Independent Media

Showing posts with label Independent Media. Show all posts
|
An investigation of a CNN news report found all was not as it seemed.

Rumours and lies


We talk to Ahmad Primo of Verify Syria, an organisation dedicated to fact-checking stories from Syria.

4 MAY 2025
            





Verify Syria was established nine years ago, in February 2016, Ahmad Primo tells us. “As a journalist who started working in the media years before the Syrian revolution, I saw firsthand how misinformation shaped public opinion.” His aim with Verify Syria was to create an independent platform committed to the truth, and free from all biases.

Ahmad found that both the Assad regime and ISIS regarded truth as a dangerous enemy. “I was arrested by the Syrian regime three times between 2011 and 2012, and I was kidnapped by ISIS in 2013, because of my journalism and my commitment to conveying the truth about what was happening.”

Like so many others, he was forced into exile. “I’ve been living in Norway for over two years,” he says. “Norway ranks at the top of the global press freedom index, while Syria is at the very bottom.”

Misinformation and disinformation were used by all sides during the revolution and war, Ahmad says, “either to tarnish their opponents’ image or to polish their own,” and this contributed to turning a revolution for freedom into a war that fuelled sectarian hatred, “portraying Sunni Muslims as ISIS militants, Kurds as PKK terrorists, Shias as Iranian agents, and Christians as traitors loyal to Western interests over Syrian ones.”

So, how have things changed since the fall of the Assad regime, we ask? “The targets and the intended audience have shifted, or rather expanded,” Ahmad tells us. And the tools used have also evolved. “Since the fall of the Assad regime, we’ve monitored various misinformation campaigns, each with its tools and target audiences.”

There are campaigns undermining social cohesion by inciting hatred between sects, campaigns depicting Syria as a crime-ridden war zone, and ones trying to rehabilitate the regime’s image. There are even campaigns aimed at discrediting well-documented facts about detention centres, Ahmad says.

Verify Syria can’t tackle all of this alone. “However, we’ve succeeded in cultivating critical skepticism among our audience,” Ahmad believes. “The first step in combating misinformation is learning to question information.”

Polarisation worsened over the long years of war. “This is understandable,” Ahamad says, “but we work hard to overcome it by proving our independence and debunking false narratives from all sides.”


Sowing division

Many of the incidents of false information exposed by Verify Syria are cases where old events are misrepresented on social media as being recent, such as a video circulated in December which claimed to show one of the victorious rebels smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary. In fact the video was from 2013, and the incident had been condemned at the time by leaders of the opposition who had identified the perpetrator as an ISIS member.

Sometimes these falsehoods use images unconnected with Syria, such as a social media post claiming to show a poster honouring Saddam Hussein being erected in Syria following the fall of the regime. In fact the image was of an event in Tunisia in 2007.

In another case, a video that was claimed to be of a beheading in Syria instead was revealed to be over a year old and from Mexico, showing gang violence there.

Some stories call for deeper investigation, such as a claim made in January that threats from Hay’at Tahrir al Sham had forced the closure of a church in Al-Suqayliba, in Hama governorate, a town with a large Greek Orthodox population.

A photo of the church showing its doorway and windows bricked-up was posted on Facebook and Twitter, and other websites.

A local priest contacted by Verify Syria denied that the closure was due to threats. He said that the church had been closed at the request of its owner, Nabeul Al-Abdullah. The church was not part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Hama, he said, and other churches in Al-Suqayliba that were part of the Archdiocese had remained open. This was confirmed by the Facebook pages of Al-Suqayliba Parish Council and Al-Suqayliba Church News, which posted photographs of congregations celebrating mass in two churches in the town.

Nabeul Al-Abdullah had been a local Assad regime shabiha leader, and he was accused of war crimes, Verify Syria reported. In 2020, it was reported that Nabeul Al-Abdullah’s church-building project was being supported by the Russian State Duma. In 2022, he was sanctioned by the UK for recruiting mercenaries to fight for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

Nabeul Al-Abdullah with a Russian officer in 2020

On December 8th, the same day Assad fled, Nabeul Al-Abdullah had posted a photo on Facebook showing himself sitting in the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Moscow. This ornate building, completed in 2020 as the main temple of Russia’s military, is dedicated to the memory of the victory of 1945, and to “the military feats of the Russian people in all wars.”


Mainstream misinformation

Problems of misinformation aren’t limited only to social media, and so Verify Syria also scrutinises mainstream media stories. In December, one particular CNN video report drew a lot of attention.

The original headline on CNN’s website was, “‘My God there is light’: CNN witnesses moment Syrian prisoner is freed from Assad’s forced detention,” with the text going on to say, “While searching a secretive prison in the belly of the Assad regime’s legacy of torture for American journalist Austin Tice, CNN’s Clarissa Ward made a startling discovery when a rebel fighter uncovered a hidden prisoner still unaware of Assad’s ouster.”


Verify Syria observed that the man appeared clean and physically healthy, with no visible injuries or signs of torture,“an incongruous portrayal of someone allegedly held in solitary confinement in the dark for ninety days.”

By investigating locally, Verify Syria discovered that the man’s name was not Adel Gharbal as claimed in the CNN report, but Salama Mohammad Salama, known as Abu Hamza, a first lieutenant in the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence.

Abu Hamza had managed several regime security checkpoints in the city of Homs, and he was allegedly involved in theft and extortion, Verify Syria found. His recent incarceration had lasted less than a month, locals said, and it was due to a dispute with a higher-ranking officer over sharing his profits from extortion.

CNN subsequently amended its report.

Another fact-check of international media looked at a claim made by Alastair Campbell, who co-hosts the podcast The Rest is Politics with Rory Stewart. They both had travelled to Damascus in early February to interview interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa. While discussing that interview on their podcast, Alastair Campbell claimed that when al-Sharaa returned to Syria from Iraq in 2011, amongst those accompanying him had been Asaad al-Shaibani, now Syria’s foreign minister. This was untrue, Verify Syria found—Asaad al-Shaibani had not been in Iraq with al-Sharaa.


Horror and exploitation

On March 6th began the worst period of violence in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime. First, non-state armed groups linked to the Assad regime carried out coordinated attacks targeting the security and military forces of the transitional government in the governorates of Latakia, Tartus, and Hama. Government forces then began security operations in response.

What happened next, according to an interim report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, was that local military factions and foreign Islamist groups affiliated with the Ministry of Defence, “though without any actual organizational integration,” joined in, as did armed civilian groups. Large-scale atrocities followed, “most of which had a retaliatory and sectarian nature,” targeting Alawites in particular, with summary executions and mass killings, attacks targeting civilians, including medical, media, and humanitarian personnel, and attacks on property, all leading to the forced displacement of hundreds of residents.

Even as the killing was at its height, deliberate disinformation was being spread on social media, with several false reports of individual deaths. When some of these reports were debunked, the effect was to create unwarranted doubt about the very real murders of civilians that were taking place.

At the time of writing, SNHR has confirmed the deaths of at least 1,217 people, either civilians or disarmed prisoners, who were illegally killed by government-aligned forces in the period from March 6th to March 10th. These include 51 children, 63 women, and 32 medical personnel.

SNHR has counted a further 445 people killed by armed groups linked to the Assad regime, of whom 231 were civilians and 214 were members of the new government’s General Security Forces.

SNHR has not published a count of members of armed groups linked to the Assad regime who were killed in combat, as those deaths are not considered violations of the law.

The government is carrying out its own investigation. On March 9th, interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed a fact-finding committee to investigate, initially giving it thirty days to report, and later extending this deadline by three months.

In its interim report, SNHR called for enhancing the effectiveness and transparency of the government’s investigation by including independent human rights organisations, and by engaging members of the Alawite community and representatives from the affected areas.

SNHR also recommended expanding the geographic scope of the investigation beyond the coastal region of Latakia and Tartus, as the governorates of Hama and Homs also saw violations targeting civilians.

For their part, Verify Syria tackled what they described as “staggering levels” of manipulation in Syria’s online space. “Fake news, miscontextualized content, and outright disinformation have spread like wildfire,” they wrote.

False reports, using manipulated YouTube videos, claimed that Ahmed al-Sharaa had been assassinated.

A widely shared video claiming to show barrel bombs impacting civilian homes was in reality of Israeli airstrikes on Qusaya, Lebanon, in December, but another video filmed inside a helicopter showing bombs being dropped over the coast appeared to be genuine, and was geolocated near the city of Jableh in the Latakia countryside.

A viral video which claimed to show an “Alawite family being shot by HTS and Turkish mercenaries” was actually of Israeli forces attacking a family in Aitaroun, Lebanon, in January.

Another video claiming to show crimes in Syria’s coastal region actually came from India. It was filmed in Kastbhanjan Balaji Dham temple, known for exorcism rituals.

A video falsely claimed that a Christian priest named Yohanna Boutros had been executed by Syrian forces. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese denied such a person existed.

A Verify Syria team member debunked rumors of a mass killing inside a church in Baniyas. However, he confirmed that Jihad Bishara, the father of the church’s priest, had been killed. Disinformation falsely claiming that Christians were being targeted was amplified by Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and others. The sectarian attacks targeted Alawites, not Christians.

In all of this, the voices of genuine victims risked being lost. The website Syria Untold, together with Lebanese news site Daraj Media, published a harrowing series of personal testimonies gathered by Syrian writer Rosa Yassin Hassan. Six articles have been published in Arabic and English.


The cost of independence

To maintain independence as a nonprofit, Verify Syria relies on grants from international media support organisations, but getting funding has become harder. “Funding cuts, like the Trump administration’s suspension of USAID support, have significantly impacted us,” Ahmad admits. “To cope, we’ve started training and integrating volunteers into our team.”

International aid is also crucial for other Syrian independent news media. “Without it, independent journalism would collapse, leaving the field open to biased, agenda-driven media funded by political actors,” Ahmad believes. “We struggle to compete with state-funded media giants, like those backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”

Sanctions make life harder, also for journalists. “Many organisations that support independent media avoid Syria due to sanctions and legal complexities,” Ahmad says. “This pushes donors to fund projects in non-sanctioned countries like Lebanon, Sudan, or Turkey, while Syria—where the need is greatest—is left behind.”

Verify Syria is part of a collective fight by Syrian independent media against misinformation, Ahmad says. “We constantly coordinate and collaborate.” And some things are better now. “Since December 8th, we haven’t received any reports of journalists being arrested or detained in Syria. Despite the high level of critical journalism, there seem to be no red lines or restrictions—everyone is writing, filming, and reporting freely. This is a promising development, and I hope it continues.”

He now wants to see Syria climb up the press freedom index, and for Syrian journalism to be strong enough to prevent any regime, current or future, from establishing a new dictatorship. “This is a long road, but I’m confident,” Ahmad says.


Notes

— Examples of Verify Syria fact checks

Fact Check: The Virgin Mary statue destruction video is from 2013, not recent, 21 December 2024
https://verify-sy.com/en/details/10572/Fact-Check:-The-Virgin-Mary-Statue-Destruction-Video-is-from-2013,-Not-Recent

What is the truth about the closure of the Hagia Sophia Church in Al-Suqayliba? (in Arabic) 10 January 2025
https://verify-sy.com/ar/details/10600/

Updated: Did CNN fabricate the story of “freeing a Syrian detainee from a secret prison”? 15 December 2024
https://verify-sy.com/en/details/10562/

Did Al-Shaybani enter Syria with Al-Sharaa? 11 February 2025
https://verify-sy.com/en/details/10649/


— SNHR reporting on the killings of March 6th onwards

Preliminary report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 11 March 2025
https://snhr.org/blog/2025/03/11/803-individuals-extrajudicially-killed-between-march-6-10-2025/

SNHR updated toll of extrajudicial killings between March 6-10 2025, updated 16 April 2025
https://news.snhr.org/2025/04/16/daily-update-toll-of-extrajudicial-killings-that-took-place-in-the-wake-of-the-events-in-the-syrian-coastal-region-between-march-6-and-march-10-2025/


— Testimonies of Survivors of the Coast Massacre, Rosa Yassin Hassan for Syria Untold

1. To whom will I say good morning from now on?
https://syriauntold.com/2025/03/20/to-whom-will-i-say-good-morning-from-now-on/

2. About Mila, who was killed but did not die, and Mira, who was not killed but did die
https://syriauntold.com/2025/03/26/about-mila-who-was-killed-but-did-not-die-and-mira-who-was-not-killed-but-did-die/

3. How will I recover from their eyes?
https://syriauntold.com/2025/04/02/how-will-i-recover-from-their-eyes/

4. Observations by a relief volunteer
https://syriauntold.com/2025/04/12/testimonies-of-survivors-of-the-coast-massacre-4-observations-by-a-relief-volunteer/

5. I will delete all messages as soon as they are sent
https://syriauntold.com/2025/04/18/testimonies-of-survivors-of-the-coast-massacre-5-i-will-delete-all-messages-as-soon-as-they-are-sent/

6. Mothers searching for their children’s bodies
https://syriauntold.com/2025/04/24/testimonies-of-survivors-of-the-coast-massacre-6-mothers-searching-for-their-childrens-bodies/


|
At a Ministry of Information press conference, 19 March 2025.

A freedom with rules


After the unspoken red lines of the Assad era, journalism in today’s Syria needs some clear rules, Yara Bader argues.

4 MAY 2025
            





Yara Bader is head of the Media and Freedoms programme at the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, an organisation she runs together with her husband Mazen Darwish. When we spoke, they were in the process of reestablishing an office in Damascus, after several years of being forced to work from exile in France.

In recent years, SCM has been most known for its work on legal accountability, helping to gather evidence for legal cases in Europe, but press freedom has been central to their mission since before the 2011 revolution.

Yara’s own beginnings were in journalism rather than activism. “Cultural journalism was my area,” she tells us, and she wrote her first articles while she was still in her first year at university, studying dramatic arts.

All journalism in Syria at that time was marked by self-censorship, but the regime’s red lines were not written down, “so it depended on your understanding of Syrian politics,” Yara says.

And this extended to cultural journalism as well. “There were books you were not allowed to speak about,” Yara remembers. “And taboos on gender equality and women’s freedoms.” Again, there were no written rules. “But I’m not sure you could find any article in Syrian media at that time referring to LGBTQ points. Even articles related to something religious, for example the Yazidi community, you wouldn’t find it easily. The Kurdish issue was highly sensitive, even on cultural rights, you know?”

Yara gives an example of when the 2003 film Good Bye, Lenin! was shown during the Damascus Film Festival. The cinema was completely full because all the Mukhabarat secret police arrived, thinking all the old communists would be there, and they found an audience of young people had come.

“And when I tried to write about the film, I had to rewrite it again and again, and in the end I found something suitable, where I could express a bit of what I wanted to say without going too far,” Yara remembers. “The film itself, it’s not that much politically, but it was not easy.”


Joining SCM

Mazen Darwish founded the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression in 2004, and it was some years later when Yara Bader first met him and got involved in their work.

“So Mazen’s office had been shut down by the government on the 13th of September 2009. And then, my friend was telling me about Mazen’s work.” Mazen was looking for someone to work on research about how the Syrian government monitored and controlled cultural freedoms, Yara’s friend Wael explained to her.

“He was saying he wanted to arrange a meeting with Mazen, because Mazen was looking for someone to work on the research, but then this had happened. So I laughed and said, ‘Well, I think it’s a fine time to do the research—let’s have a coffee.’ And he said, ‘You are crazy.’ I said, ‘No, I’m serious.’”

And so Yara and Mazen’s collaboration began, and a year or so later Yara had finished the research, and they were preparing to publish—just as the first events of the Arab Spring were unfolding in Tunisia.

“Then Ben Ali ran away, and everything related to anything took a pause. We entered a new era related to Egypt, to Tunisia, to Syria, to everything. Later in 2011, once again we reviewed the research, to check if we needed to make any adjustment—but we got arrested before publishing.”

Yara still has that study, but no longer wants to publish it. “Never, ever. Because whenever I think of it, something huge happens.”

After the regime shut down SCM in 2009, they’d registered a publishing house as a vehicle for doing their work. “I applied for the registration in my name,” Yara says, “and then SCM was able to continue.”

In reality, everyone there was doing work for SCM, not the publishing house. On 16 February 2012, their office was raided. “And after one hour, in the second round of questioning, they said, ‘We are not going to ask you about the publishing house, which has been working for over a year, and you don’t have any books yet.’ We said, ‘Okay, don’t ask about the publishing house, move on.’”

Thirteen people were arrested in the February 2012 raid. Eight of them, including Yara, were released the following May. The others disappeared into Assad’s network of prisons. One of those released, Ayham Mostafa Ghazzoul was rearrested in November the same year, and was killed under torture four days after his arrest.

Mazen survived almost three and a half years imprisonment before he was released, and both Yara and he escaped to Europe.


Journalism after the Revolution

We turn back to 2011, to the beginning of the revolution. What was that period like for her, as a journalist? As a Syrian?

“It was a moment to be alive, you know? A lot of hopes, a lot of fears. Everyone recognised they were living through something huge, no matter their opinions about what was happening.”

Syrians were speaking out, and some in the world’s media were listening. “It was fascinating for us to see all these great journalists coming to Syria, trying to cover what’s happening,” Yara remembers. “Gilles Jacquier, Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik”—the names are all reporters who were killed in Homs in January and February of 2012—Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were targeted by regime artillery while staying at the media centre in the besieged neighbourhood of Baba Amr , while Gilles Jacquier was assassinated by Assad’s Air Force Intelligence, according to his wife, photojournalist Caroline Poiron.

“Also, how bittersweet it was, to get to know the very courageous, and strong, and well-educated people who shifted from their study as an engineer, or a doctor, or I don’t know what, to be a media fixer or a correspondent, like Mazhar Tayyara, and Bassel Shehadeh, and all other people who were the first people to be targeted by the government,” she says.

Mahzar Tayyara was a videographer and photojournalist, and Bassel Shehadeh was an activist, journalist, and filmmaker. Mahzar was also killed in Homs in February 2012. Bassel was killed there in May of the same year.

Yara kept on writing during this time. “On some platforms, I wrote with my own name, but on other platforms, I wrote with a different name. Officially, I continued from 2013 to the end of 2015 as the correspondent for cultural affairs for Lebanon and Damascus with Al-Quds Al-Arabi.”

And now that Assad is gone? “Actually, this is funny,” says Yara, “I was looking to go back to journalism.”

Yara hadn’t foreseen Assad’s fall. “I thought of all different scenarios, but none of them included the regime going away. It was really difficult to imagine a scenario without the Assad regime.”

She experienced it like a repeat of Ben Ali running away from Tunisia, all those years ago. “Your life goes on like this, and suddenly something shocking—totally shocking—so it was a wonderful day. A day to live for, just to see people coming out of jail after all of these years—truly, it was deserved.”

There is hope in this new era, but also uncertainty. “I don’t know if we are capable emotionally and mentally to process all of this, to find the best reaction. Sometimes you find us very happy, sometimes very worried. Sometimes, everyone will want to go back to Syria today, and then no-one wants to go.”

Yara sees the fight for human rights getting harder, the fight for values she believes in, justice, freedom and democracy. And not just in Syria, but all over the world, questions about the independence of media, and about dealing with propaganda, are fundamental. “We are going back to our basics, to think on it, to work with it.”

Yara comes out of the Syrian revolution, but she believes journalism must reject the role of cheerleader. “Of course, I am happy the regime is not here, but we should not just be happy and point.” She sees a narrowness of views in Syrian media right now. “You can find a lot of people talking, but actually they are mostly from the same viewpoint,” She feels that it’s difficult to get balanced journalism, whether on Syria TV, the Qatari-owned pro-revolution network, or on other big Arabic channels and media platforms.

As an example of the shortcomings of Syria’s news media, Yara points to events on March 1st when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz instructed the Israeli military to “prepare to defend” the Druze population in the city of Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus, claiming that the suburb was “currently under attack by the forces of the Syrian regime.”

Yara turned to these Arabic channels to learn more. “And you see, ‘There was a problem in Jaramana, where a few members had a personal fight with some other persons.’ And you feel like there is a gap between the strong statement and the small problem.”

The episode illustrated how a lack of reliable established news sources left people vulnerable to potentially hostile misinformation.

“And you feel you need to go and find out, like, ‘Hey guys, what’s really happened? Why all of this buzz?’ And so people go to social media, and I’m really sorry, but with all my respect to the huge influence it has, social media is social media, it’s not journalism. They don’t have the same rules.”

Yara wants to see a return to journalism with rules, “with professionalism, with the ability to verify information, to check your source, and with multiple sources from different viewpoints,” she says.

“Not every journalist has to be critical,” Yara argues. “But it would be very helpful if you could mention the whole information without cutting any part of it.” She gives an example of reporting that someone has been hit by a car while crossing the street. “You need to mention the light, was it red or green? You cannot just not mention it, you know? Why was this person crossing the street? Was the car fast or slow? I feel now that we are always missing part of the story.”

So she would like Syrian journalists to take a step back, and just give the full total of the information needed. “But also, I’m not sure if the authorities are giving one hundred percent of the information,” she adds.


A lack of transparency

It has been really hard to get news about anything official from the interim government, Yara tells us, and rumours have filled the gap. “And we are not sure if this new authority is using social media as a test tool,” she says. “They leak some rumour in social media and check how people react. If the majority are accepting, yeah, that’s fine, they can go ahead. If there’s a huge ‘No!’ they will come and say, ‘Well, you know, this is social media, this is a rumour, why, there’s nothing like this!’”

Yara points to another example, the Syrian National Dialogue conference that took place towards the end of February. “Seriously, guys?” Yara exclaims. “Forty-eight hours before, you decided to announce the date of the National Dialogue Conference, which has turned from a conference for several days to one day?”

Anticipation had been building for the National Dialogue Conference, which was originally billed as a central part of determining how the country would be governed, with preparatory meetings in a number of regional cities. But the concluding event was rushed, and many felt confused and disillusioned.

“It was going to begin in forty-eight hours, and where was the agenda? Who was going to speak about what? What’s the programme, who’s organising it? No one was able to understand anything.”

Even now, Yara is unsure as to what it was all about. The final statement, “it was nice work in a way,” she says, “thank you so much,” but would it have any authority now, even moral authority? Or was it over and done with?

“A huge part of it was about transitional justice, and a lot of people were discussing this,” she points out. The morning after these discussions, Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani addressed the Human Rights Council in Geneva by video link, Yara remembers. “And he announced the establishment of a High Commission to address the cases of the missing and forcibly disappeared.”

But was this a decision coming from the transitional authority, or was it a result of the National Dialogue, Yara wondered? “Because if it was one of the results of the talks, it should be mentioned in the last day’s statement,” she says. “And if it’s not, did you not tell the people who were discussing transitional justice about this? Or you told them and they ignored it?”

So, she feels there is a lack of transparency? “I would say, yes, this is the main headline,” Yara replies.“Yes.”


Syrian to Syrian — media for social cohesion

Before the collapse of the regime, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression was running an investigative journalism project. It is meant to run three years, but with only two years completed, the third has been paused, at least temporarily, because of the American aid freeze.

“It is about supporting journalists to work on any social investigative reports they choose,” Yara explains. “We asked them for one thing, for individuals from different areas of control in Syria to apply together.” So someone from Damascus might apply with a colleague from Qamishli, perhaps, or Tartus or Suwayda, and they would propose a topic.

SCM offered each team a specialised trainer to work with them on their reports for a year, and then they were published in Arabic and English. “And by the time the regime fell, the relationship between the twenty-four of them, it was amazing, and the work they did, it was very good,” Yara says.

“We were trying to support the idea, which I truly believe in, that sometimes if you are just professional, you can do a fantastic job, no matter what your personal political or religious opinion is.”

The work on social coherence is especially needed, “to get to know our neighbours again,” she believes. “There has been a lot of stereotyping in these years. We need to break it down, to humanise each other again.”

But to do this work needs space, a condition of freedom, and even as she hopes for the best, Yara is unsure of how things will go. “For SCM, we didn’t get our registration yet. We have three colleagues now in Damascus, and one of them is just working to follow up on paperwork, where you should apply, and how the process is going to go, etcetera.”

The Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression is now registering as an NGO in Syria, because even though it’s possible to work without that, they don’t want to risk being shut down. “So it’s better with a registration, to be legal, because we don’t want to go back to undercover work, as in regime times. We should be beyond this. I hope we are beyond this.”


Reconstructing media

The Syrian media sector needs clarity over new rules and regulations, over who makes the rules, and how to hold them accountable. At the time of our interview, the Minister of Information was Mohammad al-Omar, continuing a role he had played earlier in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s government in Idlib. Since then, a new Minister of Information has been appointed, Hamza Mustafa, previously General Manager of Qatari-owned Syria TV.

To hold the new government accountable, independent media needs to be sustainable. The drastic cuts to American aid funding make this an urgent issue. “We are only affected slightly because we don’t have direct funding,” Yara says, but very many people have been hit, “for work related to democracy and to civil society,” she points out.

Access to information is another challenge, as she’s already touched on. And safety? “I truly, deeply hope we don’t find ourselves again with any problems related to the safety of journalists.”

And then, building capacity. “The people who had to leave, to Turkey, to Europe, they had a chance to develop their experience, and they received training, and worked with different media outlets, but those who worked in areas controlled by the government, they didn’t have the same chances, so there is a bit of a gap, and a lot of work is needed to raise capacity equally.”

Syrian state TV has not resumed broadcasting since the fall of the regime. At the same time, a lot of people who used to work in what was rebel-held Idlib are now working from Damascus. “So, people need to get to know each other,” Yara suggests. “We should not look on everyone who worked in state TV as a shabiha, for example.”

Yara is also concerned about women’s participation. “I hope it can be better than we fear,” she says.

And finally, on technological developments, Syria was blocked from technology, first by the regime’s need for control, and then by sanctions. “You had fourteen years of double-trouble blockage.”

What regional differences does Yara see in Syria for independent media, we ask? “So, what happens in Damascus is understood, it’s a capital,” she says. “But we are truly afraid it’s going to turn into some kind of green zone, like in Iraq. We don’t want this scenario. We hope for all Syria to be to be green, and to have some kind of freedom for civil participation, for media coverage, for diversity, for women’s participation, for everything.”

The conflict affected some areas more than others. “Homs, for example, the type of conflict has affected socially so much, not only buildings. Socially, it’s a very tense situation. And Idlib is another scenario. Now, very few articles are coming from Idlib. And in Latakia and Tartus, there are no buildings knocked down, but socially, it has its own problems.”

Internationally, there is still a will to support media and freedom, Yara believes, but Syria is in a bad place. Every sector needs to rebuild—health, education, housing—as well as everything to do with media.

“What I’m saying is, everyone has a part to do,” Yara elaborates. “So the authorities should announce that, ‘the official information is going to be published here,’ and to handle it the proper way. So, you need to give people a clear, complete press statement, and you need to give the journalists their time to handle this press statement, time to question you, and you should present them with a full, complete answer.”

For journalists, she says, “We should work with them on getting the right information, how to find different sources, protecting your source, etcetera.”

For Syrian media organisations, what she hopes for is not necessarily a Syrian equivalent to the BBC, “like, the old version of the BBC, or CNN, I’m not talking about having Edward R Murrow again, you know?” But she hopes to see a certain degree of institutional capacity being developed.

“One day, hopefully, we will have a media outlet that has a legal person just for legal review, and for fact-checking review,” she says. “This is a dream to come, but again, we are dreamers.”

For one news organisation to fully cover all of Syria would need a lot of funding. “As far as I know, Syria TV and Al-Araby Al-Jadeed now have their reporters in different areas, trying to cover different areas’ stories as much as they can,” she says, referring to the two channels owned by Fadaat Media Group, headquartered in Doha, Qatar.

“But after 15 years, after all of this great experience from Syrian journalists, civil journalists, media workers, citizen journalists who developed truly a good experience, and did the hard work, and some of them paid a huge price, I think we can dream of this.”

She has seen a burst of hope, and of people’s willingness to work again inside Syria. It’s refreshing,” she says. “It’s something similar to 2011, the international moment.” But with that she also worries about people taking things for granted, and this moment of opportunity passing by.

“We have received so many requests to support this initiative, and that initiative, they want to make a website, they want to make a news platform, and from different areas, not only Damascus, which is fantastic,” she says. “But we are trying to find enough financial support to respond to all of these needs, and to handle the problem related to different capacities.”

For example, one group initiative for a news platform proposed a budget of around seventy or eighty thousand euros, “for us, a huge amount,” and another group proposed, “give us ten thousand, and we will do one, two, three, four, five things.” Yara’s response was, “Guys, it doesn’t work like this—let’s take a step back.”

People really want to work, Yara says. They want to learn, and they need the resources to work freely, and with confidence. “And we need time.”



Notes

Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression
https://scm.bz

Reports by SCM’s investigative journalism project
https://scm.bz/en/category/journalist-house/investigative-reports/


Rumours and lies
Ahmad Primo of Verify Syria on the fight against disinformation.
|
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.”

See the timeline and map of Israel’s recent invasion.

“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


Invasion timeline
Tracking Israel’s advance into Syria beyond the 1974 ceasefire lines.
|
Funeral in Nawa, 3 April 2025.

Invasion timeline


Tracking Israel’s advance into Syria beyond the 1974 ceasefire lines.

3 MAY 2025
            





Enab Baladi has been reporting on the recent Israeli invasion in both English and Arabic. The following timeline draws on their coverage.

 december 10th: 
Enab Baladi reported Israeli tanks were advancing further in Quneitra. Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said that there was no justification for such foreign intervention now that Iran’s presence in the country had been eliminated.

 december 20th: 
An Enab Baladi correspondent in Daraa reported on a protest by locals. When dozens of them headed towards a newly-established Israeli military outpost, Jazira barracks, the soldiers opened fire, injuring one. The post is on a plateau occupied by the Israelis on December 10th. It’s near the towns of Ma’riya and Koya, and overlooks the Ar-Raqqa Valley on one side and the Yarmouk Valley on the other.

The Israeli army had demanded that local dignitaries meet with Israeli officers at their base, and several times they threatened via loudspeakers to storm Ma’riya and Koya, and also Beit Ara, Jamla, and Abidin, if their residents did not comply. The Israelis had made several demands, local leaders told Enab Baladi—for locals to disarm, to ban military clothing, and to register the names of farmers in the area.

One local leader, Hani al-Ghazi, told Enab Baladi that an officer said to a delegation from Koya, “Count your homes, and we will bring you tents in numbers equal to them if you do not fulfill Israel’s demands.”

 december 25th: 
The Israeli army opened fire on a demonstration in the Quneitra countryside, and civilians were injured.

 january 15th: 
One civilian was killed and two others injured when an Israeli drone targeted a Syrian government military convoy in the village of Ghadir al-Bustan, on the border of Quneitra and Daraa.

 january 24th: 
Enab Baladi reported that the Israeli army had arrested one civilian, and shot and injured another, when both were out gathering firewood near the town of Qudna, southern Quneitra. Israel was by that point establishing several military bases beyond the 1974 ceasefire line, most along the UN buffer zone, and one further into Syrian territory.

 january 28th: 
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz toured newly-occupied military positions on Mount Hermon—Jabal al-Shaykh in Arabic—and declared that Israeli forces would remain indefinitely.

 january 31st: 
The Israeli army detained two young men from the Syrian village of Trinjeh in northern Quneitra. According to Enab Baladi’s correspondent, one of the men had fired shots at an Israeli patrol, which then returned fire before taking both of them towards the border area.

 february 2nd: 
The Israeli army withdrew from the governorate building and the palace of justice in Quneitra, but continued construction work at their other new positions in Syria.

UN delegation inspecting the Quneitra Governorate building after Israeli forces withdraw, 4 February 2025.

 february 24th: 
Demonstrations across several towns in Daraa called for Israeli withdrawal and Syrian unity. These were in response to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks the day before, where he had declared that Israel would not permit Syrian military forces south of Damascus, and had claimed a role for Israel as protector of Syria’s Druze.

 february 25th: 
Israeli aircraft bombed military sites in Daraa, Suwayda, and Damascus governorates. Israel’s Defence Minister said the attacks were “part of the new policy we defined to calm southern Syria.”

 march 17th: 
Israeli aircraft bombed several military sites in Daraa, killing three civilians in a residential neighbourhood of Daraa city located just next to the 132nd Brigade’s base. Several more civilians were injured, including four children and a woman, as well as three White Helmets rescue volunteers who were hit when the site was bombed a second time.

Israeli airstrike, Daraa city, 17 March 2025. Photos by Syria Civil Defence.

 march 25th: 
On this day, six people were killed in Koya. Enab Baladi’s correspondent reported that young men from the town had resisted an incursion by the Israeli army, which responded with gunfire, killing two. Israeli tanks from the Jazira barracks then fired about ten shells at the town, killing and injuring more residents, and driving others to flee.

Koya residents flee Israeli shelling, 25 March 2025. Photo by Syria Civil Defence.

These killings drew international condemnation from several states. “We need to see a stop in Israeli attacks,” said the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, after a Security Council meeting later that day.

 april 2nd: 
Israel’s attack on the night of 2nd of April was the deadliest of the year so far for Daraa.

The first reports that evening were of Israeli air attacks on targets in other parts of Syria: the T4 air base in eastern Homs governorate, Hama military airport, and the Scientific Research Centre building in the Barzeh residential district of Damascus. These attacks were to “convey a message to Turkey,” an Israeli official said, to deter Turkey from establishing air defences that might prevent Israel from operating in Syrian airspace.

Then came reports of another ground attack in Daraa. Enab Baladi’s correspondent reported that Israeli soldiers had entered the forest at the Jbeiliya Dam, their deepest intrusion yet, and then bombarded the area with dozens of shells. Some civilians from the town of Nawa and nearby villages confronted them.

Nine civilians were killed, and others were injured.

An Israeli army spokesperson later said that the raid had been carried out by paratroopers of Israel’s 210th Division, targeting a military site of the former Assad regime and seizing out-of-service tanks, armored personnel carriers, mortars and rockets.

The UN Special Envoy for Syria issued a fresh statement the next day, condemning “the repeated and intensifying military escalations by Israel in Syria.” Geir Pedersen called on Israel “to cease these attacks which could amount to serious violations of international law and respect Syria’s sovereignty and existing agreements, and also to cease unilateral actions on the ground.”



Notes

Enab Baladi English language archive (Politics)
https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/category/politics/

Enab Baladi Arabic language archive (Politics/Syria)
https://www.enabbaladi.net/category/politics/syria/

Transcript of Press Stakeout by UN Special Envoy for Syria Mr Geir O Pedersen, 25 March 2025
https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/transcript-press-stakeout-united-nations-special-envoy-syria-mr-geir-o-pedersen-25-march-2025

Statement by UN Special Envoy for Syria Mr Geir O Pedersen, 3 April 2025
https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/statement-attributable-united-nations-special-envoy-syria-mr-geir-o-pedersen-3-april-2025

Institute for National Security Studies interactive map of Israeli operations in Syria
https://www.inss.org.il/publication/syria-map/#map

EekadFacts Twitter thread verifying locations of Israeli bases with satellite imagery
https://x.com/EekadFacts/status/1901950482450665822