Charles Lister

In recent weeks, considerable speculation has focused on whether Türkiye might be on the verge of a game-changing re-engagement and normalization with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. The summit held in Moscow on December 28, which convened the Syrian and Turkish military and intelligence…

“The people want the downfall of the regime!” Those were the words that hundreds of protesters chanted in Al-Mashnaqa Square in front of the provincial headquarters of the Syrian Baath Party in Suwayda on November 4. This was far from the first time protests had erupted in Suwayda, the Druze…

Although ISIS’s territorial "state" may have been dealt its final defeat in the village of al-Baghouz in eastern Syria nearly three-and-a-half years ago, the terrorist group remains very much alive. In the past two weeks alone, the group has been responsible for at least five attacks in…

It is now almost four weeks since al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in an American drone strike on the balcony of a residence in the diplomatic quarter of the Afghan capital Kabul. The strike represented the end of a decades-long search for Zawahiri, a veteran figure of al-Qaeda’s…

When the leaders of Russia, Turkey, and Iran convened in Tehran on July 19, they did so amid significant international attention and expectation. While the war in Ukraine may have set the backdrop to the Tehran Summit, one topic of acute focus was Syria but after a day of bilateral and multilateral…

On July 12, the United Nations’ Security Council passed Resolution 2642 – giving the UN a new mandate to provide cross-border humanitarian aid to northwestern Syria for a period of six months. The resolution was described as a compromise between the international community and Russia, but in…

More than three years ago, the international coalition dealt ISIS’s self-proclaimed ‘state’ in Syria and Iraq its final defeat, capturing the terrorist group’s last remaining pocket of control of al-Baghouz in eastern Syria. The military achievement, secured in close coordination with our local…

In a recent investigative report, the US Defense Department’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) concluded that “the single most important factor” behind the Taliban’s swift takeover in August 2021 was “the US decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from…

Despite international attention being squarely focused on the war in Ukraine, more than 75 countries gathered in Brussels on May 10 and collectively pledged $6.7 billion to the Syria humanitarian aid effort. Such a sizeable sum far outmatched expectations and underlined the extent to which the…

When ISIS’s territorial “state” was defeated in Syria more than three years ago, the world celebrated a historic achievement. For five years, a coalition of more than 80 countries had combined resources to roll back ISIS in Syria and Iraq and counter the terrorist group’s presence on the Internet,…