October 24th, marks the 300 day mark of the imprisonment of Al Jazeera journalist. The Al Jazeera journalist have been charged with "spreading false news, endangering national security and support a banned organization, the Muslim Brotherhood."
October 24th, marks the 300 day mark of the imprisonment of Al Jazeera journalist. The Al Jazeera journalist have been charged with "spreading false news, endangering national security and support a banned organization, the Muslim Brotherhood."
Mark Dubowitz and Eric Lorber explain why Iran should not have access to U.S. funding. It would allow for them to get away with bad behavior and put the U.S in even more binds.
This article was written during International Women's day and hightlights what women face under repressive regime. "At the hands of the coup regime in Egypt, women suffer horrific crimes including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest, violent rape, displacement, severe torture (often leading to permanent disability), sham military trials, unjust death sentences, enforced disappearances, brutal degrading treatment of political prisoners' wives and daughters while visiting relatives in the military junta's detention centers."
During the height of the revolution, many artist began to take the streets of egypt. In this article, it gives the audience a better understand of the processes and thought of each painting.
The war in Syria is costing the lives of many, but theres plenty more that is being lost. Syria is a country that has been continuously inhabited for a very long time. Civilizations have left their marks on the architecture there and there are many great archaeological sites. At the center of Aleppo, lies the great mosque, known for its 1000 year old minaret. The article is about the minaret being lost due to the fighting in the city.
This article shows the alarming amount of people that have dispalced by the Syrian regime and surround forces fighting for control. Many of these refugees are children.
The first year of Syria’s uprising, 2011, largely spared Aleppo, the country’s economic engine, largest city, and home of its most prized heritage sites. Fighting engulfed Aleppo in 2012 and has never let up since, making the city a symbol of the civil war’s grinding destruction
Rebels captured the eastern side of the city while the government held the wes
, residents say the city is virtually uninhabitable; most who remain have nowhere else to go
In terms of sheer devastation, Syria today is worse off than Germany at the end of World War II
ven as the fighting continues, a movement is brewing among planners, activists and bureaucrats—some still in Aleppo, others in Damascus, Turkey, and Lebanon—to prepare, right now, for the reconstruction effort that will come whenever peace finally arrives.
In a glass tower belonging to the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, a project called the National Agenda for the Future of Syria has brought together teams of engineers, architects, water experts, conservationists, and development experts to grapple with seemingly impossible technical problems
It is good to do the planning now, because on day one we will be ready,”
The team planning the country’s future is a diverse one. Some are employed by the government of Syria, others by the rebels’ rival provisional government. Still others work for the UN, private construction companies, or nongovernmental organizations involved in conservation, like the World Monuments Fund
As the group’s members outline a path toward renewal, they’re considering everything from corruption and constitutional reform to power grids, antiquities, and health care systems.
Aleppo is split between a regime side with vestiges of basic services, and a mostly depopulated rebel-controlled zone, into which the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have made inroads over the last year
The population exodus has claimed most of the city’s craftsmen, medical personnel, academics, and industrialists
It took decades to clear the moonscapes of rubble and to rebuild, in famous targets like Dresden and Hiroshima but in countless other places as well, from Coventry to Nanking. Some places never recovered their vitality.
Of course, Syrian planners cannot help but pay attention to the model closest to home: Beirut, a city almost synonymous with civil war and flawed reconstructio
We don’t want to end up like Beirut,” one of the Syrian planners says, referring to the physical problems but also to a postwar process in which militia leaders turned to corrupt reconstruction ventures as a new source of funds and power
Syria’s national recovery will depend in large part on whether its industrial powerhouse Aleppo can bounce back
The city’s workshops, famed above all for their fine textiles, export millions of dollars’ worth of goods every week even now, and the economy has expanded to include modern industry as well.
Today, however, the city’s water and power supply are under the control of the Islamic State
Across Syria, more than one-third of the population is displaced.
A river of rubble marks the no-man’s land separating the two sides. The only way to cross is to leave the city, follow a wide arc, and reenter from the far side.
Parts of the old city won’t be inhabitable for years, he told me by Skype, because the ground has literally shifted as a result of bombing and shelling
The first and more obvious is creating realistic options to fix the country after the war—in some cases literal plans for building infrastructure systems and positioning construction equipment, in other cases guidelines for shaping governanc
They’re familiar with global “best practices,” but also with how things work in Syria, so they’re not going to propose pie-in-the-sky idea
If some version of the current regime remains in charge, it will probably direct massive contracts toward patrons in Russia, China, or Iran. The opposition, by contrast, would lean toward firms from the West, Turkey, and the Gulf.
At the current level of destruction, the project planners estimate the reconstruction will cost at least $100 billion
Recently a panel of architects and heritage experts from Sweden, Bosnia, Syria, and Lebanon convened in Beirut to discuss lessons for Syria’s reconstruction—one of the many distinct initiatives parallel to the Future of Syria project.
“You should never rebuild the way it was,” said Arna Mackic, an architect from Mostar. That Bosnian city was divided during the 1990s civil war into Muslim and Catholic sides, destroying the city center and the famous Stari Most bridge over the Neretva River. “The war changes us. You should show that in rebuilding.”
Instead, Mackik says, the sectarian communities keep to their own enclaves. Bereft of any common symbols, the city took a poll to figure out what kind of statue to erect in the city center. All the local figures were too polarizing. In the end they settled on a gold-colored statue of the martial arts star Bruce Lee
“It belongs to no one,” Mackic says. “What does Bruce Lee mean to me?
is that it could offer the city’s people a form of participatory democracy that has so far eluded the Syrian regime and sadly, the opposition as well.
“You are being democratic without the consequences of all the hullabaloo of formal democratization
A great deal of money has been invested in Syria’s destruction— by the regime, the local parties to the conflict, and many foreign powers. A great deal of money will be made in the aftermath, in a reconstruction project that stands to dwarf anything seen since after World War II.
While it is still unclear as to who will win the Syrian conflict, there are people who are already looking towards the future and a better Syria. Plans are being made but, of course, these plans will entirely depend on who wins the war.
At any given time, there are about 70 refugees who have fled the war in Syria. They share the bunk beds inside, six to a room.
They are among the two million people Turkey has taken i
Many are housed in state-of-the-art refugee camps throughout the country, but those who have connections and more money choose to come to Istanbul in hopes of easier communication with foreign embassies, faster passage to what they hope will be a more comfortable life in Europe
The war has split and scattered all of their families around the world. Bekandy's father is still back in Syria, her fiancé and mother are in London.
He hopes his good deeds might somehow help reunite him with his family, which is now split into three parts, spread across Europe.
His wife and six-year-old son are on the line from Athens. Their eldest daughter — just 15 — is in Germany.
Lezieh says ISIS drew that X on his house in Aleppo, marking it to show his was a Christian home. He says militants tried to recruit him, threatened to kidnap his children and bombed his new business
Now Lezieh gets by with donations from parishioners and hopes to see his family all in one place soon. He tries to smile through the tears. He has to. His daughter is calling.
Syrian Christians struggling in Turkey and other European countries. ISIS has not made it easy for them to live in Syria which is why they must flee the country.
Libya's popular uprising officially began on February 17, 2011, resulting in the toppling of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Since then, the oil-rich nation has been plunged into political chaos amid the growing threat of Islamic State.
More than 500 people, including dozens of civilians, have been killed since the assault began 10 days ago
urkey has already taken in more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees over the past five years and says it will continue to do so in a "controlled fashion".
rkey would be indirectly contributing to "ethnic cleansing" in northern Syria by the government.
urkey's president asked in a speech: "Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organisation?"
While Turkey sees the PYD and YPG as offshoots of the banned PKK, the US does not and believes they are the only effective force against IS on the ground in Syria, reports the BBC's Mark Lowen in Istanbul.
France's outgoing Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, also questioned the commitment of the US to resolve the crisis in Syria on Wednesday, saying its "ambiguous" policy was contributing to the problem.
But he warned: "We feel that we were sold to the Russians, and that the West has abandoned us."
Turkey has denounced the United States for providing support to the Democratic Union Party, who any are calling a terrorist group. This is contributing to the bloodshed.
US support of Syrian extremist group, the Democratic Union Party, has been denounced by Turkish president Erdogan. The recent fighting has displaced 50,000 people and cut off key supply routes for bringing in aid. Turkey has vowed to continue to accept refugees.w
Throughout the Middle East, Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran compete for influence and supremacy via proxy wars in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Produced by Reem Makhoul, Mark Scheffler and Arielle Ray.
The number 562 is relatively meaningless to most people. But not to those who marked the 562nd anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul by the Ottoman Turks last May. Hundreds of thousands reportedly gathered in a field outside the city where a parade of jets painted the sky with red and white smoke-the colors of the Turkish flag.
"THE amounts of oil are incredible, and I have to rub my eyes frequently and say like the farmer: 'There ain't no such beast.'" So wrote an American oilman in the Persian Gulf a few years after the discovery in 1938 of a gusher of oil from Saudi Arabia's Well Number Seven, 4,727 feet (1,440 metres) below the desert floor.
said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government.
regime and its ally Russia blamed rebels.
More than 3 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict,
A further 6.5 million people, 50% of them children, are believed to be internally displaced within Syria,
Western powers,
half the country's population.
rebel groups are also deeply divided
most prominent is the moderate National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces
Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support,
support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement.
The Sunni-dominated oppositio
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states along with the US, UK and France.
rise of radical Islamist militia in rebel ranks and the arrival of Sunni jihadists from across the world has led to a marked cooling of international and regional backing.
This website offers eight steps to understanding the Syrian conflict. The sections include: uprising turns violent, descent into civil war, war crimes, chemical weapons, humanitarian crisis, Syrian refugees in the region, rebels and the rise of the jihadists, peace efforts, & proxy war
More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State.
Six months after it began, a deadly wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis that has been referred to as the "knife intifada" shows no sign of ending, despite a drop in incidents from a high point last autumn.