2 July 2021
A 34-year-old queer Syrian speaks for the first time about his imprisonment under both the Assad regime and ISIS; experiences which nearly killed him, as they did several of his friends.
الرقة
Thousands of children have been born in Syria in recent years to foreign jihadist fighters, and live now in legal limbo, deprived of civil rights and shunned by society, finds Mustafa Abu Shams in this award-nominated investigation.
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.
This text is a journey through my recollections of the three streets in Raqqa that made up my route from home to my primary and secondary schools.
Ahmad Ibrahim tells the story of the gorge, as narrated by someone who knows it very well, since the old myths surrounding its existence up until its actual monostrous transformation at the hands of the Islamic State.