A Lot of Work is Still Ahead of US

Around this time five years ago, the Turkish government announced the end of Operation Olive Branch in the Afrin district of northwest Syria. The operation resulted in Turkey and its local allies taking control of the area, and the Syrian Democratic Forces being forced out after intense battles that led to the displacement of over half of the Afrin population. More than 90% of those…

[Editor’s note: This article was first published in Arabic on 16 February 2023, calling upon the global feminist movement to meaningfully respond to the earthquake in Syria and Turkey.] For days after the earthquake, Syrians searched for their loved ones under the rubble of destroyed buildings, or in hospital halls that had been bombed in Syria during the war. Some searched in Turkey, where they could not…

The earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria at dawn on February 6, 2023, did not, naturally, take into account the dynamics of the conflict within the borders of Syria. Nor did it care that Syrians in Turkey needed a permit to visit their country, or that the Turkish gendarmerie were killing Syrians as they tried to cross the border. Naturally, the earthquake did…

The number of people killed and injured by the earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey at dawn today, Monday 6 February 2023, is still expected to rise. Emergency teams in both countries continue to reach more affected areas. The first earthquake, which struck south Turkey and northern Syria from its center in Kahramanmaraş, was at a magnitude of 7.8 and caused numerous human losses and…

We witness the news from Iran with some hope and a lot of feelings of solidarity with people like us who no longer tolerate living under the rule of a terrorizing, authoritarian and imperialist regime. Images of the revolution in Iran show a clear feminist force on the street in adjacency to many other laboring and ethnic groups that have been maltreated by the regime….

In the late 1880s, immigrants from present-day Syria and Lebanon, all of whom were then known as Syrians, began moving to Boston’s South End. This was part of the first major wave of migration from the Ottoman Empire to the Americas. “Little Syrias” cropped up from New York to Havana and Rio de Janeiro and within thirty years, most properties in Boston’s Arab neighborhood were…

Amjad sits behind the cash register of a takeaway restaurant. He talks to customers, takes money from them, and then answers the phone and writes down the caller’s order with their delivery address. Whenever an opportunity arises, he peeks into the book lying open on his feet. Amjad is a third-year student at the Faculty of Economics. He works evening shifts in this fast food…

The two-word farewell became the lyrics of a song. Its melody enveloped the long columns of cars as newly displaced families fled the hell of Russian airstrikes and Syrian regime forces, which were rapidly advancing on rural Aleppo, Hama and Idlib governorates in 2019.  ‘Goodbye, house’ This was the title of videos that began spreading across social media at the time. Perhaps the most famous…

Maha Haj doesn’t remember the exact moment she thought of the idea that later led to Mediterranean Fever, her second feature-length film which recently won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section. She knows it was about five years ago. “Next time I want to write a film, I’ll make sure to write down the date, place, time and feeling…