Ghassan Charbel

This day is unlike any other. It will leave its mark on America and the world. Neither the country nor the man at its center is ordinary. The scene is dramatic, violent, dazzling, and impactful. As America celebrates the inauguration of Donald Trump, the world must remain glued to its screens. No…

I was at the Damascus residence of Iraqi politician and publisher Fakhri Karim. A visitor, who appeared weighed down with disappointment, arrived. I tried to persuade him to return to journalism after a long break. My friends warned me that he was a difficult person to deal with. But I viewed him…

January has painful connotations in Tehran. Iran cannot forget what happened on the third of that month in 2020. A man far away crossed what it considered a red line. Qasem Soleimani was killed near Baghdad Airport. The commander of the Quds Force, the architect of the "proxies strategy" and the…

The powerful leave lasting imprints on the lives of their nations and peoples. These imprints come in various forms—some requiring entire eras to heal the wounds inflicted by their creators. History is not a neutral archive of such legacies. It welcomes those who enter its tunnels but later…

From faraway Moscow, he looks into Damascus—the city whose keys and destinies of its people he once held. It is only natural that he rubs his eyes in disbelief. The scene is difficult to comprehend, let alone endure. He knows this place line by line. It is the chair his father sat on fifty-four…

Rarely does local, regional and international attention shift to one man. This only happens at major turning points. It is no simple feat for a man in his 40s to arrive at the Umayyad Mosque square in Damascus to end over half a century of the Assad family’s rule in Syria. The Syrian Baath was…

The long night in Damascus was nothing short of seismic. Opponents could not have predicted the rapid collapse of the Syrian regime. The army was not prepared to fight the opposition advance that was gaining momentum. Iran was helpless, Russia did not want to get involved and Hezbollah is exhausted…

It is as if this difficult part of the world is destined to live with constant bloodshed. Countries break apart, wars are never really resolved, and peace is only really just a truce. We have witnessed the horrors in Gaza and later, Lebanon. The barbarity of the Israeli attacks demonstrated that…

Fate had it that I was in Damascus the day of President Rafik Hariri's assassination on February 14, 2005. That night, I felt that a violent earthquake had struck Lebanese-Syrian relations. Earthquakes need wise men, not strong men. On my way back the next day, I stopped by the town of Chtoura to…

A home is meant to protect you and your children. It is meant to protect you from rain, storms and fears. It is meant to harbor dreams and safeguard memories. Homes are meant to be there when children go to school and return. Home is your nation inside the nation. But you have grown too…