Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Up to recently, it had seemed that many people in the west think that the Russian War in Ukraine is qualitatively different from the one it has been leading for six years and a half in Syria. While one witnesses international outrage at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and European countries (...)
A leading Syrian intellectual takes on the famous linguist, arguing that Americentrism blinds the latter from the reality of the revolution
Just three weeks following my release after 16 years in prison in Syria, I started translating a book into Arabic. The book was “Powers and Prospects: (...)
After the gradual lifting on subsidies for oil derivatives, in 2020 and particularly 2021, Damascus took a next important step, on 1 February 2022. It announced the exclusion of approximately 600,000 families from its subsidy programme; something like three million people in total (based on an (...)
For decades, the Assads have tried projecting an image of themselves as “secular” bulwarks against religious extremism. All the while, they’ve been shoring up the powers of loyalist religious institutions and stoking sectarian divisions as a tool for control, argues Joseph Daher.
“I also want to (...)
Yasser Munif on the lessons of the Syrian revolution and beyond
Harald Etzbach spoke with Yasser Munif about the theoretical and methodological approaches of his book The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death, the limitations of geopolitical thinking, (...)
The disappearance of Razan Zaitouneh and her colleagues has been one of the greatest mysteries of the Syrian war — until today. DW’s investigative unit hunted clues across six countries to track down the perpetrators.
By the summer of 2013, documenting human rights abuses had become taboo even (...)
It’s difficult to recollect the euphoria of the early days of the 2011 uprising in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Reflecting on that time, Syrians speak of the breaking of the “fear barrier”—the suffocating authoritarianism and repression that had silenced them for decades. At the (...)
[The following Open Letter was a collaborative effort of a group of Syrian writers and intellectuals and others who stand in solidarity with them. It is signed by activists, writers, artists, and academics from Syria and 34 other countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North (...)
Latest deadly skirmish highlights the deteriorating security situation in the Kurdish region where Peshmerga forces set up new bases to keep the PKK at bay.
Sidekan, Kurdish Region, Iraq – Mounting tensions between rival Kurdish groups boiled over when clashes broke out between the Kurdistan (...)
A couple of years ago, I saw a discussion on Facebook of the impact of migration on Arab families. The mainly male writers were arguing that leaving the protection of the homeland has destroyed the fabric of Syrian families and society in the diaspora. They believed it had led Syrian women (...)
Suspiciously low case numbers, lenient containment measures and lack of trust in government institutions: how the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the ineptitude of local authorities in Syria.
The virus had already spread within neighboring Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. But in Syria, the (...)
Rateb Shabo, a Syrian leftist political activist, was jailed for 16 years in the 1980s and 1990s—including three years in the government’s notorious Tadmur Military Prison—for his membership in the opposition Labor Communist Party . His recent book, The Story of the Labor Communist Party of Syria (...)
South Korea held its 21st general election to elect MPs on April 15. The final result was pretty decisive: the ruling Together Democratic Party (TDP) won an absolute majority of 163 seats on the constituency ballot, plus another 17 seats on the party list ballot, for a total of 180 seats in the (...)
More than 9 years after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, the situation is more than catastrophic for the popular classes in the country. It is facing a deep humanitarian crisis with 11.7 million persons in need of humanitarian assistance, while more than 5.6 million Syrians are living as (...)
Staff at Aqeirbat hospital call on the UN Secretary General to visit Idlib and see the evidence of deliberate targeting of hospitals by Syrian government and Russian forces firsthand – picture: Al-Atareb news website via Facebook
Medical staff at Aqeirbat hospital in the countryside near Idlib (...)
The Caesar Bill has become the subject of debate among progressive and democratic Syrian actors. But what are the key arguments surrounding the bill?
On December 20, 2019, US President Donald Trump signed into law the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, so named after the Syrian military (...)
Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience By Joseph Daher Haymarket Books, 2019, 386 pages, $29 paperback.
PERHAPS MORE THAN any other recent question, the Syrian Revolution confused and divided the international left. Many dismissed the revolt as a “color (...)
Is secularism opposed to religion, or religion opposed to secularism? What is the position of authoritarian regimes towards secularism? And are Syria’s minorities truly secular? In this latest article in our series on secularism, writer Rateb Sha’bo explores some of these questions.
The (...)
Demonstration in Maarat Al Nu’man in solidarity with Kafar Takharim and against HTS, 7 November. Photo credit: MMC
Over the past few days a popular uprising has broken out across Idlib against the hardline Islamist group HTS (formerly Al-Qaeda linked Nusra) which is militarily dominant in much (...)
As I write, the revolution in Rojava is under existential threat. This threat was aggravated by a controversial roller coaster of recent events. After a late Sunday night phone conversation between US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the White House released a (...)
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