Sharaa received the investigative report for the 6 March “events” at the Syrian coast. If the report is not serious enough and no real accountability is forthcoming, this can backfire enormously right now. On the other hand, can he afford to hold accountable his fighting men in such moment?

There are many Syrians who genuinely believe that the legitimacy of the current authorities and power of the state is best achieved through massive brutalising displays of violence against "recalcitrant" communities, a la Coast, Suwayda. In other words: Assad's Hama doctrine.

The president, however, commended them for their service. Madness.

The destruction that the tribal fighters are leaving in their wake in Sweida is truly horrific. A landscape of burning, pillaging and unrestrained hatred is all you can see and hear in these videos. To excuse, justify, obscure or naturalise this is tantamount to national suicide.

Talk about timely!

Testimonies of Survivors of the Coast Massacre (3) - A Psychologist's Testimony After the Massacre, collected by Rosa Yassin Hasan for SyriaUntold and Daraj. syriauntold.com/2025/04/02/h...

@apnews.com's Sally Abou AlJoud on another killing of Alawite civilians in Syria's Tartous: apnews.com/article/syri... (via @yazanbadran.bsky.social) On displacement of Alawite Syrians from the coast to Lebanon – among thousands of Syrians on the move since December – see: tcf.org/content/repo...

Part 1 of a series of witness testimonies by survivors of the Syrian coast massacres, compiled by Syrian author Rosa Yassin Hasan. "... If this is just a search operation, then why all the gunfire? Why the explosions? Who is shooting? Who is shooting?" syriauntold.com/2025/03/20/t...

The longer Israel persists in its current approach to Syria, it risks pushing the country toward one of the very scenarios it says it wants to avoid: fostering chaos that Iran and/or jihadist militants could exploit. www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-...

Any researcher denied entry into the US for the 🙄 heinous 🙄 crime of lèse majesté against Emperor Trump should immediately be awarded a research grant from their home research council, no questions asked. Clearly they're doing something very right.

The Syria Report on the pillaging of the Syrian coast last week: "villages and towns along the Syrian coast have witnessed a systematic campaign of looting, burning, and bulldozing of properties ... accompanied by mass killings and forced displacement" hlp.syria-report.com/hlp/systemat...

Malik al-Abdeh's analysis of Sharaa's governance record is damning. And his pleas are nothing but the plainest of common sense: serious reforms, emphasis on effective governance, openness to different constituencies by giving them a stake in the new state. www.syriaintransition.com/swallowingth...

"Abu Jaber, a religious notable in Khattab and a former opposition fighter who had returned to the village, described how he and others entered homes, and forced men on to the town’s roundabout, with the purpose of displacing them from the village." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Zaina has been one of the most brilliant voices on Syria in the past decade. Her unfiltered reflections here show the profound challenges us Syrians will have to grapple with - and that's assuming we will have to stability required to even begin to tackle these challenges.

We are no where near knowing the full scale of the slaughter: "In a number of extremely disturbing instances, entire families - including women, children and individuals hors de combat - were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular."

The Alawi militant insurgency (ongoing) at the Syrian coast is plainly made up of remnants of the Assad regime. They represent in no way a form of "popular resistance"; are despised by large sections of Alawites there who see them as co-responsible for the massacres (also ongoing) that befell them.

Accounts from friends in Baniyas (who were spared because they were Christian) confirm that at least one of the groups responsible for summary killings in Al-Qusoor neighbourhood was made up of non-Syrian foreign fighters. They executed everybody else in their building (all Alawis).

The scenes and voices coming out from friends and family on the Syrian coast are nightmarish. The bloodshed continues unabated and any pretence of state authority by those in Damascus has well and truly collapsed. And we will all pay a hefty price to come.

Very happy to see this nice collaboration with Juan get a prize from @polstudies.bsky.social !

I wrote (and re-wrote) this essay for over the past two months in an attempt to think through the contradictory impulses triggered by Israel's assassination of Nasrallah in the midst of a genocide in Gaza, from a Syrian perspective.

I wrote (and re-wrote) this essay for over the past two months in an attempt to think through the contradictory impulses triggered by Israel's assassination of Nasrallah in the midst of a genocide in Gaza, from a Syrian perspective.

The axis of popular solidarity.

People in Gaza show their support for the Syrian revolution ...

The brutally imposed ossification of Syrian political life has finally been broken. A thread about old-new cleavages that will structure the political field we enter now (neither comprehensive nor sufficient - just a discussion starter)👇

The brutally imposed ossification of Syrian political life has finally been broken. A thread about old-new cleavages that will structure the political field we enter now (neither comprehensive nor sufficient - just a discussion starter)👇

There are many things that remain unclear about the current transition in Damascus including a lot of noise due to lack of discipline and experience by HTS. But early signs indicate that Syria’s direction will be led by a power bloc of socially conservative and economically (neo?)liberal forces.

NEW COMMENTARY | Regional Perspectives on the House of Assad’s Fall Crisis Group experts offer a 360° view of how the Syrian crisis could shape up regional politics. www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-...

Malik al-Abdeh (of Syria in Transition) lays down the many different challenges to an inclusive and democratic transition in Syria. The opacity of the current process (and continued fog of war) makes it difficult to evaluate the relative salience of these challenges. Worth pondering still.

Our nightmare has lifted for a day. May everyone find their disappeared, and may we never ever ever have to tremble when thinking of Tadmor and Saidnaya. May he be the last of the tyrants.

I want to celebrate this day. But I can't so long as half my family and the rest of Homs remain under the threat of this utterly mindless and pointless battle. Let them live and let this terrible part of our history die already.

The horrors of Hama have been our shared Syrian omerta for the past 40 years. May its people have peace at long last, and may theirs be the beginning of ours.

The horrors of Hama have been our shared Syrian omerta for the past 40 years. May its people have peace at long last, and may theirs be the beginning of ours.

"HTS has not been popular among people in Idlib—they've been demonstrating against it for months—but its offensive is wildly popular, because the people want to be rid of Assad and his foreign backers, and to return to their homes." @qunfuz.bsky.social in Democracy in Exile @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social

Thread on Syria

Thread! After the western Aleppo countryside, Aleppo city is on the verge of falling into the hands of Syrian rebels, with the western neighborhoods already out of the Syrian regime's control. Everyone I’m talking to is apprehensive.

👉 The Media & Communication starter pack of starter packs 📺 🎞️ 📱 💬 Internet Studies: go.bsky.app/LVrPemK Internet Studies 2: go.bsky.app/KHmxfWf Internet Studies 3: go.bsky.app/9uYafGv Media Theory: go.bsky.app/RGLr16b Audience Studies: go.bsky.app/2CKVP4u

We are already at the stage where Israel’s bombardments of Lebanon are so relentless and constant that they are no longer ‘newsworthy’

For communication/media scholars: see this open letter to the #ECREA (European Comm Research and Edu Association) Executive Board regarding their deafening silence on the genocide in #Gaza and the annihilation of academic life there. Consider adding your name. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

For communication/media scholars: see this open letter to the #ECREA (European Comm Research and Edu Association) Executive Board regarding their deafening silence on the genocide in #Gaza and the annihilation of academic life there. Consider adding your name. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Meta has increasingly silenced voices in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook. www.hrw.org/news/2023/12...

"Missteps in Gaza coverage spur push for a global code of media ethics" www.niemanlab.org/2023/12/miss...

Anyone interested in populism, nationalism and media should read this piece by @reecepeck.bsky.social

If there is one piece of mine I would like you to read it is this. My interview with Mohammed Halalo, an IT contractor for the European Commission whose mother, siblings, nieces, and nephews were killed in their home in Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza: www.irishtimes.com/world/middle...

‘I came to visit the graves of my brother and uncle and I couldn’t find them’: Israeli forces have destroyed several burial grounds in northern Gaza, amid a continuing onslaught that has killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians.

My column. "Defining Away Palestinians’ Right to Resist: What does it mean to say that rising up against injustice is impermissible?" foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/14/h...

Worth reading in full. @hahauenstein.bsky.social interview w/ masha gessen: “Comparing things that happened during or before the Holocaust with things that happen today is our best chance to prevent the Holocaust from repeating itself. [...] I think we have a moral obligation to make comparisons."

Maddening. Israel’s war cabinet has blocked a planned visit to Qatar by the head of the country’s foreign intelligence service that was aimed at kickstarting negotiations over a new hostage release deal.

There are people in my field who carry on as if 60+ Palestinian journalists have not been murdered, as if American mainstream media has not become a spokesperson for IDF. I could go on and on. And these are the same people who write about media and democracy, who push for dewesternizing our