Leiden Public Administration alumnus Jeffrey Jonkers negotiates in Syria with the Assad government, civilians and even with IS. The UN peace talks are due to start shortly in Geneva. Jonkers negotiates behind the scenes.

Islamic State may be losing ground rapidly, but Syrian President Assad's position is gaining strength. His torture chambers and the battlefield are scenes of countless criminal acts. Will these crimes ever come to trial, at the International Criminal Court, for example?

From 2012 onwards the primary scholarly and media focus in regard to foreign fighters has been on the large number of Westerners joining jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq. Yet, much less attention has been paid to another conflict in the ring around Europe that attracted foreign fighters: the Russo-Ukrainian…

Researchers from Leiden University have investigated the living conditions of Dutch fighters in Syria. Their report is central to a panel discussion on Tuesday, 24 May.

Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijn, Chelsea Daymon and David Malet, wrote RESOLVE Network Research Report that examines career foreign fighters who have traversed from one insurgency to another.

This week the Turkish army invaded North East Syria. The Turkish invasion might well have had an unintended side effect: the escapement of thousands of Islamic State terrorists held in captivity. Experts on terrorism and politicians fear a resurrection of the terror group.

As a result of two attacks in Germany and one attack in France within only one week, fears of new terrorist attacks in Europe have reignited. In France a radicalised police agent stabbed and killed four people. In Germany a man from Syria drove his car into a line of cars wounding sixteen people and…

Olivier Nieuwenhuijse, project leader of the project Focus Raqqa, was hosted by the NOS Radio 1 news broadcast on February 16, 2017.

The Faculty of Archaeology used to be involved in several excavations in Syria, before the outbreak of civil war made travel to the region impossible. One of these excavations is the one of tell Hammam al-Turkman, which started in 1981. Student Ruben Hartman, together with archaeologist Dr Diederik…

Two thousand years ago, the Middle East found itself caught between the rise of the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east. PhD candidate Nolke Tasma has been awarded an NWO grant to investigate how local inhabitants experienced these changes.