Madeline Edwards

3 weeks ago | cntravellerme.com | Madeline Edwards

Every table is taken at Fizz, an airy cafe-pub in a little sidestreet near Beirut’s port. A handful of young women decked out in full Y2K-revival gear clack away at laptops while moustachioed young men smoke outside in the garden. A yapping dog disturbs the buzzy pop music, but nobody seems to mind. It’s not even the nighttime rush yet – that’s when the place gets truly packed.

1 month ago | middleeasteye.net | Madeline Edwards |Ali Hüseyin Bakir |Joseph A. Massad

Rami lived through more than a decade of war in Syria, yet had never picked up a gun. That all changed this week. Deadly clashes between pro-government fighters and local Druze gunmen ignited on Tuesday, in part over a now-debunked audio clip of a Druze cleric allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Rami, a 27-year-old Druze activist and former Red Crescent worker, feared his community was in grave danger. He decided to join his friends on the frontline, borrowing one of their weapons.

2 months ago | newlinesmag.com | Madeline Edwards

For the Druze, memories of past lives intertwine with trauma from the conflict — which began 50 years ago this month It was Sept. 25, 1983, eight years into Lebanon’s deadly 15-year civil war and the height of the “Mountain War” between Christian fighters aligned with the right-wing Lebanese Forces and fighters from the majority-Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP).

Dec 9, 2024 | middleeasteye.net | Madeline Edwards

9 December 2024 14:48 GMT ago In 1985, at the height of the Lebanese civil war, an 18-year-old new conscript in the Lebanese Army was due back home on leave. But instead of making his way to his native Tashaa, a remote village of Muslim and Christian farmers in the mountains of Akkar governorate, Ali Hassan Ali disappeared. Ali was last seen at a checkpoint manned by occupying Syrian Army personnel.

Dec 9, 2024 | middleeasteye.net | Madeline Edwards

As rescue workers race to free any remaining prisoners from Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison, a Sudanese man in neighbouring Lebanon says he believes his father and brother-in-law, forcibly disappeared years ago by Bashar al-Assad’s administration, may be among the detainees. Ahmed Abdelrazzaq does not know if the two men, whom he says are UN-registered Sudanese refugees, are still alive.