Note from the editorial team: The writer of the following story shared his experience being arrested in 2012 with the Damascus Bureau. “Where are you from?” “From Suweida” “And Douma, you…” That’s when the beating started.

Abdel Karim Jaafar (Raqqa, Syria) - Tensions are running high in the city of Raqqa, where the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, know by the acronym ISIS, is seeking to expand its influence at the expense of the other armed opposition groups on the ground, including the Free Syrian Army.

By Hazzaa al-Adnan (Kfar Nabel, Syria) - “He who steals from a thief is as legitimate as he who inherits from his father,” said Abu Rashid, a 55- year-old farmer, after he cleared around 2000 square metres of Kfar Nabel mountain’s state-owned forestland and surrounded the area with stones. Over 50 of the residents of Kfar Nabel in the province […]

Raheel Ibrahim* Editors’ Note: The names of some of the interviewees were changed to ensure their security. (Latakia, Syria) - In a school crammed with displaced people from villages near Latakia, Um Raed, 44, sits in a room while the women around her chatter on, signs of grief and anxiety on their faces. In this school, only children seem able […]

By Razan Zeitouneh Note: This report is the third in a series dedicated to the institutions set up by the opposition in the areas controlled by the opposition in Eastern Ghouta. You can read the first two reports here and here.

By Lina al-Hakim* (Aleppo, Syria) - Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, many of Aleppo University’s students took to the streets with their pens and their voices chanting for freedom and the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. When violence and conflict spread to Aleppo in August 2012, the 2012-2013 academic year became yet another victim of war. […]

  By Raheel Ibrahim * (Damascus, Syria) - Sisters Firdaous and Sila live in a modest house with crumbling walls in the Amine neighbourhood of the old city of Damascus. They are two of the few remaining Jews in Syria, and the only ones left in Amine, which, along with the Jewish Quarter and the area of Qishleh in the […]

By Shumra Ali* Editors’ Note: All names have been changed. (Daraa, Syria) - Reports indicate that the Syrian opposition is advancing rapidly in Daraa, the Syrian province generally recognized as the location of the first major protests of the Syrian uprising in March 2011. This military action is paralleled by civil opposition work that began on the ground a year […]

By Ayman Mohammad (Jarablos and Manbij, Syria) - The Syrian Lira has deprecated against the US dollar, bringing the exchange rate on the black market to about 300 Syrian Liras to the US dollar, from around 50 when the Syrian uprising began in March 2011. This has exacerbated the price of common goods in the markets of the Aleppo countryside, […]

By Mariam Abdullah* (Damascus, Syria) - The famous thieves’ market in Damascus, adjacent to the public administration office of the Ministry of Interior, was known as a haven for poor people who would go to buy worn-out merchandise. It was a refuge for people with very limited income, allowing them to buy old furniture, mobile phones, watches, and used electronics. […]