Ten years later, the Syrian revolution is not over

 'In February 2011, speaking at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, then-Vice President Joe Biden pledged to support people around the world who were being slaughtered by their own governments for demanding basic freedom and dignity. “When a state engages in atrocity, it forfeits its sovereignty,” Biden said. One month later, the people of Syria took to the streets to demand that their government treat them like human beings. In response, the régime of President Bashar al-Assad unleashed the worst systematic atrocities since the Nazis.

 Now, 10 years later, Biden is back in the White House — this time as president — and despite what you may have heard, the Syrian revolution continues. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that Assad has won the war and that there’s nothing the United States can do, so we should do essentially nothing. In fact, though, the Syrian people never stopped fighting — and their suffering has never ceased.

 Assad and his Russian and Iranian partners control roughly two-thirds of the country, ruling his rump state with brute force and still trying to starve or bomb the rest of Syria into submission. Inside the areas Assad controls, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians rot away in his dungeons, tortured and murdered for no reason.



 But as hopeless as it all seems, the Syrians who are still fighting for freedom from Assad say there’s a lot the international community can still do. The Syrian people believed it when Biden and others promised to stand with anyone brave enough to stand up for their rights, said Qutaiba Idlbi, the U.S. representative of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces.

 “We are here today because that promise by the international community has not been fulfilled,” he said at an event Thursday hosted by the Holocaust museum, the Syrian Emergency Task Force and the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation. “We need the United States to take back its international leadership role.”

 The key effort now should be to support Syrians who refuse to live under Assad’s rule, he said. That includes more than 6 million internally displaced civilians living in Syria’s northwest or northeast, 3 million civilians living in hard-to-reach or besieged areas, according to the United Nations, plus 5.6 million Syrians living as refugees in other countries.



 Imagine if the United States led an international effort to help those Syrians Assad doesn’t rule over by giving them supplies, pandemic relief and economic support, while using sanctions smartly to deny Assad the ability to profit from his crimes or replenish his war machine. That would actually increase Syrians’ leverage with the régime to negotiate a just peace and boost Washington’s leverage when dealing with Moscow or Tehran.

 “They have voted with their feet,” Qutaiba said. “They have decided not to live under the Assad régime.” For that reason, he said, they deserve all the backing we can give them.

 The United States can also drastically expand its support for the various international efforts to hold the Assad régime and its partners accountable for their war crimes. Russia’s long abuse of its U.N. Security Council veto power has rendered the International Criminal Court a dead end. But there are criminal and civil cases in several countries, as more and more torture survivors escape and tell their stories.



 As president, Biden has said practically nothing about Syria. His administration’s only action on the issue has been to bomb a couple of warehouses used by Iranian-linked militias in response to an attack on U.S. troops in Iraq.

 The first priority of the Biden administration should be to declare clearly that the United States remains committed to the objective of a transition of power in Syria and will no longer stand by while Assad, Russia and Iran commit war crimes and crimes against humanity there. The United States cannot lead from behind. The Biden administration must make a firm decision to put Syria high on its agenda.

 “Perhaps understandably, the administration would like to find a way to avoid this problem, if at all possible. But it’s just not possible,” said former ambassador Frederic C. Hof, who advised the Obama administration on Syria. If Biden doesn’t do something, he added, “Syria’s status as the North Korea of the Middle East will be thoroughly solidified, and Syria will be a profound threat to the peace in the region and beyond.”



 The easiest way to dismiss the call for action in Syria is to present it as a false choice between a full-blown Iraq-style military invasion and doing nothing. But that is using a false analogy to justify a penny-wise, pound-foolish strategy. Without an end to the atrocities, there cannot be an end to the war. And without justice and accountability, there can be no sustainable peace.

 The American people may be tired of the Syrian crisis, but the Syrian people — those who have survived the horrors of this war — are determined. They know their decade-long struggle for dignity and freedom is far from over, whether the world supports them or not.'

Syria: Shame and Silence

 

 Farrah Akbik:

 'It was the International Fair in Damascus and there were stalls from all over the world; agricultural, cultural. I was a 14-year-old girl moving through a throng of people that simmering summer evening, air thick with noise, fun-seeking tides, a continuous motion of bodies.

 With candyfloss sticky hands, I jostled to stay close to my female herd: Mama, my younger sisters, our neighbour and her daughters. We were stood by some counter or other - and then. A hand. At first I didn’t realise what was happening, maybe someone had bumped into me. My childish mind tried to decipher the signals from my nerve endings. My body failed me. My face burnt, searchlight eyes… SOS. I was wearing a knee-length flowy skirt and sinfully my legs were bare. There was a hand that wasn’t mine, there was a hand moving up the back of my thigh. There was a hand that was between my buttocks trying to locate something. Body tensed, thighs clasped, I shook. I could hear the chatter, chuckle, barter, bustle but no - all I could hear was the pace of my breath, my heart pulsating at my jugular, the blood racing faster, the adrenaline. Why was I not moving? Why was my jaw locked? Why were my fists crushing my candy?

 Aunty turned around. “Farrah, this would be very pretty in your hair.”

 A Chinese jade comb that I barely registered. I locked her gaze, enlarged saucer eyes spilling, pleading. She understood. In one violent jerk she plucked me forward and into an opening in the crowd.

 I looked behind me momentarily and there he was. I knew because no one else saw me but him. Smiling. Arrogant in the knowledge that he would not be discovered, that he would snake through the crowd yet again and coil around unsuspecting prey. He knew that I wouldn’t utter a syllable. Impunity.

 I looked up at aunty. Silenced. A smile like a wave washed away the gravity from her face as she composed herself. I looked down. Shamed.

 “Let’s go and buy some shawarma,” she said.

 Years passed.

 December 2016 saw the capture of eastern Aleppo by Assad’s troops. Some of the women decided that death was better than rape.

 “I am committing suicide and I know all of you will unite on my entering of hell fire and that will be the only thing that you will unite upon: the suicide of a woman,” read an extract from one suicide note. The author went on to say that her death would symbolise nothing but “hatred of and neglect for women”.

 The government knew what it was doing when it added systematic rape to its arsenal. It knew that it “is worse for a girl to be raped than to be killed”. It knew that sexual violence was the taboo that everyone dreaded. The skeleton in the cupboard that no one spoke of. The weapon that would wound far beyond the bullet. The government that forced fathers to watch the rape of their daughters, forced relatives to rape each other, raped men and children as young as nine years old.

 As the anniversary of the revolution fast approaches, there are UN files gathering dust documenting rapes in several government and intelligence branches. These are the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of victims choose to remain silent for fear of verbal abuse and ostracism from communities. Meanwhile the officials returned, unhindered, to civilian duties.

 Years passed.

 I met Marwa in a park in Ealing, the resonance of her Syrian accent capturing my attention. I turned and smiled as we both sat watching our children play in the playground.

 Introductions: “My name is Farrah, I’m Syrian, how long have you been here?” And so on.

 She was uncommonly open, maybe because I was a stranger. She hinted at a hasty departure from Syria. Trauma. She invited me round for some coffee, she wanted to tell me.

 “I’m a writer though, I might feel compelled to note your account.”

 It didn’t faze her.

 Marwa, as familiar as Syria, piercing blue eyes and a lingering sadness casting a shadow upon her face. She smiles a lot as if to break it. She fiddles with her hair to occupy shaking hands. She makes eye contact at times but then shies away from my inquisitive gaze. I have a note pad and pen; I discard them. I’ve heard many people recount things to me but not like this. I’m sitting on the floor with my back to the sofa, I’m hugging my knees to my chest in anticipation. I’m nervous.

 “They took me at the check point. They stripped me naked. I can’t remember how many men groped my body, but the bruises bore witness to their deeds.

 “’You want freedom Marwa?’

 “’Bidik huriya ya sharmoota? [you want freedom, you whore]?’

 “‘This is freedom!’” she said, mimicking a heavy coastal accent.

 She stands up, she crouches, and her hands traverse her body following their gropes. She touches her breast squeezes it with force, contorts it. Her groin, her hair, her buttocks, like medusa’s snakes slithering. She can’t seem to vocalise. She is pacing around the room. She seems to be thousands of miles away back in a cell in Aleppo. Detained.

 “I was asleep once amidst the others…the guards were banging on the cell door.

 “Marwa wake up. Bitch. What currency do they use in Britain?”

 “‘The British pound,’ I told them.

 “I waited for the door to open. I thought they were coming for me. They were doing a crossword. They wanted me to help them with the crossword.

 “The women held me until I fell asleep in their arms.”

 As I listen my mind sketches an outline of their broken bodies, huddled in heaps, stealing sleep, disturbed dreams.

 “They made me and another woman watch a man being tortured. They had all four of his limbs tied, his arms from the ceiling and his legs to the ground. They were whipping him with cable wire and pulling on the ties to stretch him taut. The sounds he was making were inhuman, I can’t describe them. I kept on looking away but the jailer would pull my hair back and force me to watch. I had to. May Allah forgive me, I had to.”

 She disappears into herself.

 Marwa believes that she was released due to her dual nationality. Others were not so lucky.

 I’ve not asked her any questions. She will say something and then fall silent for what seemed like minutes. Then she spits out the words as if to expel poison from her body. She remembers my presence and looks up at me almost apologetically. I’m sure these are mere fragments. I think she regrets having told me, as if I would judge her.

 “Did they rape you, Marwa?”

 “No!”

 Sharp, quick response. Denial or truth? I will not conjecture. She told me what she wanted to tell me, she gave me a small glance into the virtual dungeon in her head. Enough to see that less than a month in the actual one gave her a life sentence.

 “Farrah, I can’t go on. Maybe next time.”

 Marwa is a pseudonym. But Farrah is me. This is for all the women, men and children of Syria who have not yet been heard.'