"Amid the rubble of Syria, a band of women are risking prison, or worse, to report, write, and edit the civil war's paper of record.
Kholoud Waleed* was startled awake by the sound of the front door being kicked in. Suddenly, her family's apartment in Darayya, a prosperous suburb outside of Damascus, was filled with Syrian government soldiers shouting, "This is the house!" It was the spring of 2012. Waleed's family—her father, mother, three brothers, and their wives and children—stumbled sleepily from their bedrooms and huddled together in the living room as soldiers rifled through drawers. Waleed was certain they had come for her.
A petite, soft-spoken 29-year-old with an English literature degree, she is a co-founder of the underground newspaper Enab Baladi, and one of only a handful of journalists left in a rapidly disintegrating Syria. The foreign press and aid workers had largely been barred from the country, and those who sneaked back in risked assassination at the hands of Bashar al-Assad loyalists or by ISIS and other radical Islamic gangs filling the vacuum. Amid the anarchy, most international news organizations kept their correspondents on the borders, and real news was hard to get.
In response, Waleed and a circle of 20-odd friends who'd met during the protests had started an underground newspaper to help inform Syrians, and anyone else who wanted to know, about the government's atrocities."
Read article by Christina Asquith from Elle.
Kholoud Waleed* was startled awake by the sound of the front door being kicked in. Suddenly, her family's apartment in Darayya, a prosperous suburb outside of Damascus, was filled with Syrian government soldiers shouting, "This is the house!" It was the spring of 2012. Waleed's family—her father, mother, three brothers, and their wives and children—stumbled sleepily from their bedrooms and huddled together in the living room as soldiers rifled through drawers. Waleed was certain they had come for her.
A petite, soft-spoken 29-year-old with an English literature degree, she is a co-founder of the underground newspaper Enab Baladi, and one of only a handful of journalists left in a rapidly disintegrating Syria. The foreign press and aid workers had largely been barred from the country, and those who sneaked back in risked assassination at the hands of Bashar al-Assad loyalists or by ISIS and other radical Islamic gangs filling the vacuum. Amid the anarchy, most international news organizations kept their correspondents on the borders, and real news was hard to get.
In response, Waleed and a circle of 20-odd friends who'd met during the protests had started an underground newspaper to help inform Syrians, and anyone else who wanted to know, about the government's atrocities."
Read article by Christina Asquith from Elle.
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