Yassin al-Haj Saleh

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de septiembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Damascus, Syria, January 11, 2025. Ercin Erturk/Anadolu/Getty Images

MundoOriente Próximo

1. My darling Sammour,

After years of silence, I began writing you a letter last October. I gave it the title “Guardian of Hope”, since your absence is bound up with my sense of hope, both personal and public, slowly eroding for the last eleven years. But I stopped after a few lines, for there was nothing I could tell you about the situation. You are the situation. What could someone who has no part in your absence tell you about yourself? Only you experienced it all, and only you can provide full testimony. All this while I have made every effort, Sammour, somehow to forget your disappearance, so as not to spend every minute in its company.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Syrian civil defense volunteer performing sunset prayers in the rebel-held town of Arbin, in the Eastern Ghouta region of Syria, this week. Credit Abdulmonam Eassa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoOriente Próximo,

On Tuesday, 78 people were killed in the Syrian rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta after heavy aerial bombardment by Syrian and Russian forces. The United Nations has called for a cease-fire for a month across Syria to be able to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate the critically ill and wounded.

The siege of Eastern Ghouta has turned into one of the longest and most destructive sieges in recent wars — about a year longer than the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo. Ghouta is an area of small towns and fertile countryside east of Damascus.

The regime of Bashar al-Assad has barred the residents from leaving and outsiders from visiting their relatives in the besieged area, according to Osama Nassar, an activist and journalist who has been living in the Douma district of the area since 2013.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un cauteloso regreso a Raqqa

MundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

A mediados de octubre, las Fuerzas Democráticas Sirias, una milicia predominantemente kurda con respaldo de Estados Unidos y vínculos con el Partido de los Trabajadores del Kurdistán (PKK) en Turquía, “liberaron” mi ciudad, Raqqa, de los combatientes de Estado Islámico (ISIS). Los árabes, mayoría en la región, tuvimos poco que ver con la expulsión de ISIS. En una ciudad cuya población local lleva mucho tiempo relegada a la condición de ciudadanos de segunda, el triunfo del Partido de la Unión Democrática (PYD, rama siria del PKK) generó temor a que la historia se esté repitiendo.

Los activistas de Raqqa siempre dijimos que nuestra malograda ciudad es una “colonia interna”, por su larga historia de marginación económica, política y social a manos de los gobiernos sirios.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

Au cours des premiers mois de la révolution syrienne en 2011, il était courant que les opposants reprochent au régime « l'option sécuritaire » face aux larges protestations pacifiques. Cette critique signifiait l'impossibilité d'aboutir à une solution féconde si « l'option politique » en était écartée. Une option qui nécessitait de repenser toute la structure du régime et les modalités de partage du pouvoir et des richesses dans le pays.

Aujourd'hui, il en est de même pour les Américains et leurs alliés qui adoptent l'approche « sécuritaire » vis-à-vis de l'« Etat islamique » (EI). Confortés par leur surpuissance, ils ne voient pas l'importance de s'attaquer aux racines politiques et sociales qui ont engendré l'EI.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

The story is simple. Here in Syria, there is a regime that has been killing its subjects with impunity for the last 30 months. The notion that there is a mysterious civil war that is inextricably linked to the nature of the Middle East and its complicated sectarian divisions is far from the truth.

The primary perpetrator of violence is the government of Bashar al-Assad, which controls public resources, the media, the army and the intelligence services. The civilians who rose up against that regime, first peacefully and then through armed resistance, constitute a broad spectrum of Syrian society.

When a government murders its own citizens and they resist, this can hardly be called a civil war.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

In all my 50 years, I have never held a passport. Other than visiting Lebanon, I’d never left Syria when, in the fall of 2004, I was barred from leaving the country. I tried many times afterward to get a passport, but to no avail.

I spent 16 years of my youth in my country’s prisons, incarcerated for being a member of a communist pro-democracy group. During the recent protests, many more friends have been detained — most of them young — under the government’s catch-all emergency laws.

The state of emergency, under which Syria has lived for 48 years, has extended the ruling elite’s authority into all spheres of Syrians’ public and private lives, and there is nothing to stop the regime from using this power to abuse the Syrian population.…  Seguir leyendo »