25 February 2016
Inside Syria
By Abdallah Al-Othman, Political Chief of the Levant Front via Foreign Policy
My Syrian rebel group is desperately waging war against the Islamic State and Bashar al-Assad. But America is letting the Russians bomb us.
By Stephanie Nebehay via Reuters
The Syrian government has approved access to seven besieged areas and U.N. convoys are expected to set off in days, the United Nations said on Tuesday after crisis talks in Damascus.
By Col. Nora Marcos via The Washington Institute
Establishment of humanitarian corridors, safe havens, safe zones, or buffer or no-fly zones could turn the tide of Syria's humanitarian crisis, but it could also pose numerous complications and create second- and third-order effects for the region.
By Sibohan O'Grady via Foreign Policy
It was destroyed anyway.
Media
By Christian Holub via Entertainment Weekly
Meet 'the people we're incoherently yelling about'
Proxy Politics
By Bassem Mroue and Philip Issa via Reuters
Turkey said Tuesday it is pressing for ground operations in Syria, hoping for the involvement of the U.S. and other allies as a force dominated by Kurdish fighters pushed through rebel lines and captured more territory near the Turkish border.
By Roy Gutman via Foreign Policy
Russia has accelerated its brutal bombing campaign and is working with Turkey’s Kurdish enemies to seize as much land as it can — before peace breaks out.
By Alexander Decina via The Daily Beast
If Riyadh and its partners actually intend to send troops to Syria, it will be an incredibly risky move that will prolong the civil war.
By Ilan Goldenberg, Nicholas A. Heras and Paul Scharre via War on the Rocks
The announcement of an agreement by the United States and Russia on a possible temporary cessation of hostilities in Syria is a positive development, though we are skeptical that this deal will hold or ever even go into effect. Until there are fundamental changes on the ground there will be no major breakthroughs in the negotiating room. And unless the United States is willing to significantly increase its support for opposition groups in Syria and take more risk in confronting both Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian supporters, it is hard to see an acceptable end to this that sets conditions for destroying ISIL and other extremist groups in Syria and Iraq. At the Center for a New American Security, we have been undertaking a review of current U.S. strategy towards ISIL, in which the Syrian civil war that stretches from Dara’a to Aleppo is one of three separate but interrelated theaters.
