Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

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A picture taken in Gaza city on May 11, 2011, shows Libyan state TV showing footage of strongman Muammar Gaddafi in a meeting. (Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty)

A Dictator behind the Scenes

by Hannah Lucinda Smith | Feb 28, 2014 | Majalla Blogs

The men who gathered around the television screen had been talking and joking without pause for several hours straight, but when Mohammed pressed the ‘play’ button they all fell silent and watched. This was the place they came to every afternoon: a cinderblock shack...

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tank tank

Libya’s Deadly Catch-22

by Hannah Lucinda Smith | Feb 26, 2014 | Features

Misrata and Tripoli, Asharq Al-Awsat—It was Anwar, a former rebel fighter and community leader from Misrata, who summed the situation up best: “If you’re a state and you have a rifle, but the people have ten rifles, then you will have a problem.” He had cut right to...

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A former revolutionary looks out over the town of Zintan, Libya (Asharq Al-Awsat)

A Revolution Adrift

by Hannah Lucinda Smith | Feb 17, 2014 | Features

Zintan, Asharq Al-Awsat—Every revolution has it: that one seminal moment. In Libya it came with the face of the dead Muammar Gaddafi, soiled and bloodied and caught in a grainy camera phone photo. It was the image that signified the victory of the rebels over a...

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Mahmoud Hassino (L) at Sout Raya’s studios in Istanbul. (Hannah Lucinda Smith)

Revolutionary Radio

by Hannah Lucinda Smith | Jan 25, 2014 | Majalla Blogs

Five years ago, Syrian radio host Mahmoud Hassino came across the journal of a doctor from Hama. What he read there inspired him to provide his listeners with something revolutionary. The journal was written in 1982 during the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama and...

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Abu Hussein looks across the border to his house in Tel Abyad, Syria. (Asharq Al-Awsat/Hannah Lucinda Smith)

Longing for home in Akçakale

by Hannah Lucinda Smith | Jan 23, 2014 | Features

Akçakale, Asharq Al-Awsat—He cut the loneliest of figures, even in the middle of the crowd. Abu Khaled sat in his wheelchair, looked towards his homeland through the sharp metal fence, and he waited. He had been waiting for a week already. No one could tell him how...