Syria Witness: Inside Stories of a Revolution

The Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in a liberated portion of Aleppo,...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:54:20 -0400

The Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in a liberated portion of Aleppo, shown here on November 29, 2012, has suffered multiple air strikes by government planes. (AP)

A 10-year-old from Dara, Bashar al-Zalfi, fled with his family...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:52:43 -0400

A 10-year-old from Dara, Bashar al-Zalfi, fled with his family to Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp after he was injured in the right eye during a bombing. On April 25, 2012, he waves a victory sign in front of a revolutionary flag that reads, “Syria, Don’t worry. We will return.” (AP)

A street in Homs shows the extent of damage by government...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:50:52 -0400

A street in Homs shows the extent of damage by government forces during the two-year conflict in Syria. The image taken on May 14 was provided by Lens Young Homsi and authenticated by the Associated Press, based on its contents and other AP reporting.

A Syrian rebels’ mother cleans her son’s rifle in Aleppo....

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:48:53 -0400

A Syrian rebels’ mother cleans her son’s rifle in Aleppo. Insurgents detonated two car bombs on May 14, 2013 in an attempt to storm a government prison where they believe hundreds of regime opposition are being held. (AP/Aleppo Media Center)

Merchants in Aleppo’s historic Old Souk pack the remains of...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:45:50 -0400

Merchants in Aleppo’s historic Old Souk pack the remains of their goods to flee the conflict on November 6, 2012. At the time, rebels controlled several districts of the nation’s large commercial center on 3 million people and most of the city’s industrial zones were deserted. (AP)

Activists Labor to Seed New Beginnings

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:40:50 -0400

Syrian American Shiyam Galyon took part in a humanitarian relief project distributing food and medical supplies in rebel-controlled Aleppo and its suburbs, where she discovered a new era of solidarity between countrymen and countrywomen.

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When Snipers Leave, Students Return to Classes

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:50:00 -0400

When the protests began, Sami of Qusayr left his English teaching job at a nearby university and became an activist. When regime forces evacuated his hometown, Sami returned to the classroom to teach 11th graders as regime jets flew overhead.

Getting into the Spirit of a Free Syria

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:57:00 -0400

Kenan Rahmani lived in Damascus when he was a child. He is a law student at the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. state of Indiana. He recently investigated liberated regions of Syria. This is what he saw.

‘She Refused to Even Look at Me’

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:50:51 -0400

Yisser Bittar, a Syrian-American in Washington, D.C., traveled to Homs every year to visit relatives. She stopped returning when the civil war began. Last December, she and six other Syrian-Americans went to a town north of Aleppo controlled by the Free Syrian Army and learned what some Syrians think of the outside world.

Documenting Life, Death and Destruction

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:45:52 -0400

Ahmed Da organized Lens Young Homsi, a group of like-minded photojournalists, and created a Facebook page to tell the world about life, death and destruction in their hometown. To date, their Facebook page, featuring countless images of a city under siege, boasts over 81,000 “likes.”

Running the Town of Qusayr Without Assad

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:38:00 -0400

In the midst of a national conflict that has destroyed much of Qusayr, Sami visited its newly-elected civic council members to ask about efforts to restore the supply of bread, electricity and water since regular municipal and state services were disrupted months ago.

Weddings are cheaper, engagements shorter in civil war

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 09:14:00 -0500

There’s nothing like 20 months of civil war to force a few changes in social institutions. Sami writes from Qusayr about families demanding lower dowries, engagements getting shorter and brides who think experience as a revolutionary may be more importance than an engineering degree. The conflict has even altered the thinking of Sami, a young activist who is a bachelor.

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‘This Assad Regime Is Trying to Destroy Syrian Communities’

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:22:00 -0500

A Damascene who identifies himself as a member of the Free Syrian Council of Damascus and Suburbs talks about a meeting with Arab League and U.N. special envoy on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and expresses his frustration with efforts to negotiations that fail and prolong the agony of Syria’s civil war.

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Radio Launches Hope From Far Away

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Syrians recently seeking refuge in Paris, Cairo and other cities have launched a radio station called SouriaLi for the people of war-torn Syria. The station’s name is Arabic for “My Syria” but its founders think the name also sounds like “surrealist.” Programming is uncensored and available from a Cairo studio as a web-based series of podcasts on www.souriali.com. Two of the station’s founders spoke on Skype with Syria Witness about creating programs - a cooking show and another imitating the style of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - that offer a hopeful future to their countrymen.

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Bombing in Kafr Batna, Damascus Video purports destruction of a...

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Bombing in Kafr Batna, Damascus

Video purports destruction of a residential area of Kafr Batna, Damascus suburbs today, November 1, 2012, by Syrian government MiGs with bombs and what the reporter identified as vacuum weapons. Casualties uncertain but opposition Damascus Media Center says some deaths and many injuries.

Spending the night in a makeshift hospital

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Surgery under desk lamps

A Qusayr activist reports about visiting his brother, a Free Syrian Army fighter, who came back home wounded after a failed rescue mission.

“The room was gloomy. A sandbag was stuffed in the only window. They used desk lamps to light the body of my brother, and I could tell that the four men treating him did not have much experience, but they were doing their best.

“There were no doctors in the room. This was a makeshift hospital as most of the clinics have been destroyed. A few doctors remain in the town, but most were forced to leave for what the government called “safer” places. Some who were harassed by the government for treating wounded civilians earlier in the protests decided to escape to other countries.”

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How a Foreigner Recruited My Friends for Jihad

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Mousab Alhamadee recalls the day about four months ago when he was introduced to Abu al-Hareth, a Saudi man, who had just arrived in Syria.

“He was accompanying a group of some religiously conservative friends of mine,” Alhamadee writes. “He said he had came to Syria to offer help to the poor Syrian people who are being killed silently. It was good to hear that, but the story had no good ending.”

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Watching the Siege of Mhajjah from a Bus

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Rund al-Huriya commutes by bus from Izraa to Damascus for her university studies. One morning, her bus passed government tanks surrounding the town of Mhajjah. On the way home, she saw that the houses in Mahajjah had been destroyed and soldiers passively stood along the roadside.

“What struck me was that the shelling and destruction of this town was just another day in the life of Syria. The men in their regime uniforms stood there as if there was nothing happening, as if they were not firing shells at the homes of civilians. They acted as if there was nothing to hide.”

Why Would Brahimi Succeed Where Annan Failed?

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Another holiday, another failed truce

A media spokesman in Hama for the Local Coordination Committees in Syria writes in disbelief about the efforts of UN-Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to persuade President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels to agree to a four-day truce on Eid al-Adha.

Mousab Alhamadee recalled another plea - am unsucessful one - by Brahimi’s predecoessor, Kofa Annan, to negotiate a trice three months ago to honor Eid al-Fitr.

“It would be nice to listen to the news at the end of the day and to hear that no one was killed in Syria,” writes Alhamadee. “This is beyond my imagination right now.”

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Praise for a Mother Blinded by Grief

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The editor-in-chief of the underground Damascus newspaper, Syrian Hurriyat, tells the story of a very protective mother who always told her children that she would rather lose her sight than let any harm come to her children. When two of her sons were arrested by Syrian security officers, the trauma of the news caused her to go blind.

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