Latakia and Tartous are often framed as Alawi “strongholds” of Syria's fallen regime.

This narrative obscures as much as it illuminates, in a region as complex as any other.

Some excerpts from a 2021 @SynapsNetwork memo, with insight from my brilliant colleague @Lina53968437 🧵 Historically, the port cities of Latakia and Tartous were mostly populated by Sunnis and Christians, who dominated an economy based on maritime trade. Alawis lived in the mountainous hinterlands, subsisting mostly off small-scale agriculture.

To understand the collapse of Syria’s army, we must understand the plight of Syrian conscripts: Young men forced to fight against their will, often for over a decade.

Below, edited excerpts from a colleague’s heartbreaking, eye-opening interview with one such man (in 2023) 🧵 “I finished my studies in 2013. I was preparing to travel abroad, but before I could do so I was arrested at a checkpoint and taken for mandatory service. For three days my father couldn’t reach me and thought I had been detained by security.”

Five years ago, a conversation transformed my understanding of Syria's prison sector—and the Syrian regime itself.

As Syrians excavate survivors from Sednaya, I’m sharing an edited transcript of that discussion. The speaker is an Arab researcher who spent decades in Damascus 🧵 “The Syrian authorities’ use of detention as a political tool goes back to 1958, even before this regime. During the unity government with Egypt, Nasser cracked down on the political freedoms that had existed earlier in the 1950s. Parties were dissolved, newspapers shut down.”

Today I went to write a colleague in Damascus, with whom I've long observed a simple security protocol:

I WhatsApp her one word—"مرحبا"—and wait for her to reply at a safe time and place.

I realized I could just send her a normal message. And then I cried. 🧵 I hesitate to project my voice into this day that belongs to Syrians. But, as I process my own astonishment, I’ll allow myself a few words on fear, relief, and hope.

I’ve worked on Syria, in one form or another, since 2012. But I've never had the chance to set foot inside.

As events in Syria unfold at dizzying speed, I find three slow-moving trends help grapple with the current moment.

First is the extreme decrepitude of Syria’s army, which for years has functioned more as a large prison than as a professional fighting force. 🧵 Barely paid, barely fed, press-ganged into open-ended service to fight and die for a regime that offers them nothing in return: no living wage, no dignity, no future.

The best most can hope for is opportunities to extract bribes from fellow Syrians at checkpoints.

I’ve gotten to know scores of Western diplomats in the Middle East. Most are smart people who care about the region.

Why, then, have our positions on Gaza been so devoid of both empathy and common sense?

And what does this mean for those of us involved in “policy research”? ⤵️ Part of the problem is that diplomats in the field have limited say in big decisions. Those are made in Western capitals, often by people who have never interacted with the region except through high-level meetings.

Syria and Lebanon both face an escalating water crisis, due at least as much to bad governance as to climate change.

As we @SynapsNetwork dig into this, I’ve been struck by how patterns of mismanagement repeat themselves globally. Here are a few
synaps.network/post/water-cri… For one, many societies continue to treat water as inexhaustible—even when we are consuming it so fast as to make the earth literally sink beneath our feet. My home state of California is a prime example goodreads.com/en/book/show/4…