In a new article for The New Yorker, American journalist Ben Taub, a 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner, recalls how, at the age of 22, he spent several months in Kilis, Turkey, on the Syrian border. In 2013, he went there to understand how reporters worked in war zones. Years later, Taub rereads his first experience of approaching the Syrian conflict and discovers that the hero celebrated by the Western press may have been little more than a myth he created himself.
Taub took a leave of absence from college to decide whether to devote himself to music or journalism, and had no intention of entering Syria. He was interested in the war correspondents he met at the border: he wanted to understand the ethical and logistical difficulties of working in conflict zones. A professor gave him contacts in Kilis—the last Turkish city on the route to Aleppo. There, Taub settled into the dilapidated Istanbul Hotel, home to freelance journalists, military adventurers, fighters, and spies; a German magazine even called it a “madmen’s hotel.” Because the opposition controlled the border crossings, almost any freelance journalist, aid worker, or fighter could enter Syria: all they had to do was fly to Turkey and cross the border on foot.
Taub’s first Syrian acquaintance was an activist named Ahmed, known by the nickname “Harvester.” Western newspapers described him as a programmer and hacker who led an anti-regime group called the “Aleppo Hackers” and was building a robot to rescue the wounded from under sniper fire. Reports said he had been arrested and tortured, had repeatedly hacked a pro-government television channel, and had received two death sentences in absentia. But the man Taub met wore a black suit and mirrored sunglasses, walked around with a “bodyguard,” and lived in a cramped room without a bathroom in the same hotel. Ahmed worked as an intermediary between journalists and local guides for $50 and boasted that he had taken 87 people into Syria and back. The hotel’s internet connection was so weak that sending an email took minutes, while his “prototype” robot turned out to be a toy car with exposed wires and nonfunctional pincers.
A commander of the Free Syrian Army offered to take Taub to Aleppo, but the journalist refused. He imagined a mother in Aleppo telling him her story, hoping he would carry her voice to the world, while he would be unable to write her story as it deserved. In opposition-controlled areas, journalists were being kidnapped with increasing frequency: experienced correspondents stopped coming, and the war in Syria became a war for freelance reporters—mostly young people with little experience and no editorial support. Once, Taub crossed the border and reached a displaced-persons camp in Bab al-Salam. He remembered his professor’s advice: “Think about who will hold the press conference if you are kidnapped.” There, he met Asaad Hamad, whose wife urgently needed heart surgery, but Turkish authorities would not let them cross the border. Taub wrote their story in the hope that publication would open the doors for them, but his professor replied that there were thousands of such stories and no one would come to save them; a few days later, the woman died.
When Taub returned to Kilis in the summer of 2013, the creation of the “Islamic State” had already been announced, and kidnappings of journalists and aid workers were becoming more frequent. According to Taub, the group’s militants watched Westerners in the city and reported across the border whenever someone left a hotel wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet. During that period, Taub met American journalist Steven Sotloff, who was heading to Aleppo. Taub advised him to avoid a local guide named Yusuf because he had been exposed by the Islamic State, but Sotloff was kidnapped along with Yusuf ten minutes after crossing the border. Taub later learned that someone had read his Facebook messages to Sotloff after the kidnapping, meaning the kidnappers may have known his hotel-room number. That same day, a man claiming to be a British doctor tried to lure Taub toward a truck near a café; the journalist refused and left the city. A year later, the Islamic State released a video of Sotloff’s execution. Taub watched it during his first week at journalism school, then entered the classroom in tears.
Later, people close to Ahmed “Harvester” told Taub that he was a fraud who took money from middle-aged women he met online. According to the journalist, two Canadian women discovered that he had deceived them in the same way; one sent him around $10,000. Ahmed married a 52-year-old French woman whom he met in a Facebook group supporting the Syrian revolution, persuaded her to invest thousands of euros in the “robot,” and in 2014 moved with her to France using a Syrian passport bought on the black market. Bilal, a Syrian technician who had worked with Ahmed, confirmed to Taub that the idea for the robot had been his own: after a sniper killed one of his wife’s relatives, he wanted to help the wounded. Bilal never found out where the donation money had gone. Together with Ahmed’s brother, he also maintained that no one in the family had been arrested or tortured, and that Ahmed had not hacked any television channels. In Taub’s view, the “Aleppo Hackers” group existed only in Ahmed’s stories to the Western press—one major European defense research institute had cited his account. Ahmed himself continues to insist that his version is true.
At the end of the article, Taub returns to Kilis in 2023. Bilal owns a computer shop and the local internet network, which city residents call by his name. The staff at the Istanbul Hotel, where Taub spent the most formative months of his life, do not remember him at all. For Taub, this is a symbolic conclusion: the place where he learned to look at war has almost disappeared from memory, while Bilal’s life has stabilized.
This story is not only about exposing one man. It shows how easily Western media create heroic images from intermediaries’ accounts, how difficult it is to verify a war from a distance, and what price Syrians, journalists, and everyone caught between propaganda, fear, and hope pay. Taub does not try to reduce everything to a simple conclusion: he shows that myths of war arise from a real need for heroes, but they always have authors, consequences, and forgotten victims.
Years later, Taub sees his first trip to Kilis as the point where the romance of war journalism collided with harsh reality. The provincial Turkish city, the hotel, the intermediaries, and the border crossings were not merely a backdrop for him but the main stage on which the great Syrian tragedy unfolded. Returning there, he discovers that the memory of those events has almost disappeared—as has the reputation of the “hero” once created by the press.
Comments on the News
Where is the Bab al-Salam border crossing, and what role did it play in 2013 for Syrian refugees and foreign journalists? — Bab al-Salam is a crossing on the Syrian-Turkish border in Aleppo province, north of Azaz and opposite the Turkish city of Kilis. In 2013, it was one of the main “gates” between rebel-held northern Syria and Turkey: refugees fled through it from Aleppo and the surrounding areas, while foreign journalists, NGO workers, and opposition activists entered rebel-controlled territory. Control of the crossing changed periodically, but to the outside world it remained a key logistical artery.
What was the Free Syrian Army in 2013, and which areas of northern Syria, including Aleppo, did it control? — In 2013, the FSA was not a unified army but a broad and loosely organized coalition of armed groups with different commanders and sponsors and no effective central command. In northern Syria, factions affiliated with the FSA controlled or shared control over rural areas around Aleppo—including Azaz, Marea, Bab al-Salam, and others—as well as parts of Idlib and northern Latakia. In Aleppo itself, rebels, including FSA and Islamist groups, held substantial areas, but the city was a scene of fierce fighting; the government retained the western neighborhoods, the city center, and the airport. By the end of 2013, the FSA’s position had weakened because of internal conflicts and the growing strength of jihadist groups.
Why did Kilis become the main base for foreign journalists, intermediaries, and fighters on the Turkish-Syrian border, and how did its role change after the Islamic State grew stronger? — Kilis is a Turkish city directly opposite Bab al-Salam. In 2012–2013, it became a convenient rear base: it was close to rebel-held northern Syria, relatively safe, and had communications, hotels, smugglers, and intermediaries. Journalists, activists, aid workers, and fighters entered Syria through the city; recruiters, traders, and smugglers also operated there. After the Islamic State grew stronger in 2014 and seized parts of the border region, the crossings became more dangerous, Turkey tightened controls, and Kilis increasingly became a humanitarian and logistical hub for refugees and the moderate opposition. Later, following Turkey’s 2016 operations, its role as a “gateway for journalists” largely faded.
How did the black market in passports operate in Syria during the civil war, and what did obtaining a Syrian passport mean for leaving for Europe? — During the war, a Syrian passport became extremely valuable because it made it possible to leave the country legally, cross borders, buy a ticket, and then apply for asylum. Officially, passports were issued only by regime authorities, so a black market emerged: stolen and forged passports were sold, along with “genuine” passports obtained through bribes and intermediaries. For a Syrian, obtaining a passport meant a chance to reach Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, or Europe; it helped during checks, visa applications, and registration as a refugee. Some non-Syrians also used forged Syrian passports to pose as Syrians and seek asylum, raising concerns in the EU. Prices rose, and the market was controlled by networks of officials, smugglers, and rebels.
What did the in-absentia death sentences imposed by the Syrian authorities on opposition figures mean, and how were they used in the propaganda struggle? — An in-absentia death sentence meant that a Syrian court had found a person guilty without the person being present, usually on charges of “terrorism,” armed rebellion, ties to foreign powers, or treason. For the authorities, it was a tool of intimidation, the legitimization of repression, and a demonstration that the regime was “fighting terrorism”; it also prevented defendants from returning and closed off the path to reconciliation. The opposition and human-rights activists used such sentences in propaganda to highlight the absence of fair trials, arbitrariness, and the regime’s brutality. In-absentia verdicts became part of the information war: each side presented them either as a legitimate fight against terrorism or as political repression.
Full version: The Madmen’s Hotel on Syria’s Border: An American Journalist Recalls His First Lessons in Covering the War