Lebanon’s Tripoli has been among the most welcoming cities to Syrian refugees, though tensions exist. In this special audiovisual report, Kareem Chehayeb profiles three members of Tripoli’s Syrian community, now caught between a Lebanon in crisis and a homeland still at war.

In my psychotherapist’s office, a painting hangs on the wall that I often find myself staring at during the sessions. The purely minimalist scene of the painting depicts three tall windowpanes; at one corner of the room is a small side-table, a white vase and some white flowers—tulips perhaps. At the other corner can be seen the edge of a table covered with a maroon…

Too rarely does it occur to Westerners, worried about the erosion of their democracies, that refugees from Syria and elsewhere have valuable experience striving for civic values against authoritarian forces.

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 3 February, 2020. Since that date, the city of Saraqeb and its surroundings have fallen under the control of the Bashar al-Assad regime, though Ariha itself remains in opposition hands.] On both sides of Ariha’s Market Street stand dozens of shops selling sweets. Their windows display the full range for which the city is famous:…

While Assad regime forces and their Russian allies continued their war of displacement in the countrysides of Idlib and Aleppo last week, reports circulated Tuesday of a large Turkish military convoy’s entry into Idlib. This convoy was said to have begun installing a new so-called “observation post” to the south of Saraqeb, near the village of Tall Mardikh. The location marks the mid-point between Saraqeb…

During the handover ceremony at Lebanon’s interior ministry last Thursday, incoming Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Mohammed Fahmi declared he would not permit “attacks against the security forces, which are carrying out their duties, and which […] have shown brilliance in terms of proactive security.” The days leading up to the formation of Lebanon’s new cabinet on 21 January offered a troubling picture of this “brilliance,”…

Last Wednesday, an elementary school in the north Syrian city of Sarmin was struck with cluster munitions, killing three pupils along with five adult civilians. The canister of the Russian-made Tochka missile that delivered the munitions fell 850 meters away, dispensing approximately fifty smaller submunitions over the area encompassing the school and the surrounding buildings. Munitions of this kind are intended to maximize casualties. In…

In many ways, the life of Qassem Soleimani—the immensely powerful Iranian operative killed by a US Reaper drone near Baghdad airport on 3 January—mirrored that of Iran’s Islamic Republic itself since its inception in 1979. Making his name in 1982, in the Second Battle of Khorramshahr during Iran’s brutal war with Iraq, Soleimani narrowly escaped death after being gravely wounded, but survived to subsequently oversee…

This morning, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) sent an email to various NGOs working in northern Syria’s Idlib Province, informing them of an agreement to temporarily allow passage out of the city of Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, the target of a fresh military campaign by the Assad regime and its Russian ally in recent days. This ostensible window of safe passage, valid…

A new book of artworks tackles the Syrian regime’s use of public space as a tool of oppression, from 1980 to the present day.