Search

This article publishes a recently discovered letter apparently written by the 19th-century British intelligence officer Arthur Conolly. Conolly is best known as the author of the term 'The Great Game' in connection with Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia during the mid-19th century. The letter was written in April 1841 while Conolly stopped on the bank of the Amu Darya River, the northern boundary of Afghanistan en route to Bukhara. He was travelling partly in an attempt to rescue a fellow British officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart, who was detained there. The mission failed and both men were executed in Bukhara the following year. The letter is addressed to the Austrian general August Giacomo Jochmus, who was the commander of the combined forces of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and Austria during the Syrian War of 1839–1841. The letter was discovered by the authors in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers Russian-Turkish relations within the context of the Syrian war. We elaborate on both Russia's and Turkey's strategies and their understanding of the Syrian War, and consider how the two countries have managed to stay on the same page despite conflictual strategies and geopolitical interests in Syria. The current literature does not address this question and does not thoroughly compare their actions and engagements in the field. This article aims to clarify Turkey-Russia relations in the Syria and provides evidence of how they are in conflict and cooperate at the same time. In this regard, it is argued that the available evidence indicates that Turkey-Russia relations in Syria operate on the "compartmentalisation" strategy. In order to test this argument, the qualitative research method based on secondary resources is used while the theoretical framework previously formulated by Onis and Yilmaz (2015) is adopted. They conceptualise Turkey-Russia relations as if they do "compartmentalise economic issues and geopolitical rivalries in order to avoid the negative spillover of certain disagreements into areas of bilateral cooperation." Furthermore, they claim that compartmentalisation can be hindered if there are deepening security concerns in an area like Syria. However, this article underscores that compartmentalisation does not only work by separating the economic issue from geopolitical rivalries; it also makes Turkey and Russia able to cooperate and conflict in a specific and fundamentally conflictual geopolitical issue such as Syria. The convergences and divergences that occurred in the Syrian field are conceptualised under the strategy of compartmentalisation. In this context, the cooperation - the signed agreements and established mechanisms, conflicts, and clashes in the field, are acknowledged as the consequences of the compartmentalisation strategy in Syria. The compartmentalisation strategy is specifically used in Syria in order to avoid the negative impacts of direct clashes in bilateral cooperation and agreements. It can therefore be concluded that the deepening divergence in security related issue does not necessarily prevent compartmentalisation; on the contrary, compartmentalisation paves the way for stabilisation of such deepening divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how Rojava and its 'Autonomous Administration' simultaneously subvert and reinstate the state(s) they are fighting. Based on Abdullah Öcalan's (b. 1948) conversion to libertarianism after his imprisonment in 1999, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) has been invested in presenting its political experiment as a 'stateless democracy', which has elicited both enthusiasm and suspicion from anarchists worldwide, and from large sections of the Western left. Far from trying to prove or disprove Rojava's own narrative, this article analyses how the construction of Rojava is a complex and often self-contradictory process, both at the rhetorical/propagandist level and in terms of actual military, political and social practices. By engaging many enemies (ISIS, al Nusra, the Free Syrian Army, the Assad regime, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey), both discursively and in battle, and trying to obtain support from various potential and mutually conflicting allies (the United States, Russia, Iraqi Kurdistan, the EU, the Western left, the Assad regime) the PYD/YPG-J (People's Protection Units) are entrenched in a fraught space in which subversion and mimicry coexist in uneasy tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are increasingly becoming iconic faces associated with wars and the suffering they inflict. This paper examines coverage of the Syrian war, namely the battle of Aleppo, by RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Al-Jazeera English (AJE). The focus is on child representations in RT and AJE news reports in Syria between 1 August and 31 December 2016. Based on a visual content analysis of 216 and 161 news clips from RT and AJE respectively, this paper identifies and discusses the four main roles that children were shown to play, namely those of "victims", "sources", "décor" and "fighters". The analysis presented here raises urgent ethical questions relating to the ways in which journalists (should) report about children without exposing them to possible harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A large number of innocent Syrians were injured or killed during the years of war. This retrospective study investigates the differences in patterns of injury and factors affecting the mortality rate in 324 patients coming to Damascus Hospital with penetrating abdominal trauma, and illustrates the difficulties of diagnosis and decision making in crisis situations.Methods: A retrospective study was registered from patient's records between October 2012 and June 2013 in Damascus Hospital. All victims were injured either by explosions or gunshots.Results: A total of 325 patients: 183 by explosion; 56.3%, 141 by gunshot; 43.3%, and one patient by other means; 0.3% were reviewed. The study focused on the two large groups with a total of 324 patients. Males were predominant (82.1%; n=266) and the majority of patients were between 19 and 35 years old. Patients suffering from multi abdominal organ injury were more common in gunshot group (n=72, 51.1%) compared to the explosion group (n=83, 45.3%). 264 patients (81.5%) underwent surgical operations and only 22 (8.3%) had normal laparotomy. The inpatient mortality rate was (17.0%; n=55), and there was no difference in mortality rate between the two groups. More than the half of deaths (n=42; 76.4%) had a P.A.T.I score≥25 where the death rate was 35.6% which is higher compared to 6.3% in those with a P.A.T.I<25. In the ICU 33 patients died, of these (87.9%; n=29) died after immediate admission to the ICU which is higher compared with a later admission (12.1%; n=4). The need for massive blood transfusion affected the mortality rate.Conclusion: Efforts must be directed toward training of medical staff to deal with crisis incidents. The need for massive blood transfusion and ICU admissions can affects mortality. P.A.T.I was found to be an effective predictor of mortality. Clinical experience in this field can produce better health care and faster judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion has been a determining factor in the recent Syrian war since its beginnings, as a prominent identity marker as well as a motivational aspect on the path of jihad. This paper seeks to contribute to a more thorough understanding of the conflict dynamics in Syria by adequately describing the role of religion in the war. Its comprehensive approach takes into account various ontological manifestations of religion: as an identity, a discourse, in its doctrinal aspect as a set of teachings, and in its significance for the individual believer. In doing so, the paper will focus on Sunni Islam as the focal point of the most crucial intersections of religion and conflict in Syria. Finally, religion will be described as a resource for reconciliation in Syria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]