Vyan Mohammad (Qamishli, Syria) - Abdel Majid is an agricultural engineer whose 50 years and grey hair did not prevent him from sitting next to Bayan, his 18-year-old daughter, at a school desk to learn how to read and write in Kurdish. Like many Syrian Kurds, Abdel Majid can speak his mother tongue, but he does not know its grammatical […]

Abdallah Kleido (Kfar Nabel and Maarat al-Nu’man, Syria) – In a cave on the opposite side of the valley from the town of Kfar Nabel, three middle-aged men spend most of their days underground, afraid of air strikes. One of these men is 55-year-old retired police officer Ali al-Basheer. He raises his finger toward the fighter jets circling the sky […]

Hazzaa Adnan al-Hazzaa (Kfar Nabel, Syria) – From mid-January until the time of this writing, the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Turkey and Syria has been closed and opened arbitrarily as a result of the explosion of two car bombs that claimed the lives of more than 16 people. Cars and trucks line up for several kilometers before the crossing […]

Hazzaa Adnan al-Hazzaa (Kfar Nabel, Syria) - Human rights defender and director of the Kfar Nabel media office Raed al-Fares survived an assassination attempt on January 29 when he was shot by two masked men as he returned to his home from the Kfar Nabel Media Office on January 29. Doctors at the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Kfar Nabel were […]

The Martyr Abdel Qader Shasho school in Aleppo’s Salaheddine neighborhood held a celebration in honor of those students that passed their first semester on February 13, 2014. The Salaheddine Revolutionaries’ Council, made up of a group of opposition civil society activists, helped organize the celebration despite the difficulties. The area, very close to the battlefront, has been relatively quiet lately, […]

Currently, the region around Damascus known as Eastern Ghouta does not have the infrastructure necessary to provide for a decent living. With no work available, most residents rely on aid to survive. Since the start of the fighting in the area at the beginning of 2012, most residents lost their jobs due to the shelling and invasions by government forces […]

Abdullah Kleido (Kfar Nabel, Syria) – Mazen is a fighter with the Islamic front from the city of Kfar Nabel. Like many others, the 32-year-old complains of not receiving aid that he desperately needs.

By Mariam Abdullah* Nohad al-Tawil bid farewell to 2013 by dancing with her family and friends to a song called “Ya Boshama,” which means “Oh Handsome One” – a song by Bahaa Youssef and lyrics by Ali Aloush. Nohad, 40, recently married a man of Syrian origin who immigrated to Germany a number of years ago.

(Damascus, Syria)- Far from the battlefronts and the sounds of combat, there are some members of opposition parties in Syria who say they believe that political work can still effect change. The activity of this “internal opposition” – whose members openly criticize Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime while living in government-controlled Damascus - has led some in the opposition to […]

The Syrian regime army took advantage of the latest battles between the Free Syrian Army and the troops of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to begin a military operation around the Aleppo airport, in the city’s northern suburbs, near the Al-Nayrab Bridge area and the village of Aziza. The army advanced on all the aforementioned areas, but some […]