Syria
The Need to Lead
Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global PowerBy Zbigniew Brzezinski (Basic Books, 208 pp., $26) READ MORE >>
[Guest post by Nathan Pippenger] It’s fair to say that the United States was caught off-guard by the Arab Spring. But whatever the strategic consequences of that lack of preparedness, the financial consequences were hard for the State Department to ignore. New, unforeseen expenses were suddenly cropping up everywhere from Tunisia to Syria, and the instability of events made it difficult to predict where money would be needed next. READ MORE >>
Close To Zero
The Making of a Syrian Dissident: A Personal Journey
Meet the Freedom-Fighting Smugglers on the Syrian Border
Antakya, Turkey—Mautaz and his wife heard the shelling getting closer to their village of Hazan and knew it was their time to leave. The subsequent journey did not take place alone: They joined a group of 13 Syrians, led by a smuggler. With the smuggler carrying one of their eight children ahead, Muataz and his brother cautiously followed behind, wary of landmines. Eventually they safely reached this Turkish border town. READ MORE >>
Will Syria’s Sectarian Divisions Spill Over Into Turkey?
Observers of the growing humanitarian crisis in Syria are increasingly worried that the conflict will turn into sectarian struggle, and with good reason: The Assad regime has enjoyed overwhelming support among Syria’s minority Alawite population while the country’s Sunni majority is leading the anti-Assad rebellion. But the conflict poses another risk. It may stir sectarian tensions in Turkey, which could, in turn, complicate any international intervention against Assad’s regime. READ MORE >>
The only real surprise about the six-point peace plan for Syria put forward by United Nations envoy Kofi Annan is why it took until yesterday, the eve of its proposed ceasefire, for the world to declare it a failure. Reacting to the latest violence throughout Syria on Monday, U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Washington is “not hopeful” that Tuesday would see a cessation of hostilities. But any such hope was naïve to begin with. READ MORE >>
The Stalled Revolution
On a Monday in late February, I received a Facebook message from a Syrian activist notifying me that a demonstration was due to start in half an hour in a heavily guarded section of Damascus. The occasion was a funeral, and so the protest was likely to be large. “Two of the five martyrs are children, and funeral processions for children are always big,” the message explained. READ MORE >>
