Versopolis Review By March 2021, a whole decade will have passed since the popular uprising in Syria started, and a titanic tragedy has been unfolding itself. What is so crushingly peculiar about these ten years is that Syrians have no promises whatsoever that things will be better, or even that the worst is already behind…
The greater jail: The politics of prison in Syria
Al Jumhuriya [Editor’s note: The below has been adapted from a talk given by the author on 10 November, 2020, at an event co-organized by the University of Cologne and the MENA Prison Forum founded by the activists Lokman Slim and Monika Borgmann, who attended the online discussion. Slim was assassinated earlier this month in…
An Arab revolutionary legacy?
Al Jumhuriya [Editor's note: This article is the fifth in a series published in collaboration with Mada Masr to mark the tenth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. It is also available in Arabic.] A tradition is unchanging rules that govern human action, a revolution is a transformative event that follows no predetermined path. As far…
A letter to the Progressive International
Al Jumhuriya [Al-Jumhuriya Editor’s note: In April, the Syrian writer and Al-Jumhuriya co-founder Yassin al-Haj Saleh was invited to join the advisory council of the Progressive International, a new movement seeking to “unite, organize, and mobilize progressive forces” around the world, involving well-known figures such as Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, and Yanis Varoufakis. The below…
State of starvation
Al Jumhuriya According to recent UN estimates, some 90% of the Syrian population lives under the poverty line of US$2 a day. 9.3 million Syrians need food assistance, while 1.4 million suffer from basic nutritional shortages. At this juncture, it is no exaggeration to talk about an imminent threat of famine; it may even be…
Coronavirus in a Syrianized World
Letters to Samira (14)
Al Jumhuriya – Translated by Alex Rowell With your abduction and disappearance for more than six years now, I have experienced the worst that any man can experience. It has also been the most unusual of all the many crimes and brutal acts committed in our world. We were not—you and I, specifically—strangers to unusual…
The love of my life disappeared six years ago, but still I cling to hope
Letters to Samira (15)
Assad’s “eternal rule:” the long prelude to genocide
Crisis Mag - Translation from Arabic by Yasser Al Zaiat Sectarianism in Syria and the region is considered a socio-political defect, one that weakens states and societies, and inhibits any rational analysis of social and political conditions. The prevailing thought on this matter, both in our countries and in the West, tends to explain sectarianism…