2025-12-29
44 分钟This is The Guardian.
Hello, my name is Claire Longregg and I'm the Deputy Editor of The Guardian Longread.
This December, we wanted to bring you our top picks of the year from The Audio Longread.
Today, I've chosen a piece called What Reconciliation?
What Forgiveness?
Syria's deadly reckoning by Haith Abdul Ahad.
At the end of last year, when the Assad regime fell,
hope for a new start was tempered by fears of a breakdown of order.
Crimes committed by supporters of the regime had destroyed so many lives,
the new government urgently needed to act to ensure that people obtained some form of justice before they took things into their own hands.
But rumours of revenge killings were rife and in March reports emerged of a massacre.
In an orgy of violence over a thousand people,
most of the members of the Alawite community had been executed in their homes and in the streets.
This story gives an account of what happened that March weekend through the experience of two friends from different communities.
Reith brings us into the lives of these two men.
as they hear and then see the violence explode around them.
It's a vivid and horrifying account of a community under attack,
as armed men rampage through a neighbourhood,
looting and killing, wreaking revenge on anyone they can find.
Peace and stability clearly hang by a thread in Syria.