Despite 10 years of murderous strife, it is ‘politics as usual’ in Syria
Talmiz Ahmad
More than half of the country’s 20 million people have been displaced. (AFP)
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Ten years after an innocuous piece of graffiti scrawled on the walls of Deraa by some children led to fratricidal confrontations across Syria, the figures of death and destruction are mind-boggling as nearly half-a-million Syrians are now dead.
Among the dead are 12,000 children and one out of every six Syrians has had one of their parents killed or wounded.
More than half of the country’s 20 million people have been displaced, half of them refugees. In north Syria, a million displaced people live in about 1,300 camps that lack basic infrastructure roads, water supply, or sewage facilities. More than 80 percent of the population is experiencing poverty, 12.4 million are food insecure, 15 million do not have access to clean water, and 2.5 million children are without educati
Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Weekly: February 20 – 27, 2021
February 26, 2021
The following are some of this week s reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with Membership in the subject line.)
Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email.
February 17, 2021 at 10:21 am
This month, the United States removed the Houthis from its list of designated terrorist groups, a decision thought wise by the administration of President Joe Biden. That move, more than simply reversing yet another policy adopted by the previous Trump administration, was made with the intention of enabling the continuation of aid to Yemen s ravaged population, amidst a humanitarian crisis deemed the largest in the world.
The designation of the Houthis as terrorists, it was argued, prevented the ease and accessibility of aid to Yemen, as agencies are not permitted to provide aid under the watch of terrorist groups holding those territories. On the face of it, that seems like a reasonable decision to make for the sake of saving human lives and preventing a humanitarian disaster.
Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Weekly: January 30 – February 6, 2020
February 5, 2021
The following are some of this week s reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with Membership in the subject line.)
Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email.
Syria’s dance of death gets murkier
By Talmiz Ahmad| Published: 3rd February 2021 5:16 pm IST
Talmiz Ahmad
The 45-member “small group” of the Syrian Constitutional Committee, made up of government, opposition and civil society representatives, met in Geneva under UN auspices last week to discuss the “basic principles” of the new Syrian constitution. Afterwards, all that UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen would say was that some potential “commonalities” had emerged, confirming that discussions had a long way to go.
On the sidelines of these talks, the members of the Astana peace process Russia, Iran and Turkey called for the sovereignty of Syria to be respected, a rebuke to the US for backing the separatist Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast of the country. At a special session of the UN Security Council on Friday, the Syrian permanent representative condemned the “terrorism, aggression, foreign occupation and unilateral coercive