Rania Abouzeid represents that new generation of Arab, in this case Lebanese, journalists who in the years before the 2011 revolutions learned to view the region with a hard eye. They were unmoved by political rhetoric and unconvinced by fantastical conspiracy theories.
They learned to trust what they saw, the ordinary people they spoke to, and that sense that the truth is always concrete, even if it is not what you want to hear.
Foreign intervention is pushing the Middle East into a series of wars with no end in sight.
The war in Syria and Iraq is threatening to spill into a war between the Saudis and Iran, Turkey is preparing to crush the restive Kurdish regions, while the prospect of a defeat for ISIS threatens a deeper and bloodier struggle over its old strongholds.
Donald Trump’s “America First” is fanning trade wars across the Atlantic and Pacific, a confrontation with China over North Korea, and hot wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The complex conflicts pitting global and regional powers against each other mark a military fault line that has terrifying consequences.
Max van Lingen spoke to author Leila al-Shami about collecting Syrian voices from the grassroots for her book, Burning Country.
Why did you want to write a book about the Syrian struggle?
Both Robin and myself felt the information coming out of Syria was very poor. The media focused mainly on the humanitarian crisis or the rise of Islamic groups and extremism. Syrians were either seen as victims or as terrorists.
In August, Darayya, the suburb of Damascus noted for its peaceful protests at the beginning of the 2011 revolution, surrendered following a four-year siege. The Syrian regime is now focusing on crushing the remaining pockets of rebel areas in Homs and Damascus.
The Syrian regime’s capture of Palmyra, the historic Syrian city taken by ISIS last summer, has been hailed as a significant victory and a vindication of Russia’s intervention in Syria. In a deft manoeuvre Putin, a key ally of Assad, announced that he would scale back Russian military forces in Syria — a move designed to reduce tensions with Turkey and the West.
Last month Britain joined the many states dropping bombs on Syria. Simon Assaf talks to Socialist Review about the causes and implications of a crisis in which none of the players have control.
With such a messy situation in Syria, where do we even start?
It’s always a difficulty when you have deep complexities on the ground to start with what’s going on there, it just becomes more and more complex. So I think the best way to view it is from the top.
The attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) on Paris, and on Shia Muslim suburbs of Beirut a few days earlier, are being marked as a new chapter in the “war on terror”.
The tragedy in Syria has taken another disastrous turn with the military intervention of Russia. This is being played out in its ruined cities and the waves of desperate refugees attempting to flee their homes.
Warplanes from the US, Russia, Turkey and their various allies have crowded the skies above the country. Now Russian, Iranian, Turkish and US troops are beginning to put boots on the ground.
It has been a disastrous few months for the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria following a string of military defeats at the hands of rebels.
Assad’s forces have been driven out of the northern province of Idlib, while his troops are said to be planning to abandon the key eastern city of Deir el-Zour to the Islamic State (ISIS). His grip on Aleppo, once the economic powerhouse, is also slipping.
