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    Joshua Hersh

    Joshua Hersh

    Contributor

  • Syrian Families Living Outside Turkish Refugee Camps Face Tough Conditions

    Back in Syria's Hama province, where he is from, Ali once had a beautiful home, with ornate tile work, a pair of cars and a driver to help him get around. Today, Ali lives with his extended family in a cramped, one-story building in this remote suburb of Antakya, where he struggles to find enough money to feed his family, and often fails to make rent. In one corner of the room, three young children watched Turkish-language "Tom and Jerry" cartoons on an antiquated 20-inch television.

  • British Journalists Freed After Kidnapping In Northern Syria

    A pair of veteran British journalists were badly wounded after being kidnapped in the wild frontier land of northern Syria, their newspaper said on Wednesday. Both journalists were badly beaten by their captors, and Loyd was shot twice in the leg. The kidnappings reinforce the sense of ongoing disarray and structural chaos that has persisted in rebel-held northern Syria, despite recent attempts by more moderate and organized rebel groups to retake control of the area from the radical Islamist force known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

  • The Real Cost Of Benghazi Politics

    In early January, as a violent rebellion flared across South Sudan, the world's youngest country, the U.S. State Department announced that it would contribute $50 million to emergency programs to alleviate the suffering. The money, which brought America's humanitarian commitment to the troubled nation to more than $300 million (it is now over $400 million), would be allocated by the U.S. Agency for International Development to local aid organizations and United Nations agencies to help combat food and water shortages, improve medical conditions, and "support reunification of families separated by the fighting," according to a USAID press release.

  • WHO Downplays Recent MERS Virus Surge

    A recent spike in a deadly virus that has swept across much of the Middle East, prompting fears of a global pandemic, was likely the result of a seasonal uptick and poor health care procedures by the government of Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization reported on Wednesday. "The upsurge in cases can be explained by an increase, possibly seasonal, in the number of primary cases amplified by several outbreaks in hospitals due to breaches in WHO’s recommended infection prevention and control measures," WHO said in a statement. The conclusions, made after a five-day investigative visit by a team of public health experts to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, come as a reassurance to many who had watched as confirmed cases of the virus, which is known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, rose dramatically. In April alone, the number of cases exceeded the previous two years of testing, bringing the total number of sick patients to around 500.

  • Experts Fret About Deadly Virus' Great Unknowns

    With cases of a virulent and highly fatal pathogen on the rise, including the first-known occurrence in the United States, epidemiologists and public health officials say some of their biggest concerns about the disease lie in the basic information that they still don't have about it. The virus, called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, is closely related to SARS, which spread rapidly across Asia a decade ago, leaving some 800 people dead. More than 400 people have been infected with the disease so far, almost all of them in the Middle East.

  • Syria's Children Bear Brunt Of Recent Airstrikes, Bombings

    A spate of airstrikes and other attacks in recent days have left scores of children dead across Syria, underscoring the dangers facing innocent civilians amid the conflict's rising brutality. On Wednesday, an airstrike by regime jets hit an elementary school in Aleppo, killing at least a dozen children who were in the process of preparing for an art exhibition, according to activist reports. On Thursday, a complex attack on a bustling market in Aleppo left 33 dead and wounded many others, including children, according to reports.

  • Don't Panic About MERS Yet, Health Experts Say

    Cases of a deadly virus with no known cure have spiked in the Middle East over the past few weeks, but doctors and public health experts said there's no reason to panic -- yet. The number of people infected with the coronavirus, called Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, has surged recently, particularly in the Persian Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia, where the outbreak is centered, reported more than two dozen new cases and 10 deaths over the weekend.

  • Let's Read Between The Lines: John Kerry Is Standing Behind The 'Apartheid' Charge

    Did Secretary of State John Kerry really back down? One day after the Daily Beast reported that Kerry used the word "apartheid" to describe a possible future for Israel in a closed-door speech in Washington, D.C., sparking outrage from Israel supporters across the political spectrum, the State Department tried to douse the flames by distributing a statement in his name.

  • Obama Lashes Out At Foreign Policy Critics

    President Barack Obama ended his tour of several Asian countries on Monday with a passionate and unscripted defense of his foreign policy agenda, flogging his critics for having once championed more aggressive approaches during the years of his predecessor. "For some reason, many who were proponents of what I consider to be a disastrous decision to go into Iraq haven’t really learned the lesson of the last decade, and they keep on just playing the same note over and over again," Obama said during a press conference in Manila with Philippine President Benigno Aquino III. "Why? Obama's unusual remarks came in response to a question from a reporter from Fox News, and they reflected the intensity of his frustration with both the shortcomings of his foreign policy and those who criticize it.

  • Syria Misses Another Chemical Weapons Benchmark Despite 'Significant Progress'

    An informal deadline for Syria to export all of its chemical weapons stocks passed on Sunday with the government having come close -- but not quite all the way -- to meeting its obligations, the organization overseeing the deal announced. Sigrid Kaag, the head of the Syria mission for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told reporters in Damascus, Syria, that the regime had so far eliminated 92.5 percent of its chemical stores, and she hailed the accomplishment as a sign of "significant progress," if not total success, according to The Associated Press. "I strongly encourage (the Syrian government) to go for that last push that we can really talk of hundred percent removal and destruction," Kaag said.

  • Afghanistan Special Investigator Drops Hammer On State Department Waste

    The special investigator tasked with assessing America's deployment of resources in Afghanistan over the past decade launched a trio of damning new reports this week, slamming the State Department for its shortcomings and waste in a slew of projects. One of the reports, which were released on Thursday by the office of the Special Investigator for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), points out that the State Department has distributed nearly 70 percent of its development funds to a single, controversial American contractor, DynCorp. The new audit doesn't specifically fault DynCorp for any of its efforts, but the company has a long history as a target of criticisms for its handling of security-related projects, particularly in Iraq, where an independent investigator repeatedly cited the company for improper billing and weak oversight.

  • Some Syrian Revolutionaries Have Had Enough Of War

    Mosab Khalaf remembers the exact moment when he became a revolutionary, and the exact moment when he walked away. The first came early in the Syrian uprising, in the spring of 2011, when a friend dragged Khalaf, then 19, to a protest in Attal, a town in suburban Damascus. When he arrived, Khalaf was stunned by what he saw.

  • War In Black And White: On The Front Lines With Syria's Army

    The commander tore off a piece of bread and dipped it into a platter of hummus. Before him sat a spread of simple mountain dishes and grilled meats -- a late lunch after a long day along the northern front of Syria's war. "I see this war in black and white, angels and devils," said the commander, who, like every military official interviewed in Syria by The Huffington Post during a visit last month, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

  • Syrian Officials To U.S.: You Should Be On Our Side

    Syrian officials have a sharp message for American policymakers about the war in this country: you should be on our side. “The militants that we face here, they are like the head of the snake,” said one Syrian army colonel, who, like all the military officials interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity. It’s a refrain The Huffington Post heard repeatedly over a recent week of meetings with top government officials, including several senior military officers, in a northern, pro-government bastion along the Mediterranean Sea.

  • 'He Knew That Death Was Coming': Survivors Mourn After A Massacre By Syrian Rebels

    Issam Darwish, a 33-year-old farmer, was asleep in his small, ramshackle home when he heard the cries of warning from neighbors. Jumping out of bed, he roused his family, including his 90-year-old grandfather, and hastily shepherded them out onto the road, where some jumped into available pickup trucks and others ran away through the wooded valleys below. “We tried so hard to make him get into the truck,” Darwish recalled recently, as he sat on a thin carpet on the floor of his drafty living room.

  • It's Presidential Campaign Season In Syria. This Is What It Looks Like

    It started around the recent peace talks in Geneva, people say. One by one, the metal security grates outside the shops that line the bustling streets of Damascus’s commercial pathways started to be repainted, most in exactly the same way: three broad streaks of red, white, and black, with two green stars in the middle -- the Syrian national flag.

  • Syrian General Defends Delays In Chemical Weapons Turnover

    A top general in Syria’s army on Saturday rejected criticism of his government’s efforts to hand over its chemical weapons stockpiles, saying that the unstable security situation had made delays inevitable. “The Syrian government has spent a great deal of money to move these weapons out of dangerous parts of the country to the port,” the general told The Huffington Post, speaking on condition of anonymity. The general is responsible for a critical stretch of highway that much of the chemicals must pass through to reach their destination in the port city of Latakia.

  • Syrian Government Promotes Local Ceasefires As The Way Out Of War

    When peace came to Ish al-Warwar, a pro-government, working-class neighborhood in the steep hills along this city’s northeastern edge, Hanan Aboud let her son go out to play. It had been almost two years since the conflict that has burned through much of Syria first arrived at Aboud’s doorstep, bringing bullets and mortars onto the streets where her family lived and cutting off the road down to Barzeh, the pro-opposition neighborhood where her son went to school. “Life was horrible,” said Aboud, who was an English teacher before the war.

  • U.S. May Risk Unintended Military Involvement In Syria

    With the Obama administration facing intensifying pressure to consider new military-backed options for mitigating the humanitarian crisis in Syria, critics say the plans being debated would raise the prospect of much greater U.S. involvement than acknowledged. In an article Friday, the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman reported that the White House is considering a broad new array of approaches to the Syrian morass, with an emphasis on actions that could alleviate humanitarian suffering -- without resorting to direct military action. This grey area -- the military as engaged, but still somehow in the background -- sounds promising to supporters of a limited intervention, but military analysts and veterans of past wars say it also carries a high risk of slipping into outright warfare, or not working at all.

  • Among Syrian Exiles, Certainty, And Fear, That Obama Has A Secret Plan

    "I do not like Obama," he said, with a studied glare at the foreign visitor. "I'm sure he has a plan," one member of Syria's political opposition, who has worked with the uprising for two years, said of Obama.