Publications

By tracing a Captagon shipment that left the Port of Latakia and arrived in Romania on its way to Germany, and through a multi-year-effort of German investigators, prosecutors will for the first time show evidence of the central role of the Assad regime and his clan in the dirty trade.

The Syrian regime is actively setting up shell companies within Syria, according to official documents I provided to The Guardian. The documents show that three nearly identical companies were recently established on the same day, with the explicit purpose of buying shares and managing other companies. In this article, Tessa Fox and I present the links between the owners of the new shells and influential members in the Syrian regime, such as Yasar Ibrahim and Khodr Ali Taher. Since the finalization of the article, a few more shell companies have been set up, highlighting a systemic attempt at circumventing sanctions and avoiding accountability. Last October, Syria’s economy minister, Muhammad Samer al-Khalil, said that “evading sanctions has become a Syrian craft,” and called on foreign investors reluctant to join the market because of sanctions “not to appear under their true names in the local market.” We also discuss the implications for Western sanctions on Syria, with comments from experts and officials.

The plight of Syrians is becoming increasingly irrelevant to Western politicians as reflected in their demonstrable lack of interest in pushing for a political settlement to the conflict. Dr Karam Shaar also shows using data from Google Trends that the level of public interest in Western countries in Syria has never been lower throughout the conflict. In fact, it’s currently, lower than prior to the conflict in 2011. How did Syria fall into irrelevance?

Despite the slowdown in military operations in Syria, other acts of violence and human rights violations remain the norm, making the whole-of-Syria unsafe for return. Published in collaboration with the Middle East Institute, this summary recaps on a recently published research project aimed at understanding the scale and types of violations experienced by Syrian returnees.

Respected Syria analysts have argued that “more-for-more” diplomacy should not be attempted with Bashar al-Assad. In this op-ed for Carnegie Middle East’s Sada Journal, Dr Karam Shaar argues that, under four principles, more-for-more is warranted to jumpstart the deadlocked political process. This diplomacy cannot on its own, however, end the conflict. The key risk in taking the more-for-more approach to dealing with Assad is using it as a stepping stone for a face-saving end to the conflict. A resolution that does not address the root causes of the conflict is a recipe for perpetual instability.