Heated discussion on the issue of Europe’s crisis in handling the arrival of refugees took place at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 4 May.

From the disproportionate focus placed on the Mediterranean crossing, to the misconception that migration is negative by default and the idea that lobbying Turkey to allow Syrians to work is the answer, the panel dispelled the myths surrounding the crisis.

Patrick Kingsley, author of The New Odyssey and the Guardian‘s inaugural migration correspondent, began by speaking about his extensive reporting of the crisis. The central stories in his book range from that of a smuggler, to a civil servant, to a pregnant refugee woman. Kingsley writes of how he travelled across the Macedonian border with the pregnant woman, who believes the child she is carrying has died.

Heaven Crawley, a leading researcher of migration, said that Kingsley depicted the movement of people more completely than many correspondents before him. Media coverage often focuses only on the crossing to Greece, and yet, “the European focus on the journey across the Mediterranean is such a small part of it,” said Crawley.

Kingsley’s reporting navigates the different routes to Europe and explores the various driving factors of migration. This is important in a Europe where, Crawley said, “policy is about 15 years behind the dynamics of the movement.”

Hassan Akkad, a teacher and freelance photographer who fled the Assad regime in 2012, illustrated European ignorance on a personal level. When people hear the word refugee they expect to see a Syrian in rags, he said. “I’ve had people questioning me about why I had a cell phone.” And yet, many who have fled the war are middle class with much to contribute; Akkad is fluent in English and has studied Shakespeare.

Akkad went on to detail how he came to be in the UK. His crime, for which he suffered broken bones and solitary confinement, was protesting peacefully against Assad: “Protesting in Syria is like a suicide mission. You say goodbye to your family because you never know where you are going to end up,” he said.

L-R: Patrick Kingsley, Heaven Crawley, Lindsey Hilsum, Hassan Akkad, John Dalhuisen. Photo by Tolly Robinson

On the journey, the Syrians that Akkad travelled with were from all walks of life – and their first encounter with Europe was not a happy one. Greek marine forces launched an attack on their boat: “I felt like Syria was on a dinghy. And we were not welcome,” said Akkad. He told the audience that for now he has put his career as a teacher and photographer on hold in order to tell the story of the Syrian people, jokingly dubbing himself “the professional refugee.”

The chair, Channel 4’s international editor Lindsey Hilsum, turned the discussion towards possible solutions. In order to explain how circumstances had become so grave, John Dalhuisen of Amnesty International said that many European governments were enacting hostile asylum policies and closing their borders to prevent the far right from sweeping to power.

Dalhuisen said that this had intensified the crisis, which is almost unprecedented. “We’re looking at quite a distinct phenomenon,” he asserted.

Kingsley disagreed regarding the relative scale of the problem. “It’s actually quite small numbers,” he said. He argued that Europe, as the world’s wealthiest continent, has more than the capacity and resources to deal with the numbers arriving on its shores.

According to Kingsley, the surge in migration is a result of the poor management of legitimate passage to the UK. People were able to wait a few years in interim countries such as Turkey before being granted visas to Europe, but they could not wait the half-decade that they were forced to. “Resettlement provides a reason for people to stay put,” he said. After so long, with no legal means to achieve more prosperous and safe lives for themselves and their families, “inevitably, people decided to vote with their feet,” Kingsley added.

Crawley agreed: “The problem is at our end, we haven’t adjusted,” she said. She dismissed the arbitrary way in which European governments treat all the countries from which people are migrating as if they are the same. “What we need in policy terms is nuance,” she said. And the whole conversation around the issue needs to shift: “The idea of the end point being to stop people is nonsense,” she said.

An audience member asked about the responsibility of the wealthy neighbouring Gulf states. Akkad responded that despite presenting itself as the “mother of Islam”, Saudi Arabia had offered fleeing Syrians no support. Kingsley added: “We shouldn’t judge our response by the yardstick of the Gulf states… it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing more as well.”

One journalist in the audience asked how it is possible to maintain public interest on such an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Following the surge in media attention in 2015, attention has drifted away. In the beginning, he said, Kingsley’s aim was to humanise the crisis. Now that so many journalists have told the personal and tragic tales of individual refugees, a degree of compassion fatigue has taken over. Kingsley said he had to keep taking different approaches. “In terms of keeping people engaged,” he admitted, “it’s a real struggle.”

Photos by Tolly Robinson

Words by Harriet Agerholm

Di Giovanni is no stranger to conflict, with work spanning the first Palestinian intifada, the Bosnian war and much of the upheaval of the Arab Spring. Her latest book is the result of numerous official and unofficial visits to Syria, weaving accounts of human tragedy into the country’s wider political picture. For di Giovanni, focusing on those trapped in a war beyond their control was the most striking and impactful way to cover the conflict.

“For me, far more interesting than being on the frontline in Homs, was going to the military hospital of Assad’s soldiers,” di Giovanni said. “I went early one morning when they were having their mass funeral… These were the regimes soldiers so you would think that we could perceive them as monsters… They were kids, they were 18, 19 years old… they just found themselves in this time and this place, but they were basically just kids.”

Sackur asked di Giovanni what it was like to witness Syria’s “terrible descent into full-on civil war,” and the rise of Daesh.

“As early as 2013 we started seeing, or maybe even earlier in 2012, the radicalisation of Aleppo… My trips back there became increasingly difficult,” commented di Giovanni. She recalled one particular incident that made her realise how dangerous the situation had become for Western journalists, in which herself and photojournalist Nicole Tung were attacked by an angry crowd frustrated by the West’s failure to intervene in the war.

“In the worst days in Sarajevo, the population never turned on us… And now we were getting attacked, as women we were being subjugated even with our former colleagues, and worse than that, Steve (Sotloff) and Jim (Foley) were beheaded.”

A major focus was the West’s inaction over the Syrian war, and the frustration that this has generated. Referring to a recent spate of Russian airstrikes on hospitals and schools in northern Syria, one audience member asked if there was any hope of bringing Assad and Putin’s impunity to an end.

Di Giovanni responded by saying Assad shouldn’t be allowed to continue his reign of power, but also conceded that “the more that Daesh continue to push and do these horrific acts publicly… the more that people who before had been supporting the opposition went back to supporting Assad. If you pull Assad out right now – this is a man with blood on his hands, a war criminal – you’re going to have a power vacuum in Damascus… There is no one yet ready to step into his shoes.”

Sackur added that a more cynical view would “argue that for all of the hopes we had for street politics and uprisings… actually removing the Gaddafi’s, or the Assad’s, or the Mubarak’s unleashes a form of chaos that is worse.”

An audience member asked what Assad’s endgame might be, given that Daesh’s actions are bolstering support for his regime. Di Giovanni replied: “I think he’s won. The Russians are on his side. He’s managed to turn the UN into a laughing stock. The diplomatic channel has basically been made a joke.”

On a final note, an audience member asked di Giovanni if she had any stories of hope from Syria. She recounted meeting members of the White Helmets, a group of ordinary civilians in Syria who rescue people from the wreckage of airstrikes – despite the enormous risks to their own lives, particularly in light of Russia’s ‘double-tap’ bombing strategy. “In war time you get horrible things, but you also get the human spirit capable of doing good… I came away thinking superheroes really do exist.”

Click here to find out more information on the White Helmets.

Purchase a copy of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches From Syria here.

A panel discussion focused on The Fight Against Daesh made for a timely first First Wednesday of the year at the Frontline Club. The packed event on 6 January was chaired by David Loyn, foreign correspondent for the BBC for over 30 years. The speakers included Richard Spencer, Middle East editor of The Daily and Sunday Telegraph; Shiraz Maher, research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College; and Robin Yassin-Kassab, journalist and author of The Road From Damascus and most recently co-author with Leila al-Shami of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. Completing the panel was Azadeh Moaveni, lecturer in journalism at Kingston University and former Middle East correspondent for TIME magazine, and author of Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran.

Fantastic debate @frontlineclub last night about what’s happening with Isis/Daesh…Always better live than on TV! pic.twitter.com/jBMWx6JbmI

— The CollectiveLondon (@Collective_Lon) January 7, 2016

From the outset, the panel approached discussions on Daesh with a thorough evaluation of the developments in Syria and surrounding region. The discussion took a turn away from the media hype surrounding Daesh towards the geo-political realities and factions at play. From Islamist and moderate groups within Syria to Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Western allies and Turkey, few stones were left unturned.

Yassin-Kassab and Spencer affirmed the widely-accepted notion that Daesh was created by the vacuum left after the destruction of Iraq, and directly enabled by Bashar al-Assad’s timely decision to release prominent jihadis from prison. Yassin-Kassab summarised the effects: “He [Assad] needed to terrify the West and he has been very successful at that. Here we are tonight discussing what to do about the enemy Daesh and not what to do about the man who has killed 95% of the people in Syria over the last 5 years: Bashar al-Assad.”

Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria, was discussed at some length. The panelists agreed that, unlike Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra’s more tolerant and classical grassroots approach would remain deeply embedded in Syrian society in the longterm.  It was also agreed that Al-Qaeda more generally has had to reassess its tactical boundaries in order to distance itself from the relentless barbarianism of Daesh.

Maher said: “Al-Qaeda over the last 15 years has been on an incredibly steep learning curve. They have learnt far more about warfare, insurgency and human terrains than we have and that’s why, to put it very bluntly, they are winning.”

Yassin-Kassab used Russia’s ongoing bombardment in Syria – supposedly targeting Daesh – to argue that outside players are worsening the situation. He said: “80% of Russian strikes have fallen on the people that drove IS out of their areas.”

Iran was also scrutinised for its relentless military support of Assad. However, when asked by Loyn if there were circumstances under which Iran would “dump” its long term alley Assad, Moaveni said: “Absolutely, I think Iran would dump Assad in a moment if it comes to that… For them, it’s important to keep some key supply routes open to some political faction that is friendly to Tehran.”

When Spencer disagreed with Moaveni – suggesting instead that Iran was more dependent on Assad than Russia was – Moaveni pointed to the double standards of Western relations with Saudi and Iran. She said:
“It’s only in the last year or two that things are shifting a bit, that you have open discussions in editorial pages about the reliability of Saudi as an ally and if it makes sense to keep Iran permanently at a distance.”

The recent decision by the UK government to bomb Syria decidedly split the panel. Maher supported the notion and warned of the danger of outsourcing the UK’s security program in not acting militarily. He said: “Daesh is a counterterrorism problem as far as we are concerned; Syria is a much bigger problem which we are not going to fix.”

L-r: Azadeh Moaveni, Shiraz Maher, David Loyn, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Richard Spencer

Moaveni, Spencer and Yassin-Kassab expressed their skepticism of how bombing Daesh could be effective in the long term. Spencer said: “Bombing IS without a strategy for the whole Middle East is a disaster… If the Western allies – Britain, France, America – don’t stick together and form common policies then western policy will fall apart.”

Yassin-Kassab criticised the dismissive approach the West maintains towards the Southern Front, the Syrian opposition unaffiliated with Islamic groups. He said: “They [Southern Front] are dependent on aid from a military operations room in Jordan, and the West, the Americans, keep telling the Jordanians and Saudis not to allow them the anti-tank and particularly anti-aircraft weapons that they need now.”

One audience member asked the panel what they predicted for the region in the future. The panelists agreed that Assad would remain in some shape or form, but Moaveni predicted a “vast kingdom emerging” in the Persian Gulf, united under a Sunni leadership. Maher, on the other hand, saw a “federalised system of government” in the Levant. Yassin-Kassab preferred not to speculate, saying: “you can’t tell what direction we are going as we are going into so many directions at once.”

L-R: Sean McAllister, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Amer Daoud

The plight of Syrians has returned to the headlines following the recent release of a tragic image of young Aylan Kurdi lying dead in the sand. It is easy to forget that the current situation in Syria, and the millions of refugees who have been forced to flee the country, has its roots in the Syrian Revolution of 2011 and the brutal response of the Assad regime.

In his latest film, A Syrian Love Story, Sean McAllister follows the story of one family torn apart by the political imprisonment of a mother, as they experience the civil war and finally find refuge in Paris.

On Wednesday 23 September, McAllister, alongside the film’s protagonist Amer Daoud and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, joined an audience at the Frontline Club for a Q&A following the screening.

Throughout the film, McAllister‘s close relationship to Daoud, his wife Raghda and their children is evident. “[McAllister became] part of the story in a way, which is quite a dangerous thing for a journalist,” said Alibhai-Brown. “We’re all trained: you must be distant, you just be objective, you must be balanced. All rubbish really.”

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

McAllister, who has shot many films in the Middle East, told the Frontline Club that he felt guilty for only visiting countries when they were at war. “I’ve made films in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and after… I always remember them talking about the golden days, before war,” he said. When he heard someone say that Damascus in Syria was like Iraq in the golden days he thought he’d go and see for himself.

Before the Arab Spring uprising and the subsequent civil war, McAllister travelled to Syria to find a story. “I kind of fell in love with this place… there was fun with fear in those days and I was hanging out there for maybe, on and off in this insane way that we do making documentaries, about eight months,” he said.

In the film, McAllister says he met Daoud in a bar in Damascus, a serendipitous encounter that Alibhai-Brown seemed initially reluctant to believe.

“Yeah, I saw this man, he asked everybody in the street: ‘What do you think about freedom? Is Syria free? And what do you think about this president Bashar al-Assad, why is his picture everywhere?’” Daoud said of McAllister. “He’s crazy to ask these questions.”

Daoud told the Frontline Club audience that he was worried at first when McAllister began to ask him these dangerous questions. “That’s why it took five years to make [the film],” said McAllister. “It took me two years to get [Daoud’s] trust and then his wife came out of prison and she didn’t trust me for another two years.”

Although the film focuses very centrally on Daoud and Raghda’s relationship, McAllister said that this was not the focus from the outset. In fact, McAllister’s initial failure to secure a commission for the film had a significant impact on its direction.

“It wasn’t that I was planning it, it wasn’t a master plan, I just couldn’t get it commissioned,” he said. “If it had been commissioned earlier it would have been an Arab Spring film that would have been largely around the topical events of the time.”

When Daoud and his family left Syria, McAllister said he was initially worried that the film would lose momentum. “But actually,” he said, “what started to happen between them for me as a filmmaker was much more interesting in France. And it was this fragmentation… this disillusionment and disconnection to this whole place.”

McAllister also said that once Daoud had moved to France, he became a lot more involved in their relationship. “My role became even more connected. They would call one week, [Daoud] would call me up and say: ‘You’ve got to come now, tomorrow, we don’t know what the fuck’s going on. You’re the only person that’s been with us on all of this, you can make sense. And the next week [Raghda] would be calling me up saying, ‘Sean, come now’.

“Because although these people that have gone through so much talk to so many interesting people that want to help, they’re looking in the eyes of people that really don’t know what they’ve been through. And I think that’s the disassociation, the disconnection we have with this tragedy in Europe now.”

Amer Daoud

Daoud explained why many refugees were so desperate to come to Europe. His experience of being a refugee in Lebanon, he told the Frontline Club, was one of purgatory. “You cannot imagine how you live without papers, without food, without anybody to take care of you. What are you? Nothing. You are waiting for just one thing: death. All the refugees are the same. They have a hope to come to Europe,” he said.

L-R: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Sean McAllister and Amer Daoud

A Syrian Love Story has started to gain more traction than McAllister is used to. He admitted that despite his best efforts, most of his work finds a niche audience. “My target audience is three mates back in Hull that don’t give a monkeys about wherever I go… and try to get them into that space” he said. “Usually that doesn’t matter and it still goes out to 265 people on BBC Four.” However, on this occasion current events have pushed the film out to more people.

“You deliver a good film and there’s unfortunately a dead body of a boy swept up on a beach,” said McAllister referring to the photo of Alyan Kurdi published earlier this month. Due to the urgency these photos have given to the refugee story, A Syrian Love Story will be broadcast in a prime BBC One slot.

“It’s not easy for eight million Syrian refugees, it’s not easy. But I think we can find a way to press our governments somehow, in Europe, to organise travel between Europe and the places of refugees,” said Daoud.

However, as McAllister said, it is much harder to support refugees in their emotional upheaval. “We went to some of the camps in Bulgaria and places on the border and it was just horrendous. I mean it was so bad that the refugees there, having been beaten up by the Bulgarian police, were trying to get back to Syria,” said McAllister.

He did not blame Bulgaria, but said there needed to be a more concerted effort.

“What we don’t really realise is how many people live like [Daoud],” said McAllister. “I think he moved houses about 16 times in the making of this film and there were times I knew he didn’t have anything, that they’d not eaten for days. And that’s not unusual for a lot of people in his situation.”

A member of the Frontline audience asked Daoud how, after leaving everything behind in Syria, he supports himself and his family. “How do I support myself?” he said, “I train my face to smile everyday.”

Sean McAllister (left) and Amer Daoud

Visit the A Syrian Love Story website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.

Amer, 45, met Raghda, 40, in a Syrian prison cell 15 years ago. Over a number of months they communicated through a tiny hole they had secretly made in the wall. They fell in love and, following their release, married and started a family together.

This film tells the poignant story of their family torn apart by the tyrannical Assad dictatorship. Filming began in Syria in 2009, prior to the wave of revolutions and ongoing changes in the Middle East. At the time, Raghda was a political prisoner and Amer was caring for their young children alone. McAllister filmed in the thriving heart of the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus – now an infamous news story as the Assad regime blocked all aid and food to its inhabitants.

This intimate family portrait probes to understand why people are literally dying for change in the Arab world. As Raghda is released from prison, filmmaker Sean McAllister himself is arrested for filming and the political pressure around all activists intensifies. The family flee to Lebanon, and then to France where they are given political asylum in the sleepy town of Albi, where they now watch the revolution from afar and wait for the fall of Assad.

However, in exile Raghda’s mental heath suffers. We see their new life in France develop, but the war is now between them. In finding the freedom they fought so hard for, their relationship is beginning to fall apart.

A Syrian Love Story won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sheffield International Documentary Festival.

Directed by: Sean McAllister
Country: UK/France/Lebanon/Syria
Running time: 80′

Nearly three years on from President Obama’s infamous ‘red line’ statement, Syrian activist and filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia, Syrian human rights lawyer Laila Alodaat, journalist Jonathan Littell and Nerma Jelacic of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), joined an audience at the Frontline Club on Thursday 21 May. In a discussion chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, host of Newshour on the BBC World Service, the panel discussed Syria’s increasingly fractured reality and seemingly endless turmoil. Also under discussion was the investigative work currently underway to record evidence linking the Syrian regime to the atrocities committed, in the hope that the acting parties will one day be held accountable for their crimes.

L-r: Laila Alodaat, Jonathan Littell, Owen Bennett-Jones, Orwa Nyrabia and Nerma Jelacic

Despite the media frenzy in recent months, the evening’s discussion avoided focusing solely on ISIS.

Nyrabia commented: “I don’t know what sadomasochism western media have towards ISIS, but they always blow it up and make it very attractive for anyone who is angry with the West.”

Instead, the speakers shed light on tangible developments on the ground, ongoing external interests and alliances in the region, and the failure of the international community to intervene.

In the wake of news that same day that ISIS had captured the territories surrounding Palmyra, Bennett-Jones began discussions by asking Nyrabia for a brief overview of the groups currently active in Syria.

Nyrabia answered that, while local Islamist groups and ISIS were gaining ground, the regime was not advancing but rather maintaining its highly populated and strategic strongholds.

On the subject of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Nyrabia commented: “it was made public that the Iranians were not giving him [Assad] the loan he requested.” Nyrabia connected this to Iran’s conflicting objectives in relation to pleasing all facets of the international community over its nuclear program.

Nyrabia went on to lay out the following summary of regional allegiances, useful even to those well-versed in the Syrian conflict: Assad is backed by Iran with Hezbollah support, and is bolstered by Afghan and Iraqi militias. On the other side, aside from ISIS, local Islamist groups have joined together, notably since the beginning of Saudi offences in Yemen, to form part of what is called Al-Fath. Finally, there is the moderate, secular opposition, exemplified by both Nyrabia and Alodaat, which feels increasingly marginalised and underrepresented.

Alodaat asked: “Where is the secular opposition in all of this? I think they have been set up to fail, they have been set up to fail by the international community that gave them no support.”

Bennett-Jones questioned Alodaat on whether the civilian opposition failed due to their low numbers. Alodaat responded: “Are we expecting civilians to have more power than arms? The answer is no.”

Alodaat went on to remind the audience of the dirty tactics used by the regime against its people.

“A perpetrator can spend a lot of arms and take the guilt of killing a thousand people, or can kill the one person who provides healthcare and make sure these people will die. And Assad did that.” The pinnacle of these crimes and the crossing of the red line occurred in August 2013, when 16,000 people were killed by chemical weapons.

An intervention by the United States never followed.

Nyrabia commented on what he saw as the dire consequence of this failure by the international community to act, and the part this played in legitimising the mass-scale crimes that followed. “We believed that after it [a US-led intervention] was mentioned it had to happen, because the cost on our people is going to be even worse than intervention. And that’s what happened.”

L-r: Owen Bennett-Jones, Orwa Nyrabia, Nerma Jelacic

Littell, who was smuggled into Homs for three weeks on an assignment for Le Monde in 2012, spoke of another tipping point.

“Homs, because of the divided nature of the city, was where things got the most conflictual the fastest,” Littell said.

He spoke of the ideals still upheld at that time by the locals who believed that a civil movement, led by the free Syrian Army (FSA), could topple the regime.

Littell commented on the regime’s tactic of allowing and encouraging the growth of radical Islamist groups, in order to do their work of suppressing other, more moderate, opposition, in the hope that they could later defeat these groups. Littell went on to draw parallels with other conflicts in which this tactic had been used.

“To me, this looks exactly like the curve in Chechnya in which the Russian special services fostered the more Islamist Chechen groups to try and crush the more moderate nationalists.”

Jelacic then discussed the work of her organisation, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, in gathering evidence linking perpetrators to crimes in the Syrian conflict. However, as Syria is not signed to the Rome Treaty, Jelacic explained that a referral must go through the United Nations Security council (UNSC) in order to bring perpetrators to trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

On this point, Jelacic commented: “You are more or less doomed if you are in a war and waiting for the UNSC to agree on anything.”

She added: “Even if the referral to the ICC happened, it would not be able to do justice to the widespread crimes that have been committed throughout the years.”

Despite a bleak outlook, Jelacic offered clear progress in the process of compiling evidence against the regime, currently consisting of over 600,000 separate documents.

She went on to explain that, despite popular opinion, harrowing victim testimonies account for little in a case of this nature: “You need to prove the three C’s: Command, Control and Communication… It’s amazing how meticulous autocratic regimes are in documenting their crimes.”

Audience questions ranged from the involvement of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia, to the meaning of Syrian identity today.

On the subject of an end to the conflict, Alodaat called for a total disarmament, while Nyrabia suggested that the international community actively support local opposition groups.

Jelacic closed the discussion by commenting: “Human intervention: that is something that this conflict has killed as an idea. The second thing it has killed is diplomacy.”

On Friday 16 January, the Frontline Club was at full capacity for an evening that showcased the diverse faces of documentary filmmaking, both journalistic and poetic. The documentaries screened offered snapshots into five very different worlds, allowing the audience to glimpse the lives of remarkable individuals in addition to illuminating pressing issues, such as female genital mutilation and the rise of ISIS in Syria.

Shorts at the Frontline Club

Chappin’
“I don’t really know what came to kickstart it, it just kind of … seemed to happen,” says 17-year-old schoolboy Liam McLaughlan as he attaches a sign advocating Scottish independence to a lamppost.
“You look around an area you come from – things like that – that’s where the desire for change really starts, and then it kind of spots out.”
A resident of Glasgow’s infamous Easterhouse Estate, Liam is determined that Scottish independence is what his area desperately needs in order to tackle the ongoing political neglect of the poor and underprivileged.
Director Igor Slepov tenderly captures the pride and determination of a young man whose political campaign is passionate and deeply personal.

Central Station Sofia
The biggest railway station in the Balkans today resembles an empty shell. Built during the years of socialism, it was once a hub of activity with twenty staff members employed to provide for its commuters. Today only three remain, and its sense of abandonment echoes the current economic instability in Sofia.
“The restaurant and café were always full,” says a station worker as the camera pans across an empty cafeteria.
Fragments of the workers’ lives are shown, interspersed with shots of a near-deserted station hall. A lady selling lottery tickets says, “Everyone is hoping to win a million so they can go to a warm country and never come back here.”
Despite the bleak subject matter, Central Station Sofia, directed by Alberto Iordanov, is not free from humour. The film includes a shot of a solemn-faced man standing behind a counter who announces, “My name is Georgi Zarev and I run the station gun shop (…) I love cars and guns like every boy”.

Syria’s Second Front
In this short documentary, reporter Muhammed Ali crosses into Syria in order to document a violent new phase of the civil war. Ali travels with fighters from the Free Syrian Army, whom he films at their base as they prepare to battle jihadist militant group ISIS.
“It’s very important for me to tell you what’s happening on the ground; no Western media can get in,” he says, conscious of the significant risk he is undertaking by entering the country as a journalist.
Ali persuades rebels to sneak him into the northwestern town of al-Atareb, which is under the control of the so-called Islamic State. He returns with footage of an ISIS rally in the town square, at which fighters are pledging their allegiance to global Jihad. The film shows ISIS members joining hands and repeating, “I pay homage to ISIS, to listen and obey, God is a witness to what we are saying. Praise God, God is the greatest, praise God.”

Godka Cirka (A Hole in the Sky)
“My mother was a shepherdess too. She died when I was born. My auntie Sahra took care of me.” These are the words of young narrator Alifa describing life in the village of Beerato, Somaliland. She exposes her own vulnerability as she discusses her pending genital mutilation, “I will lie until the rainy season with my legs tied until I can walk again.”
Alex Lora’s powerful film looks at three generations of shepherdesses – Alifa, her aunt Sahra and grandmother Faadumo – as they deal with the daily struggles of poverty and water shortage.

The Orchard Keepers
As Cairo rocks with revolution, two Bedoiun tender their orchards in the brown Sinnai desert. The first, Amariya, has created a magnificent patch of green amidst the rugged bareness of the landscape. “Look how beautiful my garden is today”, she says, her eyes beaming above a black niqab. “Everybody thinks I’m crazy living in the mountains, but I am not crazy. I said to myself that I want to make a garden and to be free.”
The film, directed by Bryony Dunne, highlights the fact that during a time of political volatility in Egypt, and despite the difficulty in maintaining them, the gardens offer freedom and timeless stability.

A compelling Frontline Club event on Wednesday 25 June showcased film and photographic work from across the globe that revealed both the depth of suffering and the strength of human spirit in some of the world’s most devastating internal conflicts.

Featured at the event was a series of photographs from Tim Freccia in South Sudan, Alvaro Ybarra Zavala in Venezuela, Eman Mohammed in Gaza and Daniel Berehulak in Afghanistan, curated by multimedia photojournalist and filmmaker John D McHugh.

The event culminated in a screening of Ground Zero Syria, a dramatic film by Robert King featuring unprecedented footage of the brutal conflict in Syria, and an impassioned interview with King by The Times journalist Anthony Loyd that offered some chilling conclusions about the future of the conflict.

Robert King and Anthony Loyd at the Frontline Club.

All of the showcased work shared a common theme: that of the determination of each journalist to bring to light the plight of people facing oppression or armed struggle in their home countries, and to reveal the characters of those individuals caught up in some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

Among Freccia’s work was a set of portraits of soldiers from the White Army, a ruthless militia group fighting alongside former Vice President Riek Machar in his campaign against the government of South Sudan.

In Freccia’s unique portraits, presented against a white background, he aimed to show through the expressions and postures of his subjects the “humanity present in these characters, for good or bad, which is often neglected”.

Zavala’s photographs were captured in Caracas and San Cristobal in February and March this year as the protests against Venezuela’s government escalated.

A picture of a woman slumped over the coffin of a lost loved one revealed the sacrifices made by the protestors, while another featured a combatant in plastic protective glasses making Molotov cocktails to take into the fray.

Mohammed took up photojournalism at the age of 19. In a narration of her photographs, she explained how she had to overcome cultural barriers to a woman pursuing such a career.

“I thought I had what it took to be a career photographer,” she said. “I was wrong. To gain acceptance in a male dominated field was next to impossible.”

Covering the war in Gaza in 2008-09 and under fire from aerial bomb attacks, the ground “shaking like a swing beneath us”, Mohammed was abandoned by the two male journalists with whom she was travelling. “Terrified, humiliated and feeling sorry for myself”, she learned a valuable lesson.

Mohammed‘s career has been characterised by a constant tension between capturing her own agony and that of others:

“You can freeze, but your camera cannot. If you don’t document history, it never happened.”

Her work included touching portraits of Mohamed Hodr, who along with 22 members of his family lived for several years beneath the rubble of what was once his home.

The only surviving remnant of what was to be a retirement retreat was a jacuzzi, which he hauled up to the roof of his shattered home so that each morning he could give his children a bubble bath.

Berehulak’s work focused on the terrible impact that the rapidly rising use of heroin in Afghanistan is having on the local population. One in 10 urban households in the country has at least one drug user, and in rural areas heroin use is as high as 30 per cent.

A set of photographs of one hospital ward that was admitting 200 children a month for severe malnutrition featured pictures of young children so wrinkled with starvation that they looked more like the elderly than the newly born. At a year-and-a-half, Mohammed weighed just 10 pounds.

“Nearly every potential lifeline is strained or broken here,” said Berehulak in his narration. “Women are kept away from everyone except those in their immediate family.

“Farmers can’t grow crops because of mines, and doctors can’t get to children until the situation is already severe. Women can’t nourish their own children [because of the heroin use].”

At the country’s premier children’s hospital in Kabul, a five-year-old boy weighing just 20 pounds was being treated on a bench because the infusion line wouldn’t reach to a bed. The drug problem, said the director of demand reduction at the ministry of health, is a tsunami for his country.

Ground Zero Syria

Screened in the second half of the event, King’s film gave a unique insight into the fighters of the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) in their efforts to survive the brutal attacks of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“For six to seven months we didn’t even think about picking up weapons,” said one.

“We started out with olive branches, but [in the end] the only option was to take up arms and put him [Assad] out of office.”

At a field hospital in Al-Qusayr, southwest of Homs near the border with Lebanon, a young boy looked forlornly up at the camera with a single streak of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. Across the ward, another child’s guts were bursting through his sundered stomach.

“If I die when I help people it is good for me,” said a doctor at the hospital. “I’m a doctor, I must help people.”

At the Dar al-Shifa field hospital in Aleppo, Dr Osman, a physician at the hospital, explained how he had nightmares about amputating children’s limbs, but each day resisted the urge to return to normal life because there was no one else to help these people.

According to Osman, about 80 per cent of the patients at Dar al-Shifa are civilians. At the time of the interview, the hospital had already been bombed five times, with another 15 bombings nearby.

“The Syrian regime considers medical staff as a perfect target, as a military target,” he said.  “When you kill one doctor it is better than killing a thousand fighters.”

In November 2012, King was there when the hospital was hit yet again, but still hope was not vanquished.

“Dar al-Shifa is not a building, it’s not a machine; it’s people, it’s doctors, nurses,” said Osman, speaking amidst the rubble.

“We will continue. We will build this hospital again and we will work again.”

In one striking scene, Dr Abaman, a former veterinarian working as an assistant physician at the hospital, appealed directly to the camera, emotion cracking his voice:

“We have enough shown TV. Do something. Do something. We are suffering here alone.”

The film also featured the tragic burning of Aleppo’s market, a world heritage site and one of the world’s best-preserved souks.

King asked Ahmed Alhaji, who had witnessed the fire, to explain what he had seen.

“I saw a lot of things that make me cry,” he said. “I saw Assad destroy our history. My heart is broken, I was crying blood.”

Towards the end of the film, King asked an FSA fighter what he thought of the West’s Syria policy. The West’s inaction before – and even after – evidence came to light of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, he said, was a sign to Assad that:

“Whatever you want to do, go ahead and do it. You want to kill 100,000 people that’s okay; you want to drop 100,000 tonnes of bombs that’s fine. Chemical weapons? Just keep 20–30 per cent of them.”

Most of the characters featured in the film, said King, are now dead.

Beyond the obvious perils of filming during an almost constant artillery bombardment, King faced his own challenges in shooting the film, not least the very lack of engagement from the West and its media that was alluded to by the film’s characters.

“I had to reassess why I was risking my life to cover slaughter,” said King in the Q&A with Loyd.

“I’d been there for four months and had photographed 5,000 dead bodies and nobody cared. No one would buy my photographs, so I started shooting video.”

The politics within Syria were also a source of frustration for King. He saw a shipment of powdered milk he had helped facilitate first held up in customs and then less than welcomed by those who had been benefiting from the black market in the product.

Those people who had helped him gain access to the country started to try to influence his material and, when he refused, banned him from going back.

“In the first year I figured that their politics were holding up the medical needs of the community,” said King. “Then they wanted to control the message.”

Asked by members of the audience whether his work could be used to try the perpetrators of the violence, King expressed his frustration with the absence of a more effective international legal system:

“If there was an international court of law that could hold people accountable for their war crimes . . . but why give my stuff to some organisation that fantasises that it can prosecute people?”

Loyd and King agreed that the future for the country is bleak and the potential fallout dire.

“The war launched against Al Qaeda was one thing,” said Loyd, wearing a cast around his leg after sustaining gunshot injuries in the latest of many reporting trips to Syria.

“Now something far worse [Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS)] has taken up a huge block of the Middle East running almost to the Mediterranean, and the West is aghast as to how to deal with the situation.

“Syria has raised a huge question mark and nobody knows what to do.”

King is convinced that chemical weapons have been smuggled out of Syria and have already reached Western European capitals. Asked whether he was planning to go back to Syria, he said:

“I don’t have to go to Syria. It’s done. It’s here. It’s over. I’m going to sit and wait.”

In a bloody coincidence with Frontline’s First Wednesday talk about the divisive issue of international intervention in Syria, yet another massacre of women, children, civilians has been charged at the Assad regime.

Less than a fortnight after the Houla massacre in the Homs province of Syria, in which 108 people were killed, opposition activist report that a further 78 people were killed on June 6 by pro-government forces in Qubair and Maarzaf in the Hama province.

Media reports increasingly talk about Syria’s ‘tipping point’ – but last night’s talk illustrated the variety of perspectives on this contentious fulcrum.

Chaired by the Guardian’s Ian Black, the panel began by explaining their own perspective on the country’s current crisis. Charles Glass, recently returned from Syria, began by telling the  audience about the striking polarity in opinions he heard advocated by ordinary Syrians – “either dramatically for or dramatically against the regime.”

Rim Turkmani, founder of secular opposition group Building the Syrian State, said that the Western powers had contributed to such polarity, whilst underestimating the complexities of Syrian society. She said that all too often, external powers had ignored “how to help Syrians”, focusing instead on “how to harm the regime”.

Christopher Phillips, of Queen Mary’s University reminded the audience that ‘we’ the international community are already involved in the Syrian conflict as the past year has seen the externalisation of conflict and a reliance on the outside world for resolution.

Ian Black introduced the final panelist, Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme, as “openly interventionist”. Shehadi qualified this by saying that at the moment the international powers are paralysed because they are falling into the trap of Bashar al-Assad’s mind game – that it’s either him or civil war.

The evening quickly moved to audience questions: What kind of deal can really be done? What kind of intervention can occur? What is the role of the external actors? But the issue to which the panellist kept returning was raised by Dr Ghada Karmi: Foreign media coverage has too often relied upon “so-called spokesmen for the opposition without any critical analysis of … who they are”.

As yet the opposition groups in Syria have remained, in Shehadi’s words, “leaderless”. Perhaps it is this lack of leadership, organisation, and the presentation of a viable alternative to the Assad regime which has delayed the ‘tipping point’. Is this the regime narrative succeeding over the opposition?

Shehadi said:

“There is an information war… The revolution started as a non-violent, peaceful opposition to the regime… and now it’s perceived as a violent civil war with bad leadership. The perception now is something the regime is very comfortable with. The regime can do violent civil war for the next ten years – it will win and flourish… The regime is winning the mind game and most of what you see in the press is buying that regime narrative.”

More questions included the threats of ethnic cleansing and of sectarianism, the pivotal role of Russia, and the failing Anan plan. Jonathan Steele asked about another tipping point: “At what point do you think the opposition will be willing to talk to the regime?”

It was an evening that posed far more questions than it answered. Despite some cautious optimism that negotiations and resolutions should not be discredited and dismissed as futile, the talk’s conclusion echoed Ian Black’s own question: “Fifteen months and 15,000 dead; can [that compromise] still happen?”

Watch the full event here:

Once written off as goofy and incapable, Bashar al-Assad vowed to fight corruption and embrace globalisation when he came to office in 2000. Instead, he has walked in the steps of his father, Hafez, who 30 years ago unleashed a brutal assault against the town of Hama that reportedly saw 20,000 killed.

Syria, the Assads’ Twilight tells the story of the Assad regime, revealing how Bashar, like his father, was unable to tolerate dissent. Filmed in 2011, it poses the question of whether, in the age of social media, Bashar can resist the challenge against his rule.