Fared al-Mahlool was sixteen when the Syrian revolution began. Within months of its beginning in March 2011, he was skipping school and work, chasing the eruptions of protest and violence nearest to him. 

He recalls a particular protest on the first Friday of October 2011, in Maarat al-Numan, a city in rural Idlib, his hometown. He joined swaths of protesters marching towards the city’s state buildings. Above them, Syrian military helicopters followed. The protesters, al-Mahlool insists, were peaceful. But right as they reached the row of state buildings, the helicopters above began to fire, obliterating the buildings in a cloud of smoke. 

The next morning, the Assad regime blamed the protesters for the destruction. Headlines, he said, in compliant newspapers declared that the protesters had lost control and burned the buildings down. “It was then I learned this is what I had to do,” he said. “I had to tell the truth.”

Fared al-Mahlool, one of the few independent journalists still left in Syria. Photo courtesy of Fared al-Mahlool.

Now a journalist and researcher, al-Mahlool lives and works in a country that is among the most dangerous in the world for reporters. The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that 711 journalists have been murdered since the revolution began in 2011. In 2022 alone, a spokesperson from Reporters Without Borders told me, at least one Syrian journalist has been murdered, ten have been imprisoned, and four taken hostage. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is behind only Somalia as a country in which journalists are killed with impunity.