[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 22 November, 2017] With just two days to go before the launch of the latest Syrian opposition conference in the Saudi capital, known as Riyadh II, the head of the opposition’s High Negotiations Committee (HNC), Riad Hijab, announced his resignation Monday. Hijab’s resignation, which had been expected from him and a number of the HNC’s…

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 20 November, 2017] Earlier this month, on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference held in Bonn, Germany, it was announced that the Syrian Arab Republic had agreed to join the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as the Paris Agreement. This accord was first adopted at the end of 2015 in…

In the latest installment of our interview series, Al-Jumhuriya speaks to Jean-Pierre Filiu, a French historian, Arabist, and professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs. A fluent Arabic speaker and veteran observer of the region, Filiu served as a diplomat in countries including Syria, Jordan, and Tunisia before taking up the academic profession full-time in 2006. His numerous books include…

Displaced Damascenes fear “reconstruction” is a fig leaf for the permanent transformation of their former home neighborhoods—and their exclusion therefrom.

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 7 November, 2017.] MA’ARRAT AL-NU’MAN, Syria – The house had grown old after its abandonment in 2008, and the decapitation of its statue in 2013, with two bullets shot through the cloak with which the sculptor Muhammad Qabawa had enveloped the statue’s figure. The grave remained alone, adorned with the words selected by its childless…

Al-Jumhuriya joins a rare guided tour of Beirut’s restored Barakat building, an aristocratic villa-turned-sniper-nest, which has finally opened to the public—but only temporarily.

[Editor’s note: The following is the first in a two-part report from Damascus and its surrounding province, originally published in Arabic on 3 November, 2017. The second part may be read here.] ZABADANI, Damascus Province – What is it that Syrians await today? Or, what is it that awaits them? All, without exception, are anticipating the end of the war sooner or later, whether by…

Hind Rifai reflects on the parallels between Samira al-Khalil’s diary under siege in Douma and the poems of Anna Akhmatova.

In our second English-language podcast, Al-Jumhuriya speaks to Dr. Bente Scheller, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Middle East office, based in Beirut. One of Europe’s foremost experts on Syria, Dr. Scheller previously worked at the Germany embassy in Damascus from 2002 to 2004, as well as the Berlin Aspen Institute’s Syria program. She is the author of The Wisdom of Syria’s Waiting Game: Foreign…

The death of prominent Druze general Issam Zahreddine should remind the community Assad is not their savior, argues Makram Rabah.