19 July 2019
For Syrian political prisoners and their families, life is a perennial wait for an amnesty that in many cases never comes, writes the daughter of a political prisoner who would later be incarcerated herself in turn.
زمالة الجمهورية للكتّاب الشباب
Over 400 Syrians have been killed trying to cross the border into Turkey in recent years. A writer with personal experience traversing the border charts its transformation from an open door to a deadly sealed fortress.
Who exactly are the people of the occupied Golan Heights? Local writer Aram Abu-Saleh charts their history, including the profound transformations brought about by the Syrian revolution in 2011.
Military service, chants for Bashar, and pretending not to recognize friends in the street: A Homs resident describes life after the regime's recapture of opposition territory.
A young Damascus resident questions the value of the cultural initiatives sponsored by international NGOs in the regime-held capital.
A displaced resident of Homs’ al-Wa’r district describes her journey on foot from the regime-held city center into the besieged neighborhood during a 2016 ceasefire.
Al-Jumhuriya gains access to Qudsaya juvenile prison, where food shortages, drugs, and physical and psychological abuse are rampant, leaving many detainees worse off when they come out than when they went in.
The thriving trade in possessions and even infrastructure looted by the Syrian regime isn't just a symptom of economic crisis and a wider moral breakdown following the war; it points to the ever-worsening criminality that awaits the country's future under Assad.
A former inmate at ISIS’ Tabqa prison recounts the physical and psychological horrors visited upon the women, children, and even babies trapped therein.
The story of a Tartous café frequented by the city’s disillusioned youth offers a ground-level look at the hopes that drove the revolution and the fractures that tore the country apart.
Three former ISIS fighters now undergoing “anti-extremism” courses at a center north of Aleppo tell our reporter the Assad regime’s brutality and slick video propaganda were among the top reasons they joined the world’s most reviled jihadist organization.
A military defector recounts his remarkable journey from the Assad regime’s army to a rebel brigade in Homs—via Palmyra prison—to exile in Idlib and, finally, menial labor in Turkey, where he still searches for the dignified life he hoped the revolution would bring him.