The Syrian crisis is approaching its ninth year. In that span, the conflict has taken the lives of over five hundred thousand people and forced over seven million more to flee the country. Of those displaced, more than 3.6 million have sought refuge in Turkey, which now hosts more refugees than any other country in the world.…

After nine years of political conflict in Syria, more than 5.5 million Syrians are now displaced as refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, with more than 3.6 million refugees in Turkey alone. It is unlikely that many of these refugees will be able to return home or resettle in Europe, Canada, or the United States.…

The Obama administration's proposal to spend $500 million on training and equipping “appropriately vetted elements of the moderate Syrian armed opposition” leaves unanswered some of the same questions that always have surrounded proposals to give lethal aid to Syrian rebels. Some of those questions involve the challenges in determining who qualifies as a “moderate.” “Vetting”…

The international refugee crisis is one of the defining political issues of our time. Haunting images—a father passing his infant between barbed wire, a stunned and bloodied five-year-old Omran—have offered powerful proof of the human cost of this crisis. As an amateur photographer, Saria Samakie—himself a Syrian refugee—understands the power of such images and of…

Attacks across the Western world—including most recently in Nice, but also of course in Brussels, Paris, San Bernardino, and elsewhere—highlight the growing threat from extremism, with Syria as its home base. It’s time to recognize, therefore, that containment of the Syria crisis (which I think is essentially President Obama’s policy and which many in the […]

Tourists can witness it firsthand, thanks to Intrepid Travel's partnership with a local NGO.

Power struggle between Bashar al-Assad and first cousin sparks rare family fissure and leaves public aghast

A defiant tyrant and his ruthless wife square up against the family oligarch, with the spoils of a nation at stake. It could be standard Ramadan television fare, but not this year. Instead, all the intrigue of Syria’s ruling family has been laid out in a spectacular real-life drama that has gripped the country and the region.

Leading the cast is the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, and Syria’s first lady, Asma al-Assad, but star billing has so far been taken by the president’s first cousin, Rami Makhlouf, who last week took to Facebook to do the unthinkable: air the normally inscrutable family’s dirty laundry.

At least 40 civilians were killed, including 11 children, when a bomb detonated in the northern Syrian town of Afrin on Tuesday, the Turkish Defence Ministry said, blaming the attack on the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Pics/Crossing lines

On a fine April morning, when Mumbai-based slackliner Samar Farooqui drove into Settlement Number 63 in Chtaura, a town wedged between Beirut and Damascus, all he could see was a sea of white tents glistening in the sun. Under the plastic tarps lived thousands of displaced Syrians who had fled to the Bekaa Valley, the largest affected area and temporary home to over 3,00,000 Syrian refugees, when a brutal civil war broke out in 2011. Lugging the nylon webbings, carbiners and other slacklining equipment, Farooqui and 14 other volunteers, stationed themselves at the nearby parking lot waiting for the refugee children.

This was to be their playground for the next two weeks. Life on the line Slacklining is the art of balancing along a narrow, flexible piece of portable fabric which is usually anchored between two points, mostly trees. "Apart from being a fun fitness activity, it has an incredible ability to connect people, start conversations and change lives," says 27- year old Farooqui. It's the reason he booked a flight to Beirut and signed up for the Crossing Lines Project, an initiative launched in 2013 by Sonya Iverson, a scientist from San Francisco, who uses slacklining to change the way we see and talk about refugees. "I had met Sonya several times at different events. The last time we interacted was at the Move Copengagen festival in Denmark, when she mentioned her plan to introduce slacklining to Syrian refugees and organise a highline festival in Lebanon. It was just the kind of inspiration I was looking for," says the Neral resident who made a career out of slacklining when he founded Slacklife Inc. — a sport and recreation company — in 2014. A level playing field At the Chtaura parking lot, the lines are hooked to the cars in the absence of trees. It's one of the things the sport has taught him — to make the best use of whatever is available at hand. "In Mumbai, I've slacklined in building compounds, garden and promenades. In fact, I was even been arrested for slacklining at Marine Drive," he laughs. Once the line was set up at the camp, Farooqui says the excitement among kids was palpable.

"Children everywhere are the same. You don't have to be concerned about the language or the way you look. I didn't speak Arabic but we managed to communicate fairly well through non-verbal cues in those two weeks. With hand gestures, I would tell them to slow down or stop or move ahead," he says. It was through two local volunteer-based NGOs Salaam and Sonbola that provides education and recreational facilities to those living in the camps in the Bekaa Valley, that the team got access to the children. Forging a personal rapport with each child — there were nearly 400 of them — was difficult for the volunteers who hailed from Iran, America and the UK.

"On the face of it, you couldn't tell that the children had gone through so much trauma. There were some who were more reserved and took time to open up," he says. Periodically, the team would sit down and discuss the day's progress. "If one of students perhaps struggled through the slacklining experience and we noticed it, we discussed it and psycho-analysed it till we came up with a solution to make sure that we didn't leave with someone feeling demoralised," he says. In the two weeks, Farooqui picked up a couple of Arabic words from them, and in turn taught them English. What was most interesting, though was how the sport changed the dynamics among the children themselves. "When you are standing on the rope, wobbling and holding the hand of the person standing on ground, you are opening up to them. So the bullies in the group ended up bonding with the rest. Everybody was on the level playing field," he says.

Catch up on all the latest Mumbai news, crime news, current affairs, and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates

The doctor at the heart of this film shows dauntless compassion

The All Blacks centre said meeting vulnerable children at a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon made him realise how 'ignorant' he has been about the escalating crisis.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Sonny Bill Williams tweeted explicit pictures of two dead children with wounds to their heads and torsos following his visit to Syrian refugee camps.

In a provocative speech in Ankara, Erdogan (pictured today) savaged Western powers for refusing to take in millions of refugees and threatened to send to Europe to 'see how they deal with it'.

President Donald Trump revealed that U.S. troops had recovered 'highly sensitive material' during the night-time raid in Syria which ended when the jihadist leader blew himself up with a suicide vest.

Footage circulated on social media this evening purports to show a helicopter raid by US special forces that took place in the border town of Turkish-controlled Jarablus.

The mole, a man of unidentified nationality, was actually inside al-Baghdadi's Syrian compound when U.S. Delta Forces raided it and killed the terror leader on Saturday.

Saad Al-Kassab, now 22, made nation headlines in 2016 after scoring am ATAR or 96.65 and being named dux of his Catholic school in Melbourne. He had fled from Syria two years earlier.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT The footage is thought to have been filmed in an oil field west of Palmyra, Syria, in 2017 as four Russian-speaking soldiers attack a Syrian national.

Membership of Islamic State (IS) is a hanging offence in Syria and President Bashar al-Assad has now said members of IS in the country will be brought to justice.

Bouthaina Shaaban, Assad's top adviser, has said that US President Donald Trump's plans to expand military operations in the country to acquire oil was like 'talking about stealing it'.

Nazh Chendi barely spoke a word of English when she arrived in Britain as a refugee from Syria eight years ago. She is now studying medicine at Cambridge University.

Dramatic video captured the final moments of a Syrian government helicopter after it was hit by missiles fired by Turkey-backed rebels in Syria's Idlib province on Tuesday.

Former London schoolgirl, Shamima Begum, now 20, furnished her makeshift tent in al-Roj camp in northern Syria and decorated it for Valentine's Day. Her roommate made a Union flag cushion.

In a post on Twitter, the father demonstrated the game which he has devised to protect his daughter from the 'psychological crisis' caused by near-constant explosions.

Camila Cabello took some time on her birthday on Tuesday to think about those a lot less fortunate than her - namely, the youth of Syria.

Three-year-old Syrian girl Salwa has safely reached Turkey, it has emerged. Her father came up with a game to make his daughter laugh every time bombs fell near their home in Idlib,

Hassan Akkad, who fled to the UK after he was imprisoned and tortured in Syria, is working at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London after deciding he had to do something to help.

She was punched in the face for trying to 'rescue' a Syrian child she believed was being trafficked in France, on Saturday night - with the bizarre events unfolding live on her Instagram feed. 

Turkey shot down two Syrian army planes and rendered its Nayrab airbase, outside Aleppo, unusable in attacks today that escalated tensions between Ankara and Damascus.

Abdullah Kurdi, 45, said he and his second wife Fayize have welcomed a baby boy at their home in Kobani, on the Syrian-Turkish border. Alan Kurdi's death provoked international outcry.

The Russian President shook hands with Syria's dictator on Tuesday as visited the headquarters of his forces in Damascus to hear military reports, amid fears of a war between ally Iran and the US.

Republican Senators John McCain and Ted Cruz applauded Donald Trump for ordering airstrikes on Syria on Thursday night saying he deserves the support of American people.

David Youaneh Ghaterchi came to Australia in 2012 after fleeing Iran to escape religious persecution for his Christian beliefs.

Alexanda Kotey, 35, is in custody in northern Syria. Kotey, from London, has been accused of torturing IS hostages and reported that CPS has evidence to charge him with murder.

Marine Corps General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr, commander of U.S. Central Command, released the footage at a press conference on Wednesday at the Pentagon.

The ten rock reliefs were unearthed in the Kurdistan region of Iraq just 15 miles away from ISIS at the height of its powers and are believed to be the first discovery of its kind in 150 years.

British ISIS fighters are set to go on trial in Syria from next month as the Kurds have grown frustrated of the prolonged legal battle over the extremists, after the UK refused to repatriate them.

The young child is the daughter of Kirsty Rosse-Emile - a Melbourne woman who travelled with her husband Nabil Kadmiry to Syria in 2014. Kadmiry was an ISIS fighter before his capture.

President Bashar al-Assad tells Vladimir Putin in the video from a church in Damascus, Syria on Tuesday: 'If Trump arrives along this road, everything will become normal with him too.'

An Airbus A320 with 172 passengers on board made an emergency landing in Russia-controlled Khmeimim air base after Syrian air defence nearly hit it, Russian state news said.

Amid mounds of rubble and the ruins of buildings destroyed during nearly a decade of war, a Ramadan iftar meal has reunited a community in northwestern Syria.

Amid mounds of rubble and the ruins of buildings destroyed during nearly a decade of war, a Ramadan iftar meal has reunited a community in northwestern Syria.

Amid mounds of rubble and the ruins of buildings destroyed during nearly a decade of war, a Ramadan iftar meal has reunited a community in northwestern Syria.

Hayden Library - PN1998.3.M3383 A45 2018

MEDIA PhonCD F G7460.Y687

Rotch Library - LC3665.M54 C85 2015

Rotch Library -

Rotch Library - DT72.S9 P44 2017

Rotch Library - DS94.7.F34 2019