Two years ago, almost to the day, a convoy of 20 vehicles drove toward a stretch of desert in southern Syria, near the Jordanian border. This terrain was unremarkable but for the fact that it encircled a military base known as al-Tanf where 200 American soldiers, most of them Marines...

After a month of bombing and shelling in the last remaining opposition stronghold in Syria, Turkey and Russia this week agreed another ceasefire to cover Idlib and northern Hama, where relations between Moscow and Ankara have been tested once again. "At Russia’s initiative, with the...

After losing her husband, a son and her home to Syria's eight-year war, Yusra al-Shomali and her daughters found refuge in rebel-held territory near the Turkish border. But as a Syrian army offensive intensifies, their safety may be put at risk. Shomali's experience of fear, siege, hunger,...

Iraqi farmer Shaker Salih says he feared Islamic State, but feared its defeat even more. His problem is persuading people to believe that he did not support the jihadists. When Iraqi forces drove Islamic State from his home town in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, Salih left with the...