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He fled Assad. Now he’s leading Syria’s tech transformation

Abdulsalam Haykal faces a practically impossible task: to bring Syria back online after 14 years of civil war and decades of Western sanctions. In his first interview as Syria’s minister...

© Ali Haj Suleiman for Rest of World

Abdulsalam Haykal, the minister of communications and information technology in Syria, 2025.
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Syria’s quest to build its own Silicon Valley

At the end of November, Hamza Hourani’s phone rang. It was a cloudy morning in Damascus, and some Syrians were quietly stocking their cupboards as rebel fighters marched south toward...

© Photography by Ali Suleiman for Rest of World

An aerial photo showing the Syrian capital Damascus.
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