The few bullet-marked schools Islamic State did not flatten or booby trap around its former Syrian stronghold of Raqqa are buzzing for the first time in years with the sound of children learning. In the village of Hazima, north of Raqqa, teachers gave ad-hoc alphabet lessons to...

Hatf Saiful Rasul was 11 years old when he told his father, a convicted Islamic militant, that he wanted to leave school and go to Syria to fight for Islamic State. The boy was visiting his father in a maximum security prison during a break from Ibnu Mas‘ud, his Islamic boarding...

(Al Jazeera)- With its rows of identical cottages, country houses and immaculately trimmed lawns, the Oxford countryside is quintessentially English. Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer and his wife Nadia may have spent more than two decades here, but upon entering their house one is catapulted into...

( The Independent )- Zahira (not her real name) was 45 when she was arrested at her workplace in a suburb of Damascus in 2013. As soon as she arrived at Al Mezzeh Military Airport, she was strip searched, tied to a bed and gang raped by five soldiers.  For the next 14 days, she was...