Broken pottery vessels in ransacked museums. Blown-up ruins in sandy villages. The crumbling dome of a mosque, open to the yawning blue sky overhead. These are the images of Syria’s destroyed cultural heritage that dominate the Western imagination. But what do these scenes of destruction actually mean, and can we really dismiss them as just […]
Tag: Syria
Syria and the War on Terror: The Mask Finally Comes Off
The world watched with bated breath on December 8th, 2024, as rebel forces rolled into Damascus to oust then president Bashar Al-Assad. This ousting put an end to the reign of not only Bashar, but the Assad family, whose stranglehold on power in Syria began over five decades ago with Bashar’s father Hafez in 1971. […]
Israel and Iran at the Precipice
The Middle East is no stranger to armed conflict, but the month of April nearly saw the region embroiled in its most substantial war in decades as long-term enemies Israel and Iran exchanged blows. Despite their decades-long animosity, these exchanges marked the first time that either country initiated direct military strikes against one another’s territory […]
Where Will Universal Jurisdiction Go from Here?
In mid-January, Germany drew headlines when a Koblenz court found Syrian colonel Anwar Raslan guilty of torture, murder, and sexual violence. A few months before the conviction of Raslan, a French court determined that legal action against a member of Syrian state security, Abdulhamid C., could not proceed. A common theme unites the two cases: […]
What Makes a Terrorist, What Makes an Ally
As members of the United States, we are given a designated list of what groups and which people we ought to believe engage in terrorism. Yet what the government considers and what is ignored when adding or omitting a name to that list is obscured. The United States’ relationship with terrorism was choreographed following the […]
The last stronghold of resistance: Idlib in War
Buried under the very important and drastic news of the ‘stock market crash’ and concerns over Bernie Sanders’ health lies the “insignificant” story of bloodshed and misery: the War for Idlib. In March 2011, when the Arab Spring spilled over into Syria, the Syrian people and the international community thought that change was underway. However, […]
The Fate of a Nation
In the span of three years, from 1986 to 1989, the Iraqi Military Force killed between 50,000 to 182,000 Kurds and destroyed 90 percent of all Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq. This dark episode in history is often referred to as the Anfal Genocide. As the persecutions against the Kurds continued in Iraq, many sought […]
Que Sarin, Sarin
Accusations of war crimes far predate the international law that defines those crimes; the first recorded international trial for war crimes occurred in 1474, while formal international law on the subject was only promulgated in the 1890s. Of course, once the concept of a war crime emerged, the exploitation of war crime accusations for political […]
Universal Jurisdiction, Universal Justice: Prosecuting Syrian War Crimes Abroad
In August 2013, a defector from the Syrian regime with the code name “Caesar” stunned the world by smuggling photos out of Syria illustrating abuses taking place at the hands of the Assad-led government. Tens of thousands of graphic photos illustrated “evidence of widespread torture, starvation, beatings, and disease in Syrian government detention facilities.” The […]
Lebanon: Too Beautiful for its Own Good
National pride has historically been founded on biases and ignorance of a country’s flawed history. But of course, it is also founded on some merit. It takes one visit to understand why so many in Lebanon beam at the mention of their nation. Cedar trees from thousands of years ago stand tall across from ancient […]