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Syrian uprising

Hassan, the main character in "The Cow Farm," has no interest in joining the army — but feels that he doesn't have much choice.

‘In Syria there is no black and white,’ says this Syrian filmmaker

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When it comes to the Syrian war, we often hear about good versus evil. But anti-regime Syrian filmmaker Ali Sheikh Khudr found a more complicated picture when he began filming a documentary on his cousin, who later joined the Syrian Army.

Syrian activist Karam Al Hamad at work. Hamad is currently waiting for permission to leave Turkey to travel to the US for a fellowship.

After a year of torture in Syrian jail, an activist finally makes it to the US

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US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power reads a statement following a United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution about the ongoing crisis in Iraq on August 15, 2014.

Shocking photos push Samantha Power to seek peace in Syria

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Rebel fighters eat in the Damascus suburb of Arbeen October 6, 2014.

Some Syrian rebels struggle to separate their real identities and their nom de guerre

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Fresh martyr portraits painted on a side street in Tripoli's Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood. Clashes last month in the economically deprived neighborhood left at least 11 soldiers, 8 civilians and 22 militants dead.

Healing this neighborhood would go a long way toward ending the insurgency

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US President Barack Obama speaks at a meeting with more than 20 foreign defense chiefs to discuss the coalition efforts in the ongoing campaign against ISIS at Joint Base Andrews in Washington on October 14, 2014.

American warplanes have effectively become Assad’s best weapon

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Everyone agrees that ISIS needs to be stopped in Iraq and Syria, but there’s almost no agreement among Western countries and their allies on how to get rid of Bashar al-Assad. And as they focus on terrorist groups, they may find themselves actually turning to Assad for help.

Turkish soldiers are silhouetted atop armoured vehicles near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border on October 3, 2014.

The US has lots at stake in the Syrian border town of Kobane

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Syrians in the Turkish border town of Kobane say they’re on the verge of being overrun by ISIS militants. But while American warplanes are coming to their aid, the US is still reluctant to get involved — but may be forced into much wider action that it wants.

Turkish tanks taking up position on the Turkish-Syrian border on September 29, 2014, after stray fire landed on Turkish territory. Turkey is concentrating forces along the border ahead of a parliamentary debate on authorizing military intervention in Syri

Turkey prepares to make a military move into Syria, but NATO needs convincing

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The Turkish government has asked parliament to authorize military action in Syria and Iraq, hoping to provide safe spaces for Kurds and keeping them on their side of the Turkey-Syria border. But Turkey’s NATO allies aren’t convinced the intervention is a good idea.

Residents inspect a damaged site in what activists say was a US strike in Kfredrian, Idlib province, Syria, on September 23, 2014.

Syrian activists worry they won’t be the ones who gain from US airstrikes

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Although the US military has the militants of ISIS in its crosshairs, it’s not clear who will step in to fill any territory they may leave behind. Some activists worry that, despite finally receiving direct US intervention, the Syrian opposition will still fall short in the wake of airstrikes.

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, sleep on the ground at the Bajed Kadal refugee camp in southwest Dohuk province on August 23, 2014.

A former UN relief coordinator says Iraqi and Syrian refugees pose the biggest humanitarian crisis of our generation

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Jan Egeland says the current crisis caused by the Syrian civil war affects far more people than the notorious violence in Rwanda and the Balkans more than a decade ago. And the former UN official says no nation is addressing it — from the West to the Arab World, or powers like China and Russia.