From nuns in London to Sufi shaykhas in Damascus, Farrah Akbik recalls the women who shaped her childhood—and the dear friend who helped her escape them.

We crossed the Galata bridge at a hundred kilometers an hour. Like all his peers, the Turkish taxi driver didn’t know what made him drive at such crazy speed, and harass other vehicles, and insult those cruising slowly as though they were committing a cardinal sin. After the rollercoaster turn following the end of the bridge, we were inevitably held up at the Tarlabaşı intersection;…

[Editor’s note: This interview was translated from Arabic in partnership with The Syria Campaign.] Syrians have been reeling from the so-called “Caesar photos”—images of tens of thousands of detainees tortured to death in Assad regime custody, leaked by a defector codenamed Caesar—since they first began appearing some six years ago. For the families of those forcibly disappeared in the regime’s prisons, the shock was severe; especially…

Last month’s new US sanctions in Syria, commonly known as the Caesar Act, have sparked widespread discussion of their possible political, economic, and geostrategic ramifications. Less examined are the potential consequences for the groups and individuals working hardest to bring about a brighter future for the war-wracked country. Al-Jumhuriya asked five prominent Syrian civil society figures how they expected the Caesar Act to affect their…

Syrian writer and former prisoner of conscience Yassin al-Haj Saleh speaks to Belarusian activist Marina Naprushkina about the global rise of authoritarians, the “plague” of Putinism, and why the time is ripe for new political movements.

So powerful are Washington’s new sanctions on Syria that even some opponents of Assad are unsure about them. Our own Syrian reporters have a range of views, two of which are presented head-to-head in this article.

As Trump threatens to turn the army on peaceful demonstrators, Syrian activist and author Leila Al-Shami writes what Americans might learn from Syria’s nine-plus years of revolutionary struggle.

The head of Karkobia’s security forces has caught a deadly virus. How will he hide the news from the Palace? A short piece of satirical fiction by Marcell Shehwaro.

Earlier this month, an in-depth study was published by a group of Syrian and international health experts assessing the likely outcomes in the event of a Covid-19 outbreak in northwest Syria, where over four million civilians live in dire conditions and the ever-present threat of renewed military hostilities. The paper, titled “The Covid-19 Forecast in Northwest Syria: The Imperative of Global Action to Avoid Catastrophe,”…

Angry demonstrations have returned to the streets of Lebanon with a vengeance, following an interruption brought about by Coronavirus lockdown measures, now being gradually eased. The final days of April saw an intense eruption of protests across the country, particularly in the northern city of Tripoli, where banks were torched with Molotov cocktails, and live fire from the army resulted in the death of one…