Jon Lee Anderson checks in on Syria's civilians:

The Syrians living in Damascus and Aleppo are now accustomed to sudden and unexplained battles in their neighborhoods, killings, roadblocks, and security checks. Most are dealing with these vicissitudes privately, out of fear of causing offense to one side or another and in the hopes that it will soon pass, like some kind of pernicious storm. But people are losing friends in the combat, and to the thugs who operate in packs, silently killing people who are suspected of one thing or another, in blindfolded groups, by day and by night. This sadly brutal conflict, now eighteen months old, has a tally estimated at some thirty thousand dead, and the death rate has a dismal upward spiral.

Toby Muse also looks at how civilians are weathering the civil war: