Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh:  'The Syrian revolution has just entered its fourteenth year. The Arab Spring revolutions swept across the Arab world and broke out in Syria on 15 March, 2011. Had it not been for Russia’s intervention, the Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad would have been overthrown. He preferred Syria to fall into the clutches of the Russian occupation than for himself to join the tyrants Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Egypt, Libya and Yemen respectively.  Assad was not the only regional dictator fearing ..read more

 ' “We’ve broken the barrier of fear… we’re not afraid anymore,” Syrian women activists say, as they reflect on the past 13 years of ongoing oppression in their homeland.  Since 15 March 2011, Syrians have been living under the brutal bombardment of the Assad régime, which cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protestors and continues to threaten those who dare to stand against it.  The war has resulted in the displacement of over 13 million Syrians, the detention of tens of thousands of civilians, and over 500,000 deaths, the majority of which are at the hands o ..read more

   'For families on the frontline, the end is nowhere in sight.  "The bombing is always ongoing; every hour, every minute, all the time, " says Khaledia Sakahi, a displaced woman. "If it is not on our village, the bombing will be near it. The villages around us are also being bombed.I can't count them all. But the bombing continues, morning and night, and death, as I told you, many people die."  In Idlib, emergency workers say the death toll in their region is rising.  "The statistics for the year 2023 were more than 1230 attacks, with more than 170 killed and 30 ..read more

   'Ali’s cat Rocky slinks along the windowsill. Behind him, the window looks out onto a quiet, residential street. Storm Jocelyn’s approach is just starting to move the bushes in the garden.  He hands me his phone to look at a photograph. A young couple. Three smiling children. The man in the picture is his son Zayan.  Ali (55) hasn’t seen his son in almost 13 years, and that wait could become interminable soon.  Both names are pseudonyms, chosen to protect their safety; they are still fearful of reprisals in the Middle East.   Zayan (29) is facing deportatio ..read more

   ' “Imagine yourself operating on a patient when you are being attacked by barrel bombs and missiles. Your hands are shaking, the hospital is shaking, soil could go in the patient’s wounds while you are operating and then you have to wait a while until the strike stops and carry on.”  These days, Dr Ayman Alshiekh, 38, is a surgeon in an immaculate, state-of-the-art hospital in Manchester city centre. But only a few years ago, the doctor was facing the unthinkable – trying to save lives in a bloody field hospital in Syria, being hunted by a brutal régime. &nbs ..read more

Ziad Majed:   ‘…a crime that will last long, meaning you will keep thinking of it. It will go with you, not like rape, there’s nothing like rape, but it’s in a way; instrumentalising the rape as well, is to target the person, but also the whole social environment, and the whole society, with crimes that we go with you, as the régime says, forever. Marking the bodies of the people, through torture, through hunger, through rape; so that the crime will live with those that survived, and with their families, as long as possible. That is a policy, it’s not just violent thugs who go and ..read more

 Ziad Majed:   ‘… in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, where Daesh imposed itself.  Now, regardless of all that, the social basis of the régime, and the demography supporting the régime, was becoming more and more tired with the war. By 2015, with all those complications, and lack of international political investment in Syria, lack of initiatives - there was a UN initiative in Geneva bringing some representatives of the régime, and different opposition groups to talk about a possible constitution, reconciliation, ending the conflict – all of that is agonising in fact, not progress ..read more

 Ziad Majed:  ‘…And the borders might be more important than the political sociology. Also see the conspiracy theories, we’ve seen it more than in other cases, maybe because of its geography, or political geography. It reflected lots of divisions, not only in Syria, or the region, but internationally as well, in the two sides of the political map, whether on the right, or on the left.  After 12 years we can start examining some dynamics, that happened through the development of the conflict; or of the revolution at the beginning, then the war, then the series of military int ..read more

   'Jamal Saeed sought refuge in Canada in 2016 after being imprisoned three times for a total of 12 years in his native Syria. Imprisoned for his political writing and his opposition to the régimes of the al-Assads, Saeed spent years in Syria's most notorious military prisons. My Road from Damascus, translated by Catherine Cobham, tells the story of his life as he chronicles the sociopolitical landscape in Syria since the 1950s and his hope for the future.  You can read an excerpt of My Road from Damascus below.  As the steel door swung open, seven ..read more

   Dawn Clancy:  'In early October, a suicide drone ripped through a graduation ceremony at a military academy in Homs, Syria, killing and injuring dozens of civilians and cadets while delivering an equally devastating blow to the psyche of the Syrian régime and its embattled leader, President Bashar al-Assad.  Although no group took responsibility for the Oct. 5 attack, the Syrian army, without providing details, blamed the incident on “terrorist groups” in the northwest of the country, backed by “known international forces,” meaning the West, led by the United States ..read more