British imam Adam Kelwick sought moments of joy amid the desolation during his humanitarian trip to Syria which included an iftar in Homs.
The Liverpool-based chaplain who heads the city’s Abdullah Quilliam Mosque – the UK’s oldest – travelled to Damascus and other Syrian cities this week to give out food parcels and money as part of the charitable work that Muslims undertake during Ramadan.
On Thursday, he hosted 120 street cleaners from Homs, in western Syria, for the meal to break the Ramadan fast. “These are the people who work hard day and night in the service of others, and the people who cleaned up the city after the previous regime had left,” Mr Kelwick told The National.
They came in their light blue uniforms and danced at the end of the meal, singing: “You are Syrian and free.”
Mr Kelwick was struck by the hope and optimism of Syrians as they try to pick up the pieces and recover their homes in a country that was torn apart by civil war and the Assad regime for decades.
“The feeling on the ground is that anything is better than former regime. Even if people have issues with the new one,” he said.
This month, clashes in Syria's coastal region between fighters loyal to deposed president Bashar Al Assad and forces of the interim government resulted about 1,000 people – including many civilians from the Alawite minority – being killed. This has raised fears over how the government will treat the country's minorities.
The visible destruction and depopulation of major cities like Homs, which had remained under the control of the Assad regime, is overwhelming, says Mr Kelwick.
“I was expecting the situation to be bad but it’s much worse than I can ever imagine. You’re going past gutted building after gutted building,” he said.
Mr Kelwick travelled as a volunteer with Action for Humanity, a UK charity previously known as Syria Relief. Though the charity had received British government funding in the past, much of this has been “substantially cut and reduced”, he said, as priorities shifted to Ukraine in 2022.
He called for more aid funding to Syria, stressing that this should come “without strings attached”, despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cuts to foreign aid announced last month.
Mr Kelwick is known for having defused far-right riots outside his mosque last summer following the Southport attacks, by inviting in some of the rioters.
Days before his trip to Damascus, he attended an iftar at Downing Street with Mr Starmer.
Mr Kelwick had been to Syria before during the civil war that began in 2011, but only to the north-western region that was held by the opposition to the Assad regime. He had worked for years with refugees in northern Syria, including on a project to build villages for people living in tents in the towns of Afrin and Azaz, in Aleppo governorate.
This week marked his first trip to areas formerly controlled by the Assad regime, where Mr Kelwick witnessed the thousands of people returning to their devastated homes.
Upon his arrival to Damascus, he went straight to the village of Jobar on the outskirts of the city, which came under heavy shelling by the Syrian army during the civil war.
“We didn’t see a single building suitable to live in. The population there was 350,000 and now it’s empty,” he said.
They met the cemetery’s caretaker Abu Fahd, who told them how he’d stayed behind after the bombing to bury hundreds of bodies, including his own father and son. Throughout the visit, women came to Abu Fahd to ask where they could find their husband’s burial place, said Mr Kelwick.
Another stop was the town of Kafr Zita in western Syria, north of the city of Hama and south of Idlib, where residents were returning after more than a decade of displacement. The Assad regime launched a chemical attack there in 2014, and most of the population fled to Atma tent camp in Idlib.
But there was very little left of the town for them to go back to. Raifa, a resident who lost her husband and son among other relatives during the war, told Kelwick that she felt “a mixture of happiness and sadness” about returning to her destroyed home. “Our homes are damaged and we’ve lost so much,” she said.
He compared the destruction to what he had seen in Mosul, in northern Iraq, which was seized by ISIS In 2014. Much of the city was destroyed in the battle by US-led coalition and Iraqi forces to remove the militants in 2017. Mr Kelwick visited in the aftermath of the war. “You feel like they’re playing a computer game where the aim is to destroy everything,” he said.
In Syria, residents told him how their applications for building permits to rebuild their homes were repeatedly ignored under the former regime. Regime forces would loot the steel reinforcements of destroyed homes to sell as scrap.
A silver lining is that this neglect serves as evidence today of the Assad regime's war crimes. “Now the evidence is everywhere,” Mr Kelwick said.
And though he has yet to meet any of the returning families he had known from earlier trips to north-west Syria, he expects to bump into them soon. “It’s only a matter of time,” he said.
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
Ziina users can donate to relief efforts in Beirut
Ziina users will be able to use the app to help relief efforts in Beirut, which has been left reeling after an August blast caused an estimated $15 billion in damage and left thousands homeless. Ziina has partnered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to raise money for the Lebanese capital, co-founder Faisal Toukan says. “As of October 1, the UNHCR has the first certified badge on Ziina and is automatically part of user's top friends' list during this campaign. Users can now donate any amount to the Beirut relief with two clicks. The money raised will go towards rebuilding houses for the families that were impacted by the explosion.”
History's medical milestones
1799 - First small pox vaccine administered
1846 - First public demonstration of anaesthesia in surgery
1861 - Louis Pasteur published his germ theory which proved that bacteria caused diseases
1895 - Discovery of x-rays
1923 - Heart valve surgery performed successfully for first time
1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1953 - Structure of DNA discovered
1952 - First organ transplant - a kidney - takes place
1954 - Clinical trials of birth control pill
1979 - MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, scanned used to diagnose illness and injury.
1998 - The first adult live-donor liver transplant is carried out
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Three ways to boost your credit score
Marwan Lutfi says the core fundamentals that drive better payment behaviour and can improve your credit score are:
1. Make sure you make your payments on time;
2. Limit the number of products you borrow on: the more loans and credit cards you have, the more it will affect your credit score;
3. Don't max out all your debts: how much you maximise those credit facilities will have an impact. If you have five credit cards and utilise 90 per cent of that credit, it will negatively affect your score.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Ain Dubai in numbers
126: The length in metres of the legs supporting the structure
1 football pitch: The length of each permanent spoke is longer than a professional soccer pitch
16 A380 Airbuses: The equivalent weight of the wheel rim.
9,000 tonnes: The amount of steel used to construct the project.
5 tonnes: The weight of each permanent spoke that is holding the wheel rim in place
192: The amount of cable wires used to create the wheel. They measure a distance of 2,4000km in total, the equivalent of the distance between Dubai and Cairo.
THE BIO: Martin Van Almsick
Hometown: Cologne, Germany
Family: Wife Hanan Ahmed and their three children, Marrah (23), Tibijan (19), Amon (13)
Favourite dessert: Umm Ali with dark camel milk chocolate flakes
Favourite hobby: Football
Breakfast routine: a tall glass of camel milk
SPECS
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Jetour T1 specs
Engine: 2-litre turbocharged
Power: 254hp
Torque: 390Nm
Price: From Dh126,000
Available: Now
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
- Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
- Avoid suspicious social media ads promoting fraudulent schemes.
- Only invest in crypto projects that you fully understand.
- Critically assess whether a project’s promises or returns seem too good to be true.
- Only use reputable platforms that have a track record of strong regulatory compliance.
- Store funds in hardware wallets as opposed to online exchanges.
Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Jiu-Jitsu World Tour Calendar 2018/19
July 29: OTA Gymnasium in Tokyo, Japan
Sep 22-23: LA Convention Centre in Los Angeles, US
Nov 16-18: Carioca Arena Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Feb 7-9: Mubadala Arena in Abu Dhabi, UAE
Mar 9-10: Copper Box Arena in London, UK
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Colomba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe
Gordon Corera, Harper Collins
Abu Dhabi traffic facts
Drivers in Abu Dhabi spend 10 per cent longer in congested conditions than they would on a free-flowing road
The highest volume of traffic on the roads is found between 7am and 8am on a Sunday.
Travelling before 7am on a Sunday could save up to four hours per year on a 30-minute commute.
The day was the least congestion in Abu Dhabi in 2019 was Tuesday, August 13.
The highest levels of traffic were found on Sunday, November 10.
Drivers in Abu Dhabi lost 41 hours spent in traffic jams in rush hour during 2019
