Significant parts of the Middle East are now in deepening chaos. And much of the region still seems to be in a state of ongoing disintegration in the wake of those colonial moments and the rise of Israel as a military power. It still remains to be seen what a post-Assad Syria will actually look like, given that 6. At this moment, the country remains in disintegrative chaos and the new Sunni Arab regime there, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the head of a former militant extremist group that did, in the end, break with ISIS and al-Qaeda , has been trying to bring it together.
Still, the collapse of a dictatorship is always a moment of hope and, with that in mind, let TomDispatch regular Helen Benedict, author of Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece , take you into the world of Syrian exiles and refugees scattered, among other places, across Europe , at a moment when everything is changing in a Middle East in ever greater chaos.
I have been watching the news for the last 24 hours. I was on the right side of history. Finally, we won! The lion has fallen! Hasan was born in the northeastern Syrian city of Manbij , 18 years before the revolution and civil war that left some , civilians dead and displaced at least 13 million more.
Because Manbij sits in a strategic position near the border with Turkey, as soon as the first signs of revolution stirred in its streets, it became a battleground between multiple forces. First, it was under the control of Assad, whose military occupied the city until Then it fell to the revolutionary Free Syrian Army, which held it until Recently, Manbij has fallen under the control of Kurdish militias and their allies.
For Hasan, growing up in such a political football of a place affected every aspect of his life. Yet many of his memories of Syria before the civil war are remarkably sweet. I want Syria to be like that again. I want us to live like before, or even better. To live in peace and build Syria together, be happy and help each other. In , Hasan and his identical twin, Hussein, joined the Free Syrian Army to fight Bashar, as they liked to call him, and free Syria from his grip. Hasan was then captured by ISIS, who hung him from a ceiling and whipped him in public.
