Rania Abouzeid

The scale of Syr­ia’s civ­il war has forced refugees in Lebanon to get past long­stand­ing di­vi­sions.

Anti-gov­ern­ment fight­ers bat­tle Alaw­ites in Syr­ia’s north­west­ern Latakia province in an in­creas­ing­ly sec­tar­i­an war.

The peo­ple of south­ern Lebanon have had their fair share of hard times, even by Lebanese stan­dards.

Bas­sam Bkeily says he has spent three-quar­ters of his life un­der­wa­ter, ex­plor­ing the Mediter­ranean Sea along the Lebanese coast and watch­ing what he de­scribed as the “slow and painful death” of his great love.

Dam­as­cus is in Wash­ing­ton’s crosshairs again, but Arab an­a­lysts say a re­cent US Con­gres­sion­al vote to sanc­tion Syr­ia will not have the in­tend­ed ef­fect.

Abu Umar is a hum­ble man with rel­a­tive­ly hum­ble am­bi­tions.

Za­ynab Di­rani is fight­ing mixed emo­tions – feel­ing cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic, yet braced for more dis­ap­point­ment.