Hanadi Zahlout Hanadi Zahlout is a Syrian writer and human rights activist who has worked on defending women and children’s rights in Syria since 2006. Zahlout has worked on political prisoners’ cases since 2008. She was active under the name Hiam Jamil on Facebook and she wrote under both her real name and pseudonym for many websites such as Al-Nidaa, […]

Um Nasser is just one of the innumerable women in Syria struck down by tragedy. The 74-year-old widow, from the town of Mouaddamiyya outside Damascus, had four sons and two daughters. But two sons are now dead, and the other two are under arrest.

In mid-October, I returned to the city of Suwaida, to stay at a house I had last visited almost two years ago. The streets of Suwaida were quiet. People are still welcoming to strangers, but these days with an air of weariness, unlike the old way. That is true of most Syrians nowadays.

Alia Ahmed Just from walking around Homs, you can tell that the city is disunited. This is where the civil war broke out, even if people deny it is happening. After more than a year of fighting, the city is now divided into two segregated camps. There are areas exclusively occupied by Sunnis, and others for Alawites, which are also […]

A unified opposition? Syrian opposition factions reached an agreement on the formation of a unified national coalition, after long meetings in Qatar’s Capital, Doha. The new coalition, formed on Sunday, includes the Syrian National Council, SNC, and representatives of both civil and armed opposition groups inside Syria. The leaders who pushed for the agreement hope that this plan will lead […]

Rasha Rami In Aleppo, hardly a day goes by without a kidnapping taking place, targeting victims from various faith groups and different political affiliations.

A year and a half has passed since the uprising in Syria began. Time to look back and reflect about what has happened so far as well as to look ahead. While fighting on the ground intensifies, we want to keep the dialogue alive. Join Damascus Bureau in cooperation with Cyber Arabs for a series of online lectures from activist […]

Loyalist TV star killed Social media users were preoccupied on Monday morning by news of the killing of actor Mohammad Rafei, who starred in the popular Syrian soap opera Bab El-Hara.

Ward al-Assi My friend, a doctor in the city of Deir El-Zor, called me today to tell me about something that had happened a few hours before. It was one in the afternoon and the roads in the city were being continuously shelled by artillery. A driver brought an injured man covered in blood to the house now being used […]

As the elderly woman burst into tears, everyone on the packed bus – mainly students and workers on their way home – fell silent. The woman had already caught their attention when she answered her phone and said, “They’ve slaughtered people in Qudsayya, using saws.” She went on to say her house had been burnt down, her relatives arrested and […]