By Ali Eid (Zaman al-Wasl)- During a prisoner swap on the outskirts of Hama, Rasha Sharbaji from Daraya was released few days ago. Rasha spent around three years in Assad prisons. She was a mother of three children before she was detained and became mother of five. She had a twin in the...

(The Guardian)- The focus of the plight of the Syrian people has shifted away from the apex of horror that was the suffering caused by the siege of eastern Aleppo. Now we must not let the lives of millions of people in desperate need across Syria slip from the world’s conscience. In 2016 we...

(The Globe And Mail)- It has been nearly two months since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces captured the besieged city of Aleppo, with support from Russia and Iran, wreaking carnage upon the civilian population and thrusting the Syrian crisis back onto the front pages of newspapers....

By John R Schindler ( Observer )- None can now deny that the refugee crisis that descended on Europe over the last year has changed the continent’s political landscape. The arrival of millions of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, with the encouragement of some European leaders,...

(Washington Post)- On the evening of Saturday, Jan. 28, as airport protests raged over President Trump’s executive order on immigration, the man charged with implementing the order, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, had a plan. He would issue a waiver for lawful permanent residents,...

(The Guardian)- The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British...

(Al-Jazeera)- The fresh clashes in Syria's Idlib region between a dozen important Islamist and extremist rebel movements are battles for turf and authority on the ground - but they also mirror northern Syria's ever-changing complexities, as local, regional and international actors change...

(CNN)- On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that effectively suspends the entry of Syrian refugees into the United States indefinitely. As he signed the order, President Trump said that this was "to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States." Full text...

(New York Times)- On April 30, 1941, a Jewish man here in Amsterdam wrote a desperate letter to an American friend, pleading for help emigrating to the United States. “U.S.A. is the only country we could go to,” he wrote. “It is for the sake of the children mainly.” A volunteer...

By Hassan Hassan (The National)- Peace talks between representatives of the Syrian regime and the rebels are scheduled to take place today in Astana, the Kazakh capital. These Russian-sponsored talks were made possible by the expulsion of the rebels from eastern Aleppo on December 23....

(The Guardian)- Key parties in Syria’s brutal civil war, now stretching towards the end of its sixth year, will meet in the Kazakh capital of Astana this week for a new round of peace talks. Organised by Russia and Turkey, and backed by Iran, these are the latest in many attempts to...

(Middle East Eye)- Tunisia is not simply a “jihadist beacon”, but that may be the only thing you associate it with given the way some European commentators have discussed the country recently. Against all the odds - deep ideological rifts, a fragile state in a chaotic regional context, and...

(Al-Monitor)- When 2016 was drawing to a close, Moscow surprisingly agreed to divide Syrian warring factions into “good” and “bad” guys and to recognize the idea of the “moderate opposition.” On Jan. 10, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced the preparation of talks between the Syrian...

By Hassan Hassan (The  National)- Al Qaeda in Syria has faced – and survived – two upheavals since 2011. Today, the organisation might be facing its third major test, and the new development brings with it a fresh challenge for Syria. The first challenge was the dispute with...

By Mohaled al-Hussein (Zaman Al Wasl)- The Syrian regime backed by Iran and Russia, seeks to recruit the largest number of young men from the region of eastern Syria into the “Al-Jazira and Euphrates Mobilization” militias, the Fifth Legion- Storm Troopers, and the National Defense among...

(Al- Monitor)- Lebanon is a country of unsettled scores. Each time I visit the country, I keep seeing and feeling the burdensome legacy of its 15-year civil war, no matter how many years had gone by since it ended in 1990. What would I find in neighboring Syria, as its nearly 6-year-old civil...

(New York Times)- Now that forces supporting the Syrian government have completed the takeover of Aleppo, and Russia, Turkey and Iran have negotiated a tenuous cease-fire, it is more than likely that President Bashar al-Assad and the regime he oversees will continue to govern Syria, in one form...

There seems to be no way for the international community to stop the ongoing war crimes being committed by the Syrian regime and its Russian allies, especially in Aleppo. But by brazenly flouting international law, leaders and rank-and-file officials in both countries are opening themselves up...

Anyone who has spent time living in or studying the Middle East will be familiar with the work of Patrick Seale, who died last weekend in London after a battle with brain cancer. Seale was a journalist and long-term observer of the region and wrote what is still, two decades after it was...

When Barack Obama moves two miles from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to 2446 Belmont Road in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood, he will live half a mile from 2340 S Street, where Woodrow Wilson spent his three post-presidential years. Wilson’s embittering foreign policy failure was the Senate’s...