• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 28, 2015

A team of Latakia Syrians have launched an Arabic-language search engine in response to U.S. sanctions and engines such as Google and Bing that do not break down borders and facilitate global ecommerce and exchange of information, according to developers. The site offers access to academic and medical papers and location-based data.

Shamra.sy, initiated from within Syria using the .Sy top-level domain (TLD) becomes available to “Syrians in the country and others abroad not under the U.S. regime hegemony,” per one report.

The engine, initially introduced September 2015 in Syria, had one local news agency calling the move an answer to “illegal” U.S. sanctions on Internet search engines. “The U.S. regimes, with the help of their minions, use sanctions against other countries as an arm-twisting policy, if failed then they move to destabilizing using covert black ops and they end up with direct invasion, just to export their version of ‘democracy,’ according to one report.

Syrian Radio and Television reports it’s the first national search engine in Latakia. The site’s content includes scientific research, as well as “Places” highlighting the Syrian sites added by users from all provinces during the trial period, which began earlier this year.

The Business Intelligence Software Company, a Syrian agency, developed the search engine Shamra and licensed it under the organization of the Companies Act in the Syrian Arab Republic. It has the support of the Ministry of Communications and Technology for such national projects.

The engine wants to provide a range of electronic services to Syrian and other users on Syrian and international affairs, such as political, historical, geographical, economic, sports, academic, technical, investment.