AL-BAB, Syria — Mohammad Hariri is worried about news coming from the eastern Damascus suburbs that the regime recaptured in April 2018. On Feb. 28, security forces affiliated with the Syrian regime arrested three women in the town of Kafr Batna in eastern Ghouta on charges of conspiring against the regime, according to local news websites. Those arrested had contacted their relatives in opposition-controlled areas in northern Syria on the phone.
Such incidents have been on the rise lately in regime-held areas, making Hariri reluctant to communicate with his relatives in his hometown Douma, in eastern Ghouta.