universities, students must apply in person or through legal proxies. If this is not possible, or if they are wanted by the security services, they are forced to pay hundreds of dollars in bribes to state employees through brokers.
Thirteen years after the Syrian revolution, displacement camps in Idlib’s Atma look increasingly like towns, tents replaced by cement buildings. Has the dream of return been lost?
As Syrians mark the 13th anniversary of the March 2011 uprising, activists reflect on the state of the women’s movement after more than a decade of revolution and war. In the face of conflict, displacement and persecution, what remains of it today?
Trees have fallen under the axe in Daraa and across Syria since the spring 2011 revolution, cut for wood to sell or use as an alternative to heating and cooking gas during war, siege and economic crises. Since 2020, however, logging has increased to include fruit-bearing trees on private farmland and within cities.
Motorcycles and scooters are a lifeline for many Syrians in Lebanon, but most cannot legally register them. As police crack down, they face fines, extortion and—as seen in the recent killing of a young man at a checkpoint in Beirut—violence.
The hanging of Syrian feminist and activist Heba Haj Aref after a long series of threats has cast a long shadow over women activists across northwestern Syria, highlighting the dangers and lack of support they face.
Residents of SDF-controlled northeastern Syria say the US military presence there brings a sense of relative stability, one that any withdrawal—as Washington was recently reported to be considering—would shatter.
As Lebanon presses forward with mass deportations of Syrian refugees, those openly involved in opposition activities against the Assad regime face a growing danger.
