Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Translation by Sam Langer and Joel Scott. For most people in the West well into the 2000s, Syria was either an unknown, a rogue state, or one of many Arab dictatorships. This changed in 2011 with the outbreak of the Arab Spring. Nevertheless, since then only heavily filtered and biased…
The Dark Path of Minority Politics
The Century Foundation - (Download PDF from the Century Foundation website) Since the inception of the Syrian uprisings, the Syrian regime has had an implicit justification for its violence: the protection of minorities. The regime has never been open about this, yet it is there. The justification reveals the dual structure of the Syrian state…
Letters to Samira (13)
Al Jumhuriya – Translated by Alex Rowell Sammour, I’ve written to you before about unpleasant things; happenings that shouldn’t have happened, and a world whose horizons have become dimmer in the years of your absence. This time, I write to you about what keeps hope alive, even in such a world: friendship; a great deal…
Letters to Samira (12)
Al Jumhuriya - Translated by Alex Rowell The only day I’ve ever celebrated since your disappearance has been your birthday. I spend it, alone, with you. For weeks leading up to your birthday, Sammour, I have been thinking of how often a love of experience brought us together; a wish to take a risk; to…
Letters to Samira (11)
Al Jumhuriya Five years. Sixty months. 260 weeks. 1,826 days. Sammour, I must have thought a thousand times about what I would do if I found myself face to face with the monsters who abducted you. I’d abduct their souls, in a nutshell; those dead souls that subsist by ruining life and restlessly spreading death…
Letters to Samira (10)
Al Jumhuriya – Translated by Murhaf Fares On this day, twenty-seven years ago, you were released from prison, after four years, one month, and eleven days of a shorter absence. Today, you also complete four years, eleven months, and seventeen days of a longer absence, during which time I have known nothing about you, nor…
An update on the Douma Four
Al-Jumhuriya - Translated by Alex Rowell Earlier this year, between the summer and fall, I spent several months in Turkey following up on the case of the “Douma Four” activists—Samira al-Khalil (my wife), Razan Zaitouneh, Wael Hamade, and Nazem Hammadi—who were abducted and disappeared in Douma, east of Damascus, in December 2013. My aim was to…
Syrians need a fresh start, not ugly appeasement
Rime Allaf and Yassin al-Haj Saleh in Al Jumhuriya US President Jimmy Carter has dedicated much time in the last decades to building homes for those in need. He has laid foundations, put up walls brick by brick, and provided solid roofs over many people’s heads, helping them secure the basic human rights of shelter,…
The world at the fascist moment
Al Jumhuriya - Translated by Suneela Mubayi In his foreword to Theo Horesh’s new book, The Holocausts We All Deny, Yassin al-Haj Saleh decries the present “lack of a global vision or project” capable of resisting the crisis of democracy from China through the Middle East to Trump’s America. Genocide is rare, or that is…
A critique of solidarity
Al Jumhuriya - Translated by Alex Rowell There is no reason why one shouldn’t be able to imagine Syrians, or Palestinians, or Kurds, expressing solidarity with the victims of a political or natural catastrophe in Western countries. Yet the direction of solidarity seems almost always to be the contrary; it is those in affluent, powerful,…