(Beirut, Lebanon) - Located down a narrow alleyway in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, is a workshop where women are busy making pillow covers, tablecloths, scarves, caps, wallets, baby clothes and other needlework products. This is the headquarters of the Syrian volunteer organisation Smile and Olive, where one of the rooms has been turned into an embroidery […]

By Karam Mansour Note: Names were changed for the safety of the interviewees. (Eastern Ghouta, Syria) - Um Rafeef was relieved after the Red Crescent helped her leave the besieged area of Moadamyeh outside Damascus for a safe suburb of the capital in October. “I am lucky. Tonight there won’t be thousands of rockets falling on our heads,” she said. […]

Many children try to make ends meet by selling goods from makeshift stalls With the number of refugees in Qamishli increasing daily, there are now more than 100,000 in the north-eastern Syrian city, according to unofficial surveys by the Kurdish Supreme Committee. This small city has been economically marginalised for decades and is unable to provide jobs even for its […]

Setting up barricades is a widespread project in Syria, such as the one that separates Al-A’athamia and Salah Eddine in Aleppo. However, these sites are fraught with danger. Setting up barricades during the day both under the watchful eyes of snipers and in their crosshair takes time. Clashes have diminished since Al-A’athamia was stormed by regime forces and the armed […]

Eight-year-old Mustafa lost his entire family in December 2012 when government warplanes dropped explosive barrels on their house in the small town of Maarat Misreen in the northern province of Idlib. Mustafa now lives with his uncle Mahmoud, who’s too scared for his safety to send him to school. A report by Damascus Bureau correspondent Issam Abdel Hamid.

By Sadeq Abdelrahman (Tartous, Syria) – Tartous is a quiet coastal city that has received thousands of displaced people from different Syrian cities. As a result, the city has not experienced any severe crises apart from the economic consequences of the conflict that have affected every corner of Syria. Battles rage far from the city, and the only bullets one […]

(Damascus, Syria) - Asaad Ali, 60, who suffers from epilepsy, requires 100 milligrams of the epilepsy drug Phenytoin each day. “The drug is still available, but in very limited amounts,” explained his daughter Souad, 33, adding that acquiring the medicine “now requires trips to several pharmacies.” Mona, 30, a pharmacist in Qassaa, confirms Souad’s experience, explaining that there is a […]

(Raqqa, Syria) - The Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been effectively driven out of Raqqa. Three Salafist groups now dominate the city: the Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham, Al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In light of this new reality, these factions have come to include the greatest number of other battalions, including those that […]

(Raqqa, Syria) - “Our families and people in Raqqa, please forgive us. We love nothing more than to enter a bit of joy and hope to your lives, our wish was that our final statement be in the time where the tyrant Bashar al Assad fell, but circumstances are stronger than we are. We ask god for the better of […]

Piroz Perik Fighting stopped in Ras al-Ayn (also known in Kurdish as Serekaniye) in the beginning of November after the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a militia allied with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), took control of the city and a large number of villages around it. Al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and other Islamist […]