Hands of a healer, heart of a Syrian
Sometimes he goes by John White. Sometimes he’s Abdulaziz Adel. At Harvard he is Mahmoud Hariri. His many names are a product of his life in Syria, where being a doctor treating the wounded is often as dangerous as being a rebel fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad. There have been 400 documented attacks on medical facilities since the Syrian war began in 2011 and close to 800 medical workers killed, according to figures from the U.S.-based nongovernmental organization Physicians for Human Rights. The assaults have been executed almost entirely by the Assad government or its allies, according to the NGO, and have targeted civilians with ruthless precision. Hariri, a surgeon and currently a Harvard Scholars at Risk fellow, has witnessed firsthand those brutal campaigns and their horrific aftermath: bodies marred by barrel bombs (cylinders crammed with explosives and shrapnel); burned remains of medical students kidnapped and murdered for the crime of...