Stories of women entering Syria on a “Sex Jihad” have taken the media by storm. But are any of them actually true?  Leila, 23, still blushes when she talks about her first kiss. Now heavily pregnant with her first child, she says she didn’t even hold hands with a boy until she...

This Lowy Institute Analysis examines the trajectory of the Syrian conflict in the wake of the Russian and US agreement to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons.  It argues that while that agreement, enshrined in Security Council Resolution 2118, may remove a pernicious class of weapons...

In early June 2011, some three months into the uprising against the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Syrian government forces began preparing for a large-scale assault on Jisr al-Shughour, a rebellious border town sixty-five miles southwest of Aleppo. The events that led to this...

As the Syrian crisis rages and debate heats up over Syria's chemical weapons, U.S. officials are fighting a quieter battle: The delivery of nearly $1.3 billion in assistance in a war zone so chaotic that ambulances are used for target practice and aid is halted by armed men at random...