ARBAT, Iraq: Speaking into a microphone in her modest studio, Sherin Mohammad goes live with the news. But this is no typical radio station: Gardenya FM is run by, and for, Syrian refugees.
Broadcast from the refugee camp of Arbat in northeast Iraq, Gardenya FM features news programs and talk shows, produced by a team far from their native Syria.
Nearly 500 km away from her home town of Qamishli, Sherin concludes her news roundup, waits for the catchy jingle to end and sets down her clunky headphones on a white wooden desk.
The 31-year-old fled Qamishli in 2014 so she could stay with her husband, desperate to avoid the military conscription imposed by the Syrian government.
Their painful displacement came with a silver lining: She could realize her lifelong dream of being a journalist.
“I wanted to be a reporter back in Syria but it wasn’t on offer at my local university, so I became a teacher,” she told AFP.
In 2018, Italian NGO UPP proposed setting up a local radio station in Arbat, and Sherin jumped at the opportunity.
She has dedicated herself since then to providing reliable information to fellow refugees on the Syrian conflict, which erupted in 2011 with protests against the regime Bashar Assad.
The war has profoundly divided communities both inside and outside Syria, with various sides trading accusations of fabricating news.
Sherin wants to be the antidote.
“Everyone has smartphones and they can read any old thing published about Syria,” she said, including “fake news spread by the regime.”
Gardenya broadcasts locally at 101.3 FM, but the team also posts on the station’s Facebook page, which has several thousand likes.
Through it, Sherin said, loved ones still in Syria could see what life is like for Arbat’s 9,056 residents, many of whom sensed their displacement would be long-term and began replacing tarp tents with cinderblock structures in 2017.
“We want to give real information to those still in our homeland through our Facebook page so that people see we don’t live in tents,” she added.
Strolling through these one-room cement homes with a bounce in his step is Khalil, another Gardenya FM reporter.
He is well-known: Fellow refugees greeted him warmly, and someone handed him a flatbread with thyme for breakfast. Youssef, a 19-year-old trainee, trailed behind.
“This is how you build a network,” Khalil explained to him.
“We use our friends, our relatives, our journalist colleagues who are in the country and those on the front” to gather information, said Khalil.
But for the former English teacher from Amuda in northeast Syria, the most interesting people to speak to are the Syrian Kurds who travel back and forth between their homeland and safe haven in Arbat.
One of them, Goran, was Gardenya FM’s latest interview subject.
Covered in flour after a long morning making flatbreads to sell in the camp, Goran answers Khalil’s questions, then has a few of his own: Is the border still open? Could he travel back to check on his wife, still stuck in their Syrian home town?
“With Covid-19, we have little information. The radio can tell us every day what’s going on,” Goran said.
Although Goran misses his family, he said he couldn’t imagine trying to live in Syria again.
“Why move back? There’s no electricity, no salary, the US dollar is so expensive,” he said.
“At least here, there’s work,” he told AFP from his cinderblock bakery.
According to the International Organization for Migration, there are 230,000 Syrian refugees living in northern Iraq, 40 percent of them in camps, with the rest in rented homes or other housing arrangements. Officially, none have permanently returned to Syria.
The Syrian regime is hosting a summit on Wednesday and Thursday to encourage returns, with 5.5 million Syrians still seeking refuge outside their homeland. But infrastructure and public services are lacking across the war-ravaged country and rights defenders warn that some areas are still unsafe for large-scale repatriations.
“Syria remains in our hearts,” said Khalil.
“Building (Arbat) with our own means is our way of saying that we can rebuild a Syria without Assad,” he added.
“That’s what the radio is for, too.”
‘In our hearts’: Radio keeps Syria refugees in Iraq close to home
https://arab.news/6dhhh
‘In our hearts’: Radio keeps Syria refugees in Iraq close to home
- Gardenya FM features news programs and talk shows
Lebanon PM to visit new Damascus ruler on Saturday
- Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati will on Saturday make his first official trip to neighboring Syria since the fall of president Bashar Assad, his office told AFP
Mikati’s office said Friday the trip came at the invitation of the country’s new de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa during a phone call last week.
Syria imposed new restrictions on the entry of Lebanese citizens last week, two security sources have told AFP, following what the Lebanese army said was a border skirmish with unnamed armed Syrians.
Lebanese nationals had previously been allowed into Syria without a visa, using just their passport or ID card.
Lebanon’s eastern border is porous and known for smuggling.
Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah supported Assad with fighters during Syria’s civil war.
But the Iran-backed movement has been weakened after a war with Israel killed its long-time leader and Islamist-led rebels seized Damascus last month.
Lebanese lawmakers elected the country’s army chief Joseph Aoun as president on Thursday, ending a vacancy of more than two years that critics blamed on Hezbollah.
For three decades under the Assad clan, Syria was the dominant power in Lebanon after intervening in its 1975-1990 civil war.
Syria eventually withdrew its troops in 2005 under international pressure after the assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafic Hariri.
UN says 3 million Sudan children facing acute malnutrition
- Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month
- Sudan has endured 20 months of war between the army and the paramilitary forces
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: An estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to face acute malnutrition this year in war-torn Sudan, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“Of this number, around 772,000 children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition,” Eva Hinds, UNICEF Sudan’s Head of Advocacy and Communication, told AFP late on Thursday.
Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed assessment.
Sudan has endured 20 months of war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing tens of thousands and, according to the United Nations, uprooting 12 million in the world’s largest displacement crisis.
Confirming to AFP that 3.2 million children are currently expected to face acute malnutrition, Hinds said “the number of severely malnourished children increased from an estimated 730,000 in 2024 to over 770,000 in 2025.”
The IPC expects famine to expand to five more parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region by May — a vast area that has seen some of the conflict’s worst violence. A further 17 areas in western and central Sudan are also at risk of famine, it said.
“Without immediate, unhindered humanitarian access facilitating a significant scale-up of a multisectoral response, malnutrition is likely to increase in these areas,” Hinds warned.
Sudan’s army-aligned government strongly rejected the IPC findings, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
In October, experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council accused both sides of using “starvation tactics.”
On Tuesday the United States determined that the RSF had “committed genocide” and imposed sanctions on the paramilitary group’s leader.
Across the country, more than 24.6 million people — around half the population — face “high levels of acute food insecurity,” according to IPC, which said: “Only a ceasefire can reduce the risk of famine spreading further.”
Turkiye says France must take back its militants from Syria
- Ankara is threatening military action against Kurdish fighters in the northeast
- Turkiye considers the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as linked to its domestic nemesis
ISTANBUL: France must take back its militant nationals from Syria, Turkiye’s top diplomat said Friday, insisting Washington was its only interlocutor for developments in the northeast where Ankara is threatening military action against Kurdish fighters.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan insisted Turkiye’s only aim was to ensure “stability” in Syria after the toppling of strongman Bashar Assad.
In its sights are the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which have been working with the United States for the past decade to fight Daesh group militants.
Turkiye considers the group as linked to its domestic nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye and is considered a terror organization by both Turkiye and the US.
The US is currently leading talks to head off a Turkish offensive in the area.
“The US is our only counterpart... Frankly we don’t take into account countries that try to advance their own interests in Syria by hiding behind US power,” he said.
His remarks were widely understood to be a reference to France, which is part of an international coalition to prevent a militant resurgence in the area.
Asked about the possibility of a French-US troop deployment in northeast Syria, he said France’s main concern should be to take back its nationals who have been jailed there in connection with militant activity.
“If France had anything to do, it should take its own citizens, bring them to its own prisons and judge them,” he said.
Lebanese caretaker PM says country to begin disarming south Litani to ensure state presence
- Najib Mikati: ‘We are in a new phase – in this new phase, we will start with south Lebanon and south Litani’
DUBAI: Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Friday that the state will begin disarming southern Lebanon, particularly the south Litani region, to establish its presence across the country.
“We are in a new phase – in this new phase, we will start with south Lebanon and south Litani specifically in order to pull weapons so that the state can be present across Lebanese territory,” Mikati said.
Tanker hit by Yemen militia that threatened Red Sea spill has been salvaged
- The Sounion had been a disaster in waiting in the waterway, with 1 million barrels of crude oil aboard
- The Houthis have targeted some 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started
DUBAI: An oil tanker that burned for weeks in the Red Sea and threatened a massive oil spill has been “successfully” salvaged, a security firm said Friday.
The Sounion had been a disaster in waiting in the waterway, with 1 million barrels of crude oil aboard that had been struck and later sabotaged with explosives by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militia. It took months for salvagers to tow the vessel away, extinguish the fires and offload the remaining crude oil.
The Houthis initially attacked the Greek-flagged Sounion tanker on Aug. 21 with small arms fire, projectiles and a drone boat. A French destroyer operating as part of Operation Aspides rescued its crew of 25 Filipinos and Russians, as well as four private security personnel, after they abandoned the vessel and took them to nearby Djibouti.
The Houthis later released footage showing they planted explosives on board the Sounion and ignited them in a propaganda video, something the militia have done before in their campaign.
The Houthis have targeted some 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.
The Houthis maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.
