Zain Samir is a journalist based in the Middle East.
On a warm afternoon in October, the streets of the southern Lebanese town of Aalma El Chaeb were deserted. The petrol station, the grocer, the bakeries and the church had all been shut down. In the middle of town, three grey herons sifted through weeks-old bags of rubbish, oblivious to the monotonous whine of an Israeli drone flying somewhere overhead. On a ridge opposite, outside the...
Early this year, Samer Fa’our noticed that small earthquakes were rattling his building in the southern Turkish city of Antakya with increased frequency. The tremors were mild, and his wife and children often slept through them, but they made him feel uneasy. Like millions of Syrians, he had lived through years of civil war: Syrian jets and helicopters had dropped bombs on his...
There are hundreds of military bases scattered across Afghanistan, from concrete watchtowers, surrounded by razor wire, to massive airbases, fortified with concrete blast walls and watchtowers stretching for miles. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan and foreign soldiers, officers, technicians, cooks, cleaners and generals occupied these bases, along with armoured Humvees, helicopters,...
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