Qantara.de December 1996, after 16 years in Hafez al-Assad's prisons, I was released from custody. I was 36 years old at the time. The only event in my life that has had a similar impact was the fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024. By then I was 64 years old. The destruction of…

New Lines Magazine Syria is unstable because it is not possible for it to be stable in its current form. This is because it is trying to walk on one leg only — a security-focused, confessional one — in a society that is diverse and plural. In practice, this means standing in place unsteadily, before…

karamshaar.com Like all honeymoons, the “Syrian revolutionary honeymoon”—in the words of Asef Bayat—was destined to end eventually. For nearly three months, many people were happy and in a celebratory mood after the fall of the Assad family regime, which had ruled the country for 54 suffocating years. But the end of the honeymoon came in…

aljumhuriya Has the Syrian revolution triumphed with the fall of the Assad regime? Is what we have witnessed since last December a successful revolution – albeit after a long, tortuous path? This question carries cognitive significance, since it demands a detailed understanding of the almost 14 years which passed in Syria between the outbreak of…

Aljumhuriya In many of the off-the-cuff, incidental comments about Syria after the fall of the Assad regime that I observed, quite a number of people in Europe and the Middle East skeptically focused on what they would like to see and expressed their frustration for not seeing what they wanted; or they would mention anecdotes…

New Lines Magazine While conflict with Israel has been part of the collective consciousness of the Arab world for generations, the character of the Israeli state and its ideological underpinnings have rarely been the subject of serious reflection outside of certain Palestinian circles. In some neighboring countries like Syria and Lebanon, the existence of Israel…

Aljumhuriya Daniel Marwecki, in a fascinating book titled Germany and Israel: Whitewashing and Statebuilding, argues that in the 1960s, “Germany was ‘denazified’ by Israel in exchange for weapons and money. On the other hand, Arab States were ‘nazified’ in a move that sought to legitimize the Israeli position in the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Thus, at that…

Aljumhuriya Editor’s Note: The letter reproduced below was written and sent to PEN Berlin at the end of January this year by Yassin al-Haj Saleh, as a member of the writer’s organization. While some changes have been made to the text to ensure the avoidance of misunderstanding, the central meaning and arguments have been left…

The Dial More than 110,000 people were forcibly disappeared in Syria over the course of the last 13 years. What started in March 2011 as a peaceful revolution and part of the “Arab spring” turned into a civil war in 2012. The regime used extreme violence from the very beginning, and by 2013 the situation…

New Lines magazine Syria is a country of only 71,498 square miles in area, with a population of less than 24 million, and yet two global superpowers (the United States and the Russian Federation) and three of the largest regional powers (Iran, Turkey and Israel) are present on its territory. Israel has occupied the Syrian…