Covered in the current issue

Sedition on the coast
How Iran attempted to turn Syria’s coastal region into a protectorate

Western media largely attributed the March massacres in Syria’s coastal villages to sectarian tensions, the presence of foreign fighters and the Islamist leanings of Damascus’s new rulers. While all of these elements played a role, one critical dimension received little public scrutiny but was very real: Iran’s involvement in instigating the violence that left approximately 400 pro-government forces and at least 1,700 Alawite civilians dead. Also overlooked was the role Russia planned to play in the failed insurgency: transforming the coastal areas — once “liberated” from interim government control — into a Russian protectorate. | continue reading

Syria’s phantom institutions
Promised state overhaul has delivered the illusion of government

“We will strive to build state institutions on the foundation of transparency and accountability (…) building strong institutions for the state, based on competency and justice, not corruption, cronyism or bribes.” This was interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s pledge to the Syrian people at the Victory Conference on 29 January 2025. After years of civil war, many Syrians were willing to believe him.

More than 140 days into his presidency, however, the gap between rhetoric and reality continues to widen. With each passing month, it becomes harder to attribute this to the practical constraints of a country emerging from war. While no one expects flawless governance overnight, the choices made by the interim government raise growing concerns: authoritarian mechanisms based on loyalty and patronage appear not as temporary necessities, but deliberate tools of power.| continue reading

The peace that wasn’t
Attempts at a deal between Syria and Israel haven’t worked — until now

The Syrian-Israeli conflict is amongst the most structurally frozen of the many unresolved conflicts in the Middle East. Unlike the Palestinian issue, it is not animated by demographic politics or daily confrontation. Unlike Lebanon, it lacks the ambiguity of state and non-state actors. Since 1974 the Syrian-Israeli ceasefire line has been largely stable and incident-free. Yet despite this apparent manageability – and multiple rounds of negotiation over decades – no formal peace has ever emerged.

Israel long preferred Assad to the potential chaos of alternative regimes – although that calculus began to shift on 7 October 2023; and with the rise of a Sunni-led transitional government in Syria, it may change further.| continue reading

Assad’s machinery of disappearance
CIJA and SiT reveal new evidence from Syrian intelligence archives

The phenomenon of missing persons in Syria remains one of the darkest and most complex legacies of the country’s civil war. With over 130,000 individuals still unaccounted for, the ouster of Bashar Assad in December 2024 has opened an unprecedented window for truth-seeking and accountability. A new report, a joint effort by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) and Syria in Transition, leverages newly accessed internal documents from Syrian intelligence archives to shed critical light on the operational, bureaucratic, and systemic nature of enforced disappearances and the regime’s policy of denial — with a particular focus on the role and culpability of the Military Intelligence Department (MID). | continue reading

The Peacemakers
Contraband

In this month’s instalment of The Peacemakers, SiT’s satirical novel, the party mood following the first aid delivery to West Aleppo comes to an abrupt halt when reports surface that the supplies are being sold on the black market—and weapons have been smuggled in. Facing a PR disaster and the threat of losing his Washington connection, Gerald hatches a bold plan.| continue reading