Clashes broke out May 4 in Syria's southern as-Suwayda (Suweida) province between the central government's Internal Security Forces and Druze armed groups affiliated with the region's self-declared "National Guard." Fighters from the Guard's "501 Knights of Hamza" battalion attempted to advance toward government lines in the governorate's western countryside under heavy cover fire, including from truck-mounted machine-guns and rocket-launchers. Government forces responded with mortar fire. (TNA)

Syria's Internal Security Forces on April 24 arrested Amjad Youssef, principal suspect in a massacre of civilians in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013. Footage emerged in 2022 showing Syrian soldiers leading captives, bound and blindfolded, to a pit before shooting them. The video became one of the most direct pieces of visual evidence of extrajudicial killings by forces of the Bashar Assad dictatorship, which was finally overthrown in December 2024. The leaked footage was released as part of an investigative report prepared by researchers from the Institute for War, Holocaust & Genocide Studies (NIOD) at the University of Amsterdam. Apprehended in a rural area of Hama province following a manhunt, Youssef appeared in the footage, and is believed to have been a member of the notorious Branch 227 of the Assad-era Military Intelligence Directorate. Estimates by the Syrian Network for Human Rights indicate that the death toll in the Tadamon massacre may exceed 450 people. (SNHR, BBC News)

Yemen's unrecognized Houthi administration warned that they are prepared to close the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, mouth of the Red Sea. This is a second maritime chokepoint for oil from the Arabian Peninsula after the Strait of Hormuz, now effectively closed due to Washington's conflict with Iran. In a post on X April 18, Houthi deputy foreign minister Hussein al-Ezzi said: "If Sana'a decides to close the Bab al-Mandab, then all of mankind and jinn will be utterly powerless to open it... [T]herefore, it is best for Trump—and the complicit world—to immediately end all practices and policies that obstruct peace, and to show the respect required for the rights of our people and nation." (Times of India)

Istanbul mayor and Turkish opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu went on trial March 9, accused of establishing an "İmamoğlu Criminal Organization for Profit" that operated parallel to and was concealed by his official duties.

The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria (COI) announced March 6 that it has completed an in-country mission to Damascus as it prepares to brief the Council in Geneva this week. The Commission said it pressed Syria's transitional authorities on accountability, institutional reform, and protections for civil society amid renewed regional volatility.

Senior UN officials told the Security Council on Feb. 13 that Syria's fragile political transition has gained momentum following a landmark agreement between Damascus and Kurdish authorities in the northeast. Still, they warned that renewed violence in the south, Israeli incursions, and deep humanitarian needs continue to underscore the precarious path to stability.

A last-minute "permanent ceasefire" may mean that northeast Syria is back from the brink of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war. But ceasefires have repeatedly broken down since fighting resumed earlier this year, with Damascus demanding disbandment of the Rojava autonomous zone, and the integration of its institutions—including its military wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—into the central government. While the new pact sets a more "gradual" pace for this integration, the Kurdish aspiration to regional autonomy and the central government's insistence on centralization may prove a long-term obstacle to peace. In Episode 315 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg weighs the odds for avoiding a conflict that holds the potential for escalation to genocide, with the connivance of the Great Powers that so recently backed the SDF to fight ISIS.

The Kurdish-held border town of Kobani in northern Syria is under siege again, as it was by ISIS in 2014—but this time by forces of the Syrian central government, which has cut off water and power to the town in the dead of winter, with snow on the ground. Since the start of the year, the Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria have lost almost all of the territory they controlled to a new offensive by the central government. Kobani with Hasakah and Qamishli are the last besieged strongholds of the reduced Rojava autonomous zone. And both the US and Russia, which have backed the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIS, now appear to be cutting them loose—effectively green-lighting the government offensive against them. The US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, has already warned that US support for the SDF is coming to an end. And in the midst of the offensive, Russia has withdrawn its forces from Qamishli, its principal military outpost in Rojava.