A report from inside Syria’s capital Damascus, battered by Western sanctions and filled with the internally displaced. By Rania Khalek / AlterNet DAMASCUS, SYRIA — I was sitting at a bar in the old city with off-duty Syrian soldiers when I learned that Donald Trump was officially ending the CIA’s covert support for the anti-government insurgents the Syrian army has spent the last six years fighting. I immediately told a group of patrons the news, but they didn’t believe it. … Continue reading As US regime-change operation in Syria fails, war-weary residents of Damascus struggle to survive