5 February 2020
After last week’s arrest in France of a former “Army of Islam” spokesman, Orwa Khalife recounts the gruesome history of the militia, from kidnappings in the Damascus suburbs to ethnic cleansing in the Turkish border zone.
Jaysh al-Islam
In his fourteenth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes that he now identifies with his late mother, paying tribute to mothers around the world who bear the anguish of disappeared loved ones.
On the sixth anniversary of his wife Samira al-Khalil’s abduction, Yassin al-Haj Saleh says uncovering the truth about her whereabouts must be an indispensable part of the Syrian cause.
In his eleventh letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, Yassin al-Haj Saleh ruminates on the temptations of vengeance, and the indispensability of justice.
Following the collapse of Jaysh al-Islam’s rule in Douma, Yassin al-Haj Saleh traveled to Turkey to seek answers from the city’s displaced residents about his wife, Samira, and three other activists abducted with her there in 2013.
Will there still be lemons on the tree of our house in Douma next year? wonders this displaced resident. If so, who will eat them?
In the first of a series of translations of articles from the final days of Eastern Ghouta’s siege, Al-Jumhuriya looks back on the initial phase of civilians’ forced displacement.
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.
With Eastern Ghouta’s remaining residents in peril like never before, friends and relatives of four renowned civil society activists abducted there in 2013 appeal for their long-overdue release.
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.
Yassin al-Haj Saleh's eighth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013.
Hind Rifai reflects on the parallels between Samira al-Khalil’s diary under siege in Douma and the poems of Anna Akhmatova.