ZAATARI REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan — A young Syrian salesman stopped into Ahmad Bidawi’s barbershop for a shave the other day. Music wafted on fan-cooled air. Outside, on what has become the main commercial strip here in one of the world’s largest refugee camps, workers steered handcarts packed with lumber and kitchen appliances through sunbaked crowds hanging out in front of shops.

Read more

On a morning in late April 2013, Peter Gelling, the Middle East and Africa editor at GlobalPost, arrived at his office on the Boston waterfront to find a story filed by one of his reporters, Tracey Shelton. She was one of the few international reporters then working inside Syria. She had just been to Sheik Maqsoud, a neighborhood on the northern edge of Aleppo. Her emailed file reported that the area had been struck by chemical weapons, possibly sarin gas, two weeks earlier.

Read more