IDLIB: Bent over a computer tablet in war-torn northwest Syria, cartoonist Amani al Ali takes her pen to the screen to sketch life in the embattled opposition bastion of Idlib.
“I’m trying to get across what others struggle to say,” said the 30-year-old artist, dressed in a long red jacket and lacey white headscarf.
Idlib, a militant-run region of three million people, has come under increasing bombardment by the government and its Russian ally since late April despite a months-old truce deal.
Through her cartoons, Amani has boldly challenged traditions to comment on life in the anti-government bastion, and to condemn seeming international indifference to civilian deaths.
In one, the world is depicted as an ostrich burying its head in a mound of blood-drenched skulls as red missiles rain down all around.
In another, titled “Eid in Idlib”, a warplane drops candy wrappers containing TNT, instead of the sweets usually distributed during the Muslim holiday.
The sketches are etched out in black and white, with splashes of red, colours the artist says are inspired by life in the opposition stronghold.
“We see nothing but blood, darkness and destruction,” she said.
The spike in violence over the past three months has killed more than 790 civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says, despite the truce deal struck by Russia and Turkey.
Amani has sketched this accord too, as a blood-stained paper bearing the words “the Idlib agreement”.
On Thursday, the Syrian government said it had agreed to a new truce, giving at least a temporary reprieve for Idlib’s residents.
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Though her cartoons have now been exhibited as far away as the Netherlands and United Kingdom, Amani had to study drawing on the sly growing up, because her father forbade it.
“I consider myself to be a girl who broke with customs and tradition,” Amani said.
“I confronted my parents and managed to impose the life I wanted for myself.”
Her society, she said, frowned upon women who engaged in political satire through cartoons or art.
Before civil war erupted in 2011, Amani worked as an art teacher at a private school in Idlib so she could “be close to the field that I love”.
But after the region fell to rebel forces, she “started a new life” as a cartoonist, often dabbling in satire to capture the reality of a war that has cost more than 370,000 lives and displaced millions across Syria.
“I hope to convey even the smallest part of civilian suffering,” she said.
But beyond government and Russian air strikes, Amani has also criticised militants and rebels controlling Syria’s northwest — a daring move that has seen others detained or targeted.
— AFP
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