Wednesday, Jun 19, 2013

Day 827

Posts Tagged ‘Latakia’

Arts + Culture: War in Syria’s Wine Country

Another winter has passed at Domaine de Bargylus, and once-twisted, gray-barked vines are today burgeoning with green buds. Spring is a precarious season, when a late frost can decimate a vineyard’s chances of ever yielding a harvest. Like the majority of their countrymen, the owners of this young estate, Syrian brothers Karim and Sandro Saadé, weren’t born into wine. But if the mark of a good winegrower is the ability to adapt and take in stride the vicissitudes of life and nature, then the Saadés have already proven themselves beyond a doubt to be a pair of natural vignerons.

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Social Media Buzz: “Cleansing” Sunnis on Syria’s Coast

Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict. Each week Syria Deeply monitors the online conversation in English and Arabic, pulling out the highlights in a feature called the Social Media Buzz.

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The Interview: Tomorrow, I’m Defecting From Assad’s Army

Below is a conversation with a fighter who said he would be defecting from the Syrian Army the following day. We speak at a house in the Latakia mountains, where FSA fighters have gathered for dinner.

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Interview: I’m an FSA Battalion Leader

Abu Adnan and I meet on a cold dark night, a few days before the end of the year. He’s lean and grizzled in jeans and a dark overcoat. He holds a flashlight, standing at the precipice of an incline in the mountains along the Turkey-Syria border. He’s about to walk me down and looks wary, but determined, at the thought of yet another cross through this well-used smuggling route.

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The Battle for Latakia Part Two

The drive from Al Sultan Selim al Woal Battalions house in Turkman to the little girl’s house in Akrad takes about 90 minutes on a good day. On those days, you have to pull off the road only once to avoid a passing helicopter. At various points, the roads are rocketed out, fresh craters filled with mud that scrape the car.

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Newsletter

Recent Posts

Decoder: What the Obama-Putin Meeting Really Means

June 18, 2013

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed Syria Monday on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland. ”Our positions do not fully coincide, but we are united by the common intention to end the violence and to stop the number of victims increasing in Syria,” Putin said. But with Obama backing [...]

The Data Miners: Syria Needs Analysis Project (SNAP)

June 17, 2013

The Syria Needs Analysis Project (SNAP) is a partnership between the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) and MapAction. It’s funded by the U.K.’s Department for International Development and is “aimed at strengthening the shared situational analysis of humanitarian responders by providing an independent analysis of the humanitarian situation of those affected by the Syrian crisis.” To [...]

What the Gezi Park Protesters Think of Erdogan’s Syria Policy

June 15, 2013

As anti-government protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park continued into their third weekend, a Syrian Turk, a riot policeman, a Kurd and others in the disputed strip shared their views on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Syria policy and how it’s shaped their views of the Turkish government.

Zaatari’s Wasted Youth

June 14, 2013

Last week at Zaatari refugee camp, as we sipped tea that was just a few degrees hotter than the air temperature, I asked a 22-year-old refugee named Hamdi why he was so quiet that day. Hamdi’s close friend Yazan, who has been the only pillar of stability in Hamdi’s life since he arrived in the [...]