By Joby Warrick, Washington Post

He was known to the CIA's clandestine service as "the chemist," and few at headquarters would ever know his real name. A professor and a gifted scientist, he had been perfectly positioned for spy work, with a job that entitled him to privileges not accorded to ordinary Syrians, including a broad latitude to travel and to meet with foreigners in the crowded souks and smoke-filled cafes of the old city.

The UK's envoy to Syria, Jonathan Hargreaves, has underlined the British government’s support for a permanent and real ceasefire in Syria, strongly condemning the Assad regime and its Russian backers.

In a statement released today (February 19), Hargreaves said, "Justice and accountability are the key to the urgently needed negotiated settlement to end the conflict."

Fighting reportedly broke out on Sunday (February 14) between members of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and personnel from the Assad regime’s infamous Air Force Intelligence Directorate (AFID) in rural Damascus province.

According to news site SY24’s correspondent in the area, “The town of Al-Ghasoula, near Damascus International Airport in the countryside of Damascus, saw clashes using automatic weapons between groups of Hezbollah militia and the Air Force Intelligence branch."

In an official sense, at least, the situation on Syria’s borders has hardly changed at all over the past couple years. The Western agenda still excluded any international solution comparable to what the Dayton Accords established in the former Yugoslavia. Russia and its partners in the “Astana process,” Iran and Turkey, oppose any formal efforts to partition the country or cement the existence of a separate Kurdish entity in the north. Moreover, the problems that followed the partition of Sudan have given Western policymakers serious doubts about the viability of such a solution for Syria.

Russian forces have reportedly begun searching for the remains of two more Israeli soldiers, missing since 1982, in a cemetery near the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.

The two soldiers, identified as Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, have been missing since 1982 during the ‘Battle of Sultan Yaqoub’ in the First Lebanese War, along with another Israeli soldier, Zachary Baumel, whose remains were recovered and returned to Israel in 2019, according to a report by the Times of Israel newspaper.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the Syrian uprising, the conflict rages on with no apparent end in sight. The role of the United Nations, the international organisation created to keep the peace and promote human rights in the world, has clearly been a dismal failure. Whilst no one claims that the Syrian conflict is the death knell for the UN, it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how the organisation can move forward from here. A litany of failures by the organisation has resulted in the Syrian people feeling abandoned by the international community.

A Belarusian veterans group claims that the Belarusian Armed Forces (BAF) are preparing to deploy two battalions of so-called “peacekeepers” to Syria in September 2021.

Political sources in Beirut said the assassination of Lebanese Shia political activist and prominent Hezbollah critic Lokman Slim in southern Lebanon on Thursday (February 4), in an area under direct Hezbollah control, was intended to intimidate the Lebanese people, especially the Shia community, and send a message from Iran’s regime to the new US administration.