Artist's 'explosive' works convey hope amid death in Syria

 'A large missile incubator stands in the middle of the room that Akram Swedaan uses as his studio. In a few days, he will completely transform the weapon of war into a work of art with the strokes of his paintbrush.

 Born Akram Abo Alfoz in Douma, eastern Ghouta, Swedaan, a self-taught painter, has made a name for himself in the last three years by transforming the remnants of shells, missiles and bullets he collects from the street in “defiance of the death plaguing Syria.”

 “Painting on instruments of death is no easy task,” Swedaan said, in his studio in al-Bab, in Aleppo’s eastern countryside. “It is not by coincidence or by sheer necessity that I use shells and missiles. Both are tools for killing. Rather, it is my attempt to convey a message to the world that the Syrian people love life and do not deserve such death and suffering. I convey that the Syrians can find life amid death and destruction and turn their sadness into art.”

 Swedaan started using missiles and shells as canvases in 2014 while still in Douma, which at the time was under the control of the armed opposition and under siege by regime forces employing air and ground bombardments.

 “I've been painting and drawing since I was a kid,” Swedaan said. “I loved drawing scenes of the old Damascus, streets with jasmine trees, as well as Damascus motifs.” While in Douma, he started the series “Painting on Death,” in which he painted Damascene and Oriental motifs against mostly bright backgrounds.



 In April 2018, Swedaan left Douma after a grueling Russian-backed government siege of more than five years against eastern Ghouta. Arriving in al-Bab, he began working on “The Returnee,” a series about his dream of returning home no matter how long it takes.

 “The paintings and the art pieces from ‘The Returnee’ are not that different from ‘Painting on Death’ in the sense that they both focus on the will to live,” Swedaan explained. “But the works in ‘The Returnee’ series are more nostalgic, longing for home and the city of Douma in particular.”

 Swedaan’s work is characterized by dark and sad colors, drawings of his comrades killed in Douma and inscriptions such as “O homeland, my beloved,” “Jasmine of Peace” and other expressions reflective of the longing for peace, home and life. The figures he paints on the missiles are of people who have died or have been detained or displaced.

 “The Returnee” aims to draw attention to the plight of displaced Syrians from Douma and elsewhere. One piece in the series is a Russian cluster incubator, or bomb tank, covered with the names of the Syrian cities and towns whose residents have been displaced due to operations conducted by or backed by the Russian military.



 Swedaan cites dates and specific events to highlight the plight of the Syrians. For the International Day of the Arabic Language, Dec. 18, 2018, Swedaan wrote the following in Kufic, one of the oldest calligraphy forms, on an empty incubator for a Russian-launched missile: “No to displacement, yes to home, no to arrest, yes to freedom, no to terrorism, yes to peace, no to murder, yes to life.”

 “These missiles kill Syrians and their children, demolish their houses, displace them and destroy [infrastructure, hospitals and] schools,” Swedaan said. “On these missiles, which I turn into art pieces, I write or sketch the disastrous consequences of their attacks. I also [paint] the names of the Syrian detainees in the prisons of the Syrian regime and those persecuted and displaced.”

 For Valentine's Day this year, Swedaan used ammunition to commemorate the occasion. “On Feb. 14, while the world was celebrating Valentine's Day, and Syria still suffered under war, I turned a collection of empty bullets into a red [bouquet], expressing love and life,” Swedaan noted.

 “One of the unique pieces that I made was a drawing of Damascene motifs against a black backdrop on a cluster missile incubator for the 8th anniversary of the Syrian revolution, March 18, and writing at the bottom ‘Revolution persists until victory,’” he said.

 During the holy month of Ramadan, Swedaan created “Ramadan Cannon” from an empty 23-mm machine gun shell. Muslims fire a cannon each day during Ramadan to signal the end of fasting. This past Ramadan (May 5–June 3) was the second Ramadan he had spent away from Douma.



 Abu al-Ala al-Halabi, a human rights activist in Aleppo, said, “Despite the tragedies Swedaan has suffered under displacement, he continues to document the revolution and the war in Syria. His works pay homage to his homeland and the artistic heritage of his country. He proves that art and beauty can resist guns, death and destruction, and he conveys hope, with art, to the suffering Syrians.”

 Somewhat unusual for a painter, Swedaan is reluctant to part with his works, saying they are too personal. “I received an offer to sell some of my work, but I refused,” he said. “I cannot sell the works that have become a testament to the most difficult stages of the Syrian revolution. I want to show my work in international exhibitions, but that is not possible at the moment.” '

Reporting on the War in Syria as an Unveiled Woman

 Zaina Erhaim:

 'Five long, shapeless tops; a pile of loose-fitting, dark-colored jeans; a knee-length coat; and a video camera. Those were the contents of my wardrobe for more than two years, when I lived in and reported on the rebel-held area of Aleppo, known as eastern Aleppo city. Few things changed between the seasons, as we had to dress conservatively year-round.

 In my “real life” — my life as a layperson and not a journalist — I have only two to three dark pieces of clothing in my closet, hidden among dozens of green, blue, pink, and red garments. When I reported from Aleppo, the hardest thing for me was putting on a dark headscarf just before leaving the house after I’d carefully chosen my outfit for the day.



 Back in early 2011, when the uprising erupted in Syria, I finally started to feel like I belonged in my own country. The anti-government demonstrations demanding democratic reforms from President Bashar al-Assad represented everything I’d long hoped for: freedom of expression, a free press, elections, and an end to fear.

 But even after experiencing all of that hope, I found myself fighting the same fight that I had won so many years ago: the fight not to wear a hijab.



 If you ask anyone why women in Syria should be covering their hair, they might cite the Qur’an. But why is this rule enforced so much more strictly now than it has been in the past? The answer is simple: many fundamentalist Muslims are now armed, giving them the unlimited power and impunity to suppress women, whom they believe to be the weaker gender.

 I come from a conservative community in Syria, in Idlib city, and my family had tried to force me to wear the hijab at 15 years old. I won that battle: I refused to cover my hair simply because I couldn’t see why “all the women in our town do” was enough of a reason for me to do so as well. I will never forget the shame I was forced to feel when I was harassed and called names on the streets. I can’t count the number of times I was groped while on my way to school, in broad daylight. Even though I had adamantly refused to put on the headscarf, I couldn’t help but feel responsible for being touched inappropriately. But I never gave up.

 After the uprising, 15 years later, I fought the battle again and lost. I had tried to resist. I had thought: I am not a foreign journalist who’s in Syria for a short trip to do some reporting before heading back home. This is my home, and I should force these people to accept who I am. I should once again fight the same battle I had fought as a teenager, this time with strange, armed men in a chaotic corner of my country, known as the most dangerous area in the entire world for journalists.

 But I and other women activists and journalists had become “minors” in Syria. Any man had the right to check the length of our sweaters, the color of our outfits, who we were moving around with, and who we were talking to. They even had the right to scrutinize the fabric of our pants. Jeans signaled that we were not locals, or that we were activists, since many consider them to be a Western form of clothing.

 I needed a man by my side to travel, to be able to move from one neighborhood to another. The chaperone had to be a mahram, meaning an allowable escort — a man who has a close blood relationship with me, such as my father or uncle. In my final couple of years in Syria, I had to fake having two brothers (I used their sisters’ IDs), four maternal uncles (my mother’s surname is not written on my ID, so this was easy), three cousins, and two husbands.

 I ran into trouble many times. At a checkpoint in northern Aleppo in 2014, when I was still refusing to wear a headscarf, a guard asked my male chaperone, “Who is she?”

 “She’s a Syrian journalist from Idlib,” my friend answered.

 “A journalist? From Idlib? Are you kidding me?” the armed man mocked. “She’s obviously a foreign journalist. We don’t have any women journalists here.”

 “Well, I’m from Idlib city — the Dabeet neighborhood, to be exact — and I have a heavy dialect, too. Here’s my ID,” I interjected, waving the document at him.

 “Wow, you speak Arabic well,” he said. “Where did you learn it? And this ID could easily be fake.”

 The idea of an impostor with fake Syrian identification papers who speaks in an authentic Idlibi dialect was, apparently, easier for the armed man to accept than the idea of an unveiled Syrian woman journalist.



 After a series of clashes like these with soldiers at checkpoints — many of which caused my male chaperones great distress — I decided to start covering my hair with the Palestinian keffiyeh, carefully wrapping it around my head in the way Arab men traditionally do to protect themselves from the desert sun. The change didn’t help to lower my profile, however, so in 2015, I started to arrange the keffiyeh around my head as if it were a full headscarf, covering my hair completely. By the time I left Syria for southern Turkey for good in 2016, I was wearing a long, dark coat along with a formal, regular hijab.

 The only way I could challenge those dim colors while living in Syria was by wearing bright underwear and colored pins on my scarf. They were tiny dots of color, yes, but they made me feel better. I didn’t quit using my expensive antiwrinkle cream either. “There’s a helicopter hovering above our heads and a barrel bomb could be breaking both of us into pieces at any minute, so why the hell are you worried about aging?” my husband at the time, Mahmoud, would ask. There’s a chance we may live through this war and come out of it in one piece, I thought. And if we do, all of the hard work I put into sustaining my skin’s elegance will have paid off. I want to live a long life and to write about what I witnessed so that no one will forget what happened here. And I want to have supple, crease-free skin, too.

 Helmets and bulletproof vests are common in my country: they’re used for protection by male reporters stationed at the front lines or as accessories for people to take photos with. Mine were mostly needed when I went shopping for groceries or when I filmed from hospitals and schools. Those were the most dangerous places to report from, because they were continually targeted by the Bashar al-Assad regime and its allies, the Russian forces.

 I have two particularly precious photos — souvenirs, you could say — of myself in a bulletproof vest. I was with my friend Hamoudi Bitar in the suburbs of Latakia. He was only 21 years old at the time, an ambitious architecture student, and he was acting as my fixer, helping me to arrange meetings and travel logistics. We’d just passed some extremist-controlled areas in the Jisr al-Shogour area. Even though we claimed we were cousins, we faced great difficulty when crossing through checkpoints. Hamoudi, in particular, had to bear the brunt of the questioning — why was he traveling on his own with a young woman?

 After we’d finished the reporting trip, we drove along the beautiful mountains of Akrad, but I started to feel overwhelmingly depressed. I was where I belonged — my homeland — but I could not accept that I had to be this dependent on someone else. I felt weak. Hamoudi sensed my sadness and suddenly stopped the car at the edge of the road. “Get out of the car and bring your camera,” he said firmly. I thought someone was following us or that he’d spotted a land mine, until he said, “Take off your headscarf. Enjoy the air in your hair and be yourself,” and began to snap some photos of me.

 Hamoudi was a conservative man from my city, Idlib. All of the women in his family were veiled, and he wouldn’t propose to a woman who didn’t wear a headscarf. However, in that moment, he supported me, risking his own life to give me a few precious minutes of relief.

 In September 2013, a year later, Hamoudi was killed while filming a battle on the outskirts of our city. The journalistic norm of “keeping a distance with your sources” is, to me, an abstract concept, as removed from reality as “living alone on an island.” My sources are my schoolmates, relatives, and family members. And those death counts flashing on your screens contain my first lovers, teachers, neighbors, and friends.



 After deciding to revolt against the patriarchal society I lived in, I had to deal with the consequences of my rebellion. There were many. “You will go to hell.” “Surely, you will end up a spinster.” “You will ruin the family’s reputation and destroy our honor.” “You will bring shame to the city of Idlib.” These are some of the attitudes that I had to fight.

 I have committed all the sins that could potentially be committed in such an awful war zone. I am a Syrian; a woman who lived in the most masculine of spaces; a journalist in a land of warlords; a secularist living among different kinds of extremists and foreign jihadists; and a human rights defender among war criminals, some claiming to be fighting for the other side, and some claiming to be pro-freedom, on my side. All of these combined meant I was far more scared of being assassinated than of being randomly killed by the Syrian army. I would be a great target, someone a fighter would be proud to have killed. After my murder, the killer would be guaranteed a place in heaven, where they’d be gifted with pretty girls. They would be a proud patriot because they would have eliminated a voice that threatened the image of Assad’s Syria.

 One of the few common threads that run through the different parts of Syria (including territories controlled by the Kurds, ISIL, the Assad regime, rebels, Turks, or al-Qaeda) is that if you are deemed a propagandist or a traitor, you must be killed. In my weakest moments, I couldn’t even share stories, photos, or bits and pieces of news on my social media accounts. I had to harshly censor myself. My loved ones volunteered to do so on my behalf as well. They would read what I intended to make public, then tell me to either publish or not publish the content. Then I started taking notes of the things that I couldn’t make public — at least for now. Over the past four years, I have barely had 10 articles published, even though I have written 80 pages of outlines and notes saved in a file on my laptop entitled “Can’t Be Published.”



 There were, nonetheless, advantages to being a woman journalist. If I wasn’t a woman, I wouldn’t have been invited to the closed segregated women’s community of Idlib. And I certainly wouldn’t have been able to film the women there moving about freely in their houses and as they worked. I was called hurma repeatedly during this time. This Arabic word carries with it multiple insulting connotations: haram, or “forbidden”; a form of weakness; someone who is dependent; a minor; a man’s tool for pleasure; his property; his possession; her gender role; and, finally, the eternal circle that a woman shouldn’t break — fertility and giving birth.

 Because I was given access to these women, I stopped being bothered by the word hurma. Instead, I was choosing to be hurma to be able to capture their stories. I was able to obtain access to a very private gynecological clinic in Aleppo city, which men are not allowed to enter. I went in with my camera, and I was terrified at first. It was a place where women covered themselves up in black from head to toe. And their male relatives could have had me killed for showing their faces on camera (to preserve their “honor,” women should be kept hidden from the public eye).

 While I was at the clinic, a 15-year-old girl wearing a black face veil walked in with her mother. She lifted her scarf to reveal the bright, youthful face of a teenager. Her mother then told the doctor that her daughter had been married for six weeks but wasn’t yet pregnant. She was worried. “What’s wrong with her?” she demanded. The girl started to blush and looked at the floor. Her mother requested a “pregnancy catalyst,” something that would “please” her husband.

 Another woman in her mid-forties visited the clinic with her pregnant daughter-in-law. She whispered to the doctor, “I want to have a baby, too. If I get pregnant, my husband will sleep in my house more, instead of going to his new, younger wife’s home.”

 These stories aren’t surprising to me, not only because I come from a community where such anxieties are common but also because I have witnessed firsthand that even empowered women activists who challenge the regime, their families, and tradition voluntarily turn into hareem (plural of hurma) after getting married.



 It’s been two years since I left that version of Syria, and I’m still struggling to find my voice and my freedom again. I’m a 32-year-old journalist, but I’ve reported freely for only two years of my life, between 2010 and 2012, as the uprising escalated into a brutal civil war. The years 2012 and beyond constitute an awful chapter of my personal and professional experience.

 I have survived extraordinarily painful conflicts — both external and internal — to be the woman I am today. A man would have been able to do it all quite easily, while I and other women have had to fight for our achievements. And I don’t want my daughter to have to do the same.

 To be frank, if I were sent back in time to the age of 15, when I had that very first argument about putting on the hijab, I wouldn’t do anything differently. I would choose to recommit all of the sins that have accompanied my being born into the original sin of womanhood. I would still choose to become a journalist, a secularist, and a human rights defender. I would choose to travel along this same path. Every thought I can change or eye I can open to help people see the difficult lives the women in my homeland live — and the inequality they experience — makes this battle a worthy one.'

The Evolution of Syrian Revolutionary Art

 'When protests broke out in Syria in early 2011, the demonstrators demanded the end of the national emergency law—in place for over 40 years—, and other basic democratic reforms. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad paid lip service to all of these demands well before 2011 so, in light of protests sweeping the Arab World, demonstrators must have felt that such requests were not especially outlandish.

 Then, in February 2011, a groups of boys scribbled anti-regime graffiti walls outside their school in Daraa. “It’s your turn doctor,” they spray painted, referring to Bashar al Assad, who was formerly an ophthalmologist. Graffiti certainly wasn’t rare, but the regime understood its possible implications to the point where ID was needed to buy spray cans if the government needed to find the buyers. The boys, who painted graffiti on their school as a lark, were arrested and brutally tortured. Disregarding the danger of dissent, the community came to protest in large numbers in the streets. As my interview with Dan Gorman, director of the Shubbak Festival said, “the curtain of fear had been pierced.”

 Perhaps, it is unsurprising then, that political posters and street art became so ubiquitous in the Syrian Revolution. The importance of graffiti, murals, and political posters is not unique to Syria or the Middle East. The Cuban and Russian revolutions produced iconic images synonymous with those struggles. The Vietnamese struggle against outside interference produced propaganda posters still sold in Hanoi today. Many of the political posters of the Syrian revolution actually seem inspired by the Palestinian struggle.

 As part of the public space, the use of graffiti and murals as a form of expression naturally connects with the general public more so than art hung in galleries. The internet amplified these images beyond their walls and shared their messages with millions of people, not just in Syria, but worldwide. It made street art—vulnerable to weather, bombardment, and whitewashing—permanent. When Abu Malik Al-Shami, the young street artist made famous by his murals in Daraya, was forced to evacuate to Idlib in 2016, he took pictures of his murals, which have since spread online.



 To the regime, nothing could be more horrifying than the ability to disseminate these images widely. This is why the instigators of these ideas were often eliminated. In October 2013, a Palestinian actor named Hassan Hassan, was taken by the regime as he was trying to leave Yarmouk Camp south of Damascus. Hassan had taped sketches of himself mocking the regime. His family was informed of his death two months later. In October 2015, Palestinian award-winning photographer, Niraz Saied, was arrested. Niraz had photographed the conditions of the government-imposed siege on Yarmouk. His images were shared widely around the world. At the end of 2018, his family was informed that he died in prison. These young artists challenged the regime’s narrative that it was the protector of the Palestinian struggle.

 The regimes of the Middle East knew the political potential for art. For this reason, it has always been closely monitored. Prior to the revolution, writers and artists in Syria were encouraged to join government-sponsored unions. Syrian dissident artists had to play a delicate balance between a desire to criticize the regime, the risk of publicizing genuine criticism, and the fear that their work would be co-opted as government propaganda, as what Miriam Cooke calls “commissioned criticism.” The regime expertly understood how small allowances of dissent improved their image without lobbing any real threat at the system. After the Russian Revolution succeeded, the Soviets too, understood the possible dangers of artistic free expression. To combat this, they strictly enforced socialist realism, their own brand of acceptable art. Anything that diverged was considered a threat. Sergei Parajanov, a Soviet film director and artist of Armenian descent, who invented his own unique cinematic style, was jailed for years along with other artists during the Soviet period; their work banned across the USSR. Others like artist Aleksander Drevin were killed for their work.

 The role of political art and murals may mean little to millions of IDPs in Syria and refugees today. Photos and paintings did not change the outcome for the victims of the Syrian war. Rather than instigating positive change, the protest songs and graffiti put a price on their heads. With Raed Fares and Abdul Basset al-Sarout, icons of the Syrian revolution, killed in just the past few months and the regime edging closer to its goal of taking every inch of Syria, the heady days of the Syrian revolution seem long gone.

 At the same time, Russia, the Syrian regime’s stalwart ally, is waging a highly effective international war on the cheap; spreading fake news to sow chaos in Europe, former Soviet republics, Syria, and the US. In addition to interfering with the 2016 US presidential election, Russia has spread misinformation on the Syrian war, suggesting that peaceful protestors were part of a global conspiracy, that the civilian victims of aerial bombardment are actors, and that search and rescue workers are terrorists.

 However, the Russian and Syrian regimes’ efforts in the media and online betray their desire to win, not just the military war, but the narrative war. In this respect, thousands of political exiles, artists, and cartoonists scattered around the world, have an important role to play along with archivists. Since 2011, various collectives have been archiving hundreds of images, from political graffiti to the infamous political satire posters from Kafranbel. The sheer number of images from across Syria demonstrate how widespread the revolution was and still is.

 Kesh Malek (meaning Check Mate) is a civil society organization that aimed to reach the world through its Syria Banksy initiative. Recently, they countered the regime propaganda, espoused by the musician Roger Waters against Syrian search and rescue volunteers, with a poster targeted to the Pink Floyd artist’s misinformed statements. The image in Idlib, Syria depicts Waters carrying an assault rifle with a caption that reads, “A message from Syrians in Idlib to Roger Waters: Hey you, don’t help them to bury the light,” referencing Pink Floyd lyrics.



 These images continue to be a part of Syria’s collective memory, a call to arms, and a venting of frustrations. As Malu Halasa, co-editor of Syria Speaks - Art and Culture from the Frontline, said, the Syrian revolution is a story of “how the street became visible.” In so doing, these works have leaked out of Syria onto our collective conscience, both as pieces of artwork and political expression. Even the establishment British Museum displayed various pieces of Syrian protest art as part of the museum’s “Living Histories” exhibit. The collection featured many works by the anonymous poster collective Alshaab Alsori Aref Tarekh (The Syrian People Know Their Way). The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution has also archived hundreds of images with statistics on the words used and the number of walls painted per month.

 As the situation grows to be more desperate in Syria and the regime continues to bombard marked hospitals without international interference, the number of political images emerging from Syria has dropped markedly since the first years of the revolution. For Syrians, it does not seem as though anyone is listening, but that doesn’t stop some from writing captions in English to reach a wider audience. There is still a movement to save those left in opposition-held areas from aerial bombardment, release prisoners, and find information on the disappeared. For Syrians in danger every day, the war is not over and the narrative war for the history of the revolution has just begun.'

Syrian Turkmen groups return to support opposition

 'Several Syrian Turkmen groups have relocated their headquarters this year from Turkey to Syrian areas occupied by Turkey and controlled by Turkish-backed opposition groups.

 The Syrian Turkmen Assembly (STA) political coalition met July 28 with members of the Turkmen Shura (Consultation) Council at the STA's new headquarters in al-Rai, Syria. The STA moved last month from Istanbul to the town in Syria's northern Aleppo province. STA leader Muhammed Vecih Cuma said that Syrian Turkmens are actively participating in the Syrian revolution against the régime and receiving support from the Turkish government, which encouraged the move to al-Rai, a town controlled by the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA).

 Cuma said about the meeting, “Several issues were discussed, including the STA’s relocation to the liberated territories, its work method and how to solve the problems of the Turkmen community and alleviate its suffering.”

 He added, “The work plan for the next round of STA elections was also discussed, in addition to how the parties in the liberated territories will operate and how the meetings will be held. We also discussed the method of choosing candidates [and] the STA’s capacity as the political cover uniting all Syrian Turkmens under its wing."



 The STA's goals include returning Syrian Turkmens safely to their lands and guaranteeing their rights under a new Syrian Constitution through democratic and fair elections.

 On its Facebook page, the STA writes about how it consulted with experts to develop new by-laws that comply with international law. The by-laws are designed to facilitate STA management inside Syria, help Syrian Turkmens return and allow for representation of all Syrian Turkmens in the STA.

 The STA was established in 2012 in Istanbul, through direct support from the Turkish government. It was known as Syria’s Turkmen Association at the time, and was limited to independent members, most of whom were migrant Turkmens. The name was changed to STA in 2013 after other groups joined, including the Syrian Democratic Turkmen Movement, the Syria Turkmen Bloc and the Turkmen Development Party, along with FSA-affiliated armed Turkmen factions. It now includes independents, political parties and the armed factions. STA is the biggest Turkmen political assembly and includes most Syrian Turkmens.

 The STA is one of the components of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, also known as the Syrian National Coalition.

 The STA convenes every two years and is made up of a general secretariat and an executive office. There are 42 members in the secretariat, which elects the 14 members of the executive office. Parties are represented as follows: The Syrian Turkmen National Movement Party and the Syria Turkmen Bloc each has six members and the Turkmen Development Party has three, while the remaining seats are divided among independents and the FSA-affiliated armed Turkmen factions. Independents' representation in the STA is based on Turkmen population distribution in Syria.

 There are members from Aleppo, Damascus, Raqqa, Latakia, Hama, Homs and other provinces. The most active Turkmen groups are located between Azaz and Jarablus in Aleppo province, and they constitute the majority in al-Rai and surrounding villages.



 The groups' movement from Turkey is logical, Cuma explained.

 “There is a general inclination to move Syrian opposition institutions from Turkey to Syria," Cuma said. "The [Syrian] National Coalition, for instance, opened headquarters in northern Aleppo on April 24. As STA is part of the Syrian opposition, it was important to move [the coalition's] headquarters to the liberated Syrian territories.”

 The Syrian Turkmen National Movement Party also relocated last month from Istanbul to al-Rai. During its first meeting there, the group elected Ziad Hassan president to succeed Bassam Barq, and presented an overview of its new strategy, which generally aims to increase activity in the FSA-controlled areas in Aleppo. A movement member told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the FSA-controlled areas in Aleppo are the natural places for its activities: "[The move] helps us get closer to our Syrian Turkmen fellows in liberated towns and cities. The [areas have] become free from terrorism, and it was the right step to move our party inside Syria.”

 Syria’s Turkmens consider themselves the second-most-dense population in Syria, after Arabs. There are no exact statistics on the number of Syrian Turkmens there, but there are unofficial estimates of half a million, constituting 3% of the citizens. Syrian Turkmens, especially in northern Aleppo, have protested the Syrian régime. They have also established political parties and opened Turkish learning centers in the FSA-controlled areas. Syrian Turkmen groups affiliated with several military factions also have been established.

 Cuma said, “Syrian Turkmens are preserving the national project of the Syrian revolution, and they are seeking, alongside the remaining Syrian constituents, to reach a free Syria, without Bashar al-Assad and his régime. We want Syria to be united and democratic and to respect people and their rights, while respecting its neighbors and abiding by international norms.” '

Ceasefire gives wary Syrians in Idlib respite from strikes

 'Shopkeepers and residents in Syria’s Idlib city have found relief from air strikes but remain wary after a ceasefire halted fierce government bombing against the rebel foothold.

 For three months, an army offensive backed by Russia has killed at least 400 people in northwest Syria and uprooted more than 440,000.

 Since Damascus declared a ceasefire on Thursday night, its warplanes have not mounted air strikes.

 Idlib lies in the last major chunk of territory rebels hold after facing defeat across much of Syria at the hands of Damascus with its allies Russia and Iran.



 At the weekend, the streets of Idlib city buzzed with cars and people. Some stopped by market stalls to look at clothes, while others lined up at kiosks to buy juice.

 “Before, there was panic. Every time the warning sirens rang, the market became empty right away,” Mhamad al-Omar, who sells cold drinks, told Reuters. “Now that there’s a bit of calm, there’s traffic today Praise God... People are tired.”

 Air strikes have hit schools, hospitals, markets and bakeries in the latest assault, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said last week.

 “The ceasefire is good for everyone. But we don’t know what’s waiting for us,” said Munaf Daher, a college student in Idlib. “We hope it will be good and people will keep coming back to their homes, this is the biggest joy.”

 Hasan Abdelallal, a local aid worker who was displaced from his city of Aleppo in 2016, said people had started returning after weeks of living in olive groves near the Turkish border.

 “But we don’t know what will happen under the table,” he added.



 Other residents also said they remained cautious after a series of truce deals or Russian-Turkish talks that have failed to end the fighting.

 Under its deals with Moscow, Ankara has forces stationed on the ground in the Idlib region at a dozen military positions.

 Rebel factions have agreed to the latest ceasefire while reserving the right to respond to attacks.

 The dominant force in Idlib is the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. HTS has rejected conditions of the 2018 “de-escalation deal” such as relinquishing its weapons. Its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was cited on Saturday night as saying his fighters would not withdraw from that zone.

 Ahmed Hmeid, who owns a vegetable shop, said the ceasefire would at least let people enjoy the upcoming Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

 “People had been scared of the bombing on the markets the most, the massacres,” he said. “Now there is some safety, one percent safety, people are coming out, seeing each other.” '

Death and fear rule areas forced to 'reconcile' with Assad

 Akram Touma:

 'Since 2016, the régime of Bashar al-Assad, with the help of its Russian and Iranian allies, has employed indiscriminate attacks and siege warfare to negotiate surrender of several areas formerly held by opposition forces.

 Many of these negotiated surrenders have included so called "reconciliation deals" mostly offered to people formerly affiliated with the opposition forces, but in some cases to the entire population who chose to stay after the area was retaken by the régime.

 These "reconciliation deals," whose implementation was supposed to be guaranteed by Russia, nominally envisaged that those who stayed in the areas retaken by the régime would, in exchange for detailed "confession" of their affiliation with the opposition forces, have their rights restored, be free from persecution, harassment and, importantly, from the forced recruitment into Assad's forces for at least six months.

 The régime's propaganda has hailed these agreements as a model for return of the displaced Syrians, often tricking some of those most desperate, living in the increasingly difficult conditions of displacement, to return.

 The Syrian Association for Citizens' Dignity (SACD) has repeatedly warned that the "guarantees" given under "reconciliation deals" are worthless and that people in these areas are facing daily threats, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and death.

 The research shows that one of the greatest sources of danger, and fears facing people in "reconciliation areas" is that of forced recruitment into Assad's military.

 Numerous reports and testimonies gathered by SACD for an upcoming report on the security situation facing returnees and people who stayed in reconciliation areas, speak of the widespread practice: People who have entered "reconciliation agreements" and their families are wanted by both the security branches for being "connected to anti-régime elements", and by the military for deployment to the most dangerous frontlines in Idlib and Hama regions.

 Once they are recruited, they are immediately shipped to these frontlines where they often die at the hands of their former comrades or in murky circumstances away from the frontline itself.
Forced recruitment has become a way for the régime to obliterate what it sees as anti-régime elements standing in the way of its vision of demographically engineering a loyal and obedient population.

 Examples testifying to this method of retaliation against the people who "reconciled" are numerous.



 SACD has just published research documenting hundreds of deaths of forcibly conscripted youth from "reconciliation areas" at the hands of régime loyalists in retaliation for their desperate attempts to escape from the frontline or at the hands of their former comrades and relatives in battles in the north of Syria.

 The moral and existential dilemmas imposed on the people from these areas are titanic and heartbreaking.

 Some activists blame the young people who signed the reconciliation agreements for having chosen to settle with the régime in order to stay in their homes.

 Others sympathise with them, knowing the difficult circumstances they suffered and the almost certain prospect of enforced disappearance if they fail to report when they are wanted for recruitment.

 Caught between a rock of forced recruitment and a hard place of arrest by Assad's security if they refuse to report, the outcome for many is dire, regardless of the choice they make.
The testimonies of victims' relatives and close friends, and the profile of the victims and their trajectory during the last few years, clearly show that some of them used to fight with the armed opposition, while others just returned to régime-held areas lured by régime propaganda and Russian promises of safety, unfortunately sometimes amplified in the narratives of some international organisations working on Syria.



 Russian guarantees, which were the decisive factor to convince many of those who stayed in areas covered by the "reconciliation agreements," are now literally claiming lives.

 There are a number of cases of men from "reconciliation areas" who refused to join the military service - relying on the Russian guarantees that they will not be forced to Assad's army for at least six months after the agreements were signed - being arrested, disappeared and killed by the régime's security forces.

 At the beginning of March 2019, in the countryside of Homs Ibrahim Obaid, Tariq Zakur and Mohammad Tariyah, were all killed and their bodies sent to their families after they were arrested for refusing to be recruited less than three months after the start of the reconciliation agreement secured by Russia.

 Dozens of other people from the northern countryside of Homs who signed up for the settlement and refused to report to the army on the basis of Russian guarantees are detained and still in Assad's prisons, their fate unknown.

 The situation of the northern Homs countryside is not unique, as the people of eastern Ghouta received 4,000 summoning reports ordering them to report to the units to perform the military service immediately after the "reconciliations".

 This summons were issued despite the explicit provision in the agreement that gives those who stay a period of six months before they can be called upon to join the military service. Large number of young people who remained in eastern Ghouta opted to obey the orders to avoid the arrests that began to take place against some who refused to report.

 Daraa's various cities and villages are also subjected to dozens of cases of forced recruitment and detention that are all in violation of what has been agreed upon between the areas that have been "reconciled" on the one hand and the Russians and the régime on the other.

 The régime's security forces in Daraa are apprehending people who have "settlement cards" every day. The Ahrar Houran group has documented 683 cases of arrests since the agreement was signed in July 2018.

 The only option for the vast majority of youth from "reconciliation areas" is to flee. To Lebanon, north of Syria or anywhere else where they will have a chance of surviving.

 But, with the Russian assault on Idlib intensifying, and anti-refugee sentiment in Lebanon and Turkey on the rise, they are finding their prospects of reaching safety dwindling. What was supposed to be a model for return of the vast numbers of displaced Syrians has now become yet another driver of displacement.

 After almost a year since the last reconciliation agreement was concluded, we can clearly see that Assad's régime was able to benefit from the youth who remained in "reconciliation areas" by forcibly recruiting them and deploying them on the most violent frontlines.

 The most energetic part of the population in areas which could have provided some sort of resistance to his policies is effectively being obliterated in this way.

 At the same time, the régime's security forces continue to arrest and kill persons from these areas whom it regards as a direct threat to its power. Such arrests and killings are being carried out in direct contravention of the terms of the agreements, which Russia had guaranteed, and testify to the retaliatory policies of the régime targeting anyone formerly affiliated with the opposition.

 "Reconciliation agreements" areas are today among the most unsafe territories in Assad's failed state.

 Arrests, enforced disappearance and forced recruitment which often amounts to a death sentence are a daily occurrence.

 Far from being a model for return of millions of displaced Syrians, they provide for a warning to the international community that any solution which will bring a hope of a lasting peace in Syria must include a robust international mechanism to monitor and ensure the rights of all Syrians, and particularly those who were already on the receiving end of Assad's criminal conduct.'

Daraa displaced watch hometowns descend into disorder

 'When Hoda’s ageing father suffered a stroke last week, there was little she could do.

 Anxious he would not get the care he needed in his hometown in Syria's rural Daraa province, where few doctors remain, she longed to be at his bedside. Hundreds of kilometres away in displacement, however, that was impossible.

 Hoda's father recovered from the stroke, yet the family remains separated across a web of front lines and areas of control. Last week was the last time she managed to speak to him over the phone.

 One year ago, Hoda's hometown in Daraa was the scene of a lightning military offensive by pro-government forces to retake the whole of the country's south from rebel control.

 It was a weeks-long battle that saw the 43-year-old move from town to town seeking safety alongside her brother and his family, finally ending up as far as she could flee from oncoming government forces along the hilly borderline with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

 Hoda's 80-year-old father stayed behind in the family home with one of his daughters. He is simply too frail, and sickly, to travel easily, Hoda says.

 Hoda had little choice but to leave him behind. She had already been detained and imprisoned by government security forces in the early years of the war, supposedly for providing "logistic support to the opposition," she says. She remained in detention for six months.



 Staying behind under renewed government control could mean arrest, again, and the risk of disappearing into the government's widely feared network of prisons.

 When the government organised bus convoys north from Daraa for fighters and civilians choosing to leave, she and her brother went along with them. The destination: rebel-held Idlib, long an end point for forcible evacuations from other formerly rebel-held pockets of Syria.

 "I didn't feel like I could trust the regime," Hoda says, referring to a series of reconciliation deals the Syrian government carried out in former opposition-controlled towns across Daraa last year.

 Now one year later, she only communicates with her father by phone, usually once every day or two. Visiting him is a distant dream, says Hoda.

 "I can't go back."



 Daraa has long been known among Syrians as the "cradle" of the country's revolution. It was there that popular protests broke out in 2011 following the arrest and brutal torture of more than a dozen teenagers accused of scrawling anti-government graffiti on a school wall.

 The following years saw rebel forces take control of Daraa while an emerging sector of citizen journalists and media activists documented events. There were aerial bombardments, battles and mass waves of displacement.

 More than eight years later, however, the rural province is under renewed, yet shaky government control.

 A series of patchwork surrender-and-reconciliation agreements saw thousands of fighters and residents board government buses.

 Like former residents of the Damascus suburbs and east Aleppo city, those who left now eke out a life in internal exile in the northwest, often unemployed and with few friends from home nearby.

 But Daraa was unique. Unlike places such as the Damascus suburbs of Eastern Ghouta and Daraya, many former rebel commanders were allowed to stay home rather than board the evacuation buses, negotiating deals with the Syrian government and its Russian allies to maintain relative autonomy in some towns and villages.

 The result is a complex web of political control in Syria's south, with restricted movement and, like elsewhere retaken by the government, communication tightly monitored.

 That uneasy peace has been fraying for months. Gunmen have attacked checkpoints and other government installations, and targeted local political figures for assassination. Former residents who still speak with relatives inside Daraa say arrests are widespread. The violence has only grown in recent months.



 Those in exile in Syria's northwest can do little but watch from afar.

 They only communicate sporadically with family and friends who stayed behind in Daraa - getting caught by the government's security forces speaking to people in the opposition-held north could mean arrest, former residents now living in Idlib tell Middle East Eye.

 Ahmad al-Hiraki works as an accountant with the Civil Defence, a rescue group commonly known as the White Helmets active in opposition-held areas of Syria.

 He left his hometown in rural Daraa province one year ago, eventually settling in the town of Ariha near Idlib city. Ahmad rarely speaks with his sister, who still lives in their hometown, for fear she could the garner attention of security forces.

 When he does reach out to his sister to check in on her, Ahmad messages her from his wife's mobile phone rather than his own - his phone number could be flagged by government authorities due to his work for the Civil Defence, he says.

 "We speak over WhatsApp, but without sending voice messages - just text messages," Ahmad says. "Voice messages are under surveillance by the regime."

 What little he does hear of home is unsettling.

 Widespread arrests. House raids in the middle of the night. Drive-by assassinations. Dead bodies, including those of his own relatives, dumped outside their homes. Late last month, unknown assailants blew up a government building just outside his hometown.

 Elsewhere in Ariha, 43-year-old father Marwan says he stops himself short of asking about the growing unrest back home in Daraa. Though he came north with his wife and four children last year, he still has close relatives in the south, and worries for their safety.

 “We don’t ever talk politics [with family members back home],” says Marwan. He requested a pseudonym for security reasons.

 “A week ago, I spoke to my nephew. It was all just ‘how are you?’ and ‘how is your health?’” Marwan says.

 “That’s it.”



 Idlib province, where most of Daraa’s exiled residents ended up, now remains the last major pocket of rebel control after several years of pro-government military advances.

 Today, they are living on the frontlines of yet another battle.

 Idlib is home to an estimated three million Syrians, roughly half of them internally displaced from areas of the country once under rebel control.

 But now the northwestern province- as well as parts of neighbouring rural Aleppo, Hama and Latakia - is facing the prospect of being the site of the next major military showdown between opposition and pro-government forces.

 A deal brokered by Russia and Turkey late last year in the Russian resort city of Sochi held off a massive pro-government assault on northwestern Syria for a time, though now it’s largely irrelevant as Syrian government and Russian forces pummel the region with bombs.

 The onslaught has brought life to a standstill in Idlib, former Daraa residents say. In Daraa, Ahmad remembers living as part of a community, among neighbours who looked out for one another and spent time together. The local shopkeepers all knew him by name.

 “Here, we don’t know anyone,” he says. The danger of air strikes, as well as his demanding work schedule as an accountant, keeps him from meeting his neighbours. The only people he now spends time with outside work and home are a sister, who also lives in Ariha, and her family.

 Even when they do gather, it’s rare that they speak of anything other than the war, and the bombing now threatening them yet again in exile.

 Most recently, he says, the conversation has turned darker. Earlier this month, two people from the family’s hometown in rural Daraa were killed under bombs in Idlib, Ahmad says. They were rattled by the news.

 Still, “I’d rather live under bombs [in Idlib] than be vulnerable to arrest in Daraa,” says Ahmad. He questions whether he’d ever be able to live at home again in his village, nestled among what was once quiet farmland in Syria’s southwest.

 “I feel as if I’ll never return.” '

From Berlin to the barracks: a Syrian rebel returns home

 'Mohammad al-Naeemi had everything he could possibly want living in exile in Germany, but he returned to war-torn Syria anyway to fight Bashar al-Assad's régime.

 Clutching a rifle to his chest, his back flat against the ground, the 23-year-old shimmies across a dry field in northwestern Syria on his graduation day from training to join an armed rebel group.

 "I returned to give back to my country," said the young fighter, wearing a black T-shirt and beige combat trousers.

 With an opposition group cap fit tightly on his head, he powers through push-ups, counting each one out at the top of his lungs in unison with fellow recruits.

 From now on, "I'll reside in military barracks and on the front lines," he said.

 "It'll be the best place I can possibly live."

 Naeemi was a high school student in Syria's southern province of Quneitra when peaceful protests demanding change erupted across the country in 2011.

 After a brutal crackdown on the demonstrations spiralled into war, he joined the armed opposition for several years.



 In 2015, fearing a régime takeover of his region, he decided to leave his war-torn country and join his siblings in Germany, he said.

 Travelling over the summer, he and friends crossed Syria's central desert to the Turkish border, before travelling by sea to Greece, and then by land onto Germany.

 "I lived in Berlin. I was studying" he said.

 "I had an ordinary life. I had rights like any German citizen and a monthly stipend. I wanted for nothing," he said.

 "But I wasn't happy and I constantly missed my home country," he added.

 Syrian government forces have taken back large swathes of the country since Russia intervened on behalf of Damascus in 2015, including Naeemi's home province of Quneitra last year.

 Since late April, regime and Russian forces have ramped up their deadly bombardment of the holdout opposition bastion of Idlib.

 The strikes and rocket fire have killed more than 600 civilians in the jihadist-held region of some three million people, almost half displaced by war from other parts of the country.

 "The fierce regime campaign on Idlib" and a government takeover of his hometown are the main reasons Naeemi decided to head back to Syria, he said.

 "My parents opposed my decision and tried to stop me from returning... but I insisted," said Naeemi, who has no relatives in Idlib.

 He arrived in northwest Syria last month and immediately joined Jaysh al-Izza, a Syrian rebel group active in the north of Hama province and parts of Idlib.



 He spent one month in a rebel training camp near the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey, where life was governed by strict routine.

 He woke up early everyday for military drills, which consisted of diving through burning tires, jumping over cement blocks and shuffling across trenches.

 He also sat for classes in religion and ethics.

 His unit was named after Abdel-Basset al-Sarout, a Syrian goalkeeper turned opposition fighter who died last month of wounds sustained in battle against regime forces.

 The group consists mainly of fresh recruits spurred into joining rebel ranks by the latest flare up in Syria's northwest, said Mustafa Bakour, a rebel commander.

 "Each one of these men has a story," he said.



 With training now over, Naeemi said the "hard part" is behind him.

 Looking back, he said he has no regrets.

 "I liked Germany and considered it as my home but there is nowhere like my country Syria," he said.

 "I don't regret my decision, I did not return for money or wealth. If money was the goal, I would have stayed in Germany." '

Former Syrian Prisoners Reenact Experiences on Stage

 'The lights stay low throughout the play, X-Adra, creating the sense of a cell-like space on stage. Halfway through, the actors, all former inmates of Adra prison in Syria, start scribbling frantically on the floor, sending clouds of chalk dust up into the air.

 For the audience, the performance is uncomfortable to watch. The actors say re-living their incarceration on stage is “exhausting” and “difficult.” But the performers believe it’s their duty to remind the world of the hundreds of thousands who have perished inside Syria’s prisons and untold numbers still languishing behind bars. “It can be quite cathartic but at the same time it’s hard to go back,” says Kenda Zaour, who was imprisoned for two months in 2012.

 The U.K. premier of the play last week, following a performance in France, was part of the program at Shubbak Festival, a biennial showcase of contemporary Arab culture in London. Hend, Ali (formerly Ola), Mariam, Rowaida, Kenda and Hend Mugale recount their time in the Adra prison near Damascus from the 1980s to the Syrian revolution.

 Their tales are framed by the haunting voice of singer Hala Omran, who wanders barefoot between speakers on the sparsely furnished stage. At Battersea Arts Centre, where X-Adra was performed, audiences are free come and go and make noise, as they wish. But during the performance, the audience stayed stock still and silent as they listened to stories of systematic torture, agonizing uncertainty, lost family members and hellish conditions.

 Roweida Kanaan was a journalist, accused of working for an opposition TV channel. Bound and blindfolded on the day of her arrest, she recalls looking down and seeing her best friend Khaled’s feet through a chink in the fabric. In prison, she would search for his face among the corpses of people killed under torture. She never saw it, but learned later that he was dead.

 Violence is kept to a minimum in this production, so the focus stays on the women and their stories. “I was amazed by the incredible presence and participation of the Syrian women in the revolution,” director Ramzi Choukair said. He wanted to spotlight individual testimonies, “but also to say that what happened to them can happen to anyone anywhere in the world.”

 One by one, the women recount the circumstances of their arrest. Zaour, who had recently graduated from the Institute of Tourism, wanted to protest peacefully against the incarceration of civil prisoners. Wearing wedding dresses, she and three friends headed to a busy market in central Damascus and waved banners proclaiming their love for Syria. “That was the moment that broke the fear inside me forever,” she says. Minutes later security services arrested them.



 The Syrian Network for Human Rights records 127,916 currently detained or disappeared by the government since the beginning of the conflict and says 14,000 prisoners have died as a result of torture.

 A 2016 United Nations report described inhumane conditions in Syrian prisons that amounted to mass extermination. Former inmates have detailed mass hangings, torture and starvation, but rights groups say there has been no sustained effort to hold the regime to account. “Some countries have been vocal about the practices of arbitrary detention, torture, and disappearance of people carried out by the Syrian government but no concrete steps have been taken to pressure the government to end these violations,” said Diana Semaan, a Syria expert at Amnesty International.

 Art can help keep the plight of those still incarcerated in the public eye, says Semaan. “We have collaborated with many of the families of the disappeared to raise awareness on this issue through showcasing objects left behind by victims and narrating the stories of disappearance and the horrible impact on their families,” she said.



 For Ali Hamidi, who used to go by Ola before a gender transition, the day of his capture was terrifying. “I was beaten up so badly,” he says. He was 21 years old at the time. “I used to drive injured soldiers to the Jordanian border so they could get help,” Hamidi explains. In a letter to his mother from prison, he wrote that: “Over here, you learn that nothing is as important as freedom.” After he was released, he made his way to Turkey and later walked to Germany, a grueling journey that took him nearly two months.

 Hamidi said in an interview that he would comfort the others after they’d been tortured, “even though I was weak.” After developing diabetes and deep-vein thrombosis in prison, he shut down and spent six months without uttering a word. “I used to write on the wall all the time, anything that came into my mind, names of my siblings, my family.”

 He spent a year and six months in the women’s prison, living with up to thirty people in a cramped cell. At one point, the others were pardoned and he was left alone, which was worse. “I would just wait and wait and wait.” He was released after being forced to sign a blank piece of paper that was used to transfer his $50,000 inheritance over to the regime. He was given 10 days to get out of Syria.



 At the beginning of the play, which is performed in Arabic with English subtitles, the performers repeat the advice they clung to inside. “Don’t admit anything, even if they threaten rape.” “Remember your loved ones.” “If you believe in God, pray.” The isolation and confusion of the early days in prison are captured in the opening scene. “Is there anyone here?” the actors ask in frightened voices, pacing the stage, heads bent.

 Their accounts of life inside Adra prison capture the surreal experience of boredom, fear, isolation, claustrophobia and eerie silence, punctuated, at night, by screams. They describe the fraught desperation for word from their families, and terror that this might mean news of death; the constant hope of release and the worry that a guard unlocking the cell means a fate that’s even worse.

 Hend Mugale, 58, used to have nightmares that her daughter was also in prison and then bang her head against the wall, strangely convinced her child was in the neighboring cell. “I could cope with anything, except the thought of her being in this place,” she told the audience. Later, prisoners who shared a cell with her daughter said the girl used to stand next to the wall after hearing her mother’s voice singing a song next door.

 For Kanaan, who now lives in Paris, pain floods to the surface in each performance but she’s determined that those who suffered and died inside are not forgotten. “Theatre is one of the forms of resistance,” she says. At some point in her monologue she stops addressing the audience and talks instead to the memory of her best friend, Khaled, who she last saw on the day they were both arrested. I think of you every day, all the time, she says. “I miss you immensely.” '

Russian soldiers fighting on front lines in Idlib campaign

 'Russia has sent special forces in recent days to fight alongside Syrian army troops struggling to make gains in a more than two month assault in northwestern Syria to seize the last opposition bastion, senior rebel commanders said.

 Moscow denied on Thursday that it had sent special forces to Idlib, maintaining that Russia has no ground troops in Syria.

 The rebel commanders said Russian officers and troops had been behind front lines directing the operation in northern Hama and adjoining Idlib province since it began in April, using snipers and firing anti-tank missiles.

 They said this was the first time Russian ground forces had joined in the battle to seize the strategic Hamameyat hilltop which fell into rebel hands last week.

 “These special Russian forces are now present in the battlefield. The Russians are intervening directly now,” said Captain Naji Mustafa, spokesman for the Turkey-backed National Liberation Front (NLF) coalition of rebel factions.

 “When al-Assad’s forces failed to advance, Russia then intervened directly ... after bombing the area with more than 200 sorties,” Mustafa said.

 Russia’s defense ministry said these were false allegations, calling them “another fake”, and repeated its official position that “There have not been and there are not now any Russian ground forces in Syria.”

 More than two months of Russian-backed operations in and around Idlib province have yielded little or nothing for Russia and Assad - a rare case of a military campaign that has not gone in Russia’s favor since it intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2015.

 Jamil al-Saleh, the head of the Jaish al Izza rebel group, said Moscow’s deployment of undisclosed numbers of ground forces came only after elite Syrian troops known as the Tiger Forces and allied militias were unable to make “any significant territorial gains.”

 “The Syrian army found itself in a crisis and were forced to ask for Russian troops on the battlefield,” Saleh said, adding he believed that Moscow miscalculated the strength and motivation of the rebels fighting in their last remaining bastion.

 “In light of the size of artillery and aerial bombing, the Russians and the régime had expected to seize large areas,” Saleh said.

 Rebels in northwestern Syria said supplies of weapons including guided anti-tank missiles by Turkey had not only made it a costly battle for the Russians and their allies but repelled ground assaults.

 The Russian-led assault in opposition held northwestern Syria not only left dozens of villages and towns in ruins but according to the United Nations forced over 300,000 civilians to flee to the safety of areas closer to the Turkish border.

 Another rebel official said Iranian-backed Shi’ite forces that had so far refrained from joining the Russian-led assault were now also entering the battlefield.

 “The Iranians have brought reinforcements and are now fighting on several fronts,” said Mohammad Rashid, a spokesperson for Jaish al-Nasr, a Turkey-backed rebel group fighting the Syrian army.'

The show must go on

 Zouhir al-Shimale:

 'A medium-sized, makeshift tent stands proud in al-Bab, Syria. Scrawled across its inner canvas are brightly coloured, hand-painted pictures. This is the work of a group of local schoolchildren aged 12 to 15, who gather here regularly throughout the week to learn the dramatic arts, as part of director Salman Ibrahim’s theatre group, Bread Way. “Each child drew what he thinks, loves or dreams [of],” says Ibrahim. “Some of them painted homes, some painted the Syrian revolution flag and freedom motto.” They did this to fit the theme of their new play, Dreamers Theatre, in which these same children share their ambitions, circumstances and memories of war.

 “The basis of Dreamers Theatre is freedom of speech, writing our scripts and conducting [plays] our way,” Ibrahim, 37, explains. He’s been penning plays since he ­graduated with a degree in Arabic literature from the University of Homs in 2005, but, for security concerns and reasons of censorship, it wasn’t until 2014 that one finally made it to the stage.

 Dakaken, Ibrahim’s first play, was performed in Aleppo that year by local activists and volunteers, but ensuring a nightly run became difficult due to instability in the city at that time. This uncertainty saw him move to Idlib in 2017, to focus on teaching, before he moved to al-Bab in 2018. Since then, he has been able to see his dreams of introducing troubled children to the theatre come to life. “There is no bombing or attacks here that risk children’s lives,” he says, while explaining how he recruited his current cohort from a local school. “[But] children in north Syria generally, and in al-Bab, have undergone desperate circumstances,” he adds.



 One of these young actors is Nesren Al Ward, 14, who came from Erben, in East Ghouta, where her two brothers, Ahmad and Ala’a, were killed in an air strike. “I was sieged and deprived from going to school or playing because of the bombing,” she says. She spent three months living in a basement with her parents and two surviving brothers, Aref and Bara’a, before moving to al-Bab. “We were unable to do anything at home, but with my mother and brother we spent time acting in the sleeping room of our house, inspired by local actors I used to see on TV.”

 In al-Bab, Nesren is able to study again, although she has been moved back by two grades. “It makes me feel sad to have lost those years, but I am studying now again and that is what matters,” she says.

 “When I came here, I finally found somewhere to sleep without [the sound of] bombs every night. It feels normal now, but for years, I could not have peace like this, or at least no fear of being bombed or killed and losing my family.”

 It is children like Nesren, who have been most affected by the war, that both Ibrahim and NGO worker Clare Payne wish to help heal through theatre. Payne, who is from Northern Ireland, works in Romania and is supporting Ibrahim independently, helping him to raise money for his plays. They first met at a ­peacebuilding course in Turkey last year. “One of my main purposes with Salman is to restore social dialogue, via theatre, as it’s the first brick in the path of new generations that should not keep paying the price of war,” she says. “Theatre is a way that ­communities can express themselves and find relief from the oppression they are living under.”



 Abdul Razak Kharar, 13, was bussed out of Aleppo with his two brothers, one sister and parents in December 2016. Just like Nesren, Abdul Razak had found it difficult to go to school regularly due to the bombings. Thankfully, his whole family survived and now, in al-Bab, he is able to live normally, returning to his studies and learning how to act in his spare time.

 For two months, four days a week, Abdul Razak headed to that tent, rehearsing the play, watching theatre on TV and talking through the script, ahead of the show’s opening night, which took place last month in al-Bab. “I have enjoyed working with Salman and my friends together every day,” he says. “I was shy, partially still now if I am honest, but I am hoping to stay longer with them because I do not have many friends from my city, as all of them are scattered across north Syria and some were killed, too.” Before he joined Ibrahim’s theatre group, Abdul Razak used to watch shows on YouTube and TV, and particularly enjoyed the work of Egyptian actor and comic Adel Emam and Syrian actor Abdul Rahman Eid. “Acting for me has become a way to express so many feelings I have,” he says. “I want to become an actor because I want to make people smile.”



 While Payne strongly believes theatre offers light moments of relief, she also sees her involvement in this initiative as an opportunity to peacebuild, which, she says, is complicated in Syria. “The communities have become shattered and unable to integrate with one another, thus the process of peace will take time. But, if we work with children … we will advance quicker.”



 One of the ways Ibrahim ensures the children are always learning is by giving them opportunities to ­discuss sensitive subjects and ethical dilemmas through the content of their performances. For example, at certain points in the play, he gets the guests involved. “This manifests when the actors on stage ask the audience’s opinion and what to do to solve this problem, [sparking] a public debate about local matters and making the society itself come up with a solution.” An example of this is when Abdul Razak, who portrays the father in the play, tries to prevent his daughter from going to school. “The actors move this conversation to the audience and try to find solutions and reasons behind this behaviour from the parents,” says Ibrahim.

 Addressing this scene, Abdul Razak, who knows well the pain of not being able to study, says: “I liked my role but not the idea of preventing anyone from going to school.”

 As a result of Ibrahim’s teachings, Nesren and Abdul Razak both say they have seen a marked difference in their confidence levels. They now want to pursue careers in the arts. “I want to become an actor,” says Nesren, “because I love and enjoy watching and acting. I want to make people happy and smile, and to make my family proud of me.”

 Abdul Razak wants to be both an actor and ­director, just like Ibrahim. “I want to act my own ideas, which is what ­Salman is teaching us to do, and ­become famous in the future,” he says.



 Ibrahim is convinced that this confidence has been built as a result of him giving the children freedom to develop their own ideas. He simply points them in the right direction. “People were deprived of freedom’s tools and it’s my quest to bring it back to life,” he says. “It is all about freedom and that is what we are trying to teach our children: to learn, practise and do it as a lifestyle, and that is what will bring Syria back.” '

Images of torture haunt ex-prisoners in Syria

 'Prisoners are suffering different types of brutal torture that the human mind cannot imagine at the Syrian régime dungeons, according to former detainees.

 Muhammed Abdullah said he was arrested for participating in pro-democracy protests in the early days of the Syrian uprising in 2011.

 Abdullah was taken into custody along with his mother and father during a régime raid in Morik district in the northern Hama province on July 8, 2011.

 "They burned my father's vehicle and his shop and took us to the intelligence unit at the Hama military base, where 80 people were held in a narrow ward,” Abdullah recalled.

 "They interrogated the three of us," he said. "We were beaten in the presence of each other."

 Abdullah said that he was held at a small prison cell less than one square meter for 50 days.

 "They gave me only a piece of bread with olive grains from the cell window," he recalled.

 "They were dropping water. I had to open my mouth and catch up while the water was dropping. Otherwise I would be dehydrated," Abdullah said.

 After 50 days in detention, Abdullah was taken to a ward in the Mezzeh military base.



 Highlighting that he was questioned for 68 days at the ward, Abdullah said: "The sound of those who were tortured was terrible."

 "They locked us up in a room in where about 800 people were naked. The scenery was horrible. There were 60 children among us," he recalled.

 "People either died of grief or torture or went crazy," he said.

 "The warden used to rape a child from our ward every day,” he said.

 "One day, 40 people with masks and batons raided the ward. We were trying to escape by pressing each other. They were beating us to death.

 "Twenty-two people died that day,” Abdullah said, adding that this scene will always remain in his memory.

 Abdullah was finally released in poor health conditions as part of a prisoner exchange with the Syrian régime.

 "My kidneys and lungs were infected. I threw up blood for a year,” Abdullah said.

 Returning to Syria after two months of treatment in Turkey, Abdullah was unable to sleep regularly for a year.



 A woman, who was formerly jailed by the Syrian régime on charges of treating civilians injured in régime attacks, also highlighted the cruel torture methods during incarceration in régime prisons.

 Meryem Hileyf was detained on Sept. 27, 2012 from her home in the northern Hama province.

 "They ruined my life. We had the same pain every day,” Hileyf said.

 “The most painful moment was when they wanted us to undress. We figured they weren't undressing us for questioning," she said.

 Held in an underground cell, Hileyf said: “They put me in a tiny cell. There was water dripping from a tap. The sound of the water was imprinted on our brains.”

 “A torturer, called Lieutenant Colonel Suleyman, used to take beautiful girls to his room every day at midnight. We heard the girls screaming for help, but we couldn't do anything,” she recalled.

 " 'Let the Free Syrian Army (FSA) come and save you', they said while torturing us," Hileyf said.

 The Syrian woman was released as part of a prisoner swap between the FSA and Syrian régime.

 "My husband divorced me. My mother hasn't spoken with me for eight years," she said.

 Stressing that she has been crying for her sufferings for eight years, Hileyf said: "People asked me if I was raped instead of asking if I need help."

 Praising Turkey’s help, she said: “I've attempted suicide three times. Only Turkey looked out for me. Turkey is my second mother.” '

Syrians dig, cook, fill sandbags in war with Assad

 'Away from the frontlines, volunteers are helping in the war against Syria’s Bashar Assad by cooking, filling sandbags, collecting old tires and digging trenches, aiming to help ward off his assault on northwestern Syria.

 It is part of the civilian effort to help defend the last major opposition stronghold from Assad and his Russian allies who have been pounding it for weeks.



 Abu Abdo, 51, says he is playing his part by collecting old tires to be burned by fighters to create a smoke screen from hostile warplanes.

 “We go to places where tires are repaired, collect them and take them to the fighters,” said Abu Abdo, 51, as he piled tires into the back of a truck with the help of his sons in the town of Salqin.

 “These tires have no value but protect (the fighters) and keep the enemy busy,” said Abu Abdo, as two of sons sat atop the pile of tires in the back of the truck.



 In recent years, Assad’s opponents have poured into northwestern Syria from other parts of Syria that have been taken from opposition. The region, which includes Idlib province and parts of neighboring provinces, has an estimated 3 million inhabitants, about half of whom had already fled fighting elsewhere according to the UN.

 With nowhere else for these people to flee, many have a stake in fending off the attack on the northwest. To this end, activists and religious leaders launched a campaign in May called “fire an arrow with them.”

 Volunteers at work in a kitchen in the town of Atarib are preparing 2,000 meals a day for fighters as part of the campaign. Yellow rice is spooned from large vats into polystyrene trays and lentil soup is poured into bags ready for delivery to fighters.

 “The car leaves from here to the frontlines under airstrikes and surveillance sometimes,” said a 40-year-old man at work in the kitchen who gave his name as Abu Wael. “God willing we continue so these meals reach the fighters.”

 At a nearby quarry, sacks that once contained rice were being filled with grit for use as sandbag defenses.

 “We are filling according to the demand of the frontline. The command center, for example, requests 200 bags or 1,000 bags for one position,” said Khaled Al-Jamal, 26, at work with a group of other volunteers.

 He finished his high school education but was unable to register at university once the war began in 2011. He hopes his effort will help fighters so “all their effort is directed at repelling the regime.”

 In Salqin, men use shovels, pick axes and pneumatic drills to dig a trench in an olive grove as part of another civilian campaign, this one called “the Popular Resistance Battalions.”

 A long way from the frontline, Yehya Al-Sheikh, 38, says the trench he is digging with others will provide protection from airstrikes for a family living nearby.

 “We came to dig trenches to defend ourselves and our people and to support our Mujahideen brothers against Bashar Assad.” '

Demonstration in Akhtarin to revive Syrian revolution

 'Dozens of demonstrators took to the streets on Friday (June 28) in Akhtarin town in Aleppo northern countryside, chanting anti-Russia and Assad militia slogans and confirming that the resistance is their choice against the continuous offensive launched on Idlib and Hama by the Assad militias.

 Demonstrators from the villages and towns around Akhtarin joined the demonstration in Akhtarin.

 Similar anti-régime demonstrations took place in Khan al-Asal city in Aleppo countryside where the demonstrators said they aimed to show solidarity with their fellow Syrians in Idlib and Hama.

 Idlib is the largest part of Syria controlled by opposition with a population swollen by Syrians who were displaced by the Assad regime and its allies’ advances in other parts of the country.

 Assad-Russian warplanes and Assad militiamen have killed more than 500 civilians, including children and women. The Russian and Assad attacks also injured more than 1500 civilians in Hama and Idlib countryside since April 26.'

Children bear brunt of Syrian government bombing of Idlib

 'Four-year-old Khaled al-Bakour was trying to hide in his bedroom with two of his brothers to avoid attacks by Syrian warplanes when the walls of the concrete house fell down and buried him under the rubble.

 His screaming brothers looked on, too young to do anything, surrounded by what was left of the house in Maarat al-Numan, south of Idlib city.

 "He's here, help us for God's sake," the brothers cried as White Helmets, members of the civil defence team that operates in rebel-held areas of Syria, arrived at the scene and desperately tried to remove broken pieces of stone to find him.

 Having been rescued from the building, Khaled was taken to a nearby hospital following the attack.

 Khaled's father said: "My son has two fractures and a loss of the skin and muscles of his left hand.

 "He lost one of his fingers, and the doctors told me he might lose another finger. Yesterday he underwent surgery. There is also a loss of skin and muscle and a sharp fracture of his right foot."



 Khaled is just the latest child to fall victim to an escalation in attacks on Idlib province by Syrian and Russian forces since late April, where on average two children are killed and a school is targeted everyday, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) activist group.

 The SNHR says that between 26 April and 27 June 2019, at least 518 civilians were killed in Idlib, including 128 children and 97 women, and at least 1,612 civilians injured.

 The organisation said that the Russian-Syrian alliance had also targeted 77 schools.

 "We emphasise that targeting schools with guided missiles is a systematic process by the Damascus forces and their allies," Fadel Abdul Ghany, the chairman of SNHR, said.

 "Schools are protected by international law, and deliberate targeting is a war crime."

 Syrian and Russian warplanes constantly fly over the area, with inhabitants not knowing where the next attack will be launched or which school might be hit.

 "Children were killed in their seats, and others were targeted in kindergartens, systematically to instil chaos and panic and force people to return to the authority of Damascus, or live without services and facilities,” Abdul Ghany said.

 "Damascus aims to stop the educational process, push children to join the ranks of the fighters, and build an uneducated generation dominated by ignorance."



 After Damascus took control of the governorates of Daraa, Homs and rural Damascus, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced to Idlib province, where the population now numbers about three million people.

 In late 2018, an agreement in Sochi between the Turkish and Russian presidents forestalled an expected attack on Idlib by Syrian pro-government forces.

 However, since late April, Syrian and Russian forces have repeatedly attacked the southern parts of Idlib province and adjacent parts of Hama and Latakia.

 The area under attack is mostly under the control of former al-Qaeda affiliate Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Syrian state media outlets say that the escalation is intended to target "terrorist groups" present in the region.

 In a less than two-month period in Idlib, in addition to the 77 schools, SNHR said that the attacks by the Syrian and Russian forces had targeted 33 medical facilities, 46 houses of worship and three camps.

 Brigadier Ahmed Rahal, an analyst and military expert who defected from the Syrian government, said: “Ninety percent of the military operations and the attacks led by Damascus and Moscow are against civilians [in a bid to] pressure the fighters. The systematic targeting of infrastructure aims to cause the greatest possible destruction, break the morale of civilians and cut off all [their] services. These military operations are aimed to shock, to create a desperate public that puts pressure on the rebels to stop fighting, like what happened in Daraa, which is now controlled by Damascus."



 Earlier this month, in a briefing to the UN Security Council regarding the situation in Idlib, Rodney Hunter, political coordinator for the US Mission to the UN, denounced Syrian and Russian activities in the province.

 “We need to see a full and immediate de-escalation of violence by all sides and, in particular, the Assad regime forces and the Russian Federation in and around Idlib province," said Hunter.

 "The regime’s military escalation is unacceptable and it poses a reckless and irresponsible threat to the security and stability of this region.”

 In addition to the deaths and casualties to children caused by the upsurge in violence, many, like Khaled, have lost their homes and seen their education curtailed.

 According to UNICEF: “This latest escalation follows months of rising violence in the area which has reportedly left at least 125,000 children displaced since the start of the year.

 "Nearly 30 hospitals have come under attack. Approximately 43,000 children are now out of school and final exams in parts of Idlib have been postponed, affecting the education of 400,000 students.”

 Sitting among olive trees in a camp north of Idlib, looking through her mother's mobile phone, is seven-year-old Fatima.

 She and her family were displaced from the south of the province by the recent escalation in violence.

 "I cannot complete my studies. My school and the rest of the schools are under attack," she said.'