Syria Deeply had a rare opportunity to hear from Palestinians facing violence and starvation in the Yarmouk refugee camp in southwestern Syria.
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.
Locals in the Syrian city of Idlib were happy when rebel forces overturned regime forces. But now the rebels are enforcing their own version of military rule.
The European Union’s failure to provide desperate asylum seekers with legal routes leaves them with no option but to risk their lives on smugglers’ boats.
Among the families in war-ravaged Syria are many being held together by women alone, as their husbands have left to try to cross into Europe and prepare a life for their families. The wait is long, and often futile.
Locals in the city of Palmyra speak out as ISIS threatens the treasured ancient ruins of their city, after destroying its notorious Assad regime prison that scarred so many.
MAJDAL AL-SHAMS — Anger is boiling over in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where local Syrian Druze on Monday attacked an ambulance and killed a wounded Syrian opposition fighter seeking medical treatment from the Israeli military. The fighter was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) in Quneitra and the Golan, according to that group’s Facebook page. The RCC is a coalition of different armed factions in Syria, many of which are hardline Islamist groups. The Druze, an offshoot sect of Shia Islam, are spread across the map of the Middle East, particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. In the […]
As the conflict between Assad’s military and Syrian opposition forces escalates around the southern city of Daraa, religious minorities fear persecution from all sides.
A chronicle of one organization’s determination to point Syrian refugees toward a better future through innovative education.
DEIR EZ-ZOR — As soon as ISIS fighters fully seized Deir ez-Zor, they made a number of draconian changes, one of which was to close schools. After a lengthy period, during which teachers were required to attend training courses in Islamic education, the schools reopened. The city’s schools are no longer housed in public buildings. Residents instead have volunteered their houses as classrooms and supplies, such as desks and boards, have been moved there from the schools. The curriculum has been modified — many subjects were omitted, while others were added — and the number of schools is limited, as […]
Categories
Why I Married An ISIS Fighter
An Eastern European woman who wanted to be the wife of an ISIS fighter in Raqqa speaks to Syria Deeply about her motivations and experience.
Kurdish commanders have broken earlier pledges to stop the forced recruitment of children, saying it is necessary to protect individual homes.
When Islamic terror groups arrived in their Syrian hometown of Al-Hasakah, Assyrian Christians were systematically victimized. The lucky managed to flee.
“We were exposed to hunger, electrocution, beating and insults. We got sick, we got lice and scabies, and were often strip searched, which was the worst part.”
War has compromised the mental health of millions of Syrians. The problem is also transcending borders, following people as they seek safety abroad.
By satellite phone and email, people living in ISIS-controlled Raqqa, Syria, say fighters have stolen their houses, killed family members and even forced them to pay rent on properties they already own.
A growing number of Syrians have been trying to escape to Europe over the past year, some meeting their tragic ends after paying smugglers to cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats.
Syria Deeply met with some young Syrians who have recently made it to Europe to seek asylum. With so much at stake, no two viewpoints are quite the same.
To gauge the ways the civil war has affected all of Syria, a look at seven cities on the fourth anniversary of the first uprising against the regime. A chronicle of death and life going on.
What was once a simple and relatively quick commute through Aleppo now takes up to 12 hours, as battered roads, endless checkpoints and ISIS violence take their toll. A bus driver’s view.
Countless displaced by the war in Syria include those forced to move from one part of the country to another. Misery tends to follow.
Once a backer of the Free Syrian Army, a harsh reality caught up with this father of three near Aleppo.
Despite lacking basic amenities, residents of a small Syrian village persist in their quest for education. But to keep the children warm in shelled-out buildings, they must bring wood to school.
ISIS imposes harsh morality codes on women and girls in Raqqa, Syria. Now females under 45 are not allowed to leave, and one mother of a teenaged daughter says she knows why.
DAMASCUS — Maher knows more about trash than a nine-year-old should know. “Some of it stinks more than others,” he says, chuckling at his own remarks. “At first I used to feel like I was about to faint before I finished my job, but I got used to it.” It’s not unusual in different areas in and around Damascus to see children and sometimes older men or women climbing into garbage cans, foraging for scraps of food. Passersby often turn their faces away from the scene. The young children who collect goods from the garbage can are often insulted or […]
SARAQEB — Zaytoun and Zaytouna relies on games, stories and illustrations to make life in Syria’s war zone a bit more bearable for kids. Launched in July 2013, the four-page magazine started as a modest project with a team of three people using a small printer and circulating it to a limited number of children. Today, says magazine director Sumar Kanjo, the team includes over 10 writers and 10 illustrators, and Zaytoun and Zaytouna has become a cultural pillar in Saraqeb and other areas under opposition control. In addition to the paper edition, the magazine is launching a website and […]
Categories
Syria, Making Love And War
As Syria’s civil war rages on, soldiers and supporters manage to finding coves of intimacy amidst the violence around them.
AL-HALBOUNI — Adel, a teenager, worked with his father at their small shop near al-Halbouni, not far from Damascus. By age 17, he had dropped out of school to support his family, as their financial situation grew desperate after years of war. Adel wasn’t a supporter of Syria’s government, but that didn’t prevent him from being forced to fight on its behalf. He was arrested at one of the army checkpoints in the town of Qudsaiya in the Damascus countryside, then sent off to battle. “We were on our way to work,” Adel’s father recounts. “We got stopped at a […]
KOBANI — Sardar is a 26-year-old fighter in the ranks of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, known by its Kurdish acronym, the YPG. A former blacksmith, he has taken up arms for the past five years, since he first became involved with the militant group. In his eyes, it is the core of a Kurdish army that will someday represent the future state of Kurdistan. His priority now is to defend the city of Ain al-Arab, also known by its Kurdish name Kobani. The city has been under attack by ISIS since September. “Compared with the weapons used by ISIS, […]
RAQQA — Ever since ISIS captured the Syrian city of Raqqa in early 2014, residents have been consumed by fear and caution. The terrorist group has banned a dangerously long list of goods and behaviors, all of which carry a heavy punishment if violated. Most noticeably, ISIS has forbidden women from leaving their homes without the supervision of a male relative, and they must wear what is deemed proper attire, dubbed “the shield” — a long, loose dress that covers them from head to toe. Smoking is banned, while it is also illegal to sell tobacco, recordings of secular music, […]
Since Syrians began fleeing the war zone for safety in their neighboring country, schools are overcrowded, jobs are scarce and tensions are high. Especially vulnerable are school children.
A Syrian activist from the northern countryside talks about keeping alive the anti-regime, non-Islamist revolution amid the constant threat of shelling and the spectre of ISIS.
A Syrian refugee living in a tent near the border with Turkey has lost his home, but he is preserving the family business of creating beautiful works of traditional mosaic art.
U.S.-led airstrikes aimed at ISIS are being met with resistance in Syria. Some ask why it took the death of U.S. journalist James Foley for Washington to intervene.
A steady stream of Syrians are joining the National Defense Force, a loyalist reserve force set up in 2012 by President Bashar al-Assad. For many it’s the only way to make a living.
Many local journalists fled Deir Ezzor when ISIS arrived – and the ones who stayed behind are forced to abide by the extremist group’s draconian list of 11 rules.
With no electricity or gas, enterprising locals in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have begun extracting fuel products by melting plastic scavenged from destroyed buildings.
In Tartus, on Syria’s western coast, residents in relative calm. But even here, a new sectarian melting pot and a flagging war economy are beginning to take their toll.
Boys in the eastern city of Raqqa are forced into military training, and say their ISIS instructors show them how to decapitate blond-haired, blue-eyed dolls with kitchen knives.
A year after a chemical attack killed nearly 1,000 civilians in the Syrian rebel stronghold of eastern Ghouta, new fears that the Islamist radical group is building its own chemical stockpile.
More than two million Syrian children have lost all access to education. In western Syria, one principal is looking to change things.