What kind of Syria would we like to see and might we see by March 2031?
On 6 March 2011, the local security services in the small town of Daraa, southern Syria, detained fifteen teenagers painting anti-government graffiti on fences and buildings. During the subsequent interrogations, the teens were allegedly subjected to unjustifiably cruel treatment and even torture. Since all the detainees were born to prominent local families, their relatives and friends soon came to the police station to demand...
It takes a strong state, suppressing political violence, and a legitimate authority to succeed in combating the consequences of military conflicts in the Middle East during a pandemic
The question of the political and socioeconomic consequences the COVID-19 pandemic will have for global development has prompted heated analytical discussions among leading politicians, economists and political scientists. The range of opinions is staggering, varying from “the world will never be the same” (Henry...
... dictatorships in Iraq and Libya generated jihadist chaos and political disintegration and worsened Washington’s relations with Moscow, which felt misled into supporting the Libyan intervention. The result was the intensification of Russian support for Bashar Assad’s beleaguered regime in Syria. In 2013, when Obama reneged on his chemical weapon red line in Syria, Putin got a first-hand indication of what “strategic patience” really meant. Thus, when Moscow’s corrupt client, Ukrainian president ...
The central issue of Wednesday's meetings in Moscow was whether Russia would give in. An immediate change of policy was obviously not on the cards since it is not in Putin's nature to make sudden concessions under pressure. But will he gradually and incrementally pull the rug from under the Syrian president?
According to Russian experts in Moscow, there are multiple reasons why the Kremlin will not. They range from concerns about future chaos in Syria in the aftermath of regime change to the damage...
