NHK World Assad dynasty's half century in power For decades, Saleh has given voice to the people of Syria through his work. In Japan, Saleh travelled to Hiroshima, Kyoto and Tokyo, he spoke about his experiences and how the Assad regime has held power in Syria for more than half a century. "Syria is a…
Normalization with a mass murderer
L’Orient Today There is something incomprehensible about the accelerated pace of normalization between a growing number of Arab regimes and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. After the visits of the Syrian dictator to Muscat in February and then Abu Dhabi March, Syria's foreign minister made his first trip last Wednesday to Saudi Arabia since 2011.…
“Continuous Insanity”: Syrian Dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh on 12 Years of War & Earthquake Relief
Syria’s Catastrophe Upon Catastrophe
DAWN In the first few days after the earthquake that devastated southern Turkey and northwestern Syria in early February, only vehicles carrying the dead bodies of Syrian refugees crossed the Turkish border into Syria—not aid and equipment to rescue people from the rubble of collapsed buildings, not vitally needed medical supplies, not temporary shelters to…
Syria Before the Storm: A Dissident Recalls Life in the Pre-Assad Era
New Lines Magazine My father, Ibrahim al-Haj Saleh, was a man of faith. As a child, he had attended a traditional Islamic elementary school, known as a “kuttab,” where he learned to read and write. I witnessed him pray and fast during the holy month of Ramadan his whole life. My mother, Ajaja al-Husayn,…
Anatomy of Tadamon Massacre, Damascus, 2013
What does the Tadamon massacre that come to be known in details in April this year, 9 years after was committed tell us about Syria? This article investigate seven faces of this horrific crime. The full text is only available through the Journal of Genocide Research This essay was first published in Arabic by Aljumhuriya…
Selective Solidarity
medico international 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 are…
Chomsky Is No Friend of the Syrian Revolution
New Lines Magazine 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: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order,” by Noam Chomsky. It had taken me some time to realize that the leading linguist and the harsh…
Why Ukraine Is a Syrian Cause
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) In the week since Russia's invasion began, Syrians opposed to President Bashar al-Assad might come second only to Ukrainians themselves in following every horror of the war that Vladimir Putin's regime is waging in Ukraine. The reason behind this curious situation, of course, should be quite apparent. Russia…
From genocide to permanent security and from identity to politics
International Politics Reviews (2022) The problems of genocide: Permanent security and the language of transgression is of great importance in the richness of its content, the strength of its main thesis, its extensive documentation, and its critical approach to Holocaust scholarship and memory. One does not often encounter this combination of attributes in Western writings…