The Collapse of Syria

There is an online map I use to track the Syrian war. It’s one of a handful of such tools, and it would have been unheard of even a decade ago. With this map, anyone around the world with an internet connection can watch the war play out in near real time. You can track attacks as quickly as they are reported on Twitter, which is, in most cases these days, within minutes. You can follow the sources reporting the attacks to assess their credibility, cross reference different sources, determine what kind of attacks they were and who perpetrated them. The map provides colour-coded zones of control, a who-is-where guide to what can often be a dizzyingly fluid war zone.

The service I use doesn’t only cover Syria. I also used it when I was reporting on the Iraqi offensive to retake Mosul from ISIS in 2016 and 2017. It was accurate. ISIS zones of control were colour-coded grey, an apt choice, while the Iraqi army and its allies were red. Using the map’s “time” option, I...