Samer Abboud

The As­tana process and im­ple­men­ta­tion of de-es­ca­la­tion zones have im­posed new re­al­i­ties on Syr­ia’s armed op­po­si­tion.

Analy­sis: The more ob­vi­ous rea­son for Trump’s at­tack on a Syr­i­an air­base was to si­lence dis­sent and whip up pa­tri­o­tism.

Safe zones rep­re­sent a so­lu­tion to the symp­tom and not the larg­er prob­lem.

A quick take on some of the key ques­tions about what next for Syr­ia’s war.

The col­lapse of the armed op­po­si­tion in Alep­po has re­moved the ma­jor mil­i­tary threats to regime ad­vance­ment.

With no oth­er mil­i­tary or po­lit­i­cal so­lu­tion on of­fer, the Syr­i­an con­flict will nes­tle back into a dis­as­trous stale­mate.

The agree­ment’s nar­row mil­i­tary fo­cus ig­nores the key ques­tion of po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion.

The makeshift con­sti­tu­tion is the lat­est ef­fort to mod­el post-con­flict Syr­ia in the Russ­ian vi­sion.

Alep­po has come to sym­bol­ise the dev­as­ta­tion wrought on Syr­ia and its pop­u­la­tion.

As we en­ter the sixth year of the con­flict, we are fur­ther away from a sus­tain­able so­lu­tion than at any oth­er point.