CEP Research Analyst Gregory Waters writes: "In the center of Harem, Idlib, hundreds of Syrian families huddle around stoves and in tents as they look on at the row of collapsed apartments they used to call home. “This disaster hasn’t happened to Syria in a thousand years,” says Abu Ahmed, the director of the new camp. “The international community must witness what is happening to us and help.” Yet despite the scores of international aid flights that have landed in Damascus, and Thursday’s visit to Aleppo by the head of the United Nations’ World Food Program, the first U.N. aid trucks did not reach opposition-held Syria until Saturday afternoon. Just 22 trucks arrived at the Bab al-Hawa crossing, and it took until late Saturday for the first convoys from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar to arrive in north Aleppo. No other international NGOs have yet sent aid."

On this week’s edition of “The Hunt with WTOP national security correspondent J.J. Green,” Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, says this is a very troubling development because they actually had thousands of dollars to pay bribes.

CEP Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler interviewed: "Membre et coordinateur de l’équipe de surveillance du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU sur l’État islamique en Irak et au Levant, el-Qaëda et les talibans entre 2013 et 2018, Hans-Jakob Schindler, directeur du Counter-Extremism Project à Berlin, fait le point pour L’Orient-Le Jour."

CEP Research Analyst Gregory Waters writes: "Damascus has adopted many strategies during its decade-long war in an attempt to adapt to and overcome serious opposition gains and international interventions. The most ubiquitous of these are the brutalizing of dissident civilians while announcing substance-less reforms, legalizing loyalist militias as legitimate forces, besieging and forcibly cleansing anti-regime neighborhoods, and finally using the guise of “reconciliation” to reimpose its will over destroyed regions and people. All of these approaches had one thing in common: the use of violent coercion dressed up as political diplomacy. Today, with much of the country back under Assad’s control, Damascus continues to try to strong-arm its remaining enemies into “negotiated settlements,” akin to the so-called reconciliation agreements that saw thousands of families expelled from their homes and thousands more men forcibly conscripted into the armed forces. But the Kurdish-led government in northeast Syria and the Turkish-protected zones in northwest have proved much more difficult to threaten than besieged rebel towns."