Author: Le Dragon Déchaîné

by Celine Sarraf

Women’s salons and book clubs are often remembered as elegant relics of a bourgeois past: private, literary, and apparently detached from politics. In Damascus, however, they played a modern and  consequential role. In the early twentieth century, as empire collapsed and colonial rule took hold, women’s literary clubs and salons became spaces of civic participation and debate. They were not ornaments to public life, but part of how public life was made.

With that, women’s public and civil participation in Damascus can be understood through this world of literary clubs and salons, especially the space associated with Mary Ajami and the Shami Women’s Club. Rather than focusing on formal political institutions, women created public presence through cultural pathways: by founding magazines, organizing gatherings, and building networks of discussion. In a context where women’s access to formal politics remained limited, these spaces mattered precisely because they gave women a collective voice. They helped cultivate a broader feminist public in Syria.

The wider historical setting of the era is essential to understand how significant these spaces were: the late Ottoman period and the years around the First World War were a time of intellectual change and political instability in Syria. Reformist ideas circulated alongside a growing Arabic literary culture, and women’s education and writing began to appear more visibly. Still, the circumstances were fragile; the war disrupted everyday normalcy, Ottoman rule collapsed in 1918, and a brief postwar moment of political opening was quickly overtaken by the French Mandate in 1920. Under colonial rule, formal political participation remained limited, which made cultural spaces even more valuable.

It is within this context that Mary Ajami emerged as a pioneering figure in women’s literary and civic culture. She founded her magazine, Al-Arous, in 1910, as the first Arab publication explicitly devoted to women’s discourse. Al-Arous, despite meaning ‘The Bride’, served to defy patriarchal notions and mobilise women as Ajami writes in the magazine’s sixth volume; ‘Some say women are born to serve their husbands, others say women are born to serve their fathers, I say her rights exist for herself.’ The magazine was paused during WWI, but restarted with momentum in 1918, with Ajami simultaneously helping found women’s clubs in Damascus, turning literary culture into an established trend of women’s civic action.

These public projects are precisely what makes Ajami’s contribution especially important: it was never only about letters or private improvement. Her intellectual salon, The Shami Women’s Club (named after the Arabic word for Damascus), held public meetings where members could present views on literature and politics. Ajami’s establishment of the club in 1920, alongside fellow activist Naziq al-Abid, defied the notion that Arab feminism rose as a reflection of European influence and tendencies. The gatherings had a unique nature and identity, proving that progress can be made and seen without dependency on being included in parliamentary office or formal political structures. 

The Shami Women’s Club and Ajami’s literary circle can thus be placed within the first wave of Syrian feminism. Across major Syrian cities at the time, the gradual popularisation of Arab nationalism encouraged conditions for feminist ambitions and drove women to participate in public demonstrations. A new feminist infrastructure was hence built on these ideological and societal shifts, concretely seen in a rise of women entering the labour force and increased literacy rates. In this sense, cultural participation became a main form of feminism. This context helps challenge the notion that women’s salons were somehow apolitical and the overlap between culture and politics was in reality immense.

The significance of this history extends beyond a single generation as Mary Ajami lived to see the end of French rule in 1946 and Syrian independence. That same year, her poem “The Peasant’s Hope” won first prize on BBC radio, reminding us that her voice remained culturally relevant even as Syria entered a new political era. Early independent Syria was a time of redefinition, and Ajami’s career bridges the worlds of Ottoman collapse, mandate politics, and national independence. Her legacy shows that women’s civic participation in Damascus cannot be understood only through legal milestones; it must also be traced through association and cultural leadership.

Her story unsettles narrow ideas about what counts as political participation. Her magazine, her work, and the broader Damascene salon culture she helped shape show that women were building civic life before they were fully recognized in formal politics. The literary salon offered an entrance to the public sphere, and women entered and reshaped it, proving that these spaces belong at the center of the history of Syrian feminism.

When performance is on the edge of dying

by Nahia Onchalo–Meynard

“I do not want to be working in ballet or opera, where it is: keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about it any more’. On March 5, during an interview at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, USA, French-American actor and producer Timothee Chalamet let out the previous words; what a slippery slope to go down. Indeed, no more than 10 days before the Oscars ceremony, a wave of criticism regarding his statement shook the internet. However, for better or worse, the Oscars nominee did a great service to those arts often relegated to the background by shedding light on them.

Context is needed before completely tearing down Chalamet’s statement. Indeed, opera and ballet statistically are no competition to the cinematic industry. As prestigious, elitist and respected as they can be, ballet only sold around 10 million tickets in 2025, which is 75 times less than movie tickets; opera is even less frequented with only around two million tickets sold per year. It also provides much less opportunities: the average 2,000 opera performances a year and 5,000 dance spectacles are nowhere near the yearly 70 million screenings. Cinema did undergo  a drastic decline of attendance since the 1980s because of television, home screenings and streaming platforms. However, it still impressively surpasses forms of arts that have been existing for centuries.

This success is mainly due to how accessible a movie screening is. It is also proof of constant technological progress, appealing to many. Moreover, as the movie industry grew, the star system developed as comedians became more famous, mainstream, inspirational, and closer to their audience, thereby creating a parasocial relationship between them and their  audience. Worshipping the given public image of an individual became a rite of passage so as to truly belong to this higher, more prestigious universe. While actors bet on the control of their expressions as well as their understanding of the various personalities, dancers and opera singers rely on their bodies. This relegates ballet and opera to a much more unstable and ephemeral type of art, fading as the artists’ age grows. The dwindling support and stereotypical image that it receives also contributes to audiences being too small to fund big productions, leaving companies saddled with debts or relying on sponsors. 

Nevertheless, if one pays more attention to the occupancy rate according to the capacity, opera sessions are 75% full on average per representation, and ballet can go up to 90%,  making the 20% average attendance rate of movie screenings look like cinema is the art “no one cares about any more.” The screenings are, of course, consequently more numerous, but this only showcases the strong cleavage between the seventh art and ballet or opera. The latter are not arts in which people are disinterested, they are however embodiments of a higher society, an elite, a world hardly accessible and understandable to those unacquainted with such pieces. But as much as this universe is hard to reach and fully explore, it cannot be dying; it is the very expression of livelihood, of movement, of change, of humanity. Born out of a need to express oneself in unique ways, mainstream cinema and such rigorous and historically significant forms of art cannot compare  when it comes to expressing the singularity of the human body and its feelings. It is not one or the other; they are complementary, carrying a different perspective, a different story, a different background, a different technique and a different passion to one single goal: expression. 

However, if Chalamet’s intervention has proven useful in any kind, it is by unexpectedly bringing the attention back to ballet and opera. By being triggered on such a matter, the public questioned its relation to other, more unmediatized art forms, noticing what importance it really had. How ballet and opera shaped tastes, personalities, careers or habits has indeed resurfaced as a collective call for the protection of those art forms.

Therefore, as much as opera and ballet’s audience unfortunately decreases, the cinematic industry is not thriving either; the downfall is collective. The question — as for now — is not if one wants to be working in the classical dance and music industries, but rather if one will be able to be working for them. 

by Angelina Lanna Chams

Migration is often viewed from a macro lens, reducing people to mere statistics. Whilst this lens can provide overall insights on migration patterns, it is through a micro perspective that a nuanced transformation in the lives of migrants can be revealed. These short- and long-term transformations are largely dependent on the rights and statuses of migrants as determined by their host countries. Within this framework, it can be said that gender plays a defining role in shaping their lives. This can be attributed to two main factors: gender-specific rights and the influence of traditional gender roles.

These dynamics can be better understood through the experiences of migrant workers. In consequence of traditional gender roles, men are seen to be the breadwinners of the family. Subsequently, this has also resulted in the common depiction of migrant workers as male. Yet, in recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgment of the feminisation of migration as women have become increasingly prevalent in labour migration. This is predominantly evident in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, which provides workers from Timor-Leste and nine Pacific island countries temporary visas to work in Australia. With women making up 25% of the scheme’s participants in January 2026, it signals a departure from traditional gender roles. However, this departure, although giving more opportunities to women, has resulted in the question of whether female participation in migration schemes is positively transforming their lives.

Even with a greater participation in migration schemes, the rights of female migrant workers fail to align with their needs. Being faced with minimal reproductive rights, one question comes to mind: is it the fault of the employer or the scheme’s infrastructure? The answer is both. Whilst the scheme does provide migrant workers with a mandatory private health insurance, its infrastructure has led to a lack of awareness of such. This has resulted in employers being reluctant to hire women — especially those who are or able to become pregnant — as they are unable to provide necessary support to female migrant workers. In consequence, female participants are often required to go through testing to ensure they aren’t pregnant before acceptance into the scheme. Discrimination thus becomes a featured part of the scheme.

But, this does not hinder their participation as female migrant workers retain a positive outlook towards pregnancy. Although their knowledge on the accessible healthcare through the scheme is limited, it is the overall image of Australia that can make the scheme even more appealing to prospective mothers. Pacific island countries are often characterised as places with poor healthcare provisions due to their inability to provide specialised care. This can be evidenced by ProMedica — a paramedic service in Vanuatu which evacuates patients with serious medical conditions and/ or injuries to Australia and New Zealand. Noting further how Vanuatu and other Pacific island countries struggle to handle neonatal and maternal challenges, it has led to the islands’ citizens viewing Australia as a better place to give birth in. However, this comes with one limitation: female migrant workers who become pregnant have a greater tendency to disengage from the scheme. This is due to the limited support they receive throughout their pregnancy from their employers and the scheme as a whole.

Reflecting further upon this lack of support, many women have also described their struggles with finding a safe environment to raise their children in. As migrant workers, female participants do not have access to paid maternity leave, nor is their pregnancy looked fondly upon by their employers. The situation of new mothers is exacerbated through their inability to access government schemes for child support. In severe cases, they may have their children taken away by child protection services. This possibility of separation, which is caused by the institutionalised structure of the scheme, raises the question of whether it can be justified, either on human rights or on ethical grounds.

Yet, the experiences of female migrant workers extend beyond reproductive rights, with gender-based violence (GBV) playing a central role in shaping the transformation they experience. Notably, the discussion of GBV appears as a taboo subject among the scheme’s participants despite its prevalence. This is because of how female migrant workers have more to lose than gain by reporting instances of GBV. The scheme’s structure restricts participants to a single employer — creating a dependency from migrant workers on their employers. Workers are thus compelled to remain productive and compliant, with any concerns hampering this image that they wish to project. Infrequent reports of GBV consequently reflect the workers’ fear of becoming a cause for concern, which increases their risk of layoff.

As layoff could lead to workers losing their visas, reporting cases of GBV appears to be counterproductive to these individuals. This is because the limited support provided to victims of GBV would not sufficiently improve their wellbeing. This signifies the precarious situation of female migrant workers due to the legal and economic insecurities associated with protecting themselves from vulnerabilities.

Overall, this treatment of women has led to concerns surrounding whether the PALM scheme in particular is inherently discriminatory. With employers’ reluctance to hire pregnant women and new mothers, the discrimination seen can be said to go against the Australian Sex Discrimination Act (1984), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and family responsibilities. This signifies the inconsistencies in Australia’s push towards gender equality.

Globally, women in developing countries are able to gain new opportunities to support both themselves and their families through the feminisation of migration. But, the impacts of these opportunities are twofold. On the one hand, women’s lives may be transformed for the better as they have better access to healthcare provisions in Australia. On the other hand, their vulnerability to GBV and their restricted ability to raise their children makes this transformation also deteriorating. If gender equality is a true priority of a host country, there needs to be further policies guaranteeing the rights of migrant women. After all, the benefits of a migration scheme will only be able to outweigh the burden placed on the shoulders of female migrant workers when they are respected as people, and not just seen as units of labour.

by Margherita Greco

At 2:30 a.m. on March 10, 2019, Kazakh national security officers forced their way into a hotel room in Almaty without a warrant, roughed up the man sleeping inside and put him on a plane to the capital. No explanation was given. No legal basis was offered. 

The man was Serikzhan Bilash, founder of Ata-Jurt Eriktileri (Volunteers of the Fatherland), the most exhaustive civilian archive of testimonies from ethnic Kazakhs who had passed through detention facilities in Xinjiang, China. Since 2017, the Chinese government has operated a sprawling network of internment camps across the region, officially described as “vocational training centres” but documented by survivors, journalists and international bodies as facilities for political indoctrination, forced cultural assimilation and the systematic erasure of Islamic identity. Ethnic Kazakhs, alongside Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities, have been detained without trial, separated from their families and stripped of their language and religious practice — not for any crime, but for who they are. While officers dragged Bilash onto the flight, others were simultaneously raiding his organization’s offices across the city, confiscating every hard drive, every camera, every record of the families he had spent years trying to help.

But nothing happens by accident. 2019 was the year Kazakhstan signed billions of dollars in new infrastructure agreements with Beijing, therefore raising questions about a connection between these two events.

To grasp the core of Bilash’s situation, it is necessary to understand Kazakhstan’s development and geopolitical weight. It is the geographic spine of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and not a mere peripheral partner as more than half of China’s overland freight bound for Europe passes through Kazakh territory. The Khorgos Gateway dry port, rising from the steppe on the Chinese border, is projected to become the largest of its kind in the world. Since 2015, the two countries have signed agreements covering dozens of joint projects in oil, chemicals, logistics and rail, amounting to tens of billions of dollars. By 2019, China had become Kazakhstan’s single largest trading partner. 

For a landlocked nation whose post-Soviet economy was built almost entirely on hydrocarbons, this represented a structural ground-breaking revolution: access to global supply chains, drastically reduced transit times, a path toward economic diversification that no other partner was offering at that scale. The BRI went beyond a simple infrastructure deal, serving as Kazakhstan’s gateway to Eurasian relevance. The price of that relevance, however, has been paid not in dollars, but in silence.

Bilash had built something rare. In a region largely sealed off from international journalists, Ata-Jurt functioned as the only systematic window into what was happening in Xinjiang. According to the United Nations, an estimated one million or more people — predominantly Uyghurs, but also ethnic Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities — have been detained in facilities across Xinjiang, making it one of the largest mass incarcerations of an ethnic and religious group in the world today. Through video testimonies from released detainees describing conditions inside the camps and from families in Kazakhstan and from families in Kazakhstan with relatives across the border, Bilash was revealing an uncomfortable truth to the world. 

He had collected hundreds of such accounts, and through them contributed more primary documentation of the detention system than almost any other civilian source in the world. He had also argued publicly, and without restraint, that Astana’s silence on Xinjiang was inseparable from its economic dependence on Beijing. 

Bilash was saying the quiet part out loud and in return the government began surveilling him for months.

External interference became more evident when his organization was refused official registration and when he was fined for running an unregistered group. Officials visited and warned him repeatedly and on at least one occasion brought along a photograph of his aunt still living in China, making clear they knew exactly who his family was and where they could be reached.

When the arrest finally came, the charge was inciting ethnic strife. A year later, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention examined the case and reached a different conclusion: Kazakhstan had targeted Bilash for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and association. More strikingly, a security officer reportedly told him at the moment of detention that he was being held for engaging in activities harmful to Kazakhstan’s relationship with China. 

That sentence is the entire story. Everything else is elaboration.

His trial, which began in late July 2019, ended with the government coercing him into signing a plea agreement that banned him from any form of advocacy for seven years. He was not imprisoned, but silenced — and for an activist, silence is its own kind of cage. Even if not physically behind bars, Serikzhan Bilash’s voice was taken away from himself, impeding dozens of families who had relied on Ata-Jurt as their only channel to the outside world and only way to speak out for themselves. Shortly after his travel restrictions were lifted, Bilash left Kazakhstan for good, settling in the United States.

Kazakhstan has long prided itself on multi-vector diplomacy, balancing Russia, China and the West without surrendering to any of them. Sovereignty, in this framing, is the one asset you never trade. And yet a 2018 public opinion survey conducted by Harvard Kennedy School researcher Shyngys Mukan found that only 3 percent of Kazakhs welcomed Chinese foreign investment, while nearly 50% viewed the BRI itself negatively — even as their government was deepening its economic embrace of Beijing at an unprecedented pace.

The suppression of Bilash was not a diplomatic compromise in the conventional sense. It was the state acting against the instincts of its own population to protect a relationship that the population had never endorsed, silencing its diaspora’s suffering to keep the freight trains running. 

Bilash built an archive. Kazakhstan dismantled it. The trains keep running.

The Silk Road has always carried more than goods. In its BRI incarnation, it carries implicit political understandings about the price of access. The question Astana has yet to answer is whether a state that silences its own citizens can still claim to be the sovereign author of its foreign policy or whether it quietly signed that authorship away somewhere between the infrastructure agreements and the hotel room raids.