Author Archives: jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Report, 28/3 The cold numbers are the first thing that hit you. Figures telling of a human catastrophe on a scale hard to compute. Suffering on a level to which any rational response seems inadequate – 470,000 people killed, … Continue reading →

Jerusalem Post, 13/3 The cease-fire that came into effect in Syria on February 27 is a partial success. Humanitarian convoys have begun to get through to some of the areas besieged by government forces. The death toll is sharply down. … Continue reading →

The Tower Magazine, 4/3/16 The Syrian civil war is a disaster of historic proportions that shows no sign of ending anytime soon. The latest figures suggest that it has killed nearly half a million people, making it the greatest catastrophe … Continue reading →

Jerusalem Post, 19/2 Over the ruined landscape of northern Syria, a number of core factors which today define the strategic reality of the Middle East are colliding.  Close observation of that blighted area therefore offers clues as to the current … Continue reading →

Jerusalem Post, 6/2 UN Special Envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura this week announced the suspension of just-convened peace talks in Geneva intended to resolve the Syrian civil war.   The failure of the talks was predictable, and foreseen by … Continue reading →

A more detailed report on the SDF, deriving from information obtained during my visit to Syria in December, appeared in Janes Intelligence Review in January, 2016. Here is a link to the report, which is behind a paywall and can … Continue reading →

The Australian, 23/1   In northern Syria, a new military alliance is making headway against IS   Kobani is a good place to start.  This once anonymous Kurdish town on the Syrian-Turkish border was the subject last year of the … Continue reading →

  Jerusalem Report, 18/1 Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, in the last days of 2015 is a place that appears to have risen from a near-death experience. In the summer of 2014, the fighters of the Islamic State (IS) got to … Continue reading →

PJmedia, 19/1 On a recent reporting trip to Iraq and northern Syria, two things were made apparent to me — one of them relatively encouraging, the other far less so. The encouraging news is that ISIS is currently in a state … Continue reading →