Saraqeb’s Agony

Saraqeb, Asharq Al-Awsat—It’s the details in the dust that give away the enormity of what’s happened in Saraqeb. The child’s shoe, stained brown and separated from its partner, lying next to one half of a broken china saucer; the relics of normality scattered over a heap of twisted cable and broken masonry. This is just one shattered house in a pulverized street, and just one street in an echoing, abandoned neighborhood. The only sounds breaking the heavy silence are the whirr of the reg...

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The Politics of Aid in a War Zone

Aleppo, Asharq Al-Awsat—Every day at 2 p.m., Raja joins the queue that snakes around the half-finished apartment blocks. Like all the others, she is clutching a small metal bowl that she will fill with food to take home to her family. On leaner days, this will be their only meal. “We left our homes in what we were wearing,” says Raja, a mother of five who fled from her home in the Palestinian district of Aleppo two months ago. Yesterday, she received news that her house has been destroy...

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