Dia Hadid
speaker
762 appearances
58 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 12 Sep
Dia Hadid’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 51 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.
Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Her sandy hair touches her tan shoulders. Al-Fara is crying. He takes a deep breath and says, praise be to God, and continues.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Michelle.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The problem is, though, it could spin out of control. Both these countries have nuclear weapons.
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.
So now we're waiting to see if Rubio can talk Pakistan and India off the ledge.
You're welcome, Michelle.
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