I have just spent a week in Damascus, my second trip since the fall of the regime, and I thought I would share a few comments which may be useful to understand the situation there, particularly in the wake of the killings in the coastal area. I was there from March 12 to 19. I will start with a comment not related to the crisis in the coastal area.
One thing I wanted to monitor during my trip was how strict fasting rules would be implemented. The result is that it is not implemented in a stricter way than it was before 2011. I was a bit surprised to be honest. Many cafes, including in non-Christian areas, remained open, something I did not expect. During fasting hours, we could order cafes, at a coffee shop facing the Cham Hotel down-town, for example. After fasting hours, at the terrace of cafes on main streets, such as in Aleppo Street, which is in a Christian area but not the Christian district of the old town, we could order vodkas without any problem.

I made a short trip to Damascus, from January 9 to 14, for the first time in 13 years. Some quick remarks here: I spent all my time in Damascus, which meant I saw little of what was happening in the rest of the country. From my experience during the Syrian revolution—and more generally from living in centralised countries—the situation in a capital city often provides only limited insight into what is happening elsewhere. (My advice to fellow journalists: make an effort to visit other cities and provinces.)

What happened this week in Aleppo is the intersection of long-term and short-term trends and of the geopolitics (weakening of Iran following battering by Osrael -that's also for the short term) and of internal dynamics (weakening of Assad and state institutions -that's for the long term because it has been ongoing for years) For anyone following seriously Syria in the past years, the least surprising thing is the crumbled state of the Syrian army's morale and capabilities. The same applies to all Syrian state institutions.