(Toronto Life)- When Jim Estill decided to sponsor 50 Syrian refugee families, he didn’t tell anyone about it at first—not his accountant, not his friends, not even his wife. It was the summer of 2015, and the death toll in Syria had reached a quarter of a million people, while another four...

(BBC)- As horrifying war reports are beamed out of Syria, a tiny radio station sends broadcasts in the other direction from Istanbul. Made up of Syrian exiles, the team gathers news from citizen journalists on the ground and has branched out into dramas and comedy shows. But they say the most...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) launched on Tuesday raid and arrest campaign chasing young men in Ras al-Ayn area in Hasaka province, local activists said. Activist Abdulmalek al-Ali from Hasaka Media Center said that PYD patrols and Asayish launched extensive arrest...

Frederic C. Hof is director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. He advised Hillary Clinton on Syria at the State Department in 2012. Some 70 months ago, unarmed, ordinary Syrians rose peacefully against a regime whose incompetence and corruption they had come...