The conference will be given by Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio, a tenured professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Alicante; Leila Nachawati, a Spanish-Syrian human rights activist, and Álvaro Zamarreño, a Spanish journalist. Moderated by: Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s International Politics Coordinator.

On March 15, 2011, the “Day of Rage” took place. It consisted of protests in Damascus and Aleppo that would lead to a national uprising in favor of democratic reforms. On March 18, the repression by Bashar al Assad’s regime caused the death of the first revolutionaries in Daraa, thereby drawing a peaceful movement into a downward spiral of violence that has caused more than 400,000 victims today, as well as five million refugees and six million internally displaced persons. In the meantime, the conflict has led to the intervention of regional powers, the creation of Jihadist strongholds linked to the conflict in Iraq, the inability of the opposition to form a common front and Assad’s continued grip on power. Up to now, international mediation at different summits and encounters (such as Geneva and Astana) have produced few tangible results. In what direction is the conflict heading? What situation has civil society been left in? And how are the media covering the crisis? Casa Árabe is bringing together three analysts of the war in Syria to provide an overview of the situation.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio. Álvarez-Ossorio is a tenured professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Alicante and the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa at the Foreign Policy Observatory of Fundación Alternativas. He is also a researcher at the Inter-University Institute of Social Development and Peace (IUDESP) and a member of the Executive Board on the Spanish Committee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). He has published or edited over a dozen books on the Middle East, including Siria contemporánea (Contemporary Syria, 2009), and he is a regular contributor to several media, such as El País, El Correo and TVE. He is the author of the book Siria: Revolución, sectarismo y yihad (Syria: Revolution, sectarianism and Jihad, published by Ed. Catarata)

Leila Nachawati. A Spanish-Syrian human rights activist who specializes in citizen participation and communication in repressive contexts, she was a co-founder of the portal Syria Untold. She is a professor of Communication at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid, where she is completing her PhD. Focusing on the region of the Middle East and North Africa, she cooperates with different projects and media such as Eldiario.es, Global Voices Online, Global Voices Advocacy, El Mundo and Al Jazeera English. With a university degree in Arabic Philology and English Philology, she also has a Master’s degree in International Cooperation.

Álvaro Zamarreño. A writer for the international news section at Cadena SER since 2006, where he has worked above all on Arab countries, Zamarreño covered the Iraqi refugee crisis in Syria in 2007, the “Egyptian Revolution” in 2011 and the attack on Gaza, where he took part in the first radio program broadcast by a foreign radio channel from the Gaza Strip (“Voices from Gaza”), as well as covering the situation of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and the Greek islands.  He earned his university degree in Journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.