Syria

Israel to expand illegal settlement of Golan Heights

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported April 28 on the Israeli government's plan for increased settler transfers into the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, calling the decision a "clear statement of intent to commit war crimes."

The $334 million plan was adopted on April 17, foreseeing full development by 2030. The government purports to make the small town of Katzrin the Golan's "first city," by bringing in 3,000 new Israeli settler families. Funds are allocated for infrastructure, housing, public services, and academic facilities.

Syria

Syria: arrest in Assad-era massacre

Syria's Internal Security Forces on April 24 arrested Amjad Youssef, principal suspect in a massacre of civilians in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013. Footage emerged in 2022 showing Syrian soldiers leading captives, bound and blindfolded, to a pit before shooting them. The video became one of the most direct pieces of visual evidence of extrajudicial killings by forces of the Bashar Assad dictatorship, which was finally overthrown in December 2024. The leaked footage was released as part of an investigative report prepared by researchers from the Institute for War, Holocaust & Genocide Studies (NIOD) at the University of Amsterdam. Apprehended in a rural area of Hama province following a manhunt, Youssef appeared in the footage, and is believed to have been a member of the notorious Branch 227 of the Assad-era Military Intelligence Directorate. Estimates by the Syrian Network for Human Rights indicate that the death toll in the Tadamon massacre may exceed 450 people. (SNHR, BBC News)

Syria

EU expands migrant detention and deportation rules

The European Union took a significant step toward adopting a Trump-like approach to migration when the EuroParliament approved a new law March 26 expanding the power of security agencies to track, detain and deport migrants. Amnesty International criticized the revised "Return Regulation" as "punitive" and a threat to fundamental rights. The law also allows for people to be deported to countries other than their country of origin—a controversial policy used by the Trump administration. Greece, an EU member, is even working directly with US officials to ramp up deportations.

Syria

UN Commission on Syria: protect civil society

The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria (COI) announced March 6 that it has completed an in-country mission to Damascus as it prepares to brief the Council in Geneva this week. The Commission said it pressed Syria's transitional authorities on accountability, institutional reform, and protections for civil society amid renewed regional volatility.

Syria

UN Security Council briefed on Syria transition

Senior UN officials told the Security Council on Feb. 13 that Syria's fragile political transition has gained momentum following a landmark agreement between Damascus and Kurdish authorities in the northeast. Still, they warned that renewed violence in the south, Israeli incursions, and deep humanitarian needs continue to underscore the precarious path to stability.

Syria

Podcast: twilight of Rojava?

A last-minute "permanent ceasefire" may mean that northeast Syria is back from the brink of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war. But ceasefires have repeatedly broken down since fighting resumed earlier this year, with Damascus demanding disbandment of the Rojava autonomous zone, and the integration of its institutions—including its military wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—into the central government. While the new pact sets a more "gradual" pace for this integration, the Kurdish aspiration to regional autonomy and the central government's insistence on centralization may prove a long-term obstacle to peace. In Episode 315 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg weighs the odds for avoiding a conflict that holds the potential for escalation to genocide, with the connivance of the Great Powers that so recently backed the SDF to fight ISIS.

Syria

Russia joins US in betraying Syrian Kurds

The Kurdish-held border town of Kobani in northern Syria is under siege again, as it was by ISIS in 2014—but this time by forces of the Syrian central government, which has cut off water and power to the town in the dead of winter, with snow on the ground. Since the start of the year, the Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria have lost almost all of the territory they controlled to a new offensive by the central government. Kobani with Hasakah and Qamishli are the last besieged strongholds of the reduced Rojava autonomous zone. And both the US and Russia, which have backed the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIS, now appear to be cutting them loose—effectively green-lighting the government offensive against them. The US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, has already warned that US support for the SDF is coming to an end. And in the midst of the offensive, Russia has withdrawn its forces from Qamishli, its principal military outpost in Rojava.

Syria

Syria: can new integration pact avert war on Rojava?

The Syrian interim government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reached an agreement Jan. 18 to immediately halt fighting and integrate SDF-held areas into state institutions. The deal follows days of renewed clashes, in which government forces routed SDF strongholds in the city of Aleppo and then pushed east, taking several towns that had been under the control of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration. Just hours before the agreement was reached, autonomous authorities in the Kurdish region, known as Rojava, had announced a "general mobilization" in support of the SDF, citing an "existential war" launched by Damascus against their territory.

Syria

Multiple foreign powers still bombing Syria

The Pentagon said US and allied forces carried out a wave of air-strikes against ISIS targets across Syria on Jan. 10, although accounts were unclear as to which other countries were involved or what casualties resulted. The raids came as part of a campaign dubbed Operation Hawkeye Strike, launched in response to the deadly ISIS attack on US and Syrian forces in Palmyra last month. Jordan was named as participating in the sorties. (CentCom, BBC News) Jordan also carried out a series of air-strikes supposedly targeting drug traffickers in the closing days of December—the latest in ongoing intermittent Jordanian strikes aimed at breaking up the Captagon smuggling newtorks in Syria. (LWJ) The past week also saw joint British and French strikes on supposed ISIS targets near Palmyra. (BBC News)

Syria

Syria: army shells Kurdish enclaves in Aleppo

Civilians fled Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Aleppo on Jan. 7 after the Syrian army declared them "closed military zones" and began shelling the areas. Some 300 homes are reported destroyed in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiyeh, which have long been under the control of the Kurdish Asayish militia force. The Asayish and the interim government's army blamed each other for initiating the clashes. Thousands have fled through "humanitarian crossings" the army has established for residents to evacuate.

Syria

UN condemns deadly mosque bombing in Syria

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Dec. 26 condemned that day's deadly mosque bombing in Syria, urging that those responsible be swiftly identified and brought to justice. The explosion tore through the Ali Bin Abi Talib mosque in the Wadi al-Dahab neighborhood of Homs during Friday prayers, killing at least eight people and injuring around 20, according to Syrian authorities. The mosque serves members of the Alawite minority, which has faced violent reprisals since the fall of the Bashar Assad dictatorship last December.

Syria

Deadly strikes on hospitals: the new norm?

On World Humanitarian Day in August, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus released a statement calling attention to intensifying attacks on healthcare workers and facilities, which constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law. "We must stop this becoming the norm," he wrote. The events of the past two weeks suggest such attacks are now already the norm.