Stuart Ramsay

1 month ago | news.sky.com | Stuart Ramsay

No checkpoint is the same, some want paperwork, others wave you through after a brief look inside - but from Damascus to Latakia, there are a lot of checkpoints, and in one way or another, you are checked every time. It wasn't like this just a month or two ago, but it is now after the most violent few days the country has seen since Bashar al Assad was forced from power in December last year. We drove through cities like Jableh, on Syria's Mediterranean coast, almost unrecognisable now.

1 month ago | news.sky.com | Stuart Ramsay

Demonstrators flooded past me as deafening police blast bombs exploded around us, to the left and right tear gas canisters landed on the road, spinning and belching out gas. Phalanxes of riot police, truncheons in hand, broke into a sprint from three sides, trying to catch up with the protesters as they disappeared into alleyways. Image: Riot police attacked with Molotov cocktails thrown by demonstrators.

2 months ago | news.sky.com | Stuart Ramsay

By the standards of other cities I have been in or visited shortly after a revolution, Damascus seems on the face of it relatively calm. More often than not, I'd expect masked gunmen to be deployed on every corner, patrolling the streets in groups, or whizzing around on battered trucks, with heavy machine guns at the ready and rocket-propelled grenades strapped to roofs or on the backs of fighters. But that isn't the case in Damascus.

2 months ago | news.sky.com | Stuart Ramsay

The recorded documentation of every facet of official life so common of dictatorial regimes is an overwhelming legacy of the Assad family's reign of terror in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of documents detailing every aspect of the government's aspirations have been taken into protective custody by the country's new government, but there are many more that have still to be gathered. We arrived in Syria in December - the day after Damascus had fallen.

2 months ago | msn.com | Stuart Ramsay

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