Ferah’s World: A teen’s quest to survive Daesh

Ferah poses for a photo in her home in Mosul, Iraq, in this photo taken Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017. Ferah was just turning 14 and starting to look to the future when the Islamic State group took over Mosul in 2014, throwing her world into darkness. Afraid to leave the house, the teenager had to find some way to endure. (AP)
Updated 04 December 2017
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Ferah’s World: A teen’s quest to survive Daesh

MOSUL: Soon after she turned 14, Ferah built her own world in her bedroom. A world of paper butterflies, of lights draped in strings from corner to corner, of inspirational messages taped on the wall above her bed.
It had to be special because the Iraqi teen intended to stay there to escape the horror outside in her home city of Mosul. Just a few months earlier, in the summer of 2014, it had been taken over by the Daesh group, the fanatics that everyone sneeringly referred to by their acronym in Arabic, Daesh.
Her room became her sanctuary for nearly three years, where she wrote a Facebook journal, expressing her fears and hopes.
“What is the problem?” she wrote in an imagined dialogue.
“The future is gone. It came crashing down.”
“How can I understand your feelings?“
“Be among Daesh. ... Try being a dreamer while sitting among Daesh.”
Ferah’s story and writings offer a glimpse of the day-to-day struggle to survive under Daesh. The group’s takeover of Mosul plunged her into isolation. Her friends fled the city, as did her two eldest sisters, who were married and had their own families. Ferah stopped going to school, afraid of the girls in her class who identified with Daesh.
Outside was dangerous. Daesh religious police hunted for the slightest sign of “sin.” Outside Ferah’s uncle’s house, they dragged away a girl when her robes swished open and they spotted something red underneath, a forbidden dash of color in the required all-black garb hiding her entire body and face.
In a nearby neighborhood, a young girl, around 12, went on her roof to catch a breeze in the summer heat. A boy next door was on his roof at the same time. They were seen. Suspicions were raised.
Daesh arrested and killed them both. The girl was stoned to death in front of her house, the punishment for adultery. Everyone in the neighborhood said when the girl’s body was taken away, the warm smell of musk lingered, one of the aromas of Paradise, proof she was innocent and God had taken her in.
Ferah, her parents and an older sister stayed inside as much as possible.




In this Nov. 11, 2017 photo, Iraqi teen Ferah, shown studying for an exam in Irbil, Iraq. (AP)

“Isn’t there a right to the freedom to dream, the freedom to have the best years of my life?” Ferah wrote. “I’d just like to know when I will really live.”
She escaped onto the Internet, staying online late into the night. Her Facebook postings garnered more than 6,000 followers, who encouraged her, gave her hope and became her friends.
Across Mosul, society rolled up behind closed doors, everyone living nocturnal, virtual lives.
With their kids stuck at home, some parents married them off just to give them something to do. It was ridiculous, Ferah scoffed — girls around her age marrying guys in their early 20s they barely knew. The girls were so excited, in makeup and elaborate dresses, as if it were a real marriage that would last, she thought.
She preferred her own world.
As months dragged on, she decorated her room with paper cutouts of butterflies and flowers. She hung strings of lights. From Instagram and Tumblr, she printed inspirational messages and taped them above her bed. One poster showed a girl wearing fairy wings. “What if I fall?” the picture asked — and then replied, “Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?“
Her “little works,” as she called them, gave her solace.
She improved her English watching YouTube videos. She downloaded Arabic translations of self-help books. Twice, she read “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.”
Habit #1: “Be proactive.” Tell yourself “I am the captain of my life. I can choose my attitude.”
She tried to do positive things. She learned to sew clothes and make gifts out of colored paper and gave them to friends. In times like this, simple things brought people joy. For a time, she and her sister went to a woman’s house for lessons in memorizing the Qur’an. But by the time Ferah learned a third of the holy book, Daesh decreed that only its clerics could teach the Qur’an, so the woman stopped the lessons, fearing reprisals.




In this Nov. 11, 2017 photo, Iraqi teen Ferah, shown studying for an exam in Irbil, Iraq. (AP)

On her 16th birthday, in July 2016, Daesh organized a bitter surprise: They shut down the Internet across Mosul.
Ferah was cut off. So she wrote for herself now — and defied her despair.
“No one can stop you when trust in what’s inside you, when survival is in your heart even as your body is drowning, when light is inside you even as darkness is around you,” she wrote. “Even when difficulties grow, I will not break. Go on, war, get worse.”
It did get worse, even as liberation came in January 2017.
As Iraqi forces battling into Mosul neared Ferah’s neighborhood, Daesh fighters seized her family’s home to use as a sniper’s post.
Ferah’s family took refuge with a neighbor. Huddling in a single room, they heard the battle outside, the rocket fire, the guns hammering. Then a giant blast shook them. The room went black.
The battle ended. The militants fled, and Iraqi troops took control of the district.
As they retreated, the Daesh fighters had set off explosives in Ferah’s home. She watched the flames consume her room. Her little works — the butterflies, the lights, the clothes — were all reduced to ash.
“I saw my dreams ... as they turned to nothing,” she wrote. “My trust in tomorrow slipped away ... My heart has burned up.”
But it was not the end.
Her family rebuilt their home. Ferah found the confidence to endure.
Now 17, back at school and able to dream of a future again, she looks back at one of her favorite texts. It’s a love song to herself, written amid her hopelessness to praise the good she had discovered.
“Good morning to everyone who feels the beauty within — no matter who it angers,” she reads. “Glory to the fading light of endings and the burst of new beginnings. Everything else won’t last long.”


Israel is trying to destabilize Lebanon and Syria: Arab League chief

Updated 42 min 17 sec ago
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Israel is trying to destabilize Lebanon and Syria: Arab League chief

  • Targeted assassinations in Lebanon an unacceptable breach of the ceasefire agreement Israel signed late last year, Aboul Gheit said

CAIRO: Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Saturday accused Israel of trying to destabilize Syria and Lebanon through military provocations, in “flagrant disregard for international legal norms.”

In a statement, Aboul Gheit said that global inaction had further emboldened Israel.

“(T)he wars waged by Israel on the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Syria have entered a new phase of complete recklessness, deliberately violating signed agreements, invading countries and killing more civilians,” said the statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

He said that Israel’s resumption of targeted assassinations in Lebanon was an unacceptable and condemnable breach of the ceasefire agreement it signed with Lebanon late last year. 

Aboul Gheit said that Israel’s actions were driven by narrow domestic agendas at the expense of civilian lives and regional peace.

“It seems that the Israeli war machine does not want to stop as long as the occupation leaders insist on facing their internal crises by exporting them abroad, and this situation has become clear to everyone,” he said.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health’s count last week, more than 50,000 people have been killed and more than 113,200 wounded in Israeli attacks on Palestinian territories in retaliation against the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel.

In Lebanon, war monitors have said that at least 3,961 people were killed and 16,520 wounded in Israel’s war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement from Oct. 8, 2023 to Nov. 26, 2024.

Syria’s new government accused Israel on April 3 of mounting a deadly destabilization campaign after a wave of strikes on military targets, including an airport, and a ground incursion that killed 13 people in the southern province of Daraa. 


Syrian government says studying Amnesty report on massacres

Updated 05 April 2025
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Syrian government says studying Amnesty report on massacres

Damascus: Syria’s government said late Friday it was “closely following” the findings of a new Amnesty International report urging an investigation into sectarian massacres last month.
Amnesty called on the Syrian government in a report on Thursday to ensure accountability for the massacres targeting the Alawite minority, saying they may constitute war crimes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor has said security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly Alawites, during the violence.
Interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) led the offensive that toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December, has vowed to prosecute those responsible.
In a statement on Friday, the government said it had been “following closely the Amnesty report” and its “preliminary findings.”
“It is up to the Independent National Commission for Investigation and Fact-Finding to evaluate them, in accordance with the mandate, independence, and broad powers granted to it by presidential decree,” it said.
The Syrian authorities have accused armed Assad supporters of sparking the violence by attacking the new security forces.
The government on Friday complained the report failed to note “the broader context of the events.”
It said the violence began with a “premeditated assault” by the “remnants of the previous regime, targeting army and internal security personnel.”
In the ensuing chaos, “acts of retaliation and serious violations occurred,” it said, vowing that these would be investigated and a report issued within a month.


Red Cross warns of continued threat of landmines in Iraq

Updated 05 April 2025
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Red Cross warns of continued threat of landmines in Iraq

  • Organization calls for greater effort to reduce contamination that spans 2,100 sq. km.
  • More than 80 casualties recorded since 2023

LONDON: The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday that landmines and explosive remnants of war continue to pose a severe threat in Iraq, contaminating an estimated 2,100 sq. km.

In a statement issued to coincide with the International Day for Mine Awareness, the organization said landmines from past conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War and the 2014–17 battle against Daesh, remained a major hazard.

The contamination had resulted in civilian casualties, forced displacement, restricted farmland access and slowed reconstruction efforts, it said.

Between 2023 and 2024, the ICRC recorded 78 casualties from landmines and remnants of war in Iraq. Earlier this year, three students were killed in an explosion in Abu Al-Khasib, Basra.

The ICRC has appealed for greater efforts to reduce contamination and support mine-affected communities. Clearance operations continue in cooperation with national authorities and humanitarian partners.

The call for action comes at a time when several NATO member states, namely Poland, Finland and the Baltic states, have signaled their intention to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, the international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines. They cited the growing military threat from Russia as the reason for reconsidering the ban.

Meanwhile, the US, previously the largest funder of global mine clearance efforts, has cut back support due to a foreign aid review under the Trump administration.

Washington had contributed over $300 million annually, covering 40 percent of total international mine action funding, according to the 2024 Landmine Monitor report, which led to major clearance efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Laos.

A State Department official said last month that the US had restarted some global humanitarian demining programs but provided no details.


Hamas says Israeli offensive in Gaza ‘highly dangerous’ for hostages

Updated 04 April 2025
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Hamas says Israeli offensive in Gaza ‘highly dangerous’ for hostages

  • “We have decided not to transfer these (hostages)... but (this situation) is highly dangerous to their lives,” said Abu Obeida

GAZA CITY: Hamas on Friday said Israel’s offensive in Gaza was creating a “highly dangerous” situation for the hostages held there, warning that half of the living captives were in areas where the army had ordered evacuations.
“Half of the living Israeli (hostages) are located in areas that the Israeli occupation army has requested to be evacuated in recent days,” Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said in a statement. “We have decided not to transfer these (hostages)... but (this situation) is highly dangerous to their lives.”


Kurdish fighters leave northern city in Syria as part of deal with central government

Updated 04 April 2025
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Kurdish fighters leave northern city in Syria as part of deal with central government

  • The fighters left the predominantly Kurdish northern neighborhoods of Sheikh Maksoud and Achrafieh
  • The deal is a boost to an agreement reached last month

ALEPPO, Syria: Scores of US-backed Kurdish fighters left two neighborhoods in the Syrian Arab Republic’s northern city of Aleppo Friday as part of a deal with the central government in Damascus, which is expanding its authority in the country.
The fighters left the predominantly Kurdish northern neighborhoods of Sheikh Maksoud and Achrafieh, which had been under the control of Kurdish fighters in Aleppo over the past decade.
The deal is a boost to an agreement reached last month between Syria’s interim government and the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country’s northeast. The deal could eventually lead to the merger of the main US-backed force in Syria into the Syrian army.
The withdrawal of fighters from the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces came a day after dozens of prisoners from both sides were freed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported that government forces were deployed along the road that SDF fighters will use to move between Aleppo and areas east of the Euphrates River, where the Kurdish-led force controls nearly a quarter of Syria.
Sheikh Maksoud and Achrafieh had been under SDF control since 2015 and remained so even when forces of ousted President Bashar Assad captured Aleppo in late 2016. The two neighborhoods remained under SDF control when forces loyal to current interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa captured the city in November, and days later captured the capital, Damascus, removing Assad from power.
After being marginalized for decades under the rule of the Assad family rule, the deal signed last month promises Syria’s Kurds “constitutional rights,” including using and teaching their language, which were banned for decades.
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, who were displaced during Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, will return to their homes. Thousands of Kurds living in Syria who have been deprived of nationality for decades under Assad will be given the right of citizenship, according to the agreement.
Kurds made up 10 percent of the country’s prewar population of 23 million. Kurdish leaders say they don’t want full autonomy with their own government and parliament. They want decentralization and room to run their day-to day-affairs.