Alex is a Beirut-based writer, translator, and managing editor of Al-Jumhuriya English. His first book, 'Vintage Humour: The Islamic Wine Poetry of Abu Nuwas', is due to be published by C. Hurst & Co. in November 2017. He tweets @alexjrowell.
The Assad regime is much more than a mere dictatorship—understanding it, and its horrors, requires updating our conventional thinking about murderous states, argues Yassin al-Haj Saleh.
Russia, Iran, and Turkey have now clearly delineated their zones of control in northern Syria, and are looking next to re-open the international highway extending from Turkey to Jordan.
Russia hints it will press Iran to leave Syria, in line with recently renewed Israeli and American demands. But serious doubts remain as to whether a forced Iranian withdrawal is even possible, let alone likely.
It's impossible on any day, but especially a day like this year’s Nakba Day, to ignore the inherent bond between the Palestinian and Syrian causes.
Al-Jumhuriya talks to journalist Gareth Browne about his week in Syria last month observing a “crazy club” of pro-Assad British parliamentarians and priests.
Who are the independents hoping to challenge Lebanon’s establishment on Sunday; what do they stand for; and can they win any seats? Al-Jumhuriya's guide to the 2018 parliamentary elections.
In his ninth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes that “a crack in the wall of your dark prison” may now have opened.
From besieged Douma, the last remaining pocket of opposition-held Eastern Ghouta, Osama Nassar reflects on the fate awaiting him and his fellow residents as Russia and the Assad regime impose their “settlement” on the region’s starved and battered population.
In response to Vicken Cheterian, Yassin al-Haj Saleh argues the link between the Armenian genocide and today’s mass murder of Syrians is tenuous at best—and that both the killing in Syria and genocide in general are better understood in terms of state power than as ethnic or religious conflicts.
In a final death knell for the once-great magazine, Newsweek has stooped in recent days to printing crackpot conspiracy theories about chemical weapons in Syria.
The Coalition’s battle against ISIS in Raqqa is over, but the war between civilians and explosives left by the latter is only getting started, with the death toll of 300 growing daily as desperate amateurs risk their lives to clear homes for a paltry fee.
The feminist struggle can’t be separated from the democratic struggle, writes Maya Rahabi, explaining why Syrian feminists boycotted last week’s Sochi conference.
