Special to The Daily Star
And so it finally happened. American sanctions against Syria are now official. Though everybody knows that America’s bark here was worse than its bite and that the sanctions have no real teeth, they do come both as a warning and as a potential prelude for a more serious assault on Syria’s regime and, perhaps, sovereignty. But, are the authorities in Damascus aware of this? More importantly, can they adapt? Continue reading “Misreading the Sanctions Message”
Life in Syria has never been simple. The realities, meticulously hidden under a veneer of homogeneity, have always been too complex for even the most discerning of scholars. The peaceful coexistence between the country’s myriad ethnic, religious, and tribal groups is the result of a complex layer of concessions, compromises, tacit agreements, and other pragmatic arrangements perfected over the centuries.
The Jerusalem Report / page 24
Ammar Abdulhamid hopes to spark an intellectual renaissance and encourage political reform at home in Damascus.
Yigal Schleifer / Istanbul
SYRIAN PUBLISHER AND author Ammar Abdulhamid doesn’t like to think small scale. The founder of a year-old nonprofit Damascus publishing house, Abdulhamid is embarking on a translation project through which he plans to introduce the Syrian public to the classic literary and philosophical works of the Western canon. Continue reading “The Young Syrian”
Special to The Daily Star / A Tharwa Project Editorial
Even as the Syrian authorities seem to have successfully managed to contain the Kurdish riots that rocked the country’s northernmost city of Qamishli over the last few weeks, there could be no denying that the country’s long neglected Kurdish question is finally out of the dark and is crying out for answers. But can the Syrian authorities muster enough will and internal support to sit down with the Kurdish parties and hammer out an answer that is acceptable to both sides? Continue reading “Out of the dark: Syria’s Kurdish question reborn”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 