The harrowing duty of Syria’s White Helmets is crucial to the country’s future

Mark MacKinnon Senior International Correspondent Buser al-harir, syria Published 26 seconds ago

Tammam Al-Abbas, leader of one of Syria's White Helmets transitional justice teams, works to recover bodies from a mass grave discovered in the village of Nawa, in rural Daraa, following a report from one of the village’s residents.

It was in the dirt yard outside a half-rebuilt factory in the south of Syria that the country’s bloody past collided with its hopes for the future.

It took three months for the residents of Buser al-Harir, a town near Syria’s border with Jordan, to get the necessary permits to convert the remains of a shattered carpet factory – the scene of ferocious battles early in the country’s 13-year civil war – into a kiln that would produce bricks to help people r