Trump, Rojava and the Jihadist

The hard- to- explain flurry of visits paid to the Syria capital by regional and global powers since the rise to power of Ahmed al-Sharaa late in December 2024 transcends by all appearances Syria’s national borders. Syria’s hard-to-define state of affairs since the December blitzkrieg, which saw the collapse of the regime of Bashar Assad, […]

Syria in the crucible of Jihad

The fall of the dictatorship of the Syrian President, Bashar Assad, late in December 2024 has opened the door wide for speculation about what the future holds for the religiously diverse and ethnically mixed country. Strangely, two days after Assad had fled, Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, called for the protection of minorities […]

Would the U.S. abandon Syria in favor of Turkey?

The election in November 2024 of Donald Trump for a second presidential term in the White House was received with anxiety by people in the autonomous Kurdish enclave of Rojava. A month later, the secularist Arab nationalist regime of the Syrian President, Bashar Assad, fell to Islamist- leaning extremist groups. This transformative shift- which could […]