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Rami Jarrah: Reporting Syria's Uprising When the World Couldn't Get In
In 2011, with no foreign journalists allowed inside Syria, a 27-year-old Syrian-British man sat in his Damascus apartment and called CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera every day. His name was Rami Jarrah. The world knew him as 'Alexander Page'.
Confirmed2 chapters2011-03-15— 2024-12-31
Operating as 'Alexander Page,' he reported the Syrian uprising to the world in 2011 — under a pseudonym, risking arrest, from inside a country with no foreign press.
01
Chapter 01custom01 / 02
'Alexander Page': Reporting Syria's Uprising from Inside, 2011
Rami Jarrah had grown up partly in the UK — he was Syrian by birth and heritage but had British citizenship and had lived in Britain for years. In 2011, he was living in Damascus.
When the uprising began in March 2011, international journalists were banned from Syria. The government controlled all access. State media was the only officially sanctioned news source. The footage and information reaching the outside world came almost entirely from Syrian activists inside the country — people risking arrest to film and report.
Jarrah began doing this, but with a particular advantage: he spoke English fluently, with a British accent, and could communicate directly with international English-language media in a way that most Syrian activists could not. He created the Twitter account @AlexanderPage, presenting himself as a foreign journalist inside Syria. He called in to CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and other international outlets, describing what was happening on the streets.
His reports were some of the first direct accounts from inside Syria to reach international audiences. He described protests, crackdowns, arrests. He described the specific terror of the Syrian security apparatus — the intelligence branches, the checkpoints, the midnight knocks on doors.
He was eventually identified. Syrian intelligence agents began following him. He received threats. He was arrested briefly and questioned. Friends and contacts warned him that he was known.
In late 2011, he fled Syria — first to Egypt, then to other locations — and continued reporting from outside. His identity as Rami Jarrah (rather than 'Alexander Page') became publicly known in 2012.
The work he and others like him did in 2011 — the citizen journalism that filled the gap left by the exclusion of foreign press — was crucial to the formation of international public opinion about the Syrian uprising. Without those voices, the Assad government's narrative that it was fighting 'armed terrorists' would have faced far less challenge in the early months.
When the uprising began in March 2011, international journalists were banned from Syria. The government controlled all access. State media was the only officially sanctioned news source. The footage and information reaching the outside world came almost entirely from Syrian activists inside the country — people risking arrest to film and report.
Jarrah began doing this, but with a particular advantage: he spoke English fluently, with a British accent, and could communicate directly with international English-language media in a way that most Syrian activists could not. He created the Twitter account @AlexanderPage, presenting himself as a foreign journalist inside Syria. He called in to CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and other international outlets, describing what was happening on the streets.
His reports were some of the first direct accounts from inside Syria to reach international audiences. He described protests, crackdowns, arrests. He described the specific terror of the Syrian security apparatus — the intelligence branches, the checkpoints, the midnight knocks on doors.
He was eventually identified. Syrian intelligence agents began following him. He received threats. He was arrested briefly and questioned. Friends and contacts warned him that he was known.
In late 2011, he fled Syria — first to Egypt, then to other locations — and continued reporting from outside. His identity as Rami Jarrah (rather than 'Alexander Page') became publicly known in 2012.
The work he and others like him did in 2011 — the citizen journalism that filled the gap left by the exclusion of foreign press — was crucial to the formation of international public opinion about the Syrian uprising. Without those voices, the Assad government's narrative that it was fighting 'armed terrorists' would have faced far less challenge in the early months.
Confirmed(85%)Sensitivity: medium
02
Chapter 02custom02 / 02
ANA Press and Training a Generation of Syrian Journalists
After fleeing Syria, Rami Jarrah turned his experience into an institution. He founded ANA Press (in Arabic, "ANA" means "I am" — a statement of presence and identity) — an organization focused on training Syrian citizen journalists to report professionally, safely, and accurately from inside Syria.
The problem he was trying to solve: Syria had a desperate need for journalism, but the people best positioned to report from inside the country were civilians with no professional training. They were filming on phones, transmitting over weak connections, not knowing how to document evidence properly, not knowing how to stay safe, not knowing how to structure a story. The international press relied on their footage but couldn't verify it. The footage of atrocities circulated widely but lacked the professional framing that would make it actionable in international accountability forums.
ANA Press trained hundreds of Syrian journalists — teaching not just journalism skills but safety practices, digital security, interview techniques, and how to document evidence in ways that would be useful in future accountability processes (war crimes documentation requires specific methodologies: GPS coordinates, chain of custody for evidence, consistent documentation of injuries, etc.).
He continued reporting himself — from Lebanon, Turkey, and eventually from inside Syria as conditions changed. His work consistently tried to bridge the gap between what was happening inside Syria and what the outside world could understand and act on.
**The continuing relevance:**
As Assad's government fell in December 2024, the documentation produced by Jarrah and ANA Press, and by hundreds of Syrian citizen journalists trained in similar approaches, became crucial historical record. The challenge of the post-Assad period was not only rebuilding Syria's physical infrastructure but documenting what had happened — building an evidentiary basis for accountability processes, memorialization, and truth-telling.
Jarrah and organizations like his had spent years building that documentation. The archive they created, imperfect and dangerous as it was to produce, may prove to be one of the most important legacies of the Syrian uprising's civil society.
The problem he was trying to solve: Syria had a desperate need for journalism, but the people best positioned to report from inside the country were civilians with no professional training. They were filming on phones, transmitting over weak connections, not knowing how to document evidence properly, not knowing how to stay safe, not knowing how to structure a story. The international press relied on their footage but couldn't verify it. The footage of atrocities circulated widely but lacked the professional framing that would make it actionable in international accountability forums.
ANA Press trained hundreds of Syrian journalists — teaching not just journalism skills but safety practices, digital security, interview techniques, and how to document evidence in ways that would be useful in future accountability processes (war crimes documentation requires specific methodologies: GPS coordinates, chain of custody for evidence, consistent documentation of injuries, etc.).
He continued reporting himself — from Lebanon, Turkey, and eventually from inside Syria as conditions changed. His work consistently tried to bridge the gap between what was happening inside Syria and what the outside world could understand and act on.
**The continuing relevance:**
As Assad's government fell in December 2024, the documentation produced by Jarrah and ANA Press, and by hundreds of Syrian citizen journalists trained in similar approaches, became crucial historical record. The challenge of the post-Assad period was not only rebuilding Syria's physical infrastructure but documenting what had happened — building an evidentiary basis for accountability processes, memorialization, and truth-telling.
Jarrah and organizations like his had spent years building that documentation. The archive they created, imperfect and dangerous as it was to produce, may prove to be one of the most important legacies of the Syrian uprising's civil society.
Confirmed(85%)Sensitivity: medium
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