Once, Taofik Alhallak made his living interviewing Syrian artists, thinkers and doers, and scripting children’s shows for his television production company. Now, the 65-year-old huddles at his laptop in northern Virginia, an asylum-seeker chronicling the devastation of his homeland while trying to help save it.
"Hundreds of thousands of Syrian children [are] out of school today," with civil war disrupting classes and leaving youngsters poorly educated and vulnerable, he blogged a few days ago for his website. He urged parents there to guard against overtures from the Islamic State group, saying, "Daesh … turns them [youths] into thugs."
The website – SalebMujeb.com, Arabic for "Positive Negative" – gives Alhallak a voice in Syria, one that he says the Assad government has repeatedly tried to silence.
"Every article is about the revolution," explains his son, Urwa Alhallak. Most of the posts "are spreading awareness of how society could move into democracy."
Shortly after Syria’s pro-democracy protests began in March 2011, the elder Alhallak began writing supportive Facebook posts. He criticized the government’s hard-line responses, which began with security forces killing several demonstrators and escalated to the barrel-bombing of countless civilians. And he blamed Syria’s government for sending a man to his home in a Damascus suburb with a warning.
"He said: 'Either you stop writing or I will kill you, burn down your house and kill your family,'" Taofik Alhallak recalls, with his son translating.
That knock on the door, in mid-2011, propelled Alhallak and his wife on a four-year, angst-ridden odyssey through several countries, finally leading in October to this modest townhouse in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.
Now Alhallak and Zahrieh Alsouso are among a growing number of Syrians seeking political asylum in the United States. Some 1,582 filed new cases in fiscal 2014 and another 633 did so in the first half of fiscal 2015, , citing U.S. Department of Homeland Security data.
Asylum-seekers, like refugees, must have faced or fear persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political views or social-group affiliation. , at least in the United States, is that they’re already in the country in which they're seeking refuge.The , says an asylum-seeker is a self-described refugee "whose claim has not yet been definitely evaluated."
Refugees are caught up in the debate over how welcoming the West should be – especially to Muslim Syrians – in the wake of the November 13 terrorist siege in Paris for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility. A purportedly fake Syrian ID was found near the body of a slain attacker, fomenting concerns that violent extremists were sneaking in with the migrants streaming into Europe from Syria and other countries ravaged by war and poverty.
The United States has resettled at least 2,261 Syrian refugees since October 1, 2011, the nonpartisan , and U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to bring in at least another 10,000 over the next year. The Republican-led House of Representatives recently voted to suspend resettling Syrian refugees pending more study of national security measures. Obama has vowed to veto the measure if it makes it to his desk.
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have spilled over, blurring the lines between newcomers and those with deep roots in the United States, between peoples of Middle Eastern descent, between those who are Muslim and those who practice other faiths or none at all.
"I feel this little wall every time I meet with friends," says Urwa Alhallak, 35, who arrived in the United States in 2007 to study filmmaking. "I say I’m from Syria, there’s this silence.... I feel like inside they will think: 'Syrian? Maybe terrorist?' It’s not going to change easily."
He and his parents describe themselves as secular Syrians. They remember Damascus as a diverse and tolerant capital city. "We have Muslims, Christians Jews, we always lived together. It’s a mix,” says the younger Alhallak, who goes by the nickname Al.
In Syria, Taofik Alhallak was well known for his television work – as host of the 1976-’86 cultural affairs show "Positive and Negative" and for the children’s show. He and his wife, a cognitive psychologist, raised two daughters and their son, the youngest, in a Damascus suburb.
The government made a point of keeping prominent people like Alhallak in check, the family says.