The newspaper is back in Damascus, and in print. Photo courtesy of Enab Baladi.
‘The Grapes of our Country’
Kholoud Helmi talks about the revolutionary newspaper Enab Baladi, and journalism after Assad.
3 MAY 2025
“Before the fall of the regime, I was in a terrible way,” Kholoud says. “I switched off, and I thought that nothing was going to change.” Syrians had seen Arab states normalising with the Assad regime, and some European governments seemed on their way down the same path. And a meeting with officials in London made Kholoud fear that even the British might consider an accommodation with the regime.
“Two weeks after that moment where I lost faith in everything, where I thought that even the UK is going to normalise—all of a sudden Syria was liberated! And now we are in a new stage of limbo, with new questions.”
Kholoud Helmi is one of the co-founders of Enab Baladi, a weekly newspaper, and a leading example of the independent news media that came out of the 2011 revolution. We wanted to hear how the paper is doing, and to know Kholoud’s thoughts about independent media’s role in Syria’s future.
On paper and online
“When I first saw it printed on paper, I cried my heart out,” Kholoud tells us. The newspaper Enab Baladi was born in the city of Daraya in the southern suburbs of Damascus. Daraya was already known as a centre of civil activism for years before the 2011 uprising, and during the first year of the revolution, all kinds of projects were launched by local activists. “We used to distribute pamphlets on what citizenship is, what democracy is, what elections mean, why we need elections, all these things,” Kholoud remembers.
“We gathered the same group of activists around the idea, what about having our own newspaper? We could do the news ourselves, because we live here, we know what is going on, and we can go to neighbouring cities and get interviews from people, and spread the news.”
That first issue—number zero—appeared on the 29th of January 2012. Their initial plan was to distribute the newspaper to people in the streets during protests, but Jawad Sharbaji, currently editor in chief, argued at the time that they should do all they could to protect the identities of the team. “He asked us literally not to tell anyone who we are, what we’re doing, even our parents.” So they developed a more secretive distribution system.
The newspaper was being printed in Jawad’s place at night, using a home printer. He and his wife would then fold the issues, and put them in black plastic sacks. A nearby rubbish bin was the dropoff point. The next person in the chain collected the bags in their car, and drove them to the next stop. Then they would be shared out amongst a trusted network.
“For example, I would take fifty copies, put them in bags, and hide them with clothes on top. Then I would walk to the next friend.” Three times, Kholoud came perilously close to being caught at checkpoints.
Those days, everyone involved was a volunteer. “We didn’t pay anyone a penny. And we got some donations from local people to print it, for the cost of the paper and the ink. But because we were controlled by the regime, by fear, we were not able to print large numbers,” Kholoud says. “The largest numbers printed inside Syria were less than a thousand copies.”
They were also publishing online, and this is how they first drew international attention. “In 2012 we started to get support from Internews,” an organisation supporting independent media internationally, “but that was training and equipment, not funding.”
At the end of 2013, they were forcibly displaced, like so many others, and in 2014, they opened their office in Istanbul. “Early 2014 was when we started to get funding, from Free Press Unlimited in the Netherlands, the CFI, a French organisation which is an independent media incubator, and also IMS, International Media Support in Denmark. We started to rely on small funds from here and there, and that’s how we survived all these years.”
When they first moved to Turkey, they found it too expensive to produce a print edition. Then a collective initiative began with international support for the printing of seven different newspapers. “They were printed in Turkey, and then shipped to the liberated areas in Aleppo and the north. But that also stopped when the funds stopped, in 2017 or 2018, I think.” Enab Baladi continues to produce weekly issues in PDF form, as well as publishing individual stories online. “And then we have our podcast, and we have our video platform, kind of like a small TV show,” Kholoud says proudly.
“We have a very prominent Syrian presenter, Abdul Moein Abdul Majeed. He used to work for state TV, and when he defected, he came to Enab Baladi and he continued his very popular programme, filming in Istanbul, and now it’s going on in the streets of Damascus.”
Abdul Moein Abdul Majeed meeting people in Damascus.
Enab Baladi was quick to return after the fall of the Assad regime. “We have our office open in Mezzeh in Damascus, and we have hired around ten people now in the office, between reporters, designers, and other staff members.” They can pay ten people in Damascus for close to the cost of one person’s salary in Istanbul.
“Fortunately, up to now, the space is open. There is still freedom of expression. And our reporters, they do go anywhere. However, they need to get permits from the government media department, and permits to attend big meetings, like the National Dialogue Conference for example.”
And since Enab Baladi’s return to Damascus, they have again started printing the paper. “You can see it in the hands of people in Al-Rawda Cafe or in Havana Cafe or in any other public places. The management saved money to print some copies inside Damascus, because it’s symbolic for us.”
Today’s news
In the early years of the Syrian revolution, international funding for independent media flowed, and lots of initiatives sprang up. After the loss of Eastern Aleppo City to the Assad regime at the end of 2016, funding began to shrink. But the current cuts in American aid are much more drastic, Kholoud explains.
“We are not in a repeat—we are in a more dramatic position,” Kholoud says. In the past, when support for media was reduced, Enab Baladi managed to get funding in other related areas. “So for example, the appetite of foreign aid was, let’s say ‘today we are supporting gender,’ or, ‘we are supporting governance,’ you know?” Or the fashion changed to migration, or security and CVE—Countering Violent Extremism.
“So the funds were ongoing for other projects, and how we survived was if the trend was now to support gender, for example, we could propose training female journalists, and continue to receive funds. But currently, Uncle Trump has closed the tap. Full stop, no funds across everything, no gender, no media, no reconstruction, nothing.”
The latest casualties include some significant organisations. “Radio Fresh, Radio Alkul, and Aleppo Today—after the Trump cut, they stopped,” Kholoud says. “Radio Alkul stopped broadcasting. Radio Fresh still exists on social media, but their funds ceased. If they get a new source of funding, they might continue. Aleppo Today used to be a TV channel, but it’s shut.”
Enab Baladi has also been hit. Two of their projects had been receiving USAID funding, and a third was funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. “They told us that their money is frozen, and while they didn’t end things with us, they said, ‘We don’t have the money to pay you.’”
When Enab Baladi was based in Turkey, they tried raising money from advertising, but it didn’t work. “The fact is that we are revolutionaries. Our name means ‘The Grapes of Our Country,’ and our slogan is, ‘from the orchards of the revolution,’ so it was near to impossible to go to a restaurant, or whatever, in Istanbul or in Gaziantep, and tell them that we can advertise for you. Why? Because everybody was afraid.”
The end of the regime brought an end to that fear for many, and Enab Baladi’s readership in Damascus has spiked, so perhaps economic opportunities may also come, if sanctions are lifted and recovery becomes a reality. “But until now, we are one hundred percent dependent on aid.”
So, with independent media under threat, where do Syrians get their news? “Number one is social media,” Kholoud says. “It’s very big. Big and dangerous—disinformation, oh my God, it’s so intense.”
To counter this, Syrians need the kind of in-depth, credible, nationwide reporting that Enab Baladi aims to provide. What other media organisations are trying to do that kind of work, we ask? “Syria TV, the private, Qatari funded station, they’re heavily present now. They do have the money and the forces to be everywhere. They used to operate from Istanbul, but now they moved to Damascus as well. Everybody is watching Syria TV now, because the national TV station is still closed.”
This can cause confusion, Kholoud explains. “Unfortunately, sometimes Syria TV conveys wrong information—unwittingly, unknowingly, I don’t know—and the international media falls into the trap of thinking it’s the national TV channel. The other day Reuters mentioned something that was completely wrong, based on a piece of news reported by Syria TV.”
And then there are Syrian independent outlets. “Radio Rozana was one of the very first radio stations in Syria,” Kholoud tells us. “They are among the very few organisations still supported by the international media support organisations, so Enab Baladi, Al-Jumhuriya, Rozana, Arta FM—a Kurdish radio station—and others.” These are among the most credible independent media outlets still operating, she believes.
“The thing that still dazzles me is the platforms that used to operate under the Assad regime, and they’re still there,” Kholoud says, wide-eyed. “They changed gears, calling al-Sharaa the president of Syria, you know what I mean? They changed their political affiliation all of a sudden.”
Israeli tanks in Syria
Aid cuts and economic sanctions aren’t all that stand in the way of Syria’s recovery. Violence continues, and there are fears of a new war.
“The other day, a friend of mine from Tasil, which is among the western villages of Daraa, the Yarmouk area, he said that Israeli tanks entered,” Kholoud is saying. “So when I talked to people from Daraa, they said that this is normal. When the Assad regime was there, the Israeli forces used to enter Syria, and they used to buy groceries, cigarettes, cheese, yogurt, or whatever, from local Syrian shops and then return to their bases at the border.”
Israel has occupied Syria’s Golan Heights since the Six-Day War of 1967. The area was fought over again in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. A ceasefire line was agreed in 1974, with a UN buffer zone, and with observation posts manned by UNDOF, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force. But according to locals, the presence of the observers didn’t prevent Israeli soldiers strolling across the ceasefire line.
“So it seems that in the past, the Assad regime was not mentioning these things, and the media was not mentioning these things,” Kholoud says. “But now it’s open, and everybody discusses whatever they want.”
On the 8th of December, the day Assad fled, Israel invaded the UN buffer zone, and since then they have gone further. “My friend said, now the tanks are approaching. So it’s the army now, not just individuals.”
“And Europe and the UK, they consider Syria safe, and they’re sending refugees back,” Kholoud Helmi points out. “Austria says it is deporting 2,900 people back to Syria. I don’t know why we have to live all these incidents in one lifetime. I mean, I lived everything. I’m done. I’m so tired. I just need to see the end of the movie. Like when they write in a film or a documentary — ‘The End’ — I want to see that, and then just close my eyes.”
Syria united or divided?
Before Assad fled, Kholoud had felt most Syrians were united in opposition to the regime. “Once Assad fell, we started to feel that we do have different agendas, and Syrians are not meeting on common ground now, unfortunately.”
One example is an ongoing dispute in the southern province of Suweida, where the population is majority Druze, over what relationship the area should have with the government in Damascus. “You have different voices in Suweida now,” Kholoud tells us. “A portion of people don’t want to surrender their arms to the government, claiming that the government is not going to protect them. And now we started to hear people from Suweida say that they want to have a federation.”
The idea of a federal system has long been promoted by the Kurdish PYD party which leads the SDF, the Coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces controlling northeast Syria. Hearing the idea being promoted in Suweida, in the south, is something new to Kholoud. And what is at stake is more than an abstract argument over political systems.
“Israel is taking its turn to mobilise people,” Kholoud points out. Even before Assad’s fall, an approach of exploiting ethnic divisions in Syria was favoured by some in Israel’s government. In early November, Israel’s new Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had said that “in a region where we will always be a minority, natural alliances will be with other minorities,” naming in particular Kurdish and Druze minorities in Syria.
In January, Israel Hayom newspaper reported that Gideon Sa’ar had held a lengthy phone call with the PYD politician Îlham Ahmed. And on February 1st, the Jerusalem Post published an interview with Îlham Ahmed where she argued that different parts of Syria—the PYD-ruled northeast, the coastal cities, the Druze communities—could not be unified under one system without civil war. She was against lifting sanctions, she told journalist Jonathan Spyer, and she believed Israel needed to be involved in discussions.
However, rather than opening any talks with the new government in Damascus, Israel was instead continuing to bomb Syrian military sites, and establishing its new military outposts in southern Syria. And then Israeli leaders began using the Druze as justification for their actions.
“We will not allow HTS forces or the new Syrian army to enter the area south of Damascus,” Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a speech on February 23rd. “We demand the complete demilitarisation of southern Syria in the provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Suwayda from the forces of the new regime. Likewise, we will not tolerate any threat to the Druze community in southern Syria.”
Remarkably, that very same day, an armed group calling itself the Suwayda Military Council announced its formation. Video of their launch at Al Kafr Agricultural Airport, south of Suwayda, featured a speech from their leader, Tareq Al Shoufi, flanked by men in combat fatigues.
A report by Enab Baladi noted that the Suwayda Military Council’s logo was similar to that used by the SDF—an outline map of Syria, with the line of the Euphrates river across it—and that the PYD’s website had welcomed its formation. The political visions of the two groups were aligned, Enab Baladi reported, with both advocating a decentralised and secular Syria. Al-Shoufi also claimed that he was coordinating with the US-led Coalition, as the PYD-led SDF does.
Suspicions of links to the PYD—or to Israel—prompted the Suwayda Military Council’s commander to issue a statement that it was “a Syrian national project, not affiliated with any party.” More established military factions in Sweida did not join in the new formation, and on the day of the launch, several of their leaders were instead in Damascus for negotiations with the interim government.
Many Druze people in Syria were worried by Israel’s attempt to use them as justification for its actions. Demonstrations were held in Druze-populated Jaramana and Suwayda city against Israel’s military campaign in Quneitra and Daraa. “We reject any Israeli interference in Syria,” Mufid Karbah, a civil activist from Jaramana told the news website Syria Direct.
An article published by Al-Jumhuriya in March reported on how the conflict within Druze politics went beyond Syria. In Lebanon, veteran Druze leader Walid Jumblatt warned to “beware of Israeli intrigues in Syria,” and he accused Mowafaq Tarif, a Druze spiritual leader in Israel, of attempting to monopolise Druze representation in the region with Israeli support. Mowafaq Tarif had visited Washington DC in January, meeting US lawmakers, and urging “international involvement and monitoring” in southern Syria.
Al-Jumhuriya’s report suggested that what had raised alarm amongst Druze in Lebanon was more than just Israeli government statements. At another meeting in Washington DC in early February, Khaldoun al-Hijri, a relative of the religious leader in Sweida, Hikmat al-Hijri, met with American officials. He wanted to hear their views on an apparent plan for a coup in Syria, led by forces from Suweida and with the participation of the SDF and Alawite groups from the Syrian coast, with Israeli support. Khaldoun al-Hijri told Al-Jumhuriya, “Overall, we agree with the US administration’s vision of allowing space for diplomacy and dialogue.”
It may be that Khaldoun al-Hijri learned of this possible coup in the Wall Street Journal, where journalist Jonathan Spyer—the same who had interviewed Kurdish politician Îlham Ahmed for the Jerusalem Post—outlined the possible elements of such a plan in an article dated February 2nd, arguing that HTS was militarily relatively weak compared to a combination of the SDF, Druze forces in Suweida, and others, including pro-Assad forces still active in Alawite areas on the coast.
It would be up to the West to decide whether to “support a new, centralized, authoritarian, Islamist Syria,” Jonathan Spyer argued, or to “consider other options.” Missing from his article, however, was any assessment of the likely consequences of encouraging a sectarian military conflict in Syria.
Ten media studies graduates recently attended the Mares (Practice) programme in Enab Baladi’s news hub. The nine women and one man received training over six weeks delivered by managing editors and senior editors of Enab Baladi.
Covering regions and communities
The day on which we interview Kholoud is the 6th of March. As we talk, first reports are coming in about a set of coordinated attacks against government forces in the coastal governorates of Latakia and Tartous. The subsequent horror of sectarian massacres has yet to unfold.
The day before saw street battles in the town of Al-Sanamayn, in Daraa governorate. Kholoud talks to us about the difficulty of reporting on events across all of Syria’s regions and communities.
“For one outlet like Enab Baladi, we don’t have the capacity to send reporters to every single village inside Syria,” Kholoud says. “Not even every governorate. We don’t have the luxury of a hundred reporters all over Syria.”
The gaps left by a shortage of professional news media are filled by social media. “People rely on the news that’s spread on social media, from locals who are reporting things from their local areas.” But to be able to judge the reliability of such local sources, it’s necessary to have local knowledge, and to understand the local experiences, prejudices, and conflicts that may be colouring their reports.
“Yesterday, the clashes in Sanamayn were with one of the most vicious armed groups there. They used to be affiliated with the Assad regime, and they were big traders of Captagon. So, bad people, and they were approached by the General Security in Damascus, and it was almost like street war, you know? A guerrilla war in the streets.”
In this case, Enab Baladi had the capacity to cover the story with confidence. “We do have a reporter in Daraa,” Kholoud affirms. “It’s easy for him to go to Sanamein and report things. He has connections there. He got the news and reported on it. So, because we have reporters there, and we trust people from wider connections, we can know what is going on.”
For Kholoud, part of this is knowing certain people from early on in the revolution, and having the experience with them to know that they can have a certain degree of impartiality, whereas others, including amongst the revolution’s supporters, can be laden with sectarianism and anger.
But when it comes to reports from, for example, Alawite villages, Kholoud is not confident that the newspaper has enough of an understanding to judge reports from locals. “I’m not saying that people are not credible,” she says. “But we don’t have enough access to these areas, and we don’t know what source of information is credible,” she explains. “And it’s mayhem, regarding disinformation.”
Tackling this requires increased capacity. So, not just funds to employ more people from different communities and regions, but also to train them.
“I needed training when I started my career,” Kholoud points out. “Capacity building is massive. You can see the gap between reporters working from Damascus now, compared to people that we trained when they first joined Enab Baladi in Istanbul, who are accustomed to being impartial, and reporting professionally. We are currently planning to do more training.”
Security is also an issue, and Kholoud links this back to the issue of diversity, to have reporters with the local knowledge to be able to assess risk, reporters who can fit in. “So, it sends us back to square one, where we need more funds to deploy more people, from different sects and different areas.”
From all we had talked about, the importance of this task for Syria’s future was already clear. The dreadful news from Latakia and Tartous over the following days would confirm the great urgency of this work, for human security, for preventing further atrocities, and for healing a traumatised and damaged society.
Notes
Enab Baladi in English
https://english.enabbaladi.net
Enab Baladi in Arabic
https://www.enabbaladi.net
Enab Baladi YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfqSMELWF9cQPbiB74gYuWA
Internews
https://internews.org
Free Press Unlimited
https://www.freepressunlimited.org/en
CFI
https://cfi.fr/
International Media Support
https://www.mediasupport.org
— on ‘Syria united or divided’
Israel Hayom report on Gideon Sa’ar phone call with Îlham Ahmed, 2 January 2025.
https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/geopolitics/article/17081858
Jerusalem Post interview with Îlham Ahmed, 1 February 2025.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-840032
Enab Baladi article (in Arabic) on the Suwayda Military Council, 26 February 2025.
https://www.enabbaladi.net/741447/
Syria Direct article on Druze fears of increased sectarianism following Israeli moves, 21 March 2025.
https://syriadirect.org/as-israel-instrumentalizes-syrias-druze-some-fear-increased-sectarianism/
Al-Jumhuriya article (in Arabic) on Druze political divisions over Israel’s intervention in Syria, 6 March 2025.
https://aljumhuriya.net/ar/2025/03/06/كيف-انفجر-الوضع/
Wall Street Journal article by Jonathan Spyer arguing that Syria’s new government is vulnerable, 2 February 2025.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/syria-has-a-new-governmentor-does-it-al-sharaa-hts-islamist-0f938cc5
A critical moment for media
Camilla Bruun Randrup of IMS on challenges for Syrian independent news media.
Camilla Bruun Randrup of IMS on challenges for Syrian independent news media.