Whatever America’s flaws, its absence from the global stage leaves a space quickly filled by far more malevolent actors

Keeping US troops in Iraq and Syria is too much of a gamble

It is time for them to go home

Tyrants are breaking with civilisation

The war in Ukraine shows tragic parallels to the earlier conflict

How did an undercover sting catch out an epidemiologist promoting conspiracy theories about the Syrian regime?

Syria’s war has licensed this century’s worst growth in violent depravity – and it shows no sign of ending soon

Syria’s drug problem undermines the rule of law, empowers militia leaders, and shifts money away from a legitimate economy

Syria’s civil war is the latest grisly chapter in more than a millennium of conflict