For Sama (97′) is an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. Told as a love letter from a young Syrian mother to her daughter, it tells the story of filmmaker Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to her daughter Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her.

Waad’s camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as she wrestles with an impossible choice – whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

A favourite of critics, audiences and film festivals, For Sama has already won 23 awards, including the Golden Eye at Cannes Film Festival 2019, the Audience Award at Sheffield Doc Fest 2019 and the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW.

The film will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmakers Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts, and Executive Producer Nevine Mabro.

SPEAKERS:

Waad al-Kateab (Director). In January 2016, Waad al-Kateab started documenting the horrors of Aleppo for Channel 4 News in a series of devastating films titled Inside Aleppo. These reports and others became the most watched pieces on the UK news programme and received almost half a billion views online and 24 awards including the 2016 International Emmy for breaking news coverage. Waad was a marketing student in Aleppo when protests against the Assad regime swept the country in 2011. She taught herself how to film and started recording the human suffering around her as Assad forces battled rebels for control of Aleppo. She stayed through the siege documenting the loss of life and producing some of the most memorable images of the six-year conflict. When she and her family were evacuated from Aleppo in December 2016 she managed to get all her footage out. Waad lives in London with her husband Hamza and two daughters.

Edward Watts (Director) is an Emmy award-winning, BAFTA nominated filmmaker who has directed over twenty narrative and documentary films that tell true stories of courage, heroism and humour from across the world, covering everything from war crimes in the Congo to the colourful lives of residents in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. His 2015 film Escape from ISIS exposed the brutal treatment of the estimated 4 million women living under the rule of the Islamic State and, for the first time on television, told the extraordinary story of an underground network trying to save those it can.  His first narrative short film Oksijan told the incredible true story of a 7- year-old Afghan boy’s fight to survive as he is smuggled to the UK in a refrigerated lorry and the air inside begins to run out. It premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2017 and has since played at prestigious film festivals around the world.

Nevine Mabro (Executive Producer) is Deputy Editor of Channel 4 News. She has led the programme’s agenda- setting foreign output, enhancing its ability to get extraordinary coverage out of some of the world’s most dangerous places. She finds and nurtures new talent both on screen and off, and works with many independent filmmakers. She executive-produced Waad al-Kateab’s award- winning Inside Aleppo coverage for Channel 4 News in 2016 as well as Marcel Mettelsiefen’s Agony in Aleppo short film that won the 2013 Emmy and was developed into the Oscar- nominated film Watani.

The battle to defeat ISIS in the region lasted years, resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and ruined vast tracts of cities such as Mosul and Raqqa. Involving some of most brutal urban combat since World War II, the fall of Mosul was key to the downfall of the Islamic State: soon after the remains of the so-called “Caliphate” began to crumble.

Ivor’s work focuses on the human struggles of conflict. Taken on the frontline, his pictures legitimately and compellingly record the experience of being “caught in the crossfire,” whether as a soldier or non-combatant. He furthermore captures post-war reality while attempting to reconstruct the final weeks of combat: the devastated cities including abandoned corpses of ISIS fighters, and, months later, families searching for missing loved ones, and civilians returning to reclaim their homes and lives.

Ivor will be joined in conversation with Anthony Loyd, senior foreign correspondent for The Times, to discuss the challenges of working on the frontline and the human stories behind his images. Copies of End of the Caliphate will be available at the event.

Speakers

Ivor Prickett is a freelance photographer for The New York Times. He has been based in the Middle East since 2009, where he documented the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Libya, working simultaneously on editorial assignments and his own projects. Traveling to more than 10 countries between 2012 and 2015, he also documented the Syrian refugee crisis. With a particular interest in the aftermath of war and its humanitarian consequences, his early projects focused on stories of displaced people throughout the Balkans and Caucasus. Ivor’s work has been recognised through a number of prestigious awards including POYI, Foam Talent, the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize and the Ian Parry Scholarship. His pictures have been exhibited widely at institutions such as the Getty Gallery in London, Foam Gallery in Amsterdam and the National Portrait Gallery in London. He is represented by Panos Pictures in London.

Anthony Loyd is senior foreign correspondent for The Times. His career began in 1993 when he started reporting from the war in Bosnia. Since then he has written from innumerable conflict zones, including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Chechnya and Kosovo. He is author of My War Gone By I Miss It So and Another Bloody Love Letter. He has witnessed the atrocities committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the brutal rise of the self-styled Islamic State and the desperate struggle of the Syrian people caught between the two.

Civilians who had remained in west Mosul during the battle to retake the city, lined up for an aid distribution in the Mamun neighbourhood. Iraq – March 2017

Nadhira Rasoul looked on as Iraqi Civil Defence workers dug out the bodies of her sister and niece from her house in the Old City of Mosul, where they were killed by an airstrike in June 2017. Iraq – September 2017

As one of the earliest Arabs to join the Afghan Jihad, the Algerian Islamist Abdullah Anas counted as brothers-in-arms the future icons of al-Qaeda’s global war, from Abdullah Azzam to Osama bin Laden, and befriended key Afghan resistance leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Brushing shoulders with everyone from Zarqawi to Haqqani, Anas distanced himself from their movements, disagreeing with their narrow interpretations of political Islam. While he remains committed to Jihad, to this day Anas takes issue with the extremist trajectories of his one-time companions.

Using Anas’ memoirs, To The Mountains: My Life in Jihad, From Algeria to Afghanistan, and his intimate knowledge of the networks that formed during the Soviet-Afghan war as a springboard, this panel will be tracing the journey of  ‘Jihad’ – and what it means for our societies today.

Speakers:

Abdullah Anas is an Algerian politician-in-exile and former member of the mujahideen who fought alongside bin Laden before falling out with the al-Qaeda leader over his plans for a global Jihad. He lives in London, having gained political asylum.

Tam Hussein is an award-winning investigative journalist and writer who has reported on UK Jihadist networks and British foreign fighters in Syria.

Photograph courtesy of Dawei Ding via Creative Commons

  Watch the video stream of The Meaning of Jihad

In the six short years since Marie Colvin’s death in Homs, Syria, on February 12, 2012, she has been remembered in many ways. As a member of the Frontline Club, those eulogies of Marie have often taken place here. Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, City of Ghosts) chose to make her life, death and dedication to journalism the subject of his feature debut.

“For me, A Private War is a love letter to journalism and an homage to Marie, who risked her life time and time again fighting to tell hard truths. It was deeply important for me to try and also capture Marie’s personal struggle and to examine the demons that plagued her mind. I didn’t want to approach the film as a biopic, but instead, an exploration of the paradoxical swirl of addictions that made Marie brilliant, but also increasingly tortured. She often struggled with the very thing that drove her – Will the world care when her words finally reach them?” – Mathew Heineman

Join us for an exclusive pre-screening of ‘A Private War’ on Tuesday February 5th, 10 days before the film’s UK release. We’re partnering with Women in Journalism for a Q&A afterwards with Matthew Heinemann and Paul Conroy, chaired by Editorial Director of the Sunday Times Eleanor Mills.

Run time: 110 minutes

Watch the trailer here

Eleanor Mills is Editorial Director of The Sunday Times and Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine which was named Supplement of the Year at the prestigious 2018 British Press Awards. A passionate advocate of equality and keen feminist, Eleanor is Chair of Women in Journalism, the UK’s premier network for female journalists across print, radio, TV and online, Her publications include: Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs: 100 Years of the Best Journalism by Women, which is on the A level syllabus. She is on the board of the New York based Centre for Talent Innovation think tank and is a trustee of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund  (JDRF). She appears regularly on TV and radio and lives in London with her husband and two daughters.

Paul Conroy is a former soldier who spent seven years with the Royal Artillery. He developed a passion for photography and first became involved in journalism on a mission to the Balkans. He has since worked extensively as a photojournalist and filmmaker in combat zones around the world, producing footage in the Balkans, Iraq, Democratic Republic Congo, Rwanda and most notably Libya and Syria. Paul first met Marie in March 2003 in Syria. A firm friendship was forged over their many shared interests: sailing, whiskey, and their extraordinary dedication to covering the atrocities of war. Having worked together in Libya in 2011, they were determined to cover the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown and the devastating impact this was having on civilians.

Matthew Heineman is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who has twice won the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary Award from the Directors Guild of America, one of only three directors to win the prestigious honour twice. Heineman recently directed and executive produced ‘The Trade’, a five-part docu-series that premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The critically acclaimed series chronicles the opioid crisis through the eyes of those most affected-growers, cartel members, users and law enforcement. His last film ‘City of Ghosts’ that follows a group of citizen-journalists exposing the horrors of ISIS premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

  Watch the video stream of ‘A Private War’ Exclusive Q&A

Run Time: 1 hr 35 mins

Chair

Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News’ International Editor. Her biography, “In Extremis; the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin” will be published in November. She has covered many of the conflicts of recent times, including Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also reported on the Trump administration, terror attacks in Europe and refugees, and was Channel 4 News China Correspondent from 2006 to 2008. During the 2004 US assault on Falluja, she was embedded with a frontline marine unit, and in 1994, was the only English-speaking foreign correspondent in Rwanda when the genocide started. She has won awards from the Royal Television Society and BAFTA, aswell as the Charles Wheeler Award and the James Cameron Award, and was the recipient of the 2017 Patron’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society.  Her writing has been featured in the New York Review of Books,  Granta, the Sunday Times and the Guardian among other publications. Her first book was ‘Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution’.  Before becoming a journalist, she was an aid worker, initially with OXFAM in Latin America and then with UNICEF in Africa.

Speakers

Scott Gilmore is Staff Attorney at the Center for Justice and Accountability. He is an expert in strategic litigation on behalf of victims of international crimes in national courts, including cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, universal jurisdiction and foreign sovereign immunity. For the past six years, Mr Gilmore has investigated war crimes and torture in Syria and filed the first-ever war crimes case against the Assad regime for the targeted killing of American journalist Marie Colvin. He has investigated crimes committed against Yezidi, an ethno-religious minority targeted by ISIS, for potential prosecution of Duvalier-era officials in Haiti, and pioneered litigation strategies to challenge cyber-surveillance targeting journalists and human rights defenders. He has a BA from McGill University, a JD from George Washington University Law School (high honours, Order of the Coif), and certification in international human rights and humanitarian law from Oxford University. He was formerly a professional musician in the Indie rock bands A Silver Mt. Zion and Black Ox Orkestar, and a theatre performer in Le Petit Théâtre de l’Absolu.

Paul Conroy is a former soldier who spent seven years with the Royal Artillery. He developed a passion for photography and first became involved in journalism on a mission to the Balkans. He has since worked extensively as both a photojournalist and filmmaker in combat zones around the world, producing footage from conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Democratic Republic Congo, Rwanda and most notably Libya and Syria. Paul first met Marie Colvin in March 2003 in Syria. He was attempting to smuggle himself across the Tigris on a raft made of tubes stolen from lorries, with the aim to get into Iraq to cover the final assault on Baghdad. A firm friendship was forged over their many shared interests: sailing, whiskey, and their extraordinary dedication to covering the atrocities of war. Having worked together in Libya in 2011, they were a natural pairing for an assignment to Homs. They were determined to cover the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown and the devastating impact this was having on civilians. Conroy is the author of Under The Wire. Offering a testimony of war reportage, and a personal account of the final assignment he embarked on with Marie Colvin.

Cat Colvin is Marie’s sister. She and her three children filed a lawsuit against Syria in 2016 in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., alleging that Marie was targeted and killed by the Syrian regime. Cat is the founder of the Marie Colvin Fund, which supports charitable organisation that reflect Marie’s life-long dedication to humanitarian aid, human rights, journalism and education. The fund’s primary donation recipient is the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting at Stony Brook University of Journalism, where Cat serves as a founding Board Member. The mission of the Marie Colvin Centre is to nurture and grow the next generation of overseas reporters, to cement Marie’s legacy by rewarding tenacious overseas reporting with a journalist-in-residence fellowship, and to raise awareness about the need for robust international coverage through the Marie Colvin Distinguished Lecture Series, which has welcomed Christiane Amanpour, Clarissa Ward, Ann Curry, Rukmini Callimachi and Lindsey Hilsum. Cat currently serves as General Counsel and Senior Vice President of a large US-based multinational corporation, where she is responsible for all aspects of legal and regulatory affairs, and architect of her company’s Charitable Giving Programme, which promotes active participation by more than 10,000 employees worldwide in STEM education, humanitarian and environmental causes. After graduating from Yale Unversity, Cat started her career as Programme Director for the Executive Council on Foreign Diplomats, then spent several years working as a professor of Rural Development for United World Colleges at FUNDACEA in Barinas, Venezuela. Cat is a graduate of Fordham University of Law and began her legal career as an associate of International Project Finance at Shearman & Sterling in New York, the law firm that currently represents her in the Colvin v. Syria lawsuit, along with the Center for Justice and accountability. She subsequently worked as a foreign Legal Consultant for Baker & McKenzie in Santiago, Chile, and in house Corporate Counsel for the Independent Film Channel in New York.

Chris Martin is an award-winning director he has made films for all the major UK and US networks as well as a number of feature documentaries (Palestine is still the Issue, War on Democracy)

A Brief Visual History in the Time of ISIS, supported by Newspaper Club, is curated by Magnum photographer, Peter van Agtmael and includes an essay and timeline by Peter Harling, an expert on the Middle East, formerly of the International Crisis Group, and founder of Synaps. The work of nineteen photographers is included in this first newspaper, and the images range from those taken in the final years of the French mandate in Syria in 1941 to the fall of Mosul in 2017.

Each Magnum Chronicles newspaper will be curated by a different Magnum photographer, showcasing the breadth and depth of Magnum’s archive, combining contemporary images with archival to offer a unique perspective and context on global social and political issues through to lighter subjects of general interest. The aim of Magnum Chronicles is to create a series of intelligent free democratic publications that inform, engage and entertain through the use of visual narratives. Each publication will also incorporate collaborations with experts and creatives across many disciplines and fields, and will be in several languages.

Chair

Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, currently, for The Independent. He was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, and is the author of several books on Iraq’s recent history, including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq and the most recent The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising.

Speakers

Peter van Agtmael was born in Washington DC in 1981. He studied history at Yale. His work largely concentrates on America, looking at issues of conflict, identity, power, race and class. He also works extensively on the Israel/Palestine conflict and throughout the Middle East. He has won the W. Eugene Smith Grant, the ICP Infinity Award for Young Photographer, the Lumix Freelens Award, the Aaron Siskind Grant, a Magnum Foundation Grant as well as awards from World Press Photo, American Photography Annual, POYi, The Pulitzer Center, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, FOAM and Photo District News. His book, ‘Disco Night Sept 11,’ on America at war in the post-9/11 era was released in 2014 by Red Hook Editions. Disco Night Sept 11 was shortlisted for the Aperture/Paris Photo Book Award and was named a ‘Book of the Year’ by The New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, Mother Jones, Vogue, American Photo and Photo Eye. “Buzzing at the Sill,” a book about America in the shadows of the wars, will come out in Fall 2016. He is a founder and partner in Red Hook Editions. Peter joined Magnum Photos in 2008 and became a member in 2013

Noman Benotman is Quilliam’s President and is an Executive Board Member. He leads Quilliam’s work on de-radicalisation processes in the UK and abroad, working to raise international awareness of Jihadist recantations, co-ordinating Quilliam’s outreach to current and former extremists and using Quilliam as a platform from which to share his inside knowledge of al-Qaeda and other Jihadist groups with a wider audience. He also heads the current research programmes. Born in Libya in 1967, Benotman first adopted radical Islamism in the mid-1980s after reading the books of Sayyid Qutb. In 1989 he travelled to Afghanistan where he fought against the Soviet Union, taking part in battles around Khost, Gardez and elsewhere. After the Soviet withdrawal, he helped set up the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group which aimed to violently overthrow Colonel Gaddafi and establish an ‘Islamic state’ in Libya. In 1994, he moved to Sudan where he forged close links with Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other key members of al-Qaeda. Since 1995 he has lived in London where he was initially part of the ‘Londonistan’ scene alongside other senior extremists such as Abu Qatada and Abu Musab al-Suri before gradually distancing himself from Islamism. During the last few years, he has played a key role in the disbanding of the LIFG and the issuing of its ‘refutations’. He is also well known as one of the most public critics of al-Qaeda, appearing widely on international media such as CNN and al-Jazeera as well as taking part in a range of international conferences. He has a degree in Human Development Studies from Birkbeck University and speaks English and Arabic.

Award-winning photographer Nish Nalbandian spent three years documenting life and war in Northern Syria from the frontlines to the everyday lives of people struggling to survive amid the ruins. A selection of photographs from this powerful body of work were published in Nalbandian’s critically acclaimed first monograph A Whole World Blind (Daylight, 2016). In 2014, as the situation in Syria escalated and it was becoming too dangerous to stay there, Nalbandian shifted his focus to another story close by: the lives of the nearly three million Syrian refugees still living in southern Turkey. Nalbandian’s humanistic portraits of Syrians in Turkey are published in his second book: A Handful of Dust (Daylight Books, April 2018).

In the book’s introduction, Nalbandian writes: “My intent in this book was not to produce a ‘poor refugee’ story, showing sad pictures of exotic Middle Eastern people living in poverty. I do have some pictures like that. But I challenged myself to show a wide swath of the Syrian population from all walks of life. I do not claim to show a complete picture, just a broad picture of what life is like for these people in this place at this time. I also tried to leave people’s politics and specifics of the war out of it”.

About the photographer

Nish Nalbandian working in Aleppo, Syria. Photo courtesy of Richard Charles Harvey

Documentary photographer Nish Nalbandian has photographed in more than 35 countries worldwide, in a variety of situations and environments, from wars to sporting events, cities to remote deserts. His work has appeared in such diverse outlets as The Human Rights Watch World Report, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, The New Yorker, Bag News National Geographic Traveler, and New Scientist. His first monograph, A Whole World Blind:War and Life In Northern Syria (Daylight Books, 2016) received critical acclaim in such outlets as Smithsonian Magazine, The Daily Beast, Vice, American Photo, Square Mile Magazine, Lensculture and The New York Review of Books. Nalbandian’s work has been shown in the New York Photo Festival, Powerhouse Arena, and IPA Best in Show in New York, and in exhibitions around the world.He has received many honours, including: Applied Art’s 2014 ‘Best Portrait Series’ Award (Portraits of the Syrian Opposition); American Photography AP30 (Aleppo Struggles On); First Prize, IPA (International Photography Awards) Editorial/Conflict (Aleppo Struggles On); Silver Medal, ND Awards (Special – Panoramic, Panoramic Photographs in and around Aleppo); Honourable Mention, ND Awards, Special PhotojournalismStory (Aleppo Struggles On); and Lensculture’s Top 50 Emerging Talent Award for 2014. For more information, go to: http://www.nishnalbandian.com/

Matthew Cassel 

Matthew Cassel is an award-winning filmmaker and multimedia journalist based in the Mediterranean region. For more than a decade he has documented stories of people facing conflict and persecution in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and beyond. He works mainly as a one-person video crew, filming, producing and editing short and long-form documentary content for various publications.

Learn more here.

The area of East Ghouta is said to be one of the last strongholds of resistance by Syrian opposition forces and as such the target of renewed violence by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his foreign allies.

The panel invited for the talk included Dr Abdulkarim Ekzayez, a Syrian medical doctor and an epidemiologist; Leila Al-Shami, a founding member of Tahrir-ICN, a network that aims to connect anti-authoritarian struggles across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe along with Dr Idrees Ahmad, a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling. The evening was hosted by BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen.

Bowen began by asking Dr Ekzayez how he manages to work and provide medical care in hostile situations such as East Ghouta to which replied:

We see the same patients that we discharged a few days ago, with even more serious injuries, but they (hospitals) don’t have space to treat patients, they don’t have the medical supplies…they don’t have food, water or any essentials. Even the word catastrophe can not describe what’s happening in East Ghouta.

What can done about the conflict in Syria? UK could expand its Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, support the 5.5m Syrian Refugees into work + schools & help rebuild Raqqa – @BowenBBC at @frontlineclub with @LeilaShami pic.twitter.com/64thtTW1ap

— James Denselow (@jamesdenselow) March 13, 2018

He went on to explained that the Assad regime causes delays and confiscates certain medical supplies provided by UN humanitarian convoys and  they hardly reach the population or meet their basic needs.

He further added: “My interpretation is that they (Assad Regime) use this tactic to weaken the community, because this scenario happened many times before…in Baba Amr in Homs, in Eastern Aleppo and other places. First, they besiege the area, then they target all the civilians, so people don’t have access to healthcare or any essentials.”

The lack of a concerted effort on part of the international community was raised by Al-Shami. She pointed out that the UN has not managed to get aid in these besieged areas such as Eastern Ghouta and starvation is being used as a weapon of war. She commented:

This should not be a negotiating principle, this is a basic humanitarian standard.  The aid has to reach these communities in need. We need more efforts, we need air drops of aid. The international community has to start asking questions when a regime purposefully stops aid and starves people, what they can do?

"Civil society, suppressed under Assad but multiple in opposition controlled areas = hope for future of #Syria" #EastGhouta @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/NYsZSDvL2C

— Suzy Madigan (@Suzy_Madigan) March 13, 2018

Further along in the discussion Bowen turned to Dr Idress to see what he thinks the international community can do besides watching the conflict unfold and discussed UN’s classification of words such as ‘besiege’ and ‘hard to reach areas’.

In terms of expectations from the UN agencies Dr Idress explained:

The problem is that the UN has no international backing. The UN alone cannot enforce resolutions. Its efforts have been repeatedly thwarted even for humanitarian efforts and we have had 11 vetoes from Russia which blocks any kind of accountability. In the absence of this it doesn’t have any mechanism with which to confront the regime. So, it’s incumbent on the states which are supposed to be guarantors of world order, but what we have seen is a collapse of that.

One of the questions raised from the audience in this open discussion was on the support for the Syrian government. On this Dr Ekzayez commented that the Syrian regime is not similar to any other authoritarian regime. It relies roughly on 2500 people within its core structure and each person from this inner core was holding positions of power within institutions such as the army, The Ba’ath Party and society agencies. They similarly had links within communities who had shared interests with the regime.

After the formal ending of the conversation for the evening the panel and audience continued to discuss their individual points on the unfolding of events in East Ghouta in the members room on the lower floors of the Frontline Club.

One such area, the Damascus suburbs of East Ghouta, is the target of renewed violence, with over a hundred civilians dying daily to chemical weapon attacks and regime airstrikes. Compounding these attacks, the state of siege East Ghouta faces has prevented food or medical supplies from entering the region, leaving hundreds of thousands malnourished and vulnerable. Finally, reports are surfacing that the Syrian regime forces are pursuing a policy of targeting doctors, nurses and other medical workers, denying treatment to an already beleaguered population.

All of these crises raise troubling questions about the nature of East Ghouta’s previous designation as a “de-escalation zone” by the Russia-sponsored Astana peace negotiations, and what this seemingly-inevitable eradication of the last bastions of Syria’s popular opposition means for the shape of a potential peace outcome.

The Frontline Club has invited a panel of experts to dissect what the events that have transpired in East Ghouta reveal about a pattern of human rights violations that have come to define the Syrian civil war.

Chair

Jeremy Bowen BBC Middle East correspondent from 1995 and Middle East editor since 2005, award-winning journalist Jeremy Bowen has spent much of the past two years documenting the game-changing moments in the history of the Middle East.

Speakers

Dr Abdulkarim Ekzayez is a Syrian medical doctor and an epidemiologist. His work at Chatham House focuses on the public health impacts of conflict, as well as challenges around the protection of healthcare in conflict, both issues he has experienced first-hand in Syria. Dr Ekzayez researches health workers as military targets and is personally working with other Syrian and British medics and activists to support humanitarian efforts in Eastern Ghouta. He is a regular contributor to several medical and civil society institutions in Syria, and has been active in advocacy for Syria through media and conferences. He is a trustee member of two NGOs, Shafak and Eye to the Future.

Dr Idrees Ahmad is a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a former research fellow at the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. He is the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). He writes for The Observer, The Nation, and a wide variety of other publications. He is now working on a book on the war of narratives over Syria. Idrees has appeared as an on-air analyst on Al Jazeera, the BBC, TRT World, RAI TV, Radio Open Source and several Pacifica Radio channels.

Leila Al-Shami has worked with the human rights movement in Syria and across in the Middle East. She is the co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (Pluto, 2016, 2018) and a founding member of Tahrir-ICN, a network that aimed to connect anti-authoritarian struggles across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Photo: Civilians escape from explosion site after Assad Regime’s forces strike over the de-conflict zone, Ein Tarma Town of Eastern Ghouta region of Damascus, Syria on 22 August, 2017 [Alaa Mohammad/Anadolu Agency]

Rania’s new book is published to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of  protests in Syria. Cinematically crafted, it weaves a tapestry of rebels and exiles, radical Islamists and their victims amid the deadliest conflict of the century thus far.

Extending back to the first protests in Damascus in 2011, and based on more than five years of clandestine reporting on the frontlines of the war, No Turning Back presents an unforgettable portrait of a shattered country that “has ceased to exist as a unified state except in memories and on maps.”

Rania Abouzeid is a journalist with well over fifteen years experience in the Middle East and South Asia. A print and television journalist, fluent in Arabic, she has won numerous international journalism awards including the 2014 Frontline Club Print Awards and the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. Rania regularly writes for the New Yorker and National Geographic and she has been published in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Australian, CSM, and a host of other outlets.

Lyse Doucet is an award winning Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter for BBC World News television and BBC World Service Radio. She is regularly deployed to anchor special news coverage from the field and interview world leaders. Lyse also reports across the BBC including for BBC Newsnight. She played a key role in the BBC’s coverage of the “Arab Spring” across the Middle East and North Africa and has covered all the major stories in the region for the past 20 years.