Ali Ferzat's cartoons – in pictures

'This was made three months before the revolution started. I was in Damascus at the time and there was a feeling that Bashar could not sit comfortably any more. Basically, things were starting to give him a pain in the arse'
Illustration: Ali Ferzat

'This is from 2002 and it's about the way that dictators are all the same. They are always willing to starve their people, just so they have enough money to spend on the weapons they need to secure their own positions of power'
Illustration: Ali Ferzat

'This is a very simple idea. It is taken from al-Domari, a magazine I ran in the early 2000s.'
Al-Domari was Syria's first independent satirical magazine since the Ba'athist regime took power in 1963. It quickly won an enthusiastic domestic audience, not to mention awards from around the world. However, frequent government censorship forced its closure in 2003
Illustration: Ali Ferzat

'I drew this in 2002. I have made a lot of cartoons of guns. It's not a series with a start or an end point. It's something that I think about all the time and something that I always want to draw attention to. I want to show how violence always has two sides; how it hurts others but will always end up hurting you too'
Illustration: Ali Ferzat

'Here I was thinking about political parties in general. The flag has nothing on it and shows how the slogans that the parties use are often completely empty. The line of men with their hands in each other's pockets shows how most of the time politicians use these empty phrases simply to steal from each other, to take bribes and look after their own interests' Photograph: Ali Ferzat

'My work about Syria had always been very general, talking about the wider issues. But in 2010 I realised that it needed to be more specific, particularly in relation to Bashar al-Assad. I wanted to break down the wall of fear that surrounded him. There was a distorted view of Assad. Although he is small - just one man - there was an idea that he was unbeatable'
Illustration: Ali Ferzat

'This is from 1994. It's about the customs, the police and the mukhabarat - the Syrian secret service. When you came into the country they were not interested in what was in your cases, your clothes or the gifts you had brought for other people. They wanted to know about what thoughts you were bringing into the country. New ideas were the most important and the most dangerous things'
Illustration: Ali Ferzat

'I did this at the time Muammar Gaddafi was on the run in Libya. I expected that Bashar would run too, but he didn't. This is the cartoon that caused the most problems for me, and is the reason that the government was so angry with me'
Illustration: Ali Ferzat