Dia Hadid
Appearances
NPR News Now
NPR News: 12-29-2024 7PM EST
Ahmed al-Sharra spoke to Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya to lay out his vision for the country, barely three weeks after his rebels overran Damascus earlier this month, forcing the former leader Bashar al-Assad to flee. Sharra said elections would take time because the country had not had a proper census in years and because Syria needs a new constitution.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 12-29-2024 7PM EST
Shara says he hopes to hold a national conference with Syrian representatives who can set the agenda. He says at the conference, he'll dismantle the group he leads, HTS, or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Shara also told Arabia that the time of the Syrian revolution was over and the time of nation building had begun. Diya Hadid, NPR News, Damascus.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
Yeah, and most people were sleeping, eh? But a resident near one of the worst hit places in southern Pakistan recorded this audio. And even in a nearby town, one resident said the strikes woke up his family. This is Ajaz Rao.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
Well, India's army says it struck militant training camps and what they call terror infrastructure. And many of those strikes were in Pakistani-held Kashmir. Kashmir is that Himalayan territory divided between India and Pakistan. It's claimed by both and it's at the heart of nearly every conflict between the two countries.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
But Pakistan says the strikes mostly hit mosques and part of a hydropower dam. One prominent Pakistani militant says one of the strikes targeted his relatives and killed 14 people, including women and children. And that was in a small town in southern Pakistan. And it's really important to say here where these strikes took place. Some were deep in Pakistan.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
One was near the country's second largest city. So here have a listen to Michael Kugelman. He writes the Foreign Policy's weekly South Asia brief, and he says this hasn't happened in decades.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
An analyst I've spoken to said they were actually expecting India to hit hard.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
Well, just because of the nature of the attack that triggered these renewed tensions, it happened on April 22 when gunmen attacked Indian tourists in a meadow. And it seems some of the gunmen targeted Hindu men. It was the deadliest attack against civilians in years. And the victims came from all over India. So it just really triggered widespread anger.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
But after the strikes, the Indian military said its response was measured, focused and non-escalatory. Analysts say those words signal that India is not interested in escalating this further.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
I guess the problem here is with strikes so deep in Pakistan and with this death toll, Pakistan may feel like it must respond to show people that its army isn't weak. So analyst Praveen Danti with the International Crisis Group says other countries have to step in.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
For now, President Trump has said he hopes this ends quickly, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he's closely monitoring the situation.
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India And Pakistan Conflict, Papal Conclave Begins, Transgender Military Ban
You're welcome.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
Good morning, Laila.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
Right. Well, the Pakistani army spokesman, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif, accused India of sending across 25 Israeli-made drones this morning. He says some of them flew over major population centres, including Karachi, which is the biggest city in the country with 20 million people, and crucially Rawalpindi, which is home to Pakistan's general military headquarters.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
Sharif says they shot down all the drones, except for one that targeted an old airport in Lahore. He says four military personnel were injured and one civilian killed. Sharif just spoke to the media in English. That's a signal that his message is for the West.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
What he's referring to there, Leila, is India's Hindu nationalist government, which had vowed retribution for a militant attack in late April, where gunmen opened fire on tourists in a meadow, killing 26. India blamed Pakistan for that attack. Pakistan says it's not connected, but it's that incident which triggered these escalations.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
At this point, yes. But if I can step back a bit, when India struck Pakistan earlier this week, the Indian military had quickly signalled they were not seeking an escalation. And Pakistan said it shot down five Indian military aircraft. And analysts told me they were waiting to see if that would be enough for Pakistan to show its people that the army was defending the country.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
Even this morning, the Pakistani deputy prime minister confirmed that national security advisers of both countries had spoken to each other. So it was looking hopeful. But then the accusation happened of India sending drones over Pakistani airspace. So Ajay Shukla, he is a retired Indian Army colonel, and he says any new development here changes all calculations.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
Not so far, but India's foreign minister has just said if the country is attacked, there'll be a firm response. And it's important to remember already in this latest escalation, there are casualties, more than 30 people on the Pakistani side, including children, and more than 12 people killed in India.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
And that doesn't even include the 26 people who were killed by gunmen in late April, which triggered this whole escalation.
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India And Pakistan Latest, Libya Deportations, The Fed And Interest Rates
Thank you, Leila.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
Thank you, Michelle.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
Well, last week, gunmen opened fire on tourists in a meadow that's in Indian-controlled Kashmir. It's a territory claimed by Pakistan and India, and both countries control parts of it. But this attack was pretty harsh. Eyewitnesses reported that some gunmen asked their victims if they were Muslim, and if they weren't, they shot them.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
So most of the killed were Hindu men, and the attack felt visceral in this Hindu-majority nation. Praveen Donte is from the International Crisis Group, and he says that's put pressure on India to respond.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
Yeah, they're blaming Pakistan because the group that claim responsibility is seen as a proxy for the Pakistani army. Now, Pakistan denies any connection and has called for a neutral investigation, but that hasn't mollified India.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
It quickly announced it was withdrawing diplomats, it shut down a border crossing, and it suspended a water-sharing agreement that Pakistan sees as existential to its survival. So Pakistan's announced similar measures and it's banned trade with India.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
Yeah, Michelle, like you mentioned earlier, there's been near daily exchanges of gunfire. Residents are fleeing the area on both sides. Yesterday, Pakistan said it shot down two Indian drones and overnight it cancelled commercial flights to Himalayan areas that are close to Kashmir. So analysts say it's now a waiting game, like Milan Vaishnav. He's with the Carnegie Endowment.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
The problem is, though, it could spin out of control. Both these countries have nuclear weapons.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
Yeah, there could be. But you see, analysts say this is part of the problem in South Asia. There's a pattern of India and Pakistan escalating and then waiting for outsiders to de-escalate the crisis. One Pakistani columnist, Arif Anur, recently wrote about this.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
So now we're waiting to see if Rubio can talk Pakistan and India off the ledge.
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Economy In The Next 100 Days, Ukraine Minerals Deal, India And Pakistan Tension
You're welcome, Michelle.
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Syria's Missing Children
The regional director, Tom Malvert, who's a Swedish national, told me they're trying to rectify the situation now as much as they can.
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Syria's Missing Children
SOS Children's Villages has trawled its records to find 139 children who'd been placed there. But they can only confirm that 21 Syrian children were reunited with their families as of this April. Malvett says he believes the staff were operating under extreme conditions. They were trying to do their best by the children who were appearing at their doorstep.
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Syria's Missing Children
And after Malvett's statement, multiple orphanage directors spoke up to defend the work they continued to do in Syria. These orphanages, however imperfect, have played a vital role in Syria particularly through the civil war. They remain one of the only places that vulnerable kids can receive care. From our interviews with orphanage directors, patterns emerged as to how these placements happened.
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Syria's Missing Children
Agents delivered the children in white vans to the orphanage. They came with a paper listing the child's first name and a demand to keep the child's existence totally secret. And one institution appears to have obeyed that order to the letter.
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Syria's Missing Children
The Life Melody Complex, or Tajammar Lahna Al Hayat, is a gated complex. It's perched on a hill overlooking Damascus. Syrians appear angriest at this orphanage more than any other. That's because it was once sponsored by Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syria's former ruler. She used to visit the institution, cameras at the ready to show her with orphans.
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Syria's Missing Children
Aisha, as I was seeing what was happening in Damascus, I couldn't stop thinking about the children. I'd covered conflicts like this for so long and I knew there'd likely be a large number of kids in orphanages whose parents had been detained or even disappeared during the civil war. And I kept thinking, what was happening to them now? And let me tell you, this was hard for me.
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Syria's Missing Children
She was photographed alongside a long-time board member, Nada al-Khabara. We met Al-Khabara on a winter's day. She walked us through the orphanage. She wanted to show us how well they care for the children. There's about 400 boys and girls here, from babies to women in their early 20s who have nowhere else to go. We met toddlers who were warmly dressed, watching cartoons.
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Syria's Missing Children
In other rooms, babies nap two or three to a cot. There just wasn't enough room for all the babies that had been abandoned here. As we walked, Al-Khabra proudly told us she is familiar with all the children in the orphanage. She laughed and said she even arranges the circumcisions of all the baby boys. Muslim boys are expected to be circumcised. She paid for the weddings of the older kids.
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Syria's Missing Children
She was really proud of that. She pulled up one video on her phone of one of those weddings. But Alhabra says she only found out that intelligence agents were delivering children to the orphanage after the Assad regime was toppled. She says that's because she didn't spend any time in the administrative building where children were handed over.
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Syria's Missing Children
She was with the children in the main building, the orphanage, and she says she didn't notice some of the children suddenly arriving or leaving. But Life Melody Complex actually did keep records of the security placement children who were transferred into their care. Copies of those records were handed over to the new interim government.
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Syria's Missing Children
An official showed NPR a list of 45 children who were placed there by intelligence agents. That official told us there was a stack of pages, an inch thick, filled with other names of other security placement children who were cycled there over the years. But the official didn't show us that stack of papers.
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Syria's Missing Children
The official spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from members of the former Assad regime. They said, my life is worth the price of a bullet. During this investigation, I visited every single orphanage I could find in Damascus to figure out if there were patterns to these children being hidden away. One of them was Almobarra Nisaia, which is on a busy Damascus road.
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Syria's Missing Children
Here, the director kept detailed records of the 50 children who were deposited by intelligence agents. Inside, director Rana Al-Baba is chatting to some colleagues when I met her in December. Compared to what we heard at the Life Melody orphanage, Al-Baba was sharply aware of the transfer of security placement kids into her orphanage's care.
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Syria's Missing Children
Over bracing Turkish coffee, she tells us the first time an agent came knocking with a baby boy to hand over, she didn't believe it. She tells me, I even asked for the man's ID. I said, how do I know you haven't kidnapped these children? Al-Baba tells me, this man looks at her and says, you're asking me for my ID? Do you understand who I am? And Al-Baba says, it began to sink in.
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Syria's Missing Children
Saying no to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate would be a death sentence. She says, they would have put us through their human mincer. They would have made us hamburgers or kebabs. Albaba says when the children arrived, they were sick, thin, dirty, infested with head lice, like they'd just come out of prison.
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Syria's Missing Children
I have two young kids, so stories about vulnerable children really hit home. And I try not to take too many long trips away from them. So for this assignment, I felt like I needed their permission. So I told them, I'm going to Syria so I can meet little ones who don't have a mama who So is that okay to give your mama to some other kids for a little while? And my girls agreed.
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Syria's Missing Children
Al-Baba says in her orphanage for the first week, they isolated the kids with a caregiver. They called them housemothers, and the housemother would offer the kid new clothes, a pink pyjama or a blue one. Do you want a toy? What do you want to eat today? Fries? She says they wanted the kids to see they were cared for.
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Syria's Missing Children
But Al-Baba says she was not at peace with the arrangement and there were limits to what she could do. She says she had to turn away relatives who came to her orphanage looking for their missing children. She had to obey. We end our interview with Al-Baba. She tells me she hopes she was worthy of the burden that God made her carry.
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Syria's Missing Children
It's at this moment I look out the window and see a man lingering outside. He's clutching his mobile phone and looks nervous. I ask Al-Baba, does he work here? Al-Baba peers out the window. No. And she invites him into the office. He walks in and tells Al-Baba that his children went missing in 2013 with his wife.
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Syria's Missing Children
She'd been detained by forces loyal to Syria's former ruler Bashar al-Assad as she was trying to get to hospital because she was nine months pregnant. He says for a long time he believed his wife and kids had been killed to punish him because he'd refused to provide information about rebels operating in his area. He pulls out his phone to show her pictures of his kids. There's Mohamed, 7.
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Syria's Missing Children
And in December, 11 years after they disappeared, he saw the social media buzz about children hidden in orphanages. And he began hoping just maybe his children were alive. Maybe they'd been hidden in an orphanage. Maybe this orphanage. Al-Baba says she's sure his children weren't placed here, but just in case, she asks for his wife's name.
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Syria's Missing Children
The children typically came listed under their mother's names. Al-Baba shakes her head sadly. Not here, sir. I wish they were. I would have given them to you. But she tells him, you mustn't give up hope, sir.
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Syria's Missing Children
We took Hani al-Faraz details and we met him a few days later in his tiny apartment in a working class suburb of Damascus. It's up a few flights of narrow stairs. And al-Faraz holding his youngest son from his second marriage.
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Syria's Missing Children
We sit in a room that feels like a cubbyhole. During the years that he tried to find his wife and children, he angered the Assad regime soldiers who manned the checkpoint in his area. They detained him and ultimately shifted him to a lock-up where he was tortured for hours, every day, for three months. He says he was strung up from a ceiling, beaten and starved.
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Syria's Missing Children
After that, he began to hope that his wife and children were dead, rather than experience the depravities of detention under the Assad regime. And that includes well-documented cases of rape of women, men and children. Al-Fara says his friends urged him to move on, marry a good woman, make a new family. One of his friends set him up with his sister, and they fell in love.
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Syria's Missing Children
He calls her his everything. His mother, his father, his friend. He now has three sons with his new wife. The youngest is baby Mohamed, about a year old. He squirms on Al-Fara's lap and toddles off to examine a drainpipe.
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Syria's Missing Children
So I began calling groups that care for vulnerable children, like UNICEF, the Red Cross, other big organizations that run programs in Syria. And one group I reached was SOS Children's Villages. That's an international aid group headquartered in Austria. It has branches all around the world, including in war zones.
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Syria's Missing Children
But even as he cuddles his youngest son, the hope of finding his older children and first wife won't leave him. He says he even asks his current wife, what will you do if I find my first wife? He tells us, my new wife lost her brother during the war and she understands the pain I'm feeling. And she told me, if you find your first wife, I'll put her in this eye before that eye.
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Syria's Missing Children
It's an Arab saying that means I'll honour her. And his sons, especially the oldest, know that something isn't right. His oldest son is eight now. He's aware of the world around him. He keeps asking about his older half-siblings, particularly his sister, Islam. She was five when she disappeared. In a photo Al-Farah keeps on his phone, she's sitting in a garden.
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Syria's Missing Children
Her sandy hair touches her tan shoulders. Al-Fara is crying. He takes a deep breath and says, praise be to God, and continues.
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Syria's Missing Children
And a spokesperson for them told me they were coming to terms with a revelation that was shaking the organization. Their Damascus branch had secretly taken in children whose mothers had been detained by intelligence agents. And this revelation was triggering a lot of anger in Syrian society.
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Syria's Missing Children
Well, after getting this tip, me and producer Mirna Rashid, we went to other orphanages across Damascus and we asked, did intelligence agents force you to secretly take in children? And what happened to those children?
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Syria's Missing Children
While it was really hard to get answers at first, orphanages did not want to speak to us. The situation felt so uncertain. The Assad regime had just fallen at the time and people online were accusing them of collaborating with the former regime. But as we investigated, we finally met an official at the Ministry of Social Affairs who also wanted to know the answers.
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Syria's Missing Children
You see, the ministry had been overtaken by rebels who formed an interim government, and Syrian families were asking them for help to find their children. So this official helped us by calling up orphanage directors and telling them that they had to talk to us. He requested anonymity through this process because he wasn't meant to be speaking to the media, let alone helping us.
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Syria's Missing Children
Yeah, we spoke to one orphanage director who wanted us to hear from the detained women themselves. So she connected us to a couple of mothers. One of those women was Sukaina Shbawi. We reached her at her home in a village in the southern Syrian province of Daraa. That's where the uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad first erupted. She was keen to chat.
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Syria's Missing Children
So Ayesha, this is what Shabawi told me. She says that in the fall of 2018, Syrian security forces turned up one day and they dragged her and her daughter Hiba from their home. Hiba was just two. Shabawi believes they were taken hostage to pressure her husband's brothers to surrender to government forces.
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Syria's Missing Children
That was a pretty common tactic at the time because the brothers had joined the uprising against the regime. Jibawi and Heba were driven to holding cells run by the Air Force Intelligence Directorate. That was one of the most feared and violent arms of the Syrian regime. Guards pushed her and Heba into a cold, dark cell with about six other women and their children.
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Syria's Missing Children
Nearly all the women's cells also held children, but the conditions there were not conducive to staying alive. Jibawi says they were only allowed to use the bathroom three times a day, not enough for little kids. So the mothers procured a bucket for the children to use as a toilet and they emptied it out whenever they could. There was never enough food.
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Syria's Missing Children
An egg once a week, 15 olives twice a week, plain yogurt every four days. sometimes jam, boiled rice one day, boiled lentils the next, boiled potatoes after that. Shabawi says she gave Heba her share so she'd stay alive. But still, her daughter was losing weight. She became infested with lice.
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Syria's Missing Children
And she says 20 days after she arrived, prison guards banged on their cell doors and told the women, get your children ready. It was chaos.
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Syria's Missing Children
And even now, years later, Shbawi cries as she remembers this. One woman who'd been detained for a while told them, say goodbye to your children now because they're going to take them away. Don't make a fuss or they'll put you in solitary.
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Syria's Missing Children
but some women wouldn't let go, so the guards came in and took their children by force. Shabawi drew Heba into her lap. She put her arms around her and hugged her. She said, You're going to a better place, and when this ends, you'll be with me and I'll hug you. Shabawi hoped that was true. She prayed. Oh God, protect her with your watchful eye that never sleeps.
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Syria's Missing Children
As the months went on, Shabawi watched more mothers come into the cell and she watched them have their children snatched away, including newborn babies. She says pregnant women detained alongside her were taken to hospital when they went into labour. After birth, the women were returned to their lock-up with their babies.
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Syria's Missing Children
They were allowed to nurse them for a few weeks and then the guards took the babies away. It was a fate spare we feared as well because when she was arrested with Heber, her two-year-old, she was also a few weeks pregnant. But after almost eight months of detainment and weeks before she was due to give birth, she was finally sentenced and she was shifted to a notorious prison called Adra.
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Syria's Missing Children
She still doesn't know what her crime was, but in prison she was told she'd be released soon and she was given one phone call. So she called her sister and asked if somebody could pick her up and she told her sister, Heva isn't with me. I don't know where she is.
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Syria's Missing Children
Shbawi returned to her village heavily pregnant. Her husband by that point had abandoned her and married another woman. This happened a lot to women who'd been detained. When they were freed, they weren't greeted as heroes. They often faced immense stigma over the possibility that they'd been sexually assaulted while confined.
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Syria's Missing Children
Shbawi jokes that it would have been better if her husband had died in a Syrian prison so she could tell their kids that he was a martyr. It was Shbawi's brother who began the search for Heba. He heard that she might be in an orphanage, and so he went banging on their doors across Damascus.
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Syria's Missing Children
And after three months of running around, the intelligence agency that had detained Shbawi finally returned Heba to him. Shbawi was in their village waiting. She'd just given birth and was recovering. And then they arrived. She says when she saw her daughter, their reunion was bittersweet. Shbaoui says she came to her girl and asked her, do you remember me? And Heba replied, mama.
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Syria's Missing Children
She says, I hugged her in my arms and I saw her. But as the days wore on, Heba grew distant. She screamed when Shbawi tried to bathe her, feed her, dress her. It was like she blamed her mother for their separation. But Sukaina Shbawi, at least, was one of the lucky ones. Her daughter came back.
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Syria's Missing Children
I'm not sure we'll ever be able to get an accurate count, but a respected monitoring group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, they estimate some 3,700 children remain missing after they were detained during the war by Assad regime forces.
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Syria's Missing Children
And based on our own investigation, we were able to confirm that at least 300 children were taken away from their mothers while they were being held by the directorate, including one baby girl who died while she was in the care of an orphanage. That was just in Damascus. We weren't able to reach orphanages in other parts of Syria at the time when we did our reporting.
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Syria's Missing Children
And in Damascus, children were handed over to four orphanages and care centres. Intelligence agents ordered them to keep the children's existence a secret. The practice became so common that orphanage workers even had a name for these kids, security placement children.
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Syria's Missing Children
Yeah, and just like they were handed over by intelligence agents, days, weeks, months, even years later, intelligence agents took the children back. Orphanage directors presumed the children were given back to their mothers once they were released from detention. And that did happen, like Heba Zbawi, who was returned to her mother, Skaina Zbawi.
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Syria's Missing Children
First, Aisha, it's important to understand that an orphan in Muslim-majority countries like Syria is not a child who's lost their parents.
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Syria's Missing Children
It's a child who's lost their father and often children are handed over to orphanages because the mother can no longer support them financially or because if she'd like to remarry, her new husband may not want to raise what conservative society sees as somebody else's kid.
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Syria's Missing Children
Yeah, the fates of these children of detained mothers first bubbled to the surface through the activism of one man, Hassan al-Abbasi. Al-Abbasi is a Canadian Syrian engineer who lives in Canada, and he's been searching for his sister, Rania al-Abbasi.
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Syria's Missing Children
She was taken by Assad forces on March 11, 2013, alongside her husband and their six children, from Dima, the eldest at 14, to Leyan, who was two years old at the time. Aranya's relatives believe that her decision to give food to families displaced by fighting at the time made her a target. Aranya very quickly became one of the most prominent women held by the Assad regime and
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Syria's Missing Children
That's partly because of al-Abbasi's activism and partly because Rania was a national chess champion in Syria. The US State Department still advocates for her release. And Hassan al-Abbasi keeps trying to find clues to his sister's fate and of her family. Sometimes he uploads old home videos of Rania's daughters to Sad Music just to remind people that they're maybe still out there.
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Syria's Missing Children
Then last year, after the Assad regime fell, al-Abbasi made a remarkable claim that aired on a popular Syrian opposition television station that he was told by an anonymous friend that Rania's children were being hidden in an orphanage. Al-Abbasi says he sent friends to ask around the orphanages immediately, and he began to cast doubt on the Damascus branch of the SOS children's villages.
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Syria's Missing Children
Al-Abbasi's claim was picked up by other Syrians on social media who began accusing the orphanages of human trafficking. As this unfolded, SOS Children's Villages issued a statement. They acknowledged that their Damascus branch had taken in security placement children over a period of four years until the charity's headquarters found out and ordered their Damascus branch to stop.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
You're welcome, Scott. Hello.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
Well, President Trump had announced on his social media network that the two countries had agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire. And then India's foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, made a short announcement. And he said Pakistan's director of military operations had called his Indian counterpart and they agreed to this.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
That's right. Things felt very different a few hours ago. India had struck air bases in Pakistan, including one right near the capital, Islamabad. And Pakistan began a military operation called Iron Wall, and soldiers were filming themselves firing projectiles into India.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
Yeah, this began on April 22, so not so long ago. That's when gunmen opened fire on tourists in a meadow in Indian-held Kashmir, and they killed 26 people. India said the group that claimed responsibility was a proxy linked to Pakistan's army.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
Pakistan denied any connection but said it would defend itself, and then overnight Wednesday, India began military strikes, and the two countries had been exchanging fire every night since. And About 70 people have been killed on both sides, and most of the casualties were in Kashmir. That's the territory divided between India and Pakistan.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
It's claimed by both and has been fought over repeatedly by both.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
You know, it's so interesting, Scott, because for days analysts were saying that the Americans were not being serious. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, they said was just making phone calls. And then Vice President J.D. Vance went on Fox on Thursday saying they wanted a de-escalation, but...
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
But, you know, then I spoke to Abdullah Khan. He's with the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. And he told me America was waiting.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
Yeah, Khan tells me that Pakistan was waiting for a moment that it could sell to its people that, you know, they had showed India. That would allow them to save face and step down. And India is trying to attract manufacturing from companies that are leaving China because of Trump's tariffs. It's not a time for war.
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India and Pakistan Agree Ceasefire, Food Stamps Data, Nuclear Reactor Watchdog
You're welcome, Scott.