By William Tucker
War is a fluid event. Constant troop movements and changes in territorial holdings can occur rapidly. Complicating matters further, as is the case in Syria, is the lack of independent verification of claims made by the regime or opposition. Careful research, however, can reveal a great deal of information. The Institute for the Study of War recently published a map of the Syrian conflict showing important ethnic divisions and territorial holdings of the warring factions. ISW analysts were only able to verify about 25 percent of the information by crosschecking claims through different sources. Though the results documented on the map are hardly surprising it does help to understand the flow of combat and areas that may be contested by the belligerents in the near future.
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