Mohamad Katoub, a former doctor who escaped from eastern Ghouta, always felt that Syria’s daily toll of deaths and casualties are more than just numbers – until he saw the power those statistics had. Here, he explains why he changed his mind.
Source: SYRIA DEEPLY
Syria Deeply is an independent digital media project led by journalists and technologists, exploring a new model of storytelling around a global crisis that relies on both user-generated content and the highest standards of the professional press.
The United States intervened militarily in Syria under the premise of the ‘war on terror’ and the fight against ISIS, but their presence is actually helping the Syrian government.
-OpEd- NEW YORK — I’m almost certain I saw Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Strand bookstore in Manhattan today. I wanted to walk over and call him a war criminal and a monster, and tell everyone around us that he was the man butchering unarmed civilians in Aleppo. But after half an hour of stalking him through the fiction and film stacks, I still couldn’t determine if it was really him. I pulled up a Wikipedia page with his photo as a reference. I read that during his university days Lavrov was active in drama. This was quite […]
Nujeen Mustafa didn’t realize fleeing from Syria to Europe in a wheelchair would be considered extraordinary. Now in Germany, she has written a book about her journey.
The Syrian government’s recent tourism videos of beautiful scenery and nightlife look ludicrous to Westerners who know the brutal truth about Aleppo, but the West isn’t the intended audience for this publicity blitz.
His beloved hometown grows more dangerous every day, but he can’t kiss her goodbye.
There is an economic explanation for why more Syrian refugee families in Jordan were able to make it to Mecca this year.
Women in the government-controlled province of Latakia must decide between love and danger if they are to marry men from opposition-held areas in Syria.
An estimated 4,500 Westerners have joined ISIS so far — leaving behind devastated parents who never saw the signs of radicalization. Here’s one story from Canada.
Regular shelling from all sides has made it too dangerous for students to go to school in the Syrian city of Aleppo, so a group of volunteer teachers decided to open their own.
Categories
Where Are The Men Of Damascus?
Forced conscription for what many describe as “someone else’s war,” has led to widespread exodus and shuttered up draft-dodging for much of Syria’s adult male population.
Categories
Syria’s Gruesome Organ Trade
In Syria and its neighboring countries, an underground network of organ traders has sprung up, preying on the thousands affected by the five-year-long war by offering them desperately needed cash for nonessential organs.
How a former fighter lost both his brothers: one to Bashar Al-Assad’s forces and the other to the Islamic State
Violence, poverty and displacement have affected millions of Syrian children. In the besieged Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, many are foregoing their education and turning to selling wares in the streets to help support their families.
Following the plan by the EU and Turkey to turn back refugees, many are looking for alternative ways to reach Europe. A new path to the continent starts on the other side of the Atlantic — in South America — and continues through far-flung French terr
Who is behind the smuggling of refugees from Turkey to the Greek islands? How are these potentially deadly trips planned and organized? Syria Deeply speaks with a human smuggler in Izmir, himself a Syrian refugee.
The dangerous sea and land crossings that Syrian refugees are making to Europe have been well-documented. Less well known are the equally perilous journeys people take to leave Syria itself.
Syria Deeply looks back at some of the history and evolution of the country’s revolutionary art over the past five years of war, including political graffiti, digital art and other mediums that have become part of the uprising’s language and culture.
The internationally brokered ceasefire had a rocky start. While the first 24 hours passed relatively quietly, Russian and Syrian government air strikes picked up again on Sunday, with airplanes targeting towns and villages controlled by the Free Syrian Ar
The siege of Madaya began in July, but global pressure on the Syrian government to allow humanitarian access didn’t begin to build until nearly 30 people had died of starvation. Why did it take so long?
The Turkmen minority of Syria have been forced from their homes after Moscow airstrikes. With ethnic links to Turkey, Ankara wants to help, though the border remains sealed shut.
While residents in Madaya may have no way out, other besieged areas under government control are finding creative ways to carry on. In Eastern Ghouta, a well-known rebel-held area in rural Damascus, residents can access a network of tunnels to escape or t
Local organizations have been working day and night over the past two months to prepare Syrians for the winter cold. Nearly a dozen people died there last January due to a fatal combination of inadequate shelter and freezing weather.
Northeastern Syria’s autonomous Kurdish leadership has informed schools in the area that they must teach core subjects in Kurdish. While proud to embrace their ethnic heritage, some worry that the change could create new conflicts.
Thousands of Syrian women face not just grief but also fear and poverty after losing their husbands to war. They often endure strict control from their remaining family and are forbidden to work. Some make the heartbreaking decision to remarry.
ISIS has banned the use of newly pressed 500 and 1,000 Syrian pound notes. Some fear its the start of a currency switch, though others say it’s a way for some to profit on money exchanges.
The strongest armed group in Douma, Syria, paraded caged detainees, including Syrian army officers and women and children, for several hours to try to deter future government attacks. Syria Deeply spoke with residents to get their reactions.
ALEPPO — Like many boys his age, Muhammad loves to draw. Already known for his artistic talents in his hometown of Aleppo, the largest and probably hardest-hit city in Syria, the 14-year-old boy now has something to show the world. When the armed conflict intensified in Aleppo in 2012, Muhammad, then a sixth-grader, was forced to quit school. After the Syrian government began to bomb his neighborhood in the city’s Salah al-Din district, Muhammad and his family moved into the cramped student dorms of Aleppo University. Seven months later they were able to return home, but unfortunately for children like […]
Hundreds of Syrian university degrees are reportedly being forged every day, putting the reputation of Syrian academics at serious risk. But counterfeiters say their only concern is helping their countrymen find a “safe way out.”
As students return to school this month in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo, they won’t be heading back to the same classrooms they left last year. Instead, they’ll be studying in basements and other “secure areas” across the devas
An exclusive look at the evolution of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade through the words of members and locals in the Yarmouk Valley in southwestern Deraa.
Moscow’s decision to enter the Syrian conflict with bombing raids may bring smiles to the Assad regime. On the ground, ordinary Syrians are paying the price.
The UN estimates that at least 45,000 Palestinians who were already living as refugees in Syria have arrived in Lebanon since the Syrian civil war began.
The staple crop is so strategic that it has been targeted from all sides in the Syrian Civil War.
BODRUM — When the photograph of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body spread around the world, the plight of Syrian refugees suddenly came into focus like never before. Yet Kurdi was just one of many who have died making the perilous journey to Europe, where they hope to attain asylum as the ongoing Syria civil war in their homeland continues to claim countless civilian lives. Turkey, which currently hosts some 1.8 million exiled Syrians, has increasingly become a departure point for a perilous sea journey toward Greece in flimsy rafts and ill-equipped boats to get inside European territory. Sayeed, a construction worker […]
Wareef Kaseem Hamdeo, a chef from Aleppo who found refuge from the Syrian civil war in Gaza, became a local celebrity after opening a Syrian restaurant there.
As radical Muslims from the West head to Syria to fight for Islamist forces, other foreigners are joining the Kurdish forces against them. But how useful are these volunteers?
Nearly one in five people in Lebanon is a Syrian national who fled the war, the world’s highest per capita refugee population. Like on the borders of Europe, they are largely unwelcome.
A volunteer who led a writing workshop for Syrian child refugees of the war did what he could to offer the aspiring writers some hope. His heart was touched in return.
ALEPPO — With Syria’s civil war now its fifth year and showing no sign of ending, virtually all sides have been recruiting and training children to kill. Situated in the opposition-controlled outskirts of Aleppo, the Abdul Razzaq Military Academy is one of the most organized programs for preparing youngsters for the battlefield. Established by Sergeant Abdul Razzaq, a Syrian army defector, the academy’s instructors train some 150 children from surrounding areas on the grounds of an abandoned school in the village of Ehtemlat for two hours a day. Other than saying that the academy is “the achievement of his lifetime,” […]