2024 in Review: Syria before the fall of Assad
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the year wraps up, we're looking back at ten of the episodes that defined 2024 at The Take. This originally aired on March 15. None of the dates, titles, or other references have been changed.
Thirteen years ago, Syrians took to the streets to stand up against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The war that followed has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than 12 million. Today, al-Assad is still in power. Has the world abandoned Syria?
In this episode:
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Alia Malek (@AliaMalek), journalist, lawyer, and author of The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by David Enders, Chloe K. Li, Negin Owliaei and Amy Walters Khaled Soltan, and Ashish Malhotra, with Spencer Cline, Phillip Lanos, Mohannad al-Melhem, Hisham Abu Salah, and our host Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Joe Plourde mixed this update. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.
Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:10.7 | Hi, Malika here. |
| 0:12.8 | This week and next, as we say goodbye to 2024, |
| 0:16.4 | we're revisiting 10 of the episodes that shaped our year. |
| 0:20.6 | When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled the country on December 8th, the sudden end of |
| 0:26.0 | decades at Assad family rule came as a shock. But it was much earlier this year on the 13th |
| 0:32.2 | anniversary of Syria's uprising that we reflected on where Syria was in 2024. |
| 0:38.7 | After protesters took to the streets and a call for change, the government's brutal |
| 0:43.0 | crackdown eventually became a war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and |
| 0:48.4 | displaced over 12 million people. Many of them are now beginning another new chapter in |
| 0:54.0 | their lives. This episode |
| 0:56.3 | originally aired on March 15th, 2024, so all dates and references reflect that time. Here's the |
| 1:03.9 | episode. |
| 1:08.9 | Today, as focus shifts to other conflicts, has the world forgotten Syria? |
| 1:14.6 | They didn't ask for the overthrow of the regime, they asked for reforms. |
| 1:18.6 | There were choices made by the regime to not engage with its people. |
| 1:25.6 | As Syrians marked 13 years of war, we hear about their struggle since the 2011 |
| 1:32.1 | uprisings. I'm Malika Bilal, and this is The Take. |
| 1:47.8 | Today I'm speaking with Alia Malik. |
| 1:49.7 | She's the author of two books. |
| 1:54.1 | The latest one is the home that was our country, a memoir of Syria. |
| 2:01.4 | I am a journalist, but I also direct international reporting at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and I am speaking to you from my apartment in Brooklyn, New York. |
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