L’Internationale, 1 December 2014 At an early stage of the Syrian revolution, which erupted in the context of the ‘Arab Spring,’ the billionaire Rami Makhlouf stated that ‘the government’s decision is to fight.’ Speaking without any official title except for being the cousin of Bashar Assad, Makhlouf added: ‘Each one of us knows we cannot…
Islam, Islamists, and Violence, Part I
L’Internationale, 17 November 2014 Views on the relation between Islam and violence Two clear doctrines regarding the relation between violent Islamist groups and Islam are currently in circulation. A first widespread doctrine holds that these groups are Islam itself, or at least its accurate expression; a second widely held doctrine states in turn that Islam…
Forty-four Months and Forty-four Years: 1- Two Blindfolds
L’Internationale, 16 November 2014 Forty-four years ago, on an autumn day like this one in 1970, Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria by military coup. The man had been minister of defense during the June 1967 war with Israel, which ended in a disastrous defeat for the Arabs and Syria. Thirty years later, he passed…
One Aspect of the History of Political Rumour in Syria
Heinrich Boell Foundation – Middle East, 5 November 2014 This article deals exclusively with political rumour in ‘Assad’s Syria’. It is an attempt to examine the subject based on the author’s personal experiences Rumours to soothe Only a few weeks into our detention we began hearing rumours about our imminent release. It was the 1980s…
Three levels for a successful confrontation of ISIS
Al-Jumhuriya, 1 September 2014 There seems to be American and Western plans in the making to fight ISIS in Syria, although it is unlikely to exceed air strikes and perhaps some limited commando operations. The purpose of such strikes is probably to put the emerging terrorist entity under pressure, busy it with pulling itself together…
Syria: The End of the Prophet-Intellectual
Al-Jumhuriya , 21 July 2014 A little over a generation ago, a huge national crisis erupted in Syria. It precipitated an unprecedented humanitarian plight, and forced one of the most progressive Arab countries onto a path of absolute decline. An indirect consequence of this has been the transformation of ‘The Syrian Arab Republic” into “Assad’s Syria”,…
Freedom, social change, and Syria
Al-Jumhuriya, 28 June 2014 Presented in World Press Photo’s «Reporting Change ‒ Stories from the Arab region» (Netherlands, 15 June) In Arabic, we differentiate between taghyeer (تغيير) and taghayur (تغيّر). Both words mean change. But taghyeer connotes planned action, executed unilaterally by a powerful elite, with a pre-known end result; whereas taghayur implies an open-…
Samira Khalil
Douma4 (Originally published on Al-Quds Al-Arabi), 27 May 2014 - Translated by Murhaf Fares After four years of imprisonment (1987–1991), Samira, who comes from the Homs region, chose to live independently in Damascus. She worked in typesetting and formatting books, a job that merely earned her $100 per month at the time. It is not…
Raging with the Machine: Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersh and Syria
PULSE, 25 April 2014 In the West, Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh are considered critical journalists. They occupy dissident positions in the English-speaking press. Among Syrians, however, they are viewed very differently.The problem with their writings on Syria is that it is deeply centered on the West. The purported focus of their analysis – Syria,…
Assad’s Killing Industry and the Role of Intellectuals
Al-Jumhuriya, 16 March 2014 Originally published in L’Express The worst estimates of incarceration and torture victims in the prisons of the Syrian regime put the number at around 3000. As of late August 2013, the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) run by human rights activist and writer Razan Zaitouneh –a reliable organization that does not engage…