Israel’s bombing of Syria last week, in an apparent attempt to intervene in brewing communal bloodshed in the country’s south, drove home a point that Syria watchers and Syrians themselves already understood too well: Bashar al-Assad may be gone, but the conflict, now in its fourteenth year, is far from over.
Although most of the country is now under new Islamist leadership, a large part of Syria remains under the control of a rival Kurdish faction. Foreign interference, local conflicts, and a brutal humanitarian crisis further muddle the picture.
In 2025, as in 2011, Syrian politics is mindbogglingly difficult to understand—for Syrians, but even more so for outsiders. Decisions are typically made by close-knit groups in backroom settings, only then to be laundered through public institutions. Official data are scarce and unreliable; media sources are plentiful but also very partisan. If you don’t speak Arabic, you miss most of the best media coverage of Syrian affairs, but also another key source of information—the political discussions, debates, and mudslinging contests on Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook.
That’s not to say there aren’t good English-language sources out there. The mainstream agencies and dailies remain fantastic sources of news—Reuters, Associated Press, and AFP, and newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times. But to get more granular information, you’ll need to turn to Syrian and Syria-focused outlets. And if you don’t have past experience and you don’t speak Arabic, it can be difficult to figure out where to begin.
Below are five of the best non-paywalled English-language online sources on Syria. There are certainly others no less deserving, but for those new to Syrian politics, these outlets should do as a point of departure.
Enab Baladi
The political weekly Enab Baladi is one of Syria’s best all-round news sources. Originally a project of anti-Assad dissidents in the Damascus suburb of Darayya, the team behind Enab Baladi was forced to flee to Turkey early in the war. The paper bounced back, however, by tapping into foreign aid to build a professional network of correspondents and expand its audience. One of many aid-funded Syrian diaspora publications at the time, Enab Baladi was unmistakably a pro-opposition enterprise, but it stood out from the crowd by striving for more objective and critical news coverage instead of simply cheerleading the rebels.
After Assad’s ouster, Enab Baladi returned home to report on a nation transformed, hoping to heal. Unfortunately, aid for Syria is receding, especially after Donald Trump destroyed USAID—and in the absence of regional or domestic patronage, Enab Baladi now struggles to survive financially.
You can read more about the paper here.
While it is primarily an Arabic-language publication, Enab Baladi runs an active English section: english.enabbaladi.net.
Syria Direct
Syria Direct—which operates in Arabic as Souriya Ala Toul—was set up with the help of Western aid money in Amman in 2013, aiming both to publish original reporting and to train and support Syrian journalists. Over the years, it developed into a small but impressive online outlet.
When the rift between the rulers of Amman and Damascus began to close in the late 2010s, Jordanian authorities grew less tolerant of activism and media perceived to be critical of Assad’s regime. Syria Direct was forced to close shop in 2021, but reincarnated itself in Berlin a year later—in exile from exile. It’s still going. The pace of publication may have slackened since its heyday, but Syria Direct continues to publish very worthwhile reporting.
Read at syriadirect.org.
SANA
SANA, which is short for the Syrian Arab News Agency, is the centerpiece of Syria’s state media apparatus, in operation since the early 1960s. Despite the name, it is less of a journalistic enterprise than a government mouthpiece, serving whomever happens to be in power at any given moment. It dutifully notes major domestic and international events (insofar as they fit the government’s agenda), records the adoption of laws and presidential decrees, chronicles the activities of top officials, and issues authoritative transcriptions of their public speeches. In other words, SANA is entirely partisan—and very useful.
The SANA website is published in several languages. The English version is not quite as comprehensive as the Arabic original—for example, speeches may be summarized instead of transcribed verbatim—but it does the job. Read at www.sana.sy/en.
North Press Agency
North Press, which also publishes under that name in Arabic and Kurdish, reports on Syria as a whole, but it is based in the country’s northeast and focuses most of its reporting on that region. Although Syria has changed dramatically in the past six months, the northeast remains under the control of a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which maintains a kind of lukewarm peace with Damascus. Unsurprisingly, North Press has a pro-SDF slant to its reporting and is often critical of the SDF’s archenemy, Turkey.
As long as you keep the politics in mind, however, North Press is a useful source—especially for the attention it lavishes on an otherwise under-covered and poorly understood part of Syria, which faces its own set of complex problems.
Read North Press at npasyria.com/en.
ReliefWeb
Last but not least, ReliefWeb is an invaluable tool for following Syria, considering the centrality of humanitarian concerns to a country that has seen half its people displaced by war and where more than two-thirds of the population now depends on foreign aid.
Managed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Relief, or OCHA, ReliefWeb is an automated humanitarian information aggregator. It’s not a news service, but rather a place to keep up with the constant flow of specialized reports, activity updates, statements, data packages, and fact sheets from thousands of entities involved with humanitarian affairs.
On ReliefWeb’s Syria page, you’ll find reporting from across the UN system, including anything Syria-related coming out of the Security Council, OCHA itself, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the World Food Programme (WFP), and so on. ReliefWeb also collects reporting from a variety of non-UN multilateral institutions, nongovernmental organizations, international charities, and human rights groups. It includes the latest from the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Refugees International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the World Bank, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Syrian American Medical Society, Mercy Corps, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the International Rescue Committee, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other key organizations in the country.
To dive into this flood of humanitarian, economic, and human rights reporting, click https://reliefweb.int/country/syr.
After taking an intense interest in the early years of the civil war, Western powers and media audiences now tend to regard Syria as a sideshow. Syria’s oil wealth pales in comparison to that of Iraq and the Gulf; its population is much smaller than Egypt’s; and it attracts fewer ideological sympathizers than Israel, Palestine, or Lebanon. But the country has a deep relevance to the future of the region: Damascus has a long history as an Arab cultural capital, it remains a key piece of the Arab–Israeli puzzle, and the destabilizing effects of the war—refugee crises, smuggling, and extremism—matter not just to the Middle East but even to Europe. Going forward, a collapsing or thriving Syria will affect the region in proportional measure. It is a good time for anyone who cares to search out ways to be a bit better informed.
Header Image: A man addresses demonstrators during a rally against Israeli intervention in Syria on July 16, 2025 in Damascus. A rally was held in Damascus in support of Syria’s interim government and to denounce Israel’s intervention following recent clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze militia in the southern Syrian city of Suwayda. Source: Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images
Tags: israel, Arab media, human rights reporting, syria, reporting
Syria for Beginners: Five Sources to Follow
Israel’s bombing of Syria last week, in an apparent attempt to intervene in brewing communal bloodshed in the country’s south, drove home a point that Syria watchers and Syrians themselves already understood too well: Bashar al-Assad may be gone, but the conflict, now in its fourteenth year, is far from over.
Although most of the country is now under new Islamist leadership, a large part of Syria remains under the control of a rival Kurdish faction. Foreign interference, local conflicts, and a brutal humanitarian crisis further muddle the picture.
In 2025, as in 2011, Syrian politics is mindbogglingly difficult to understand—for Syrians, but even more so for outsiders. Decisions are typically made by close-knit groups in backroom settings, only then to be laundered through public institutions. Official data are scarce and unreliable; media sources are plentiful but also very partisan. If you don’t speak Arabic, you miss most of the best media coverage of Syrian affairs, but also another key source of information—the political discussions, debates, and mudslinging contests on Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook.
That’s not to say there aren’t good English-language sources out there. The mainstream agencies and dailies remain fantastic sources of news—Reuters, Associated Press, and AFP, and newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times. But to get more granular information, you’ll need to turn to Syrian and Syria-focused outlets. And if you don’t have past experience and you don’t speak Arabic, it can be difficult to figure out where to begin.
Below are five of the best non-paywalled English-language online sources on Syria. There are certainly others no less deserving, but for those new to Syrian politics, these outlets should do as a point of departure.
Enab Baladi
The political weekly Enab Baladi is one of Syria’s best all-round news sources. Originally a project of anti-Assad dissidents in the Damascus suburb of Darayya, the team behind Enab Baladi was forced to flee to Turkey early in the war. The paper bounced back, however, by tapping into foreign aid to build a professional network of correspondents and expand its audience. One of many aid-funded Syrian diaspora publications at the time, Enab Baladi was unmistakably a pro-opposition enterprise, but it stood out from the crowd by striving for more objective and critical news coverage instead of simply cheerleading the rebels.
After Assad’s ouster, Enab Baladi returned home to report on a nation transformed, hoping to heal. Unfortunately, aid for Syria is receding, especially after Donald Trump destroyed USAID—and in the absence of regional or domestic patronage, Enab Baladi now struggles to survive financially.
You can read more about the paper here.
While it is primarily an Arabic-language publication, Enab Baladi runs an active English section: english.enabbaladi.net.
Syria Direct
Syria Direct—which operates in Arabic as Souriya Ala Toul—was set up with the help of Western aid money in Amman in 2013, aiming both to publish original reporting and to train and support Syrian journalists. Over the years, it developed into a small but impressive online outlet.
When the rift between the rulers of Amman and Damascus began to close in the late 2010s, Jordanian authorities grew less tolerant of activism and media perceived to be critical of Assad’s regime. Syria Direct was forced to close shop in 2021, but reincarnated itself in Berlin a year later—in exile from exile. It’s still going. The pace of publication may have slackened since its heyday, but Syria Direct continues to publish very worthwhile reporting.
Read at syriadirect.org.
SANA
SANA, which is short for the Syrian Arab News Agency, is the centerpiece of Syria’s state media apparatus, in operation since the early 1960s. Despite the name, it is less of a journalistic enterprise than a government mouthpiece, serving whomever happens to be in power at any given moment. It dutifully notes major domestic and international events (insofar as they fit the government’s agenda), records the adoption of laws and presidential decrees, chronicles the activities of top officials, and issues authoritative transcriptions of their public speeches. In other words, SANA is entirely partisan—and very useful.
The SANA website is published in several languages. The English version is not quite as comprehensive as the Arabic original—for example, speeches may be summarized instead of transcribed verbatim—but it does the job. Read at www.sana.sy/en.
North Press Agency
North Press, which also publishes under that name in Arabic and Kurdish, reports on Syria as a whole, but it is based in the country’s northeast and focuses most of its reporting on that region. Although Syria has changed dramatically in the past six months, the northeast remains under the control of a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which maintains a kind of lukewarm peace with Damascus. Unsurprisingly, North Press has a pro-SDF slant to its reporting and is often critical of the SDF’s archenemy, Turkey.
As long as you keep the politics in mind, however, North Press is a useful source—especially for the attention it lavishes on an otherwise under-covered and poorly understood part of Syria, which faces its own set of complex problems.
Read North Press at npasyria.com/en.
ReliefWeb
Last but not least, ReliefWeb is an invaluable tool for following Syria, considering the centrality of humanitarian concerns to a country that has seen half its people displaced by war and where more than two-thirds of the population now depends on foreign aid.
Managed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Relief, or OCHA, ReliefWeb is an automated humanitarian information aggregator. It’s not a news service, but rather a place to keep up with the constant flow of specialized reports, activity updates, statements, data packages, and fact sheets from thousands of entities involved with humanitarian affairs.
On ReliefWeb’s Syria page, you’ll find reporting from across the UN system, including anything Syria-related coming out of the Security Council, OCHA itself, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the World Food Programme (WFP), and so on. ReliefWeb also collects reporting from a variety of non-UN multilateral institutions, nongovernmental organizations, international charities, and human rights groups. It includes the latest from the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Refugees International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the World Bank, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Syrian American Medical Society, Mercy Corps, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the International Rescue Committee, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other key organizations in the country.
To dive into this flood of humanitarian, economic, and human rights reporting, click https://reliefweb.int/country/syr.
After taking an intense interest in the early years of the civil war, Western powers and media audiences now tend to regard Syria as a sideshow. Syria’s oil wealth pales in comparison to that of Iraq and the Gulf; its population is much smaller than Egypt’s; and it attracts fewer ideological sympathizers than Israel, Palestine, or Lebanon. But the country has a deep relevance to the future of the region: Damascus has a long history as an Arab cultural capital, it remains a key piece of the Arab–Israeli puzzle, and the destabilizing effects of the war—refugee crises, smuggling, and extremism—matter not just to the Middle East but even to Europe. Going forward, a collapsing or thriving Syria will affect the region in proportional measure. It is a good time for anyone who cares to search out ways to be a bit better informed.
Header Image: A man addresses demonstrators during a rally against Israeli intervention in Syria on July 16, 2025 in Damascus. A rally was held in Damascus in support of Syria’s interim government and to denounce Israel’s intervention following recent clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze militia in the southern Syrian city of Suwayda. Source: Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images
Tags: israel, Arab media, human rights reporting, syria, reporting