It is no easy thing to let your best friend go. But Iran needs to change its attitude towards the Syrian regime if it wants to stay a relevant player in the Middle East.
Secularists and Islamists alike have long suffered under the shadow of autocratic rule. What is required now is the strength and courage to actively integrate and mix so that we can be rid of the corrosive prejudices which threaten what this revolution stands for
A Lebanon-based journalist examines the possibility of violence spreading from Syria to Lebanon. There are reasons enough to fear the worst, but also signs of real restraint.
Whatever genuine grievances and demands for political reform the Syrian people might have had a year and half ago were trodden underfoot by this stampeding sectarian drive that the Syrian opposition itself worked so hard to foster among its own supporters.
Why a widespread analogy is harmful to fragile post-Arab Spring states and civil societies.
The first and most important casualty of the militarization of the Syrian uprising is the non-violent movement.
Examine the contributions of members of different religions and sects in achieving independence from the Ottoman Empire or the French mandate. Don’t use minorities to inflame feelings of insecurity in Syria
The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 launched a grand strategy to reorder the middle east. A decade on, growing tensions over Iran and the conflict in Syria suggest that it created the seeds of even greater instability.
The Saudi regime and Washington are fundamentally working at cross-purposes, for the Saudis’ nemesis is al-Qaeda-like groups, not the Muslim Brotherhood, which will most likely be the beneficiary of armed chaos. Washington will set in motion a process it cannot control, to the calamity of the Syri
The military approach, sole government policy since the 1980s, has failed. Hawkish voices are no longer able to dominate discussion and portray the Kurdish question solely as a security issue. Can a solution best be found through democratic means?
The International Criminal Court could play a key role in securing justice over serious crimes perpetrated in Syria's conflict. But this in turn requires bold action from the European Union, say Lotte Leicht & Clive Baldwin.
The author interviews the FSA and ponders its relationship to sectarianism in the wider context.
