Critical Cases

A frontline eyewitness account of the Syrian Revolution from prizewinning journalist and activist Hadi Alabdallah. Hadi Alabdallah was an emergency medicine student in his mid-twenties when he became a citizen journalist, covering the attack by Assad's forces on the city of Homs in 2013. He and his colleague were the first to document evidence Hezbollah was fighting for the regime. After breaking the story, which changed the course of the war as it became clear Iran and also Russia were in alliance with Assad, Alabdallah became a sought after and trusted voice on social media, where he joined the ranks of cyber-dissenters. His memoir tracks his experience upon leaving his studies to become a first responder during the Arab Spring uprisings, through 2020, by which time he had fled north to Idlib Province among the rebel factions, which posed their own dangers to young reporters. Astonishing for its rendering of friendships forged during the emotional impacts of war, Alabdallah's friends and colleagues collectively dedicated their lives to the truth and to each other, though they risked capture, prison, torture, or death every day. Using creative language and style, Critical Conditions explores not only the political concerns of the author and his closest friends, but gives centrality to their feelings during the life-changing mission they undertook by challenging the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Critically injured in an assassination attempt in Aleppo in 2016, Alabdallah spent months in recovery in Turkey, where he was interviewed for a multimedia feature on The New York Times. Later that year, he won the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize. Alabdallah's new Afterword remarks on the liberation of his country and the challenges that lie ahead.