The Assad Regime Is Exploiting Reconstruction to Gain Legitimacy

Syria has been gravely damaged by its civil war.

The country has seen hundreds of thousands of its citizens killed in bombings and fighting, with more dying as a result of war’s inescapable consequences, and yet more disappearing into regime prisons and into the hands of radical groups such as the Islamic State (IS).

The Panama Papers and Hypocrisy

The mass data leak which has been christened the Panama Papers is one of the largest in history. It contains enormous amounts of information, much of which concerns the financial arrangements of powerful and famous people. Many of them are politicians, even national leaders. The response in the press, and from the publics of many countries, has been correspondingly outsized.