سوريا

It has long been known that the Assad regime, facing a shortage of manpower in its regular army, has had to rely on irregular paramilitaries in its bid to reverse rebel advances. This became particularly apparent in 2013, when Hezbollah openly declared its participation in the capture of Qusayr, a town in Homs Province on the border with Lebanon.

A shorter version of this analysis was published in Foreign Policy.

Read the full article at Foreign Policy, or click here for an extended version of this analysis.

In his recent National Interest blog post entitled “Assad Will Have to Stay for Awhile,” Paul Pillar advises the Obama administration to ignore regional calls to help bring down the Assad regime, for three reasons: the resilience of the regime; the need to avoid fighting it and ISIS simultaneously; and the need to preserve stability in Syria. Pillar’s three reasons are flawed.

Hind Kabawat is a senior program officer at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and a senior research associate at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution (CRDC) at George Mason University. Since 2012, she has been conducting periodic conflict resolution and peace-building workshops for communities within Syria and for Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Turkey.

Analysis of Syrian civil war dynamics tends to draw a sharp contrast between the southern front, referring to the southernmost provinces of Deraa, Quneitra, and Suwayda, and the north. Most observers point to the south, in contrast to the north, as lacking a significant Islamic State (ISIS) presence. How true does this general assessment hold? Are radical or extremist groups much less influential in the south?

Around 100 Syrian opposition figures recently concluded a conference in Cairo. The meeting was noteworthy for two reasons. It signaled Cairo’s cautious but unmistakable entry into the Syrian minefield, and it marks the still-fragmented opposition’s first careful steps in the direction of a compromise with the Assad regime.

Virtuoso French-Swiss qanun player Julien “Jalal Eddine” Weiss, who tirelessly promoted classical Arab and Syrian music to international audiences from his home in Aleppo, Syria, died this month in Paris. Forced to flee Syria’s brutal civil war like millions of other Syrians, Weiss’s death is a sad reminder of the ongoing threat to Aleppo’s rich cultural traditions, as well as an occasion to remember the city’s heritage, which played such an important role in inspiring his unique Middle Eastern compositions.

An Israeli helicopter fired rockets on a convoy in the Golan Heights on January 18, killing six members of Hezbollah and an Iranian general. MEI’s Randa Slim explains the context surrounding the attack and the likely repercussions.

Why did Israel choose this time to attack Hezbollah and Iranian targets in the Golan Heights?

It is no longer accurate to describe the war in Syria as a conflict between Syrian rebels on the one hand and Bashar al-Assad’s regime forces “supported” by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG), Hezbollah, and Iraqi militias on the other. Most major battles in Syria—along the frontlines of regime-held areas—are now being directed and fought by the IRG and Hezbollah, along with other non-Syrian Shi‘i militias, with Assad forces in a supportive or secondary role.

The exceptionalism of Thaer Maarouf and Jason Tecson is that they reached over a cultural desert to talk to each other and to serve as catalysts of multi-contextual significance—emphasizing that beyond conflicts, it is traditions, culture, and history that define people today. The Arab world would do well to learn from their exchange. Exporting the distinguished culture of the Middle East is critical in any effort to counter the barbaric images of the region currently shaping Asia’s view of Arabs.

In his pursuit of foreign policy deals with Syria and Iran, President Obama has taken a soft approach. As a result, Syria and Iran have taken advantage with aggressive opportunism.