The Assad Files

 'After a decade spent training international criminal-justice practitioners in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Cambodia, Engels now leads the regime-crimes unit of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, an independent investigative body founded in 2012, in response to the Syrian war. In the past four years, people working for the organization have smuggled more than six hundred thousand government documents out of Syria, many of them from top-secret intelligence facilities.

 The commission’s work recently culminated in a four-hundred-page legal brief that links the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of Syrians to a written policy approved by President Bashar al-Assad, coördinated among his security-intelligence agencies, and implemented by regime operatives, who reported the successes of their campaign to their superiors in Damascus. The brief narrates daily events in Syria through the eyes of Assad and his associates and their victims, and offers a record of state-sponsored torture that is almost unimaginable in its scope and its cruelty. Such acts had been reported by survivors in Syria before, but they had never been traced back to signed orders. Stephen Rapp, who led prosecution teams at the international criminal tribunals in Rwanda and Sierra Leone before serving for six years as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, told me that the CIJA’s documentation “is much richer than anything I’ve seen, and anything I’ve prosecuted in this area.”

 On March 30, 2011, Assad addressed the nation from the rotunda of the Syrian parliament building. He had just sacked his cabinet, and many people expected him to announce liberalizing reforms. Instead, he declared his intention to suppress dissent in the brutal tradition of his father, Hafez al-Assad. “Syria is facing a great conspiracy, whose tentacles extend” to foreign powers that were plotting to destroy the country, he said. “There is no conspiracy theory,” he added. “There is a conspiracy.” He closed with an ominous directive: “Burying sedition is a national, moral, and religious duty, and all those who can contribute to burying it and do not are part of it.” He emphasized, “There is no compromise or middle way in this.”

 Two days later, protests across the country grew larger. Assad had already formed a secret security committee, called the Central Crisis Management Cell, to coördinate a crackdown. Its chairman was Mohammad Said Bekheitan, the highest-ranking official in the ruling Baath Party, after Assad; the other members—who were all Assad-dynasty confidants—were routinely shuffled among the top positions in the military, the ministries, and the security-intelligence apparatus.

 The group decided to hire someone to process all the paperwork. One of the applicants was Abdelmajid Barakat, a twenty-four-year-old with slicked-back hair. Early in the unrest, he had joined one of Syria’s first organized revolutionary bodies. Now, in the regime’s haste to make the Crisis Cell more efficient, it was employing a member of the opposition to process confidential security memos from all over the country. At the end of each meeting, the Crisis Cell agreed on a plan for every security issue. Then Bekheitan, the chairman, signed the minutes, and a courier delivered them to Assad at the Presidential palace. Barakat learned that Assad reviewed the proposals, signed them, and returned them to the Crisis Cell for implementation. Sometimes he made revisions, crossing out directives and adding new ones. He also issued decrees without consulting the Crisis Cell. Barakat was certain that no security decision, no matter how small, was made without Assad’s approval.

 Shortly after Barakat began working for the Crisis Cell, he started leaking documents. Though the regime publicly claimed that it was allowing peaceful demonstrations, security memos showed that intelligence agents were targeting protesters and media activists, and shooting at them indiscriminately.

 Mazen al-Hamada was born in 1977, the youngest of seventeen children in an educated, middle-class family in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor. His siblings grew up to be pharmacists, teachers, and lawyers, and he became a field specialist at Schlumberger, the international oil-services company, which operated in the rich oil fields around Deir Ezzor. Members of Hamada’s family were outspoken critics of the government, and even before the revolution they were routinely followed and periodically arrested. They were especially outraged by the government’s failure to do anything about the widening gap between the rich and the poor. “It was all organized to benefit the élites,” Hamada told me.

 Hamada and his friends were excited by the prospect of revolution, and every Wednesday they began meeting inside the neighborhood mosque, the Othman bin Affan, to organize protests that would take place after Friday prayers. “It was a logistical issue,” he told me. “Everyone went to the mosque on a Friday, everyone came out.” He laughed, and added, “If we could have come out of churches, we would have come out of churches!”

 Hamada often videotaped protests as well as the security response. The regime had cut off the Internet in his neighborhood, so he uploaded the videos to YouTube at a relative’s workplace. Some of them ended up in Arabic news broadcasts. To counter such activities, the governor told the security committee, “We should nominate Internet experts among our comrades to deal with hostile Web sites spitting out their venom in the country, such as Facebook.”

 On the evening of August 5, 2011, the Central Crisis Management Cell held its usual meeting at the Baath Party Regional Command. In five months of revolution, the protests had spread to several more provinces, which members of the committee attributed to “the laxness in handling the crisis,” according to documents captured by the CIJA. They blamed “weak coördination and coöperation among security bodies.” That evening, they devised a plan to target specific categories of people.

 First, all security branches were to launch daily raids against protest organizers and “those who tarnish the image of Syria in foreign media.” Next, “once each sector has been cleansed of wanted people,” security agents would coördinate with Baathist loyalists, neighborhood militias, and community leaders to insure that opposition activists could not return to those areas. Third, they would “establish a joint investigation committee at the province level,” made up of representatives from all of the security branches, which would interrogate detainees. The results “shall be sent to all security branches, so that they can be used in the identification of new targets that need to be prosecuted.”

 Mazen al-Hamada’s name soon appeared on an arrest list in Deir Ezzor. Two of his brothers were also wanted, as was one of his brothers-in-law. One day in March, 2012, a doctor asked Hamada if he would smuggle baby formula to a woman in Darayya, a rebellious suburb of Damascus. He and his nephews gathered fifty-five packages of formula, hid them under their clothes, and travelled to meet her at a café. As soon as Hamada handed over the bags, security agents handcuffed him and his nephews, pulled their shirts over their heads, and shoved them into an S.U.V. “I had no idea where we were going,” Hamada said. “The whole way, they were telling us, ‘We’re going to execute you.’ ”

 Two weeks later, in the Air Force-intelligence branch at al-Mezzeh Military Airport, the prisoners were put in a small hangar, a little more than forty feet long and twenty feet wide. A hundred and seventy people were packed inside, their arms wrapped around their legs, chins on their knees. “You’re rotting,” Hamada told me. “There’s no air, there’s no sunlight. Your nails are really long, because you can’t cut them. So when you scratch yourself you tear your skin off.” The prisoners weren’t able to wash themselves or to change their underwear. The sores of scabies and other skin ailments covered their bodies. Throughout the country, detainees routinely drank water out of toilets and died from starvation, suffocation, and disease. “People went crazy,” Hamada said. “People would lose their memories, people would lose their minds.” Eventually, he was transferred to a solitary-confinement cell, which he shared with ten people.

 One day, Hamada was blindfolded and dragged to another room for questioning. The lead interrogator, whom Hamada knew as Suhail, began by establishing Hamada’s identity. (Some people were detained and tortured by accident; their names were similar to those on wanted lists.) When Suhail asked for information about other opposition activists he had met in Damascus, Hamada hesitated. The torture began. “At the beginning, they were using cigarettes,” he said. “They would stub them out on my legs.” He rolled up his jeans to the knee and showed me four round scars on his left leg, five on his right. There were burns on his thighs, too. They also poured water on him, and shocked him with wires and prods. To end the abuse, Hamada gave up the names of friends who had already been killed in Deir Ezzor.

 Suhail’s assistants told Hamada that if he admitted to carrying weapons he would be released. He didn’t confess, so they cracked four of his ribs. At that point, he agreed that he had been armed with a hunting rifle, and they let him down. But, to better suit terrorism charges, Suhail wanted the confession to include a Kalashnikov. Hamada refused, so, he said, “they stripped me out of my underwear and brought a plumbing clamp,” of the kind typically used to moderate pressure in hoses. “They put it on my penis, and started tightening it.” Hamada recalled Suhail asking, “Are you going to admit it, or shall I cut it off?” Hamada agreed that he had carried a Kalashnikov, so Suhail released the clamp and asked how many clips of ammunition Hamada had carried. “How many clips do you want me to have?” Hamada asked. Suhail reminded him that he had to confess on his own, so Hamada said, “I had five bullets.” That wasn’t good enough, Suhail told him: “I need two magazines.” The torture escalated until Hamada confessed to everything they asked.

 Coerced confessions served no apparent intelligence-gathering purposes, but they did lend a legalistic veneer to the detention process. After confessing to violent crimes, anti-government activists could face serious charges, and, if convicted, be kept in detention for years. The confessions also perpetuated the illusion of a vast conspiracy against Syria, as detainees admitted to engaging in sedition or treason.

 The brutality took a toll on many interrogators, too. In at least one case, an interrogator begged a detainee to admit to a crime so that he could stop hurting him. “They were very much of the opinion that they had to produce results,” Chris Engels told me. “The ramifications of not doing their job well were real, and there’s evidence of what happened to people who did not.” The final line of the Crisis Cell’s targeting policy ordered the heads of security branches to “periodically supply the National Security Bureau with the names of security agents who are irresolute or unenthusiastic.” Some of them ended up in Hamada’s cell.

 In early 2013, after nearly a year of detention, Hamada lay on the floor of the hangar. He had been interrogated and tortured seven or eight times. An infection in his eye was dripping pus. The skin on his legs was gangrenous. he next day, the head of interrogation came to the cell and informed Hamada that he was being sent to Hospital 601, a military hospital that sits at the base of Mt. Mezzeh. Hamada had heard of Hospital 601. Several other detainees had been sent there, and the few who had returned, Hamada said, had cautioned, “This is not a hospital—this is a slaughterhouse.” Despite Hamada’s condition, guards hit him during the drive to the hospital. One used a green pipe; in Arabic, al-akhdar refers to a green object, so security agents all over Syria taunted detainees by calling this weapon Lakhdar Brahimi, who was then the U.N. special envoy for Syria.

 In the hospital corridor, male and female nurses started hitting Hamada with their shoes and calling him a terrorist. When he got to the ward, he was tied to a bed with two other prisoners. A nurse asked him about his symptoms, then beat him with a stick. A U.N. report from later that year notes, “Some medical professionals have been co-opted into the maltreatment” of detainees at Hospital 601. Hamada was in disbelief as much as he was in pain.

 That night, Hamada woke up needing to use the bathroom. A guard hit him all the way to the toilets, but he went in alone. When he opened the first stall, he saw a pile of corpses, battered and blue. He found two more in the second stall, emaciated and missing their eyes. There was another body by the sink. Hamada came out in panic, but the guard sent him back in and told him, “Pee on top of the bodies.” He couldn’t. He started to feel that he was losing his grip on reality. According to the U.N. inquiry, dead detainees were “kept in the toilets” at multiple security branches in Damascus.

 Later that night, two drunk soldiers walked into the ward. One of them bellowed, “Who wants medicine?” Several detainees lifted their hands. The doctors hadn’t given Hamada any drugs—only a mostly empty bag of intravenous fluid—but one of his bedmates, who had been in the ward for several days, warned him not to volunteer. The soldier selected an eager prisoner. With the inmate kneeling at his feet, head facing the floor, the soldier grabbed a sharp weapon and started hacking at the base of his skull, severing the spinal cord from the head. Then he ordered another patient to drag the body to the bathroom. The U.N. report says of Hospital 601, “Many patients have been tortured to death in this facility.” The soldier called himself Azrael, after the archangel of death; other survivors recall him murdering patients in similarly horrifying ways.

 On the second day, he begged a doctor to send him back to the Air Force-intelligence branch. The doctor noted that Hamada was still sick. “No, no, no, I am totally cured,” he said. On the fifth day, he was escorted out of Hospital 601 by the same guards who had deposited him there. “You animal, you son of a bitch,” they said. “You still didn’t die.” They hit him all the way back to the branch, then strung him up by his wrists for four hours.

 In the early hours of August 21st, the Syrian government launched rockets carrying sarin gas into densely populated neighborhoods in Damascus, killing more than fourteen hundred people. In response, President Obama, who had earlier committed to a “red line” should Assad use chemical weapons, announced, “I have decided the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets.” He said he would wait for congressional approval, but, he continued, “what message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death, in plain sight, and pay no price?”

 Shortly after the chemical attack, Hamada and many other prisoners were transported to al-Mezzeh, without explanation. Agents moved the detainees to a large, empty hangar on the base. At least one of the sarin-gas rockets is believed to have been launched from the base at al-Mezzeh—it was a logical target for an American strike. Inside the hangar, guards jeered at the detainees. They said that when the Americans bombed Syria all of them would be killed.

 In early September, the United States backed away from the prospect of a military campaign, and Hamada was returned to the terrorism court in Damascus, where his case was finally heard. The judge noted that he had confessed to attacking checkpoints and killing soldiers. Hamada rolled up his pants and showed the judge the cigarette burns. He held up his wrists, revealing deep purple scars. He showed the black-and-blue welts on his torso. It was a familiar scene inside the courtroom. To each charge, the judge said, “Not guilty.”

 He fled to Turkey, boarded a smuggler’s raft to Greece, and travelled more than seventeen hundred miles to the Netherlands, where his sister had moved before the war. He recalled the migration with a shrug, in a single sentence, as if it were nothing.

 Hamada’s account of atrocities at Hospital 601 was later corroborated by approximately fifty-five thousand photographs, smuggled out of Syria by a military-police officer known by the name Caesar, an alias. Between Caesar’s photographs and the CIJA’s case, Stephen Rapp told me, “when the day of justice arrives, we’ll have much better evidence than we’ve had anywhere since Nuremberg.” Wiley and Engels believe that, should the case go to court, the CIJA has sufficient evidence to convict Assad and his associates on several charges of crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, and other inhumane acts.

 Last year, when Assad was asked about the Caesar photographs during an interview with Foreign Affairs, he said, “Who said this is done by the government, not by the rebels? Who said this is a Syrian victim, not someone else?” In 2011, the U.N. commission of inquiry alleged that a thirteen-year-old boy named Hamza al-Khateeb had been tortured to death in detention. In response, a Syrian investigation concluded that, shortly after the boy died, a “forensic photographer” took “six colored photos” of the corpse. “We attributed the number twenty-three to it.” The Syrians determined that the pictures showed “no beating marks, no traces of torture,” and that the boy had been killed by gunfire, “most probably by his fellow-terrorists.” The investigation also found that a doctor who had reported that the boy’s penis had been cut off “had misjudged the situation in an earlier examination.” Caesar’s collection contains six images of Hamza al-Khateeb’s body. His eyes are swollen shut, and his head is a deep purple, from being beaten. His penis is missing. In every picture, there is a bloodstained note card bearing the number twenty-three.

 In the Netherlands, Hamada attends physical-therapy sessions to rehabilitate his scarred limbs. He studies Dutch and organizes anti-Assad protests in public squares, though attendance is sparse. He wonders about his nephews, his brother, his brother-in-law, and many missing friends. “Where are they?” he cried. “Are they alive? Are they dead?” His sister in Syria asks the military police for death certificates, to no avail. Every day is “misery,” Hamada said. “It’s misery. It’s misery. It’s death. It’s a life of death.” '

The war is going ahead to the silence of worldwide media

 'Mohammad Alaa sent these pictures and this video from Aleppo asking us to show what is happening in Syria while all the world think Russia is saving the country. Alaa today picked up a member of White Helmets and a child, both death because of the bombings.'



 Note 24/5/25, both links broken.

'You will go behind the sun'

 'Only one of Rabe Alkhdar's brothers came back alive from a Syrian prison. Hassan, emerged from one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's most infamous prisons, Tadmor, and told his mother that her other son, Hameed, had been killed inside.

 "He told her that after he was beaten and hung, the guards returned the body and threw it on top of Yunus. They left both bodies there for two days. Hassan had to watch his brother lay there dead for two days. We only got Hassan back, and Hameed's death certificate. It's now been three years since we lost him."

 "One day my brothers were called to treat a victim at his home," Rabe explained. "They went to the given address and were trying to do it quietly. They knocked on the door but nobody answered, and they felt that something was wrong. Suddenly they were surrounded by Assad's intelligence forces and were captured."

 He continued: "As detainees, they were beaten with batons and cables. The interrogators used braided electrical cords to beat them across their backs and neck, and batons to beat them on the bottom of their feet in Tadmor. The agents promised to released them if my family paid them a ransom, so we paid $9,000 to get both of them back. But Hassan was also forced to make a deal. He had to promise to collect information for the regime about doctors and pharmacists working in Syria's medical aid networks."

 Hassan betrayed his captors and fled to Turkey after he was released, Rabe said. But his other brother, Hameed, was killed inside the prison.

 "We gave them all the money and only one of my brothers walked out of Tadmor," Rabe said. "We waited and waited for my other brother. No one came. We looked at Hassan and he could not speak. My mom hurried to hug him and she begged him to tell her about her other son. Hassan just cried uncontrollably. She insisted for him to tell her right then."

 "He told us that while he was in prison, there was a young boy being detained in their cell along with six others. His name was Yunus. Yunus was sick all the time. One day, he suddenly fell to the ground. He got up and stumbled across the cell and fell to the floor again. He lay there on the ground curled in a ball. Yunus seem epileptic."

 After his release, Hassan explained that Yunus had been in the prison for a month because his family was poor and couldn't pay for his release. He was not allowed any medication for his condition, and, Hassan recalled, "on that day his health seemed to fail him all together."
"The guards grabbed my brother and left this child to suffer alone from his seizure. Within a few long moments Yunus was dead."

 Not long after, Hameed was dead, too. After trying to get out of the guards' grip to reach Yunus after he collapsed, Hameed was dragged out of the cell and hung.

 "There's a saying in Syria that if you do something wrong, if you defy the government, you will 'go behind the sun,'" Rabe said. "In other words, you will be arrested and then just disappear. 

 No one goes to Assad's prisons without being tortured." More than half of Syria's population has either fled or been killed since the war erupted in March 2011. The vast majority have died simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time: barrel bombs dropped by regime helicopters on civilian targets in rebel-held areas have killed over 20,000 people, mostly civilians, in five years.

 Thousands more have been tortured and killed in the regime's prisons, a practice the United Nations deemed "extermination as a crime against humanity."

 The Islamic State and Al Qaeda's affiliate group in Syria, known as Jabhat al-Nusra, have also ruled parts of Syria with an iron fist, but far fewer have been killed by the jihadist groups than by the government and its allies. Rabe said his uncle, Ahmad, was killed by the Islamic State in March 2013, along with his cousin, Hasan. They were charged with treason "for helping infidels move from one area of Aleppo to another" in 2013, Rabe said.

 The Free Syrian Army, an umbrella organization comprised of mostly moderate rebel groups backed by Western countries, kicked ISIS out of Aleppo later that year, Rabe explained. But before the jihadists fled, they killed all of their prisoners.

 Still, when asked who his own family had suffered from more, Rabe was unequivocal.
"Both [ISIS and Assad] are hideous," Rabe said. "But my family suffered most from the regime side."

 Rabe moved to Washington, D.C. As of this article's publishing, he was still waiting for his and his family's asylum claims to be processed. His Facebook page offers a glimpse into his life before the war — photos of him and his brothers at soccer games, his trips to Sydney and Cape Town, his boys playing with iPads. Now he uses it to post videos of the war's atrocities and photos of his sons draped in the revolution's flag. He is under no illusion that his family will ever be reunited in Aleppo. The war will rage on, he believes, as long as Assad remains in power.

 "I can’t see an end to this war, and no one is helping to solve the root of the problem, which is Assad," Rabe said. "Assad is the head of the snake."

 The embattled president recently said in an interview that he didn't think it would be difficult to form a coalition government with members of the opposition, and that he would call for new elections if that is what the Syrian people wanted. Rabe laughed at the notion, saying that he had never voted because there is no use in it.

 "I don’t know what voting is. I don’t know what freedom is," he said.

 Then, he began to cry.

 "Since moving to the US, I've met many Americans who ask me what it was like growing up under that dictatorship. They then say they 'can't imagine' what it must have been like, that they were born free and will die free. I've never experienced that," he said, with a sad smile. "I will never experience that." '

Syrian Alawites distance themselves from Assad

 'They wanted to make clear, they said, that members of all Islamic sects in Syria were "brothers and sisters" - and that the Alawites "should not be associated with the crimes the regime has committed".'

 Assad is toast. It is a question of when, not if, he goes. Dictatorships always maintain the façade that they are loved by their people until the end, because when that lie goes, nobody wants to be the last to die, or commit horrific crimes, for a butcher. And, 'Those behind the text say Alawites are not members of a branch of Shia Islam - as they have been described in the past by Shia clerics - and that they are committed to "the fight against sectarian strife".' This cuts across the Iranian attempt to recruit Alawites to their sectarian conflict across the Middle East.

 I'm reminded of Tony Cliff's prognosis¹ for Stalinist Russia, even if the comparison isn't exact.

 "The Tsarist soldiers rebelled only after they saw that the mass of the people was in revolt. The workers’ barricades gave the soldiers confidence in the people’s strength and inspired them to revolt against their officers. In Russia today there is no group of people which is not under closer surveillance than ever the Tsarist army was. Only when the anger and resentment embedded in the hearts of the masses cumulates till it is ready to burst, will the masses break out in revolt. (A proletarian revolution in the west can obviously accelerate this process to an incalculable extent).

 The class struggle in Stalinist Russia must inevitably express itself in gigantic spontaneous outbursts of millions. Till then it will seem on the surface that the volcano is extinct. Till then the omnipotent sway of the secret police will make it impossible for a revolutionary party to penetrate the masses or organise any systematic action whatsoever. The spontaneous revolution, in smashing the iron heel of the Stalinist bureaucracy, will open the field for the free activity of all the parties, tendencies and groups in the working class. It will be the first chapter in the victorious proletarian revolution."

 I found a piece² today, via EA Worldview, about the arrest and ransoming of prisoners by state security agencies in Syria. There is some speculation in the original about whether this can be part of a stable economy, which seems completely wrong to me, clearly when they have moved from arresting protestors to arresting anyone to sometimes arresting pro-régime young people it is a sign of an economic system that has been parasitic on, and eats away, at the society it is based on; and only massive foreign assistance to the régime can even keep it on life-support. Also from EA Worldview³, those pictures of the mass grave of ISIS victims in Palmyra? A fake, obvious because the pictures are from Iraq. And yet the BBC and others ran with them, simply on the word of the so-called Syrian government.

 Finally, Senay Ozden:

 'Yesterday at my Turkish class for Syrians, we were reviewing the vocabulary we learnt. I wrote down the word "devrim" which means revolution in Turkish. Many of the students got very enthusiastic when they heard the word "revolution" and they started clapping. Then one of the women said: "But most of the time we have to say we came here because there is a war in Syria. Otherwise, when we say revolution, people don't understand. They don't find it a legitimate reason." This is what being a refugee means: Your political agency is ripped off from you. You don't have the right to define your struggle or what is happening in your own country in your own words. How you define the violence that is inflicted upon you should be legitimate for the "host" population. You are just reduced to being the object of some deal between states.'

 1. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/ch09.htm]

 2. [https://notris.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-malice-of-power-arrests-in-syria-as.html]
 3. [https://eaworldview.com/2016/04/syria-feature-iranian-russian-medias-false-image-of-palmyra-massacre-by-isis/]

Syria: The 21st-Century Disaster

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'What does that mean, an arsonist playing at being a firefighter? Well, for example, everyone at the moment is saying the greater evil is ISIS, the mad jihadists, who want to kill us in London, and Paris, and probably Boston, and so on. We would argue that the greater evil, in Syria, is president assad. He's responsible for 95-97% of the civilian casualties. Until recently he's been the only force there with an airforce, the vast majority of civilian casualties have come from the airforce. He's responsible for the vast majority of people displaced; 70% of refugees in Europe say they're escaping Assad, the rest say they are escaping various militias, Nusra, the PYD, etc.

 The other point is that the problem is that Syria has changed from what started as a peaceful protest movement, it became militarised, it turned into a war, every state in the world jumped in and started interfering in that situation; and it became a sectarian war, it started feeding into the larger regional dysfunction, the Sunni-Shia issues between Saudi Arabia and Iran, all the problems left by Saddam Hussein's sectarianism and then the disastrous American invasion and occupation of Iraq, so people think, "Look how dangerous this region is! Look how sectarian it is! Look at all the terrorism and mad jihadism coming out of there! We have to work with the dictator for the sake of stability. This guy's wearing a tie, he doesn't have a beard, so even if he's killed 97% of the people, we should work with him." But Assad has deliberately started this war, he has deliberately made the thing militarised, and he deliberately made it sectarian.

 For a start, it hasn't become completely jihadised, or Islamised. That's been overdone. It's been dramatically overdone in a rather Orientalist way, by commentators of left as much as right. Because there are still all of these democratic councils on the ground, self-organised communities, Free Army militias which a lot of journalists claim don't exist, but clearly do. So that's not the whole story. But how did it happen? Well, Assad deliberately provoked a war, because he knew that he couldn't survive a genuine reform process, that one thing would lead to another, and he and his cohort would end up, at best, in prison, and stripped of their wealth. So as they wrote on the walls, "Assad or we burn the country," they decided to burn the country, because the people didn't want Assad. They did this because it worked before.

 In the late 70s, there was a movement of Islamist, nationalists, leftists, Communists, against Assad. Not a massive popular movement like 2011, but a movement nevertheless. It was so ruthlessly suppressed, that by 1982, all that was left of that movement was the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Which then out of idiocy or desperation staged an armed uprising in the city of Hama, at which point the Assad régime said, "Great! They've brought guns out, it's a war situation." They went in and flattened the historical centre of that ancient city, and killed somewhere between ten and forty thousand people, we don't know how many, and that kept Syrians terrified and silent for the next decades until 2011. It worked. Then the Algerians did something similar in 91/92, and are still there, that régime is still in power. The Russians did it, from Chechnya I to Chechnya II, you see the same thing.

 Assad, at the same time that he was locking up and torturing to death tens of thousands of peaceful non-violent non-sectarian protesters, he was also releasing salafist jihadists from prison, and a lot of these people went off and founded these organisations, Jaish al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, and even worse, went of to join the upper ranks of the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra (the al-Qaida franchise) and so on. He did this deliberately, he organised a series of sectarian massacres in 2012, on the plain between Homs and Hama, because he wanted a sectarian backlash. In order to terrify two constituencies. Firstly minorities in Syria, religious minorities, bourgeois secularists in Syria, who may have sympathised with the aims of the revolution, but when they saw angry Sunni Muslims threatening vengeance, as you do after massacres and children being tortured to death and a mass rape campaign, they suddenly thought, well if the alternative to this guy is people who may kill us just because of who we are, just because we aren't Muslims in the way they are, then we have no choice but to stick to this guy. And secondly, the West. He's done it very effectively. He's convinced people that don't know much about Syria, or don't want to know much about Syria, in the West, that yes, this guy is the lesser evil. But he's actually the source of the problem, him and his backers.'



 Leila Al-Shami:

 'I think we need to remember that when the protest movement first started, people were not calling for the fall of the régime, unlike in Tunisia and Egypt. People were calling for reform, they were chanting slogans such as, "The Syrian People Will Not Be Humiliated," "The Syrian People Will Not Be Insulted." But due to the massive repression which the state unleashed upon peaceful protesters, people radicalised, and over time started calling for the fall of the régime, and in time you got calls for the execution of the president. But yes, I agree with Robin, the Assad régime really provoked a war, and provoked sectarianism within this conflict. There was a string of massacres carried out against Sunni communities, often by solely Alawi militias, to frighten, to cause tension within different communities in Syria, and as the violence increased from the state, of course people took up arms to defend themselves, to defend their communities from the assault of the state, and in that sense, you get an increasing militarisation within the conflict. And then, as Robin said, because of the provocations against certain communities, specifically targetting Sunni communities, and also through releasing lots of Islamists from jail, you get an increasing sectarianisation of the conflict as well.

 But I think the important thing is not to see this solely through a military lens, and not see this solely through a sectarian lens. Because what's missing from the debate about Syria is what people have been doing on the ground in the most difficult of circumstances. Since the revolution started, I mean what you need to understand first about Syria is that it's an ultra-authoritarian régime where they was no political pluralism, there was no active independent civil society in Syria prior to the revolution. Since the revolution started, you've had an explosion in civil activism. For example, you have many groups that are working on recording human rights violations, talking about issues of democracy. You have organisations that are working to provide relief. Also one of the most interesting things is the way in which communities are self-organising to manage the basic necessities of life, as the régime has withdrawn from those areas.'

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'How remarkable, therefore, that today there are over 400 democratically elected councils working. So despite the fact of Russian imperialism, of Iranian imperialism, American imperialism too, Saudi imperialism; despite all of these states jumping in, despite the fact that the Syrian people are under attack from their own state and internationally and from transnational jihadists, both Sunni and Shia, they have remarkably achieved the formation of over 400 democratically elected councils.'

 Leila Al-Shami:

 'I agree that democracy is not something that can be brought by the West, they tried that in the last decade to bring democracy to the Arab people on the back of American tanks, and obviously it failed. But what people are failing to see today, is that it doesn't need the West to bring democracy. Arab people, Syrian people, are practising democracy in the most difficult of circumstances, and that's something that's really missing from the narrative on Syria.'



 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'It's something that people don't talk about. It's something that if you ask people in the street what's happening in Syria, they know about ISIS cutting heads off, they know about all the states and the geopolitics and the supposed Sunni-Shia conflict, although actually Shia people in Syria are 1% of the population so that's not really what it's about, but they don't know about this miracle. It was supposedly so important to the West that the Arabs have democracy a decade ago that they invaded and occupied a country and created a whole load of problems, and today we don't even bother talking about it because we're so wrapped up in geopolitical nonsense, preconceived grand narratives, and we don't bother talking to people on the ground.

 If you look beyond American statements, and Western statements, and rhetoric, to actual actions, the Americans in the Syrian case, actually have been on the side of counter-revolution. It seems that Obama has actually decided to hand over the Syria file, as we heard at the beginning, when he made a red line supposedly for chemical weapons and then he didn't mean it, then when it happened he handed it over to Russia. He said I don't want this Middle Eastern cake any more, I'll just hand it over to other versions of imperialism. Unfortunately, after 2011, it's a very messy process, revolution is wrapped up with all the forms of counter-revolution. The people themselves, however, started asking for a say in how their countries were governed. This makes it complicated for all régimes because it's much easier to have one guy that you can tap on the head or bribe or threaten to get what you want than to have a complex society full of different actors who you have to deal with. But I think the first part of an answer is to stop the horrific violence, because these democratic councils, self-organised communities that we're talking about, at the moment they are keeping life together in these horrifically bombed and traumatised and tormented areas. The reason why there is any life surviving, why there's any rubbish collection, or food distribution, or education or healthcare at all, is because of these local councils. All they're able to do is focus on day to day survival. If you could really stop the bombing, if the United States does want to get involved, I think the best way it could get involved would be to pressure other states to get out, and that includes the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks, and the most violent, the most committed, the Russian imperialists, and the Iranian occupation troops.

 There are very, very, very few Syrians who are asking outside powers to come and remove Assad. It's true that the Coalition, the élite based outside, has put its eggs in the basket, foolishly, of states outside coming in and removing Assad for them. That's a massive misconception. The states of the world don't want democracy in the Middle East, they don't want the dictators to go, and that's why actually, I don't understand what Jeffrey Sachs saying about how supposedly Obama's letting the war party get its way partially. The Free Army got a few ready meals, so therefore the war party has got its way. At the same time Russia is supplying the guy with attack helicopters and tanks and so on, Iran is providing tens of thousands of on the ground troops and organising transnational jihadists on the frontline, which is making the ISIS problem, and the Sunni identity politics, so much worse. It seems strange to me that the most significant act of the Obama administration, militarily, has been to veto other powers from sending the anti-aircraft weapons which the civilian community so desperately need to defend themselves. The Saudis, the Turks and the Qataris have said they want to give anti-aircraft weapons, of course for their own filthy reasons, to do with their own geostrategic chess game, they don't want democracy either; but they, in part responding to public pressure in their own countries, they want to give anti-aircraft weapons to the resistance, and the Americans have vetoed that. The Americans have done a deal with Iran over the nuclear sanctions. I don't think there should have been sanctions on Iran in the first place over the nuclear issue, but they are doing a deal with Iran and are going to do business with Iran precisely at the first moment in 300 years that Iran takes a really aggressive and sectarian and expansionist turn, and it has Shia militias and occupation troops in both Syria and Iraq. This is a major source of ISIS. This is a major cause of the Sunni Islamist backlash.

 Putin went in there with his direct intervention. Of course he'd been intervening, politically, militarily and economically since the start, and he's the main sponsor of this terrible dictatorship, but since last September his direct military intervention started. He said he was going in to take out ISIS, to rescue Palmyra, and all the rest of it. Well, 80% of his bombs fell on democratic nationalist communities. Not even on the militias defending those communities, but usually on bakeries, schools and hospitals. On the logic that he's doing what Assad has been trying to do, to destroy the democratic nationalist opposition, so the world is presented with a choice between the fascist dictator and the mad jihadists, assuming that the world will choose the fascist dictator because he wears a tie and doesn't have a beard. It's appalling. If you think the political answer is to bomb the hell out of democratic nationalist civilian communities, their bakeries, their schools and their hospitals, then you might see some logic in inviting this savage imperial assault on Assad. Here is the problem with the so-called left: it seems to think that American imperialism is bad, which of course it is, but Russian imperialism is somehow good. Russian imperialism is filthy, it's disgusting, it's grotesque, it's murderous. There's no excuse for it.

 The Arab people are trying to have a say in their own lives, and Hugh Roberts is saying these filthy imperialist powers should make a deal between themselves, and what he's doing, as he does in his articles for the London Review of Books, is completely and totally ignore what happens on the ground. The Kofi Annan plan in 2012 had absolutely no chance whatsoever of working, not because of America, not because of Russia, but because of the actors on the ground. Because the Syrian people could not stand to see the mass rape campaign, the mass torture campaign and the destruction of their cities, and because the Assad régime had absolutely no intention of compromise, or of going. That's the fundamental reality. You need some local possibility of peace before foreign imperialist powers put a seal on it.'



 Leila Al-Shami:

 'I think America should stay out of Syria. I'm against all interventions from foreign powers in Syria. But I think also there's a tendency to overstate America's influence in Syria at the moment, and I think this comes from a basic misunderstanding of how the region has changed since 2011. Yes of course, when you have a popular struggle, a revolution, you have every state in the world trying to intervene in terms of influencing that process and trying to control that process and get power in that situation. Let's be very clear, that no state is intervening to support the popular struggle, they're intervening for their own interests. But as far as I'm concerned, yes America is involved. it's trying very much to control the negotiations, it's trying to influence the SNC and the external coalition, and its also intervening in terms of bombing ISIS. But I think people really have a tendency to overstate what America's role is now, because the main imperialisms in Syria at this time are Russian and Iranian imperialism, and America has played a marginal role, has been scrambling for influence, and really failing since 2011 to assert its influence in Syria.'

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'I think that one thing the vast majority of Syrians, pro-revolution and pro-régime, or more commonly anti-revolution or scared of the revolution, can agree on, apart from some Kurds, is that they don't want partitions. At the moment, with this imperial carve-up that seems to be being discussed behind closed doors by all these powers, it looks like we might be moving towards that. Some kind of federalism and more decentralisation probably is part of the solution in Syria when after years of war we've got these explosive polarisations, but...Sykes-Picot, there's nothing sacred about those borders that were drawn by foreign imperialists, and followed by sectarian engineering which worked out very badly indeed; but if we're going to get rid of Sykes-Picot borders, we want something better. We want something that doesn't divide people more on sect, and what it looks like is, Syrians are already upset that Greater Syria was chopped up into little bits, and each one given to a different sect or a different sphere of influence, different imperial control. They are angry about that, they don't want what's left of Syria to be carved up into more pieces, which will then be at war with each other, which will then lead to a great sectarian cleansing. It doesn't work because everyone's mixed up. There are Alawis, not just on the coast, but in Damascus. There are Sunnis on the coast. There are Christians in the east, etc.

 If there was a permanent dramatic drop in the violence, if you could stop everybody bombing, fundamentally, things could start moving again, What you've seen recently is not a ceasefire, because the death count has gone down from 120 a few weeks ago to about 40 a day now, which is a lot better, it's still awful, but with that you see the revival of civil protest, you see women back on the streets, you see the Free Army flags rather than the black flags of the Islamist battalions. You see people in Idlib province fighting against, and protesting against al-Nusra, the al-Qaida franchise. As soon as there is a breathing space for the people, then the civil activism becomes very visible again, and you don't need the Free Army to defeat Damascus, to move into central Damascus and destroy the Alawi enclaves around there, and the military bases around there. You don't need to storm the coast. What you need is a calming of the violence, and then there's the possibility of a good example in the liberated areas. And when people in places that are controlled by the régime see that good example, they will be less scared of the jihadist movements and so on, and there will be more possibilities for people to come together and communicate, and that would be a dramatic movement against the régime. That's why the régime wants war, because as soon as the war stops, the régime will be truly challenged again.'

 Leila Al-Shami:

 'One thing we have seen is women back on the streets, and I think that's very positive, because women have long argued that one of the main reasons they have not been on the streets is security issues. I agree that an end to the bombing would allow civil activism to resume, and it gives these extremist groups less rationale when there's no military conflict.'

Arrests in Syria as Part of a Politico-Economic Rationale

 ' “I was shocked when I learnt Naser had been arrested. I did not want to believe it at first. To be arrested is the worst thing that could happen to you in Syria. No matter how you die – the main thing is not to die this way – that is what most Syrians will tell you. ‘I need to get hold of one of these pills that kill you instantly,’ Naser had said to me shortly before. He was planning ahead on how to elude an arrest. And then he was arrested in the Foreigners’ Registration Office, as he is Palestinian. The images of tortured dead bodies entered my mind at once,” Samira explains. “My uncle, however, reassured me that Naser would walk free within a few days. He said he knew someone inside. With high hopes, we started to collect the money that was being demanded from us. That was back in October 2014. At first, we were to pay 4,000 dollars, and then it increased to 20,000, in the end the sum had multiplied to 60,000 dollars. We have not been able to trace him since January 2015. Even though they continue to demand more money from us, we do not even know whether Naser is still alive.”

 “By now, it is estimated that 90 % of those arrested by the regime or regime militias had nothing to do with the revolution,” says Amer, a former officer in the Syrian military. Free rein when it comes to arrests is one of the ways in which the regime renders it possible for various parts of its security apparatus to enrich themselves. That way, the regime secures support for its actions in times of economic demise. The ones who are left to suffer are the thousands of disappeared Syrians and their families. On the one hand, the issue is actual corruption [Fasad] in which money serves as a means to obtain a service and on the other hand it is sheer fraud [Nasab], in which a service is promised in return but the promise is not kept.

 Every secret service controls a certain district of a city; information on who controls which parts is contained in the store of knowledge of many Syrians or can be inquired about. However, the most frequent and random arrests are made at checkpoints. Checkpoints have been set up at the entrances to every village, and even at the access points to every district in cities. “Most checkpoints at the village entrances of Jaramana are controlled by the jawiya, the secret service unit of the air force. Within the district however, the shabiha are in control,” Lama, a human rights activist, tells us. She herself was imprisoned for a long period of time. “When I was arrested, I was glad it happened at an official regime checkpoint. That way, I was taken and my husband was arrested at home – but at least our house was not ransacked and my daughter was not raped.”

 Shortly after the arrest, the person is taken to the interrogation centres of the various departments (Fira’, pl. Fur’u) of the secret services. “Oftentimes, they (the Fur’u) arrest a person and keep him or her in custody for four or five days. They request the phone numbers of family members, and then the blackmailing begins,” Feras tells us. He also is an attorney from Damascus who now lives in Beirut. Even if you pay, that does not mean that the release of your relative is secured. After exploiting the families financially, the shabiha oftentimes surrender the prisoner to the secret services. The unofficial and official structures of Syrian secret services therefore do not only coexist, they cooperate directly.

 Already before 2011, the regime had the most extensive security apparatus of the region. Since the beginning of the revolution, it has multiplied – through the many checkpoints and the development of diverse militias loyal to the regime. At the same time, the economic situation has become devastating, which means that the regime is not able to support the increased expenses for the security sector with state funds alone. 100 dollars, about 20,000 Syrian pounds, is the current income of a regular officer in the regime’s security apparatus. “A packet of coffee costs about 2,000 SP and diesel for two days is about 5,000 SP,” explains media activist Amjad. “As the regime facilitates arrests and the blackmailing of families, shabiha as well as regular soldiers of the regime can generate a secondary income for themselves. Soldiers no longer have confidence in the regime but now they see their opportunity to profit.”

 By the end of 2012, the country’s economy had already suffered the loss of 1.5 million jobs. “The Syrian economy has been almost entirely destroyed […]. [It] has almost entirely developed into a wartime economy that consists of crime, smuggling, trading in arms and people, as well as the theft of subsidies etc.. A small class of people has emerged who were able to profit in the context of this economy, whereas at the same time, millions of youths are left unemployed, unable to support their families,” says political scientist Sabr Darwish. To enable corruption and extortion is a strategic decision made by the regime – an adjustment of its system in light of changed circumstances.

 Due to the fact that cells are oftentimes hopelessly overcrowded, inmates in many cases memorise 70 or more names and phone numbers, Missing Syria activists have come to learn. Once they are released, they either try to contact families directly or they share their knowledge through human rights organisations. This is where Syrian public figures, such as Yara Sabri, assume an important role. She is perceived as a person of trust and makes contact with the families. On her Facebook page, she adds a new list of names of disappeared people on a daily basis. Many times, a statement issued by Yara Sabri has helped families uncover the identity of their blackmailers. If they were notified that their family member could be released from the Fira’ by means of a certain lump sum and Yara can tell them that their son was, however, last seen elsewhere, they can still freeze the payment.

 The Anti-Terrorism Court is the judiciary of a regime that claims to be leading a war against terrorists since March 2011, and that renders it a strong symbol of a trend in regime ranks: those in key positions have abandoned the motivation of defending an alleged anti- imperialistic, socialist system long ago. In fact, the interest in personal profits predominates political motivation. The regime has created an elaborate structure of profiteers who have a selfish, not an ideological, interest in the regime’s survival.

 The omnipotence of this court reveals that corruption in the business of life and death is not restricted to the lower ranks alone: in this case, judges are the ones who benefit in the chain of beneficiaries. Suspended sentences are their personal commodity, and amnesties offer a basis for wide-ranging corruption. These are general amnesties which bring remission of certain penalties with them, without determining the individuals it is issued for beforehand. Payments are made in order to receive a place on a list of those granted an amnesty.'

'Liberation' of ancient Palmyra came at huge cost

 'A 30-year-old activist from the anti-Assad Palmyra Revolutionary Coordination Committee, who asked to be referred to as Abdul Majd al-Tadmuri, told Fairfax Media "the regime wants to show the whole world with Russian support that they are the only force that can stand up against IS's barbarity ... but that's not true".

 The local opposition group, which started in July 2011 after the revolution against Dr Assad turned bloody, still receives footage from activists on the ground using satellite phones in hidden sites around the city. It said in a statement that Russian raids over a week had destroyed half of Palmyra's infrastructure.

 "When Palmyra was invaded in May 2015 by the Islamic State, it was more of a swap between the regime and the terrorists," 'Abdul Majd' said. "The Syrian forces withdrew from their military stronghold in the city centre, the airport, the prison, to the deserted areas outside of the city." '

Syrian exiles speak, five years into the war

 'University student Mais (29) found herself in the southern city of Deraa when the first major security crackdown took place on March 18th, 2011.

 “A lot of revolutionaries were in the streets calling for freedom when the solders started firing on them,” she recalled. That day, at least five were killed and dozens of others detained by security forces, never to be seen again.

 “The people woke up from their numbness,” she said. When her brother, an activist, was abducted and found dead outside Damascus in 2012, Mais blamed the regime’s security forces. “I left Syria for Turkey because we lost my brother and my family didn’t want to lose me too. Also I’m a girl if they [the security forces] took me at that time I would be raped by them.” '

Former ISIS Hostage: 'We Need A New Narrative'

 Nicolas Hénin:

 "They are not enemies. They cooperate together. ISIS needs the regime to kill Syrians in huge numbers, so then, ISIS can come and tell the Sunnis in Syria we are the bad guys powerful enough to protect you. We are like your godfathers. Because as long as ISIS is here, the West will be terrified and will say, maybe, Bashar al-Assad is the lesser problem. This regime, which claims that it fights terrorism, that it is secular. It is nothing like that. All the foreign fighters who joined the Iraqi insurgency in the early years of the American occupation of Iraq, they all transited through Syria! And this transit was managed by the Syrian intelligence. The regime played with terrorism to ensure its future.

 Assad needs ISIS to survive. He released Jihadi prisoners at the very early stages of the revolution, he declared an amnesty. But this amnesty did not concern all the democrats. They stayed in prison. All the political prisoners in jail, they stayed in jail. But all the Jihadis, they were released because he wanted a civil war, he wanted this revolution to become a civil war. And for the very same reason he also created tremendous fear among the minorities in the country. So that the Syrian Christians, for instance, are convinced that if ever the revolution succeeds then they will be either dead or will have to flee, which was at least at the beginning totally wrong. Yes, there is definitely now concerns for the future of minorities in Syria. But at its early stage it was just people begging for its freedom.

 One of our main mistakes is to believe that ISIS is the problem. No, ISIS is just the result of the problem. If we fight only ISIS, is just like if we fight fever but don’t care of the disease. No, we have to fight the disease. And the disease, what is it? It is the massacres being committed against the Syrian population. Since the beginning of the revolution over 300 thousand Syrians have been killed. Do you know that the Syrian regime has killed between seven to ten times more civilians, since the beginning of the civil war, than ISIS? So it is our short view on this, and our only focus on ISIS and terrorism because we are afraid of these guys. And it’s normal because it’s their job to terrorize us. It is this which creates the conditions for ISIS to become prosperous."

Syrian recounts flight from war, struggle for acceptance

 'Syrian refugee Lawrence Powell was born in the wrong place at the wrong time, a secret "criminal" whose family disowned him as civil war erupted in his homeland.

 "No one in my family or friends knew I was gay," he recalled Friday evening. "It's a crime in Syria. It's a scandal socially."

 Then came the Arab Spring of 2011, which led to rulers being ousted from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In Syria, though, rebels pushing for freedom of speech, jobs and education were killed by President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

 "Blood brings blood," Lawrence said. "When people are being killed, they seek revenge. It was a real revolution. Then the revolution was stolen. ISIS came, Hezbollah came, the Free Syrian Army came. Unfortunately, this revolution by good people was stolen."

 When Lawrence refused to be seduced by a high-ranking government official, he was jailed for three months.

 "After jail, my family knew. To be outed by police - this is a scandal. And I am the oldest son, so I am like a role model for the family. So I was disowned."

 That's a bit of an understatement. His brothers pummeled him brutally, and Lawrence's sisters helped him escape through a window while the brothers took a break. George helped Lawrence move to Lebanon in 2013 while trying to obtain either U.S. or Canadian tourist visas. Neither country cooperated. But finally, after medical exams, background checks and repeated interviews, the treasured U.S. visa came through. The couple flew to Houston and visited George's family members en route to Colorado. They loved Lawrence, too.

 "They all showed me all the love," Lawrence said, beaming. "Even George's mother, who is 94 years old and very conservative. But after a day, she loved me so much.

 Personally, I have a good life, and everyone is welcoming me. But I want to tell the people that Middle Easterners aren't terrorists. We have the same fears you do. We just escaped from the war. We want to be productive, we want to work." '

Muzna Al-Naib speaking about Palmyra

 Muzna al-Naib:

 "The city is not saved. ISIS and Assad are basically two faces of the same coin. I spoke today to activists inside of Palmyra, they said nothing has changed. Before ISIS took this city, the artifacts were looted by Assad's shabiha, and the city has long been known to Syrians as the site of one of most horrific prisons, where people have been tortured to death. At least 1,800 people have been killed in the 80s, in seven massacres, and basically the city has been bombed with cluster bombs for the last few weeks, causing more than 50% of the neighbourhoods in the city to be destroyed.

 This is the perfect propaganda game. The city was handed to Daesh, to ISIS, according to the former attorney-general of Palmyra, who spoke about this; and now it was taken again. So as the loss of Palmyra was the perfect coin to get international attention, now the regaining of Palmyra is the same thing.

 There are two evils on the ground. The people on the ground are fighting both, but the outside world are more concerned about the artifacts than the people on the ground. No-one can claim they are more devastated about what is happening to the heritage of Syria than Syrians; but come on, human life is more important, the protection of civilians should be the priority of any narrative about Syria, and there is no excuse for putting all the attention on the artifacts and playing the propaganda game of Assad and ISIS.

 What needs to happen now is the protection of civilians. There are so many prisons right now in Syria where people are being tortured to death. The tragedy of Palmyra prison shouldn't have been repeated, shouldn't be going on right now. Inside Sednaya prison, people are dying in horrific ways right now. We need the world to act. We need them to prioritise human lives, our human values, rather than historical artifacts."

 Note 24/5/25, original video private, probably from BBC.

The surprising ways fear has shaped Syria’s war

 'Syrians’ stories about life before 2011 call attention to a silencing fear that served as a pillar of the authoritarian regimes of Hafez al-Assad and then Bashar al-Assad. People consistently describe a political system in which those who had authority could abuse it limitlessly and those without power found no law to protect them. As one man explained: “We don’t have a government. We have a mafia. And if you speak out against this, it’s off with you to bayt khaltu — ‘your aunt’s house.’ That’s an expression that means to take someone to prison. It means, forget about this person. He’ll be tortured, disappeared. You’ll never hear from him again.”

 A lawyer described a world in which “a single security officer could control an area of 20,000 people holding only a notebook, because if he records your name in it, it’s all over for you.” Undercover spies and pervasive surveillance led parents to warn children not to speak because “the walls have ears.”

 “Nobody trusted anyone else,” a rural dentist noted. “If anyone said anything out of the ordinary, others would suspect he was an informant trying to test people’s reactions.” A drama student joked, “My father and brothers and sisters and I might be sitting and talking . . . And then each of us would glance at the other, [as if to think] ‘Don’t turn out to be from the security forces!’ ”

 A Syrian in exile since childhood noted: “When you meet somebody coming out of Syria for the first time, you start to hear the same sentences. That Syria is a great country, the economy is doing great. … It’ll take him like six months, up to a year, to become a normal human being. To say what he thinks, what he feels. … Then they might start whispering. They won’t speak loudly. That is too scary. After all that time, even outside Syria, you feel that someone is recording.”

 The spread of peaceful protests across the Arab world in 2011 helped launch a dramatically distinct experience of fear as a personal barrier to be surmounted. Syrians who participated in demonstrations explained that, aware of state violence, they never ceased to be afraid. However, they mobilized a new capacity to act through or despite fear. A mother told me that “no amount of courage allows you to just stand there and watch someone who has a gun and is about to kill you. But still, this incredible oppression made us go out … When you chant, everything you imagined just comes out. Tears come down. Tears of joy, because I broke the barrier. I am not afraid; I am a free being.”

 Syrians I meet follow each new crisis, from the Assad regime’s use of newly horrific weapons to the rise of the Islamic State, and lament the fate of a revolution that now fights tyranny on multiple fronts. Nearly all expressed despair with the foreign agendas distorting what began as a popular groundswell for dignity. “Many countries have interests in Syria and they are all woven together like threads in a carpet,” a Free Syrian Army commander shook his head. “We don’t know where this is leading. All we know is that we’re everyone else’s battlefield.” The 20-somethings who led demonstrations count lost comrades with a pain tinged with depression, even guilt. “I belong to the revolution generation, and I’m proud of that,” one young woman explained. “We tried our best to build something. We faced a lot, and we faced it alone. But we lost control. We don’t know what is useful anymore.”

 Many people’s most urgent fear is for their loved ones: children who have lost years of schooling, family scattered among Syria and several other countries, and relatives who have been arrested and never heard from again. A Syrian colleague articulated this fear in reaction to the January 2014 revelation of photographs evidencing systematic torture in regime prisons. “The most difficult part of the torture pictures,” he told me, “is not the decomposed flesh, the starved bodies … or even the knowledge that the torture is both widespread and systematic. These things have always been elements of our Syrian reality. What is so difficult that I do not think we have the strength to overcome is the fear that some of these pictures may show us the body of someone we know and we hope is still alive.”

 In describing how they have experienced the Assad regime before and since 2011, citizens are transforming its power from something too menacing to be named into something whose naming renders it contestable. When a state uses fear to silence subjects, their talking about that fear — articulating its existence, identifying its sources, describing its workings — is itself a form of defiance and an assertion of the will to be free.'

We're not just numbers to be moved around

 'Despite surrendering to the Syrian regime last September, Madaya remains blockaded. That means nothing and no one enter or exit without the government’s permission. The 40,000 civilians trapped inside rely entirely on the goodwill of the Syrian regime to eat, and in the case of Ibrahim Abbas, for permission to leave the town to get the surgery he needs to stay alive beyond the short term.

 "I was injured on March 7, 2015—a Friday. I was going to Friday prayers, and was hit by a sniper round in my stomach that cut up my intestines. Currently there are no colostomy bags in the field hospital. I have one bag in poor condition. You're supposed to change the bag once a week. I've been using this bag for an entire month.

 We're human beings, not just numbers to be moved around. We don't need aid or humanitarian campaigns, we need the world to look at us with humane eyes. We need the world to appreciate, and understand our situation. I'm a young man, 26 years old, and until now I've done nothing in my life, and I feel like I'm an old man of 60.

 The regime arrested me at the end of 2012 and forced me to join the army. I served for six months, then fled at the beginning of 2013 and returned to my hometown of Baqin, next to, and administratively a part of, Madaya. I committed myself to civil resistance and worked as an independent citizen journalist. Currently I'm an activist with a civilian project called Ammirha.

 This isn't a war, it's a revolution belonging to people who came out to demand the most basic rights—freedom, equality, and life with dignity. I'm with this revolution until my last breath; on the other hand, I hope it ends as soon as possible and in a way that satisfies everyone. Five years is enough in my opinion." '

Daraa tells story of Syrian revolution

 ' “The first spark of the Syrian revolution came out from the al-Arbaeen school in Daraa after a number of students were detained for spraying anti-regime graffiti,” Abu Ali Mahamid, a member of the so-called Shura Council of Daraa, told Anadolu Agency on Monday.

 On March 18, 2011, thousands of protesters set out from the historic Omari Mosque in the city to protest abuses by regime forces and demand the release of students. Mahamid said pro-Assad forces threatened to open fire on the protesters in an effort to disperse the mass rallies.

 “As demonstrators did not heed their calls, security forces opened fire on the protesters, killing two people, who were the first two martyrs of the Syrian revolution,” he said.

 Five years after the revolution, almost all of Daraa’s landmarks have been destroyed, including the Omari Mosque, whose minaret was brought down by regime shelling in 2013.'

The Syrian Spring Blossoms Again

 'I still remember that day clearly, the February 11, 2011. The people of Egypt succeeded in overthrowing the regime that held it for three decades. The windows in our house were closed that day by my mom; she was fearful like any other parent in Syria. My mom always told us not to have any political discussion with anybody out of the walls of our place. My mom closed the windows and started dancing, clapping and ululating. In Arab countries ululation is commonly used to express celebration - that day we celebrated the feeling of freedom in our house for the first time.

 Many people thought at the beginning that the Syrian revolution is a copy of the other revolutions in the Arab world, but this is false. Syria was a very specific situation which pushed the people to be unintentionally ready for a change which was demanded years ago. People had been fed up with injustice and all the regime needed to do is make one more mistake.

 As time passed, the regime had almost the complete comfort to react violently to the peaceful chants. The regime's brutality increased and many massacres were committed in different Syrian cities and towns.

 The number of political detainees reached unbelievable numbers. Syrians raised their voices again and again but the international community did nothing serious to stop the bloodshed. Some Syrians lost hope in getting any international support, so the Free Syrian Army was established by officers who quit the regime's army, the ones who refused to join the regime that was committing war crimes.

 Five years have passed and everybody is trying to cover up what really happened and is still happening in Syria. They want Syria to turn into black and then they can be satisfied with their scenarios about extremism and Syria being a field for a civil war, but they are not going to be able to hide the truth which is as clear as the sun.

 Syrians are the doctors in the field hospitals who are keeping Syrians alive. Syrians are the civilians who are sharing their last amount of food under siege and shelling. Syrians are the teachers who are volunteering to teach the children under siege and doing their best to feed their minds even though they can't feed their stomachs. They are the refugees who are still holding Syria inside their hearts wherever they are going and trying to show the best in them to the whole world.

 The revolution flag was all over Syria for the last two Fridays, and the black flags that the regime and regime's supporting entities wanted to look like as if they belong to the revolutionaries just disappeared!

 The color that they tried to make Syria stick to for the last 3 years was demolished in two days and by hundreds of peaceful demonstrations. The Syrian revolution is still alive against all the faces of oppression in Syria. And if you are not able to see it after all, that would be because you don't want to.'

Meeting the Syrians who helped start the revolution

 'Mohanned: "We stood defiant, facing the police and the shabiha militia, demanding freedom, justice and democracy. They opened fire, some of us fell dead, but we held on, unarmed, in a peaceful manner. It was an incredible feeling, it's indescribable.

 I'd rather sacrifice myself for 5 or 10 years, to put an end to this régime, than be controlled by this régime for centuries on end. In most countries, people are allowed to protest, as part of their fundamental rights, but in Syria, it was suicidal."

 Riad al-Asaad: "The entire world has turned a blind eye to the situation. Now there are talks of a political solution, but the régime should put an end to its offensive, and to its bombings. During the last conference in Geneva, the Syrian régime kept on advancing towards Deraa, and on the coast, and besieged Aleppo. The régime prevents access to humanitarian aid, and starves civilians, while the US and Europe do nothing about it."

 Aziza Jalad: "Just last week, we saw that many protests broke out in Syria. If the bombings ended, and if the régime stopped killing or arresting demonstrators, I believe the entire country would keep on protesting, including in territories controlled by the régime."

 Yassin: "The ceasefire could pave the way for a permanent solution in Syria. But for that to happen, things need to change. There will not be any solution if Bashar al-Assad stays in power. Syrians are fleeing their homes because of the war. If the war ends, they will stay in Syria. But the war started because they wanted Assad to step down, so if the current régime stays in place, the migrant crisis will continue."

 Ziad Majed: "Russia pretended it was there to fight Daesh [ISIS], and we see that Daesh is still occupying 40% of the Syrian territory. What Russia really did was save the Assad régime from military collapse, they gave it the possibility to regain some territory. The peace talks are starting, and maybe the Russians thought that Assad was asking too much, the analogy used by his state affairs minister about refusing any discussion concerning the transition, is challenging the Russian, American and de Mistura discourses about the necessity of having a transition. Putin wanted to show he is back internationally, and is imposing himself on the Syrian situation, and maybe he is telling Assad to calm down a little bit, because Assad was saved due to this military intervention.

 Maybe with the new Russian position, it will put pressure on the régime to accept compromises. What continues to be the problem, is the place of Bashar al-Assad in a transition. For the opposition and for the majority of the Syrian people. After 45 years of rule by the Assad family, the only condition of success for the talks, is the departure of Bashar al-Assad. So that the fight against Daesh will start, so that the many challenges facing Syrian society can start being addressed. If they agree on how to deal with the Assad question, many of the other things, I'm not saying they would be easy, but at least negotiations on that could start.

 The problem today is, what kind of transition? The Syrian régime uses the term, 'coalition government', meaning the régime will stay, and add some opposition figures. While Geneva I stipulates a transitional body, that will lead to elections, and then to turning the page of the past. So I think the negotiations will mainly be about that, and how to deal with Daesh later.

 I think the Syrian population has benefitted a lot from the ceasefire, because for four years now it has been under the bombing of the Assad's aeroplanes, of barrel bombing, of the Ruusians recently, and the consequences of all sorts of fighting. We've seen that as soon as the ceasefire was respected, partially, all kinds of demonstrations against the régime; peaceful gatherings, started again, and there was a kind of rebirth of civil society, that in the last years emerged, tried to organise itself, to survive, and now is feeling some help to end the conflict. On the other hand, without a political horizon for the ceasefire, all parties will try to benefit from it, militarily speaking, to reorganise their troops, to prepare for the next phase. Unless they understand that this is a long-term ceasefire, and in parallel the peace process will lead to long-term changes in Syria. The priority would be the régime change, at least the Assad change, if some structures of the régime would be preserved for the next phase.

 There are three or four reasons why Assad didn't fall in 2011. Unlike in Tunisia, in Syria the structure of the régime is a mixture of security services, military, and a family clan, based on sectarianism and the confessional configuration in Syria. The reaction of the régime was not to look for a political compromise, but to crack down on the demonstrators, to destroy the society of the demonstrators, and use all sorts of force, exactly as Bashar's father did in 1980 and 1982. The the reaction of the régime was quite different, and led to the militarisation.

 The second thing is the geo-strategic location of Syria. On the Israeli border, on the Iraqi border, on the Turkish border, with all that meant with regional actors becoming involved.

 Thirdly, the Syrian régime had a strong ally in Iran, that from day one supported it, and then Russia also jumped in, because it considered it was its ally that was being targetted, and Putin wanted to show that he is loyal to his old alliances, and will protect them.

 All that generalised the conflict, and internationalised it, plus Daesh, but at the origin, and I think the major responsibility, is of course that of the régime, that refused all kinds of political compromises, of dealing politically with its own society, and preferred to just use violence against it, to crack down on it. This has also been the history of Syria, unfortunately, since 1970, where the régime replaced politics in the society with violence, that is the killing machine that operates against all kinds of dissidence and opposition, and preserves politics for regional and international questions. So I think it's a mixture of that, and the timing did not play for a quick change in the régime. We saw in 2015 with all that, that the régime was very close to collapse, and that's probably why at that moment Russia decide to restore the balance, in order to make a compromise where they were part of the new Syria." '

Syrian revolutionaries: ‘Carrying arms was not a choice’

 'Mohammad al-Ibrahim, 23, was one of thousands of young men who took part in the early, initially peaceful demonstrations. He told Al Arabiya English that the uprising forced him to switch paths and take up arms to defend himself. He was 17 when he said he led some of the demonstrations, shouting anti-government slogans, reciting poetry, and singing revolutionary songs. His personal turning point was towards the end of 2011, during a peaceful protest. He said none of his fellow demonstrators were armed when regime soldiers opened fire, killing two of his cousins.

 “I don’t regret using weapons against a monstrous and brutal regime… and if I can go back in time and pick up arms in the face of a regime that destroyed my homeland, my future, and killed my beloved ones I would not hesitate,” said Ibrahim. “I don’t believe that the revolution ‘failed’ because it became armed,” he said, adding that the Syrian regime had been behind the creation of Islamist militant groups and had been aided by foreign intervention.

 Ibrahim’s mother, who refers to herself as Umm Mohammad, said she had not wanted her son to take up arms, but felt she had no right to interfere in his decision. “I told myself my son isn’t of more value than the rest of the Syrian men who are dying to protect us.” Repeating what she claims is the sentiment of most of the wounded men, she said “[It turned out] the only reaction the regime understood was the same weaponized response they used against us, even though the revolution was initially peaceful. The very regime that drowned out our voices with its bullets had to hear us when we picked up our guns. They took our land, homes, memories, everything beautiful, even our beloved ones, and their actions led to my son becoming crippled in front of my own two eyes. What do you think our reaction is going to be? Of course were going to resort to arms… to protect ourselves.”

 Hadi Abdullah, an independent Syrian journalist and activist from the city of Al-Qusayr, Homs, said that many Syrian men had no other choice other than to pick up arms. “The crimes committed by the Assad regime pushed the Syrian protestors to carry arms… many Syrian men carried arms not by choice but were forced to defend themselves. We hoped that our revolution would continue as a peaceful movement and attain freedom and democracy without a single bullet,” Abdullah told Al Arabiya English.

 “No one can sit and watch Assad’s Shabiha [thugs] slaughtering entire families than resist taking arms to defend their family. No one can sit and watch the regime forces detain women and abstain from picking up weapons. It’s human nature to fight to live and defend those you love.”

 Bashar al-Zoubi, who is also referred to as Abu Fadi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Front and is head of the Yarmouk Brigade, also said that picking up arms was never a choice and that they were ‘welcomed with tanks and bullets’ while peacefully protesting. “We are revolutionaries and not opposition. We took the streets demanding freedom, and a better future for Syria. Our words were not heard, so we were forced to take up arms. The opposition might have a different agenda than the revolutionaries, but this is what we’re fighting for. The ceasefire in Syria has brought back the wonderful old days of the revolution, where we went out as one and demanded for our rights.”

 Mohamad, 24, who asked to not have his full name disclosed, said he decided to join one of the early rebel groups, the Free Syrian Army, after his mother was killed in the town of Manbij in the northern Aleppo province. He said he was at home when Syrian airstrikes hit the market where his mother and sister had gone to buy clothes for his sister’s soon-to-be-born child. She had lost both her legs and there weren’t enough medical professionals and supplies to save her. After losing my mother, I felt I had nothing left to lose. If someone keeps hitting you, and you tell them to stop through words over and over, and they continuously hit you... you're going to strike back, am I correct?" '

The Young Men Who Started Syria's Revolution Speak

 'Omar first heard about the graffiti at morning recess. It was winter, he was 14, in the middle of 10th grade, and his friends said it was just a prank. The day before, just after school, a handful of Omar's classmates found some red paint and scrawled, "Your turn doctor," on the school's wall. The "doctor" was Bashar al-Assad, Syria's dictator, and in Daraa, Syria, in February 2011, those words could get you killed.

 It's been five years since Omar's friends wrote on their schoolyard wall; now the city of Daraa is divided between enclaves controlled by the Syrian government and parts that Omar says have been "liberated" by the Free Syrian Army. Omar avoided arrest, but his friend Yacoub, who was 14 at the time and also in the 10th grade, was not so lucky. Over the course of weeks, the police in Daraa completely brutalized Yacoub. They forced him to sleep naked on a freezing wet mattress, they strung him up on the wall and left him in stress positions for hours, and they electrocuted him with metal prods.

 It was in Daraa, a mostly Sunni city well known for its well-to-do families and close military and financial links to the state and the Assad family, that the first full-blown rebellion broke out.

 Omar remembers going to mosque on one of the first Friday protests and watching the imam — who had for years read out a pro-government message at the end of his sermons — throw the regime's talking points on the ground. After prayers, the families and friends of the boys who had been arrested poured onto the streets, and began chanting "We want our kids out of prison." The police responded with tear gas, live ammunition, and sniper fire. Omar was among that first group of protesters, and remembers fondly how the people of Daraa — even those who had no connection to his friends — rallied around them.

 "I thought the people in the neighborhood would be against us, and think we were just stupid kids," Omar remembered. "In the end, writing on that wall was viewed as something heroic and courageous."

 Ismael, now 43, worked as an administrator at Daraa's main hospital during the early days of the uprising. One of his young cousins had been rounded up in the graffiti arrests, and Ismael was one of the first to join the protests. A few weeks into the uprising, Ismael secretly filmed medical workers uncovering a mass grave on the outskirts of town, he passed the film to a relative in the US, and it was eventually aired on CNN. Afterwards, Ismael was arrested, but his family managed to scrape together $20,000 to bribe an official and get him released. He immediately fled the country, and he's now a refugee in Toledo, Ohio. He says countless cousins and uncles have disappeared into Assad's prisons, or wound up dead on the streets.

 An official with the Free Syrian Army, Khaled now lives in rebel-controlled Daraa and he's had a few close calls, dodging the explosive-filled metal drums the Syrian military shoves out the back of helicopters. Since Russia, the US, the Syrian government and rebels agreed to a partial ceasefire last month, the front line that divides the Daraa city center has been largely quiet. But the years of barrel bombs, offensives, and counteroffensives, have taken a serious toll. "This generation is pretty much destroyed emotionally — now kids' toys are weapons." Khaled says. "We all need therapy." Khaled has the means to flee Syria, but he's decided instead to devote his life to overthrowing the Assad regime. He spends his days coordinating rebel activity around Daraa: he helps train new recruits, and make sure that some government services continue to function. "I want things to go back to normal, that's my real hope." '

'Curse your soul, Jolani'

 'Hundreds of anti-regime demonstrations have taken place in Syrian opposition towns over the past week after a five year hiatus.

 One of the most surprising twists to this tale has been how the Syrian population have remained largely "unradicalised", despite nothing more than superficial support from democratic powers.

 Popular songs have even take aim at the jihadi fighters in the neighbourhood.

 [The revolution] was hijacked by the bearded men,

 Curse your soul Jolani [Nusra leader] and your soul Hassoon [pro-regime Sunni cleric],

 Curse your soul Baghdadi [IS leader] wherever you are too!



 This combined with the fact that, in many areas, Islamist fighters such as the Nusra Front - al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise - are their only lines of defence against pro-regime militias is proof that Syrians have not fallen victim to Stockholm Syndrome. Chants in support of the Free Syrian Army accompanied by energetic singing and dancing relive the heady days of 2011. The relative peace means the war - but not the fight - has been temporarily put on hold.

 Such secular "slights" to the puritanical sensitivities of local Salafi-jihadi fighters have rattled some elements within Nusra, which angrily broke up one demonstration in Idlib province this week, threatening to shoot at protesters.

 "Both fundamentalist extremists and Assad regime supporters have been embarrassed by the protests. Supporters of both groups have claimed that the protesters are being paid by foreign agents," said Oz Katerji, a Middle East analyst. "Democracy and free speech terrifies reactionary counter-revolutionary forces more than anything else."

 "As soon as the bombing lightens then immediately the jihadists are weakened," said Robin Yassin-Kassab, a British-Syrian writer and co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. "Assad produces jihadists. When a battle takes place, Nusra is seen as a friend of the revolution because it is fighting the regime. When a battle isn't taking place then Nusra is seen as an authoritarian power trying to enforce an unjust political project. Nusra's project is not democratic and it must be upset that after five years of trying to embed itself in revolutionary Syria, still the people on the streets are calling for freedom, democracy and the Free Syrian Army, and not the jihadist militias."

 Michael Karadjis, from the University of Western Sydney College and a writer on Syrian affairs, believes that a reduction in bombing has given moderate revolutionary forces a shot in the arm. "The FSA supporters and civil uprisings were very tactically wise in coming out all over the country as soon as there was a lull in the bombing... or perhaps people spontaneously came out," he said.

 If Russia and the regime re-launch major bombing raids on rebel towns to suppress these protests, as has been reported today in eastern Ghouta, then it would no doubt backfire and likely trigger a more unified and extreme military response from the opposition, particularly if international condemnation remains muted. Groups such as Nusra, which have been among the best-performing armed opposition groups, would no doubt be among the main benefactors. The West and regional powers would also be in no position to ask rebels to cut ties with the extremist groups.

 "It is futile to demand the FSA not to have military coordination with groups like Nusra to fight the regime as the US has demanded for years. I'd go further, it is a call for mutual destruction of anti-Assad forces," Karadjis added. "With a regime like Assad's, some military element in [the resistance] is almost essential. But the greater the response, the less the civil component of the FSA's military struggle can raise its hand."

 The longer the bombing continues, the greater the potential that groups such as Nusra have to expand their ranks. "The ceasefire does have an isolating effect on groups like Nusra precisely because they thrive on the extremist atmosphere that inevitably comes from war," said Karadjis. "That is why Assad pushed for civil war from the moment the civil uprisings began." '