Publications

Since the latter months of 2020, Syria has yet again fallen into a severe drought. This new drought is occurring in a country whose agricultural capacity has already been decimated by decades of agricultural and water misgovernance, and war, making it less capable of coping with a drought than at any point in its modern history. The paper analyzes agricultural stress-related satellite images and survey data to answer the following questions: How severe is the drought? What are the impacts on the country’s agriculture, economy, and the humanitarian response? How might the drought affect the course of the conflict?

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.