This story appears in the March 2014 issue of National Geographic ... of 2013, Syria’s bloody and complex civil war had displaced some nine million men, women, and children (view map).

Rebels have launched a major offensive against the government in Syria, seizing cities in a lightning ... Western powers of trying to redraw the map of the region.

This story represents the tricky kind of geopolitical stories that I love doing with National Geographic magazine. Tricky because Syria is a country that is somewhat closed and difficult to work ...