22 September 2020
When a new “Progressive International” invited Syria’s Yassin al-Haj Saleh to join, he was happy to accept. When he then submitted this letter for their publication, they ceased contacting him without explanation.
Commentary
Is it time to leave Lebanon? The question, posed with renewed urgency after Beirut’s port explosion, is as old as the country itself, writes Dr. Sara Mourad, who returned in 2016 after seven years abroad.
The famine looming today in Syria is caused not by a lack of food, but by policies consciously adopted by the Assad regime for many years, argues Yassin al-Haj Saleh.
Beirut’s wounds are starting to heal, but its system is more broken than ever. That must change before rebuilding becomes feasible, writes the owner of a popular hostel, café, and bar destroyed in the giant port blast.
From nuns in London to Sufi shaykhas in Damascus, Farrah Akbik recalls the women who shaped her childhood—and the dear friend who helped her escape them.
So powerful are Washington’s new sanctions on Syria that even some opponents of Assad are unsure about them. Our own Syrian reporters have a range of views, two of which are presented head-to-head in this article.
As Trump threatens to turn the army on peaceful demonstrators, Syrian activist and author Leila Al-Shami writes what Americans might learn from Syria’s nine-plus years of revolutionary struggle.
Rather than developing south Syria economically, having recaptured it militarily, the Assad regime has reverted to the same old neglect and misgovernance that pushed the region to revolt in the first place.
Now in its tenth year, Syria's war has seen an entire generation of reporters come and go, exposing its crimes in minute detail to a world that only ever grows more indifferent.
An exiled Syrian poet wonders why émigrés often prefer their second language when writing and speaking about the deeply emotional.
Too rarely does it occur to Westerners, worried about the erosion of their democracies, that refugees from Syria and elsewhere have valuable experience striving for civic values against authoritarian forces.
It’s never easy to be optimistic about Lebanon, but the uprising of the past week offers a real chance for lasting change—if the protest movement plays its cards well.