My anger is against those who claimed they stood for human rights

 
 'When Syrian teenager Bashir Abazed was arrested a decade ago for scrawling anti-government graffiti on his school wall, he never imagined an uprising would flare that would devastate his country.

 “The war...broke a lot of things in our lives, it took away our childhood and joy, it made us grow up before our time,” Abazed, now 25, said from Turkey where now lives, exiled far from his hometown of Deraa in southwestern Syria.

 Deraa became the cradle of the uprising and later insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad after two dozen teenagers including Abazed were rounded up and tortured by secret police for writing slogans against the Syrian autocrat.

 The youths’ act of defiance emulated the start of other “Arab Spring” uprisings that overthrew dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, and their brutal treatment in detention brought long latent discontent boiling to the surface.

 It escalated into street protests that were met with deadly fire by armoured security forces.

 Abazed, one of over two million Syrians who fled the war to neighbouring Turkey, recalls how a Syrian security officer forced him to confess under duress that he had scrawled the slogan, “Your turn is coming, Doctor Bashar.”

 Abazed was freed days later as the first round of mass pro-democracy demonstrations loosened the authorities’ iron grip and security forces resorted to gunning down peaceful protesters.

 He still has nightmares of tanks rolling though his crowded Deraa neighbourhood, relatives and friends who were shot dead and others who began to carry arms and turned into insurgents.



 Today Abazed and many of his townsfolk are among millions of refugees who have built new lives in neighbouring countries and beyond in Europe, with no intention of returning any time soon.

 Many fear they would be drafted into the army or arrested and know that their towns and villages where anti-Assad feeling ran high were pillaged and destroyed. Most say they will never go home until Assad’s rule is over.

 Only a handful of the original inhabitants of Abazed’s old Hay al Arbeen neighbourhood in Deraa remain, the streets mostly deserted. Some said that disaffection has grown again since Assad’s forces backed by Russian air power finally retook the town from rebels in 2019.

 Police repression has resumed amidst the economic ruin, they said, while authorities have restored statues and portraits of Assad and his late father in public places that were torn down in the early days of the uprising.

 “Nothing has changed from the days when we chanted for freedom,” Abazed said bitterly. “We demanded our rights. But the régime has not learnt any lesson. If anything it has become more vicious, clinging even more to power.”

 A Deraa resident said that, in one small gesture of defiance, dozens of people marked the 10-year anniversary on Thursday by chanting anti-government slogans in the streets of the town’s ancient quarter out of sight of security forces.

 “Even if Bashar has now taken back control, the revolution will not end and Bashar will never rule Syria as he used to,” Abazed said.

 “My anger is against those who claimed they stood for human rights but let us down and left us to our fate,” he said, alluding to Western powers which did not intervene against Assad in the conflict.'

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world

 

  'For Reham Abazid, home is the place where you are safe and loved.

For most of her life, that meant Daara, a small city in southwestern Syria, where she lived a happy life with her husband and son in a house with a lemon tree.

 Now, it means Saint John, N.B., the Canadian city that has welcomed and nurtured her family since they arrived in Canada as government-sponsored refugees five years ago.

 "Home means safe, means love, but I can't find right now anything in Syria like I find it here in Canada," Abazid said.



 When the revolution began, Abazid was right at the heart of it.

 In March 2011, a group of children in Daraa were detained and tortured for spray-painting anti-government graffiti in support of the Arab Spring uprisings spreading through Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

 Some of the earliest protests in Syria were in support of those boys, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responded with a brutal crackdown. The protests became an uprising.

 Daraa is a small city and Abazid knew the boys who painted the graffiti. Some of them were her brother-in-law's cousins.

 "It was crazy and, like, unacceptable," she said. "Because they are kids in the end."



 As the conflict raged on, Daara became a different place. Abazid's neighbourhood became a focal point of violence, with bombs going off almost nightly. No longer safe in their own home, the family moved in with friends.

 On the morning of Jan. 30, 2013, her husband Mohammad al Najjar got a phone call from his cousins. She says they told him: "If you have something very important at your house, you have to grab it right now because the soldiers are in the front of the street."

 Najjar got up to leave, but Abazid stopped him.

 "I told him, 'No, no, you're not going there,'" she said. "Because if they found him alone at home, they will kill him or they will take him and he will never get back home."

 Abazid, who was eight months pregnant at the time with twins, decided that she would go instead, accompanied by her father-in-law.

 They grabbed the documents they needed, but when they tried to leave, they spotted a tank on the street nearby.



 "I told my dad, 'Let's run, go back,'" she said.

 But it was too late. The régime soldiers spotted them and opened fire. It didn't matter that she was visibly pregnant.

 "They know and they don't care," she said. "Even if I have a child like one day old, they don't care."

 The pair dodged the fire and retreated back inside the house, where they hid out, waiting for the violence to die down. They were so happy to be alive, they burst into a fit of laughter.

 "I thought, 'Am I alive?' He said, 'Yes. I am alive too! And we was laughing," she said. "But at the same time, I can see the tears of his eyes."

 About an hour later, the bombing started.



 Abazid says she heard it before she saw it. She was knocked unconscious, and when she woke up, she was bleeding. The pair fled to a family member's house.

 "I stuck around eight hours bleeding with my babies, and I don't have any idea if they are alive or not," she said. "That was a very scary moment for me."

 Finally, when it seemed safe, Abazid's family got her to a hospital. The doctor, a friend of hers, performed an emergency C-section.

 The doctor handed her a healthy baby girl, who she named Rous.

 "I took her. 'OK, where is the other one? Like, I know I'm expecting a boy and girl.' She said, 'I'm sorry we lost the boy.'"



 Before she even had time mourn the loss of her son Hamza, government soldiers showed up with a document for her to sign. It absolved the Syrian government of the child's death, instead putting the blame on ISIS.

 It was a lie, Abazid said.

 "I refused to sign it. And they said, 'OK, if you refuse to sign it, you are not allowed to bury him,'" she said. "I was so angry and screaming at their face."

 She says the soldiers told her if she didn't sign the document, they would go find a dog to dispose of her son's remains.

 "My friend, the doctor, she said, 'Reham, you have to go right now from the hospital. You have to run away.'"

 The doctor snuck Abazid out through the employee entrance with her husband, newborn daughter, and stillborn son. She buried Hamza at her old house under the lemon tree; 18 days later, they fled over the border to neighbouring Jordan.



 Life in Jordan was hard, Abazid said. As refugees, they weren't legally allowed to work. Her baby girl had to drink sugar water because she couldn't afford formula. Her husband was arrested several times for working under the table.

 Then one day, her husband received another fateful call — this time from the UN refugee agency, telling them they were eligible for asylum in Canada if they wanted it.

 She has no intention of moving back to Syria, she said, but she would like to visit one day with her kids.

 "I wish someday to take them there, to tell them where I grew up and to show them, you know, here used to be our home." '

“I Still Believe In Every Word We Chanted”

 

  Waad al-Kateab:

 'In Syria, we knew the incessant feeling of something stifling our mouths, hindering us from breathing, speaking clearly and being heard. We were used to social distancing – a fear of others, even family members, was planted in us from childhood. Anyone might be an informant – such as the son who reported his mother after she voiced her frustration about the government’s constant electrical outages.

 Independent ideas, values, freedom of expression – these were a virus for Bashar al-Assad’s government. This is not just a metaphor. In one of the president’s speeches after the revolution – which began 10 years ago this month – he described us, the protestors, as “germs” from which Syria needed to be disinfected.

 I was 20 years old and a student at the University of Aleppo when everything changed for my country. For months, we had watched anti-government protests unfold in Tunisia and Egypt (the Arab Spring, as it would later be termed). We never thought the same would happen in Syria. But on 6 March 2011, 15 children were arrested in Daraa for writing slogans against Assad’s government. We couldn’t believe it, but the violent reaction from the regime made it all too real.

 After that, things escalated quickly across the nation, as more and more people emerged on to the streets chanting for freedom. In Daraa, a camera captured a father being beaten by the army. In Al-Bayda village in Baniyas, boys and men were pictured lying under the feet of soldiers. In Raqqa, a throng of people formed around a statue of Assad’s father, trying to pull it down. Enormous crowds gathered in Assi Square in Hama; hundreds around the giant clock in Homs; thousands of students – myself among them – at Aleppo university. The revolution was under way.

 We were ecstatic at what we had created, but shocked at the aggressive response from the government. A friend was arrested by the regime and imprisoned. We never saw him again. A colleague was killed at a security forces checkpoint. Whole cities were invaded by tanks. We were attacked by mortars, scud missiles, phosphorus, cluster and barrel bombs. This became our everyday life – and still is for many Syrians today.

 Growing up, I heard stories about the corruption of the military state, the injustice and violence, but I only saw it clearly when I reached secondary school. During Ba’ath Party meetings, I refused to affiliate with Syria’s sole political party and instead spent time alone in the schoolyard. My principal saw me as a sheep who had strayed from the flock. Though I wasn’t always comfortable being different, it taught me how to say no – and that no sometimes has a price, which is not always an easy one to pay.

 When the revolution happened, I understood what it meant to belong to a place. Before then, Syria didn’t mean anything to me. My greatest dream was to finish university and to work in the Gulf or do a master’s degree or a PhD in Germany.

 Suddenly, millions of us were fighting together for a new way of life, protecting each other, beating with one heart. I saw it in the shared smile of a stranger who I recognised from a protest. I felt it when I tried to rescue an unknown girl from the security forces. It’s why I smuggled a revolutionary flag to safety under my clothes during the chaos of a strike. I knew it when I drank water from a bottle that was being passed from one protester to another on a very hot day. It wasn’t cold, or clean, but it was the best water I have tasted in my life.

 As the weeks and months wore on, the violence used by Assad’s regime descended the country into a full-blown war. Shock gave way to relief when we heard explosions because it meant we had survived. I picked up my camera and started filming. I needed to capture what was happening. I would not be able to explain it – I had to show it.

 Somehow, among the falling bombs, I fell in love with Hamza, a doctor. We were married in the half-destroyed hospital where we lived and where he tried to save injured civilians, the young and old, friends and strangers. Soon, I was pregnant with our daughter, Sama. I was terrified, but I kept filming for her, so that one day she would understand. I didn’t put my camera down, not even during the hardest moments imaginable – not even when a mother found out her small child had been killed while playing with his brother. She wanted me to keep filming her indescribable pain, to show the truth to the world.



 It’s thought that more than half a million people have been killed in the Syrian conflict; over 90,000 are believed to have been detained; and an estimated 13 million, more than half of Syria’s pre-war population, have been forcibly displaced either internally or internationally. I have submitted my footage as evidence of war crimes and we are building a case against the Assad regime and its ally Russia.

 After 10 years, some people might think that we have been defeated, that we have made great sacrifices for a life that is worse than the one we lived before. But a revolution is a path of no return. I still believe in every word we chanted. Though I’m 30 now, and far wearier than that 20-year-old student in Aleppo, I still have her passion and willpower.'

Counting the Losses in Idlib

 'Tasnim, 11, doesn’t remember life before the war, but she remembers losing an uncle, her grandmother, two cousins, beloved family friends, and now, she says, hope. 

 “I dreamt that we were happy and going back to our village,” she says, sitting on the rocks that hold her family’s tent in place. She speaks matter-of-factly, like a weary adult. “In the dream it was like before, and our home wasn’t destroyed. But those are just dreams. Everything will stay like it is.”



 It has now been 10 years since the start of the Syrian revolution, and Tasnim holds on fiercely to the few things she hasn’t lost. She has school in the mornings and, at the moment, surviving family and friends. “But everyone who is good to us and we love, dies,” she says.

 Nearly a quarter of the population lives in Idlib and surrounding areas, the last remaining opposition stronghold.

 Like Tasnim, families here say they have lost almost everything to the war.



 When her village was attacked, Tasnim’s father’s life was saved by a member of the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group that works in Syrian opposition areas. 

 “They bombed our house … and a neighbor hid us in a cave nearby,” she says. “I saw my father unconscious and the White Helmets were carrying him. They thought he was dead. I ran after the car shouting, 'Dad!’”

 Ibrahim Mohammad, 26, has served with the White Helmets since 2014 and says he has pulled countless people — alive and dead — from the rubble of bombed out buildings, including babies. 

 At a training center in Idlib city last month, Mohammad says he dropped out of college because of the war. He lost his home, friends and members of his family. But he did not lose everything, he says.

 When asked what the war has given him, he smiles warmly and replies, “A lot.”

 “We are living in the north, with freedom, dignity and on our land,” he explains. “We’ve lost so many people. Everyone has lost someone from their family.”  



 At the beginning of last year, nearly a million people fled their homes in other parts of Idlib province in the largest exodus of the war, many here to the opposition-controlled north.

 A number of rebel groups control this region, some with the direct support of Turkey. In Idlib city, one of the strongest of the groups, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is in charge, along with a civilian authority called the Syrian Salvation Government.

 Roughly 1.5 million people are displaced in this region alone, along with millions of others across the country. The presence of HTS complicates humanitarian efforts and potential peace negotiations as the group is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States and other countries.

 But local authorities describe HTS as an opposition force like any other, adding they believe the humanitarian crisis would be best addressed by rebel victories that allow people to return to their homes without fear of the government.

 “In 10 years, our people have suffered through massacres and bombings with suspicious international silence,” says Muhammad Salem, the Syrian Salvation Government’s public relations director. “Our revolution was not for comfort and bread, but for pride and dignity.”



 For many families in the camps, however, a modicum of comfort and some bread to eat would be welcome, and potentially lifesaving as displaced families face sometimes-deadly cold and hunger.

 After Tasnim and her family fled the bombardment of their village a year ago, they moved through eight camps before they found a "safe” place to stay. Most camps were overcrowded and without running water or humanitarian aid. Tasnim’s uncle used to wait for it to rain so they could collect water for cooking or drinking.

 They finally settled in a camp with water tanks and some humanitarian aid, but not nearly enough.

 “Sometimes they bring us hygiene kits, but we don’t want that,” Tasnim says. “We need things for children like diapers, milk and food. We want to eat. It has been two months since we received any food aid.” 



 One of her neighbors, 50-year-old Fatoum al-Shamali, better remembers life before the war and says she wants more than just enough to eat and a heater for her tent, both of which are now lacking.

Al-Shamali says she wants to go home and one day be buried in her own village. Alternatively, if Assad’s forces advance, she wants to stay and fight, despite the fact that she needs two crutches to walk.

 “I’ll be first to fight for Idlib,” she says. “We have no other place to go.”

 Most families say they will flee if Assad’s forces move in, but even that plan is lacking, as there is increasingly nowhere to go. The Turkish border in the north is firmly shut and the region is surrounded by government forces.

 Tasnim misses her three-room village home, where she and her cousins used to play in the yard. But returning, she says, doesn’t seem remotely possible.

 “What did we do?” she asks. “Why did they take our village? We are children and did nothing to them.” '

'I'm not a hero anymore,' says doctor who spent years running secret hospitals in Syria

 

 'Dr. Mahmoud Hariri has lost a lot over the course of the Syrian war — his colleagues, his patients, his home. But he never lost hope.

 This week marks 10 years since the start of the war in Syria. Hariri has spent much of that decade working in underground hospitals and medical schools in Aleppo and Idlib, risking his life to treat people wounded by the regime's mortars, bombs and gunfire.

 He now resides in Turkey with his family, but his work at home isn't done. Today the surgeon works with an NGO helping to facilitate an underground medical school in Syria, training the next generation of doctors to replace the hundreds who have fled.

 "How I survived, I don't know," Hariri said. "But thank God that I'm still alive, and hope I will be back again to my country and work again and train the new generation."



 When the war began in Syria, being a doctor meant having a target on your back — especially if you dared to treat rebel fighters or civilians wounded by the Russian-backed Syrian regime.

 Just a year into the conflict, President Bashar al-Assad's government enacted a broad anti-terrorism law that doctors and human rights advocates say effectively criminalized providing medical assistance to those who oppose the regime.

 And any so-called rules of war that protect medical facilities from attack were quickly thrown by the wayside. Hospitals have been been a frequent target for bombings in Syria, and doctors have been arrested, tortured and killed.



 At one point, Syrian doctors gave the locations of their clandestine facilities to the United Nations in order to create a "no-strike list." But as those institutions came under repeated fire in 2019, it became clear to doctors on the ground that Russia and Syria were using the co-ordinates for targeted attacks.

 "If I'm a doctor and being captured in an Assad-regime area, I will be jailed, maybe [for] life, or be killed because I helped [treat] a wound and because I treat such patients. This is my crime," Hariri said.

 "We lost a lot of doctors, a lot of our friends, some of the good hearts, those people who stayed in spite of all of these difficulties."

 Physicians For Human Rights estimates that at least 930 medical professionals were killed in Syria between 2011 and March 2021, and that more than 90 per cent of those deaths were at the hands of the regime.

 Some of them were Hariri's friends. Like Dr. Muhammad Waseem Maaz, killed in an airtstrike on an Aleppo hospital in 2016. At the time, he was one of the last pediatricians still working in the city.



 "We lost one of the best hearts in this world," Hariri, then using the pseudonym Abdul Aziz, said at the time.

 "He always smiled. We asked him, 'Please just take a rest.' He said no. He's now 36. He's unmarried. He said, 'How can I marry? I would be [too] busy for my family. I would not be able to work for those babies who are crying every day."

 Today a hospital in al-Salameh, Syria, bears Dr. Maaz's name.

 "Everybody remembers Waseem," Hariri said. "They remember this generation of those martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the lives of others."



 Hariri says that early in the war, when the government was enacting a brutal crackdown on protesters demanding reform, there was hope among Syrians that the international community would come to their aid.

 "At the beginning of the revolution, they expected that within a couple of months, everything will be fine. We will get rid of Assad by the help of American and European countries," he said.

 But it didn't take long to realize they were on their own, Hariri said. And that meant taking things into their own hands.

 For Hariri, that meant working in secret medical units to treat the wounded, while training young medical students to work as trauma surgeons in the field.



 Before the war, he was a surgeon and a lecturer at Aleppo University Hospital, and he and his colleagues identified seven students who he suspected had sympathies for the revolution. They joined the cause, and Hariri trained them in the basics of emergency first aid over Skype, concealing their faces and voices. During demonstrations, they would wait nearby in their vehicles, then shuttle the injured to safe houses for treatment.

 In the summer of 2011, Hariri's colleague who helped form the fly-by-night school was kidnapped and killed. Then three of his students disappeared, their charred bodies discovered a week later in the streets of Aleppo.

 "I still remember them, still crying for them, of course," Hariri said.



 During those years, Hariri also took steps to protect his own identity. For the first year of the war, he went by the code name Dr. John White. After his students were killed, he adopted the pseudonym Dr. Aziz.

 Now that he and his family are in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, he finally feels safe to live as himself again.

 "I'm still dreaming to see my father and my mother, unable to see them. They are living on the other side," he said. "But this is a price. You have to pay the price. It's the price of freedom."

 Leaving Syria was a difficult decision, one he made for the sake of his own children. At first, he would cross the border intermittently to provide aid. Now, he works exclusively out of Turkey.

 Throughout the interview, he sang the praises of those doctors and medical professionals who stayed behind.

 "I'm not a hero anymore," he said. "I'm just one of those team who are looking for the future."

 Hariri now works with an organization called Health Information System Unit to co-ordinate Syrian medical aid, as well as the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations to help operate a clandestine medical school inside Syria, which will see its first graduating class next year.

 "We are training. We are able to build our country," he said. "We are able to prove to the whole world that Syrians can do it, can build themselves. They can do the miracles in Syria."



 He's fuelled, he said, by his memories of the war. The little boy whose life he saved, who clung to him crying, "Thank you doctor. I love you." The nine-year-old whose shoulder he amputated and who died in his arms. The father who thanked God after only one of his twin sons was shot and killed by a sniper, because at least his other child was spared the same grisly fate.

 "I'm living now on the mercy and the love of these days. In spite of the difficulties, it was the best days of my life," Hariri said.

 "Because I did many things for the sake of those people, innocent, and saved hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lives. I do believe that as a doctor, I did my best for my people. Not for the sake of just earning money from this job — for the sake of humanity." '

Where Syria uprising began 10 years ago, dissent still rife

 'A neglected provincial city amid the farmlands of the south, Daraa was the first place in Syria to explode into protests against the rule of Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.

 Daraa saw the arc of Syria’s conflict. Protesters met by a vicious crackdown by Assad’s forces turned to armed rebellion and civil war. Opposition fighters broke free of Assad’s rule in many areas, only to be crushed by his military once his allies Iran and Russia backed it with their firepower.

 Now on the 10th anniversary of those first protests, Daraa is back under régime control. But only tenuously. Boiling with resentments, desperate from economic crisis and rife with armed groups, the uprising’s birthplace still feels perched on the rim of an active volcano.



 “The young men still inside Syria are living in despair,” said Ahmed al-Masalmeh, who helped organize protests in Daraa a decade ago. Now in exile in Jordan, he remains determined to see the cause through despite the régime’s military victories. “We will invest in the despair ... to relaunch the revolution again.”

 Al-Masalmeh, at the time a 35-year-old electronics shop owner, was among the protesters at Daraa’s Omari Mosque on March 18, 2011, when security forces opened fire on the crowds. Two people were killed, the first to die in a decade of war that would killed more than a half million people, drive half of Syria’s population from their homes and level entire sections of its proudest cities.

 Al-Masalmeh had expected some violence, but thought Assad couldn’t get away with what his father Hafez Assad did in 1982, killing thousands to crush a revolt.

 “We thought the world has become a small village, with social media and satellite stations,” he said. “We never expected the level of killing and brutality and hatred for the people to reach these levels.”

 In some ways, Daraa set the tone for the opposition. A backwater compared to more cosmopolitan cities in the center, Daraa province’s population is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, largely conservative and impoverished — and bitter over decades of neglect. While secular activists advocated peaceful protests, Daraa’s protesters when faced with security agencies killing and torturing them turned to armed militias to fight back.



 The viciousness of the crackdown fueled sectarian hatreds, particularly between Sunnis and the Alawites, the minority sect to which Assad belongs.

 “My fear turned into spite and hatred. I hated Shiites, I hated Alawites,” said Nadel al-Amari. He left university in March 2011 and started a media center in Daraa transmitting images of protests to the world. Al-Amari was detained and brutally tortured for four months in 2011. He fled Syria and now lives in Germany.



 At its height in 2013 and 2014, rebels controlled most of Syria east of the Euphrates, parts of Daraa province and much of the north. It battled for all the major cities and even threatened Damascus from the surrounding countryside.

 Assad’s forces unleashed airstrikes, devastating barrel bombs and chemical attacks. The tide turned when his allies, Moscow and Tehran, stepped in directly, first Iran with military experts and allied Shiite militias, then Russia with its warplanes.

 Sieges and military campaigns against opposition-held cities and towns flattened neighborhoods and starved populations into submission. Opposition territory shrank, until it became confined to a small enclave centered on Idlib province in the northwest, dominated by Islamic militants and surviving only because of Turkish protection.

 Régime forces backed by Russia overwhelmed Daraa province in August 2018.

 But Daraa was far from controlled. Daraa has come under a unique arrangement mediated by Russia, partially because of pressure from Israel, which does not want Iranian militias on its doorstep, and from Jordan, which wants to keep its border crossings open.

 In parts of the province, rebel fighters who agreed to “reconcile” remained in charge of security. Some joined the 5th Corps, which is technically part of the Syrian Army but overseen by Russia. State and municipal institutions have returned, but régime forces stayed out.

 Elsewhere, Russian and régime troops are in charge together in a watered-down government authority. In the rest, the government is in outright control, and the Syrian army and Iranian-backed militias have deployed.



 The organized opposition presence gives a margin for protests and open anti-government sentiment hard to find elsewhere.

 Some rebels rejected the deal with Russia and wage a low-level insurgency that has killed more than 600 people. The dead include régime troops, pro-Iranian militiamen, rebels who signed onto the Russia deals, and mayors and municipal workers considered loyal to the government.

 As in other parts of the country, many are concerned over Tehran’s expanding influence. Iranian-backed militias recruit young men attracted by a stable salary. Traders linked to Assad and Iran have exploited the destitution in Daraa to buy up land. Pro-Iranian militias are said to be encouraging Sunnis to convert to Shiism.

 A new civil movement in the province is working to raise awareness against land sales and rally opposition to upcoming presidential elections, in which Assad will be the only candidate, said Hassan Alaswad, a prominent lawyer from Daraa now in exile in Germany.

 But at the same time, the public is also exhausted by the economy’s collapse across Syria. Inflation is spiraling, and there are few jobs. Trade and agriculture are broken down, and infrastructure wrecked.


 In Germany, al-Amari is working to build a life. But he is inexorably intertwined with Syria. He follows events in his home city. He breaks into tears when he talks of home. He hasn't seen his family in 10 years. Tattooed on his forearm is the date of the first protests, March 18.

 “We are living and not living,” he said.'

Hope still lives among the Syrian people, 10 years after the war started

 Rabia Kasiri, White Helmet volunteer and medical student in Idlib:

 "The past 10 years have taken an extreme toll on me, and I don't think about the future anymore. The constant bombing by Syrian and Russian warplanes forced us to live in a state of emergency and I always wonder if I will live until the next day. I might leave the house and never come back or I might go to sleep and never wake up.

 I fear that if we will live like this for many more years, my daughter will grow up feeling the same. Six-year-old Rahaf represents my hopes and dreams. She gives me strength and happiness every day. I love medicine and I dream I'll be able to finish my studies and become a doctor. I dream our children won't live in fear, deprivation, and danger like we did. The war took so much from us, but we have to remain strong to be able to help others. I hope for peace to prevail and for no more lives lost."



 Dr. Tarraf al-Tarraf, surgeon in Idlib:

 "When I joined the protests in 2011, I dreamed of our right to freedom and dignity.

 I wanted to resume my higher education but all my dreams stopped when I lost my brother Dr. Huthaifa, who died from torture in Assad's prisons; my brother Dr. Yousef, who was killed by a Russian airstrike; and many of my friends and colleagues. I also lost my home and was displaced with my family. I stopped dreaming when all I could do was try to save the life of a child injured by the bombardment.

 I hope for the targeting of civilians and hospitals to stop and that we're not forced to set up more hospitals inside caves to escape the airstrikes.

 I hope for the release of all detainees in Assad's prisons, including doctors and medical workers who were tortured for doing their jobs. I hope for all the doctors who were forced to leave the country to be able to return home and help build a stronger health system that would meet the needs of all Syrians and compensate for the hundreds of hospitals destroyed by Assad and Vladimir Putin's warplanes.

 But it is impossible for any of these dreams to become a reality while Assad is still in power. I fear the régime will continue to commit crimes -- from bombardment, detention and forced displacement -- and the international community will continue to remain silent and turn a blind eye to these crimes."

 Nora Barre, Syrian-American activist:

 "We can't discuss Syria's future in a vacuum without understanding the intricate relationship with Russia and Iran -- with Assad as their puppet. Iran has the most skin in the game on the ground in Syria, but Iran's economy is suffering due to sanctions following the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

 Russia's economy is also struggling due to Covid and increased sanctions, so I believe Russia will also start to withdraw its support for Assad. The Caesar Act (sanctioning Assad supporters) has unfortunately caused unbearable suffering for Syrians but has also starved the régime's resources.

 Today, Syria is a failed state with increased suffering, worldwide refugees and terrorists.
The best case scenario for Syria's future is not filled with sunshine and rainbows. The end for the Assad régime will be when the continued decline of the Iranian and Russian economies means they stop funding the Syrian killing machine."



 Wafa Mustafa, Syrian activist and journalist:

 "It will not be long before Assad and his inner circle are on trial for crimes against humanity. The evidence is stark and all it takes is for the international community to overcome Russia's and China's Security Council vetoes and refer Syria to the International Criminal Court. I hold onto hope that more than 130,000 political prisoners will be released and my dad will be free and will join the call for justice for all the years we have lost together.

 It should also be possible for the families of those kidnapped by ISIS to see justice done or to find answers about their loved ones, for all those detained by armed groups to be freed.

 Ten years ago so many Syrians demanded freedom, dignity and democracy. I continue to march and campaign for these very same values and I will not give up hope."

 Hasna Issa, Syrian activist:

 "Ten years since the revolution started, Assad has killed hundreds of thousands, forced millions to flee their homes, bombed schools and hospitals and burned farms. But we don't regret calling for freedom, dignity and justice, and will continue to do so.

 Being detained by the régime for participating in the peaceful protests 10 years ago made me hold on more firmly to our revolution's values and goals, because I've witnessed what happens in Assad's dungeons with my own eyes.

 My husband left me alone with my twin daughters in besieged Ghouta -- the way I was treated by the community for being a divorced woman made me fight for women's rights and it became my struggle. I do everything in my power to support and empower women around me, especially young women, because it all starts with raising a generation of leaders who will help shape the future of our country.

 So many Syrian women seek to build a better Syria that guarantees them their rights to freedom and dignity. We don't want a food basket or charity, we want justice and accountability. We want to return to our homes that we were forced to flee, we want schools for our children, we want universities to give proper education, we want job opportunities to work and be independent."



 Hiba Barakat, journalist and photographer in Idlib:



 "When the revolution started in 2011, I wasn't fully aware of how criminal and corrupt the régime was. Maybe because I was too young or because of people's fear of speaking out. I later began to see the crimes that the régime was ready to commit to silence the people. I was forced to flee my home more than once to escape bombing. My brother has been missing in Assad's prison for years and we know nothing about what's happened to him. My father was killed by a Russian airstrike. My life turned upside down in an unspeakable way.

 Armed groups and militias took advantage of the honest and peaceful revolution that was sparked by young men and women who demanded freedom and dignity. Then it turned into a proxy war between many states with different agendas and policies.

 I fear we will find ourselves ruled by régimes that are similar to the one we fought to bring down. I fear there will be no place for me in this country anymore.

 What I hope for is another revolution that will liberate us from those who imposed themselves as rulers with the power of their weapons."



 Ali Abdulkader, activist and center manager of the Kesh Malek advocacy group: 

 "When we were forced to flee our home last year, my 8-year-old daughter Hiba came to me crying because she left her favorite toy behind. It breaks my heart every time I think about it.

 I was a law student when the revolution started but I soon turned to work with civil society groups because I believed that our work with the youths is essential in helping them shape the future of the Syria we still dream of.

 The world stood still as the Assad régime and his allies committed all kinds of crimes against Syrians over the past 10 years. It stood still as extremist groups, including ISIS, emerged to take advantage and tried to distort the image of our revolution. But that didn't stop us from continuing to work for a free, civil, democratic and pluralistic Syria. Even if we don't get to live to see it, at least our children will get the chance.

 My hope is for the world to realize their huge responsibility to step up to end the suffering of millions of Syrians, hold criminals accountable and restore our faith in humanity and human rights. It's never too late to save Syria."

Despite war and destruction, Syrian activists have no regrets on tenth anniversary of revolution

 'Syrians this week will mark the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring revolution against President Bashar al-Assad's rule which took their country by storm and shaped its present-day reality.

 While many Syrians today feel great sadness at the death and destruction that their country has suffered over the past ten years, Syrian activists who took part in the revolution have said they remain committed to the ideals of freedom and dignity which the 2011 protests espoused and have no regrets.

 The beginning of the Syrian revolution is generally dated to 15 March 2011, when hundreds of activists took to the streets of Damascus in a "Day of Rage" against the authoritarianism, corruption and political persecution which had pervaded Syrian political life ever since President Bashar al-Assad's Baath Party took power in a 1963 military coup.

 Sawsan Abou Zainedin, an activist from Suweida province, said that the régime's authoritarian rule pervaded every facet of life in Syria before the revolution.

 "We were raised to fear the security forces, informers, and the mukhabarat (secret police), who people said knew everything about you. They were present everywhere and this made us afraid to talk and even to think loudly. Everything was being run in a way where régime loyalists and Baath Party members got preferential treatment. In practice we were living the régime's oppression in every aspect of our daily lives – in schools and the education system, in job opportunities and university places and even in entry to hospitals."

 Assad's régime responded to the first protests in the only way it knew how, with repression and arrests, but this was only a small foretaste of the violence it would later inflict on the Syrian people.

 The uprising quickly spread across the country, however, as news of protests and their repression in one Syrian locality would quickly reach other parts of Syria through the then-new tool of social media, and people took to the streets in solidarity with the régime's victims.

 One of the earliest centres of revolutionary activity was Daraa province, where the régime had detained and tortured teenage boys for scrawling anti-Assad graffiti on a wall in early March 2011.

 Dani Qappani, an activist from the city of Moadamiyeh near Damascus said, "My activism started in the first months of the Syrian revolution, and it was all thanks to my city, Moadamiyeh. All of its people rose up in the early days in solidarity with Daraa, against what Assad's gangs were doing to its children and its people."

 Abou Zainedin told of the innovative forms of non-violent resistance that her and other activists in Suweida province took part in.

 "When the Arab Spring started we felt we could speak, and that change was possible. People organised in a really spontaneous way. We'd organise demonstrations together and perform other acts of rebellion – paint pictures of the president with red, release balloons with revolutionary slogans on them, or write slogans on dozens of baseballs and release them all over the streets. This was our response to the violence of the régime in Homs and Daraa and other areas."

 Many Syrians had left their country before 2011 over the long years of Assad family rule and the protests in Syria inspired members of the Syrian diaspora to take action in support of the Syrian uprising.

 Leila al-Shami, the co-author of the book Burning Country: Syrians in War and Revolution said that the Syrian revolution had defined life for her over the past decade.

 "I think for all Syrians the revolution has defined the last decade for us. In 2011, when it began, I felt immense pride and admiration for the young women and men who risked their lives to attend protests calling for freedom and social justice," she said. "Being outside Syria but having friends and family inside, some of whom were involved in the protest movement, I felt a responsibility to do what I could to stand in solidarity and amplify Syrian voices to ensure that they are heard outside."

 Salam Abbara, a Syrian-French medical researcher, said that she found a big discrepancy in the way the Syrian uprising and later conflict was being reported and what was happening on the ground.

 "Since the beginning of the revolution I was involved in media or humanitarian activism. I participated in an initiative to translate information from the ground to English and French because journalists could not enter Syria [at the time]. The Syrian conflict is very hard to understand to most people, and lots of people forget the most important part of it: a fight for dignity."

 Today, ten years on, the hopes of the people who took part in the original protests of the Syrian revolution seem like a distant dream. The régime received crucial support from Iran and Russia and showed that it was willing to destroy the entire country in order to stay in power. It had no reservations about deliberately targeting schools and hospitals, or using chemical weapons against civilians.

 By contrast the activists who took part in the earliest protests of the Syrian revolution received little more than rhetorical support from Western and Arab states.

 Syria in 2021 is in ruins. Over half a million people have been killed, mostly by the Assad régime and its allies. Nearly seven million people – over a quarter of the country's pre-war population – are refugees outside Syria and a further six million are internally displaced. It is estimated that the war has cost $1.2 trillion worth of damage and it will take decades for the country to rebuild. Eighty per cent of people in Syria live in poverty today.

 However, despite Syria's ongoing tragedy, the Syrian activists said they had no regrets.

 Dani Qappani documented human rights abuses by the régime and was pursued by its security forces, while his brother was arrested. After the régime lost control of Moadamiyeh to rebels, it used chemical weapons on the city, killing hundreds of people and later overrunning the rebel stronghold

 "My experience during the revolution was one of a dream fulfilled, a dream of freedom of thought and expression, a dream of liberation from servitude to individuals, to the Assad family, from all the chains restraining our minds, our eyes, and our mouths," he said.

 "Personally, I have never regretted my participation in the revolution and I will not regret it. It's an inevitable result of the oppression, repression, and criminality that Assad's gang has practiced for decades," he said.

 Sawsan Abou Zainedin said that despite the hardships her country and her family experienced, she would only hold the Assad régime, not the Syrian uprising, responsible.

 "Of course, I have no regrets, 100 per cent. My father, my brother, and my sister were detained and we were constantly harassed by the security forces and Assad's supporters. But we can't hold the revolution and the dreams we had of freedom and justice responsible. The régime, its security forces, and its allies are responsible for the death and destruction in Syria," she said.

 Her sentiments were echoed by Leila al-Shami.

 "I don't feel regret regarding the revolution. When people suffer decades of oppression it's inevitable that they will eventually rise against tyranny. My regrets relate to the brutality of the counter-revolution and the failures of the international community to act to stop the ongoing slaughter of civilians," Al-Shami said.

 Salam Abbara is currently working on 100 Faces of the Syrian Revolution, a project to preserve the memory of the Syrian activists who took part in the uprising and their work. She said that so many Syrians were still working for a better future for their country.

 "Thousands of Syrians are still working every day, whether in arts, media activism, humanitarian projects, legal initiatives against impunity, local councils, women empowerment projects, and so on. So we should not forget them, and try to focus on those people who bring positive action to go further."

 Syrians have led a long campaign for justice against Bashar al-Assad's régime and last month, a German court sentenced a former Syrian intelligence officer to four and a half years in prison for crimes against protesters in a landmark ruling.

 Abou Zainedin said that the efforts to bring justice and accountability gave her hope despite the bleak situation in Syria today.

 "We have a very long way to go in order to get to a point where we can start building the country we dreamed of. We have to focus on justice, and holding criminals accountable," she said.

 "We must pressure the international community to support Syrian efforts to realise justice through all legal avenues. We must also pressure them to deliver aid to Syria in a just way that respects human rights, and not contribute to strengthening the régime or rehabilitating it".

 "But in the long term, I have faith that all Syrians will stand up for their rights and for justice, or at least some aspects, of it to be done. They know the road is very long but it has to be travelled," she added.

 "One day Syrians will see the dream they tried to achieve become real, even if it's through very small steps and even if it doesn't happen in our generation or the next."

 Qappani also said that he remained confident that the values of the revolution will bring positive change to Syria in the future.

 "On the surface, the present situation is not what we wished for and not what we sacrificed for… however, since we have broken the fear barrier imposed on us for decades and as long as we don't lose hope in a free Syria and fight to establish justice and accountability for criminals from all sides, first among them Bashar al-Assad, I am confident we will see a better day, where we will cry tears of joy with one eye and tears of sadness with the other." '

‘We survived Assad’s prisons and we will rebuild Syria’

 

  Omar Alshogre:

 'A decade has passed since I first tasted real freedom.

 It was March 18, 2011, when I received a phone call from my then-20-year-old cousin, Bashir. In a shaky voice, he asked me to come down to the city centre of Baniyas, 10 minutes from my home village of al-Bayda, telling me only: “The birds are gathering, you have to come.”

 I was 15, but I understood what his coded words meant. I had watched the protests in Tunisia and Egypt on TV. On March 6, they had arrived in Syria, when residents of Dara’a protested against the arrest and torture of 15 students for writing anti-government graffiti, and on March 15, there had been more unrest in Damascus. Now I understood that it was the turn of my city.

 Overhearing our conversation, my father, a retired military officer, told me: “Stay home, stay safe.” He knew only too well the corruption and brutality of the régime as, decades earlier, his cousins had been detained for 12 years. Now he wanted to keep me and my siblings safe.

 But I desperately wanted to be part of something so important. It wasn’t even because of the corruption of the régime, which had been so normalised I barely noticed it, but because all of my classmates and friends were taking part and I wanted to join them.

 My father believed in the need for a revolution, but he was afraid for me. I channelled all the excitement I felt into persuading him to let me go. Perhaps it was the hope in my eyes that finally changed his mind. He agreed to drive me into the city on his motorcycle.

 As we drove there, I thought he would join us, but he just dropped me off, telling me: “Hide your face, a million people may die.” I watched him as he drove away.

 As I approached the protesters, someone handed me a white rose. I remember vividly the smell of that rose as it mingled with the sea air. It seemed to me to add more beauty to the protest and to our demands for freedom.

 As I sang that word – “freedom” – in Arabic and English, I felt immovable. I couldn’t believe the feeling of strength it gave me. But there was also fear there in the crowd. I noticed the way protesters looked anxiously around, from one side to another, as though they were waiting for something.

 And then that something arrived: Thousands of Syrian army soldiers and operatives from the intelligence services, all armed.

 I was confused. Despite all the stories I had heard, I’d never before witnessed the régime’s brutality myself.



 The demonstrators turned to face the military peacefully, chanting: “The Army and the people are siblings.” But our siblings opened fire on us that day, killing a handful and injuring many more.

 Among those killed was my 16-year-old school friend, Alaa.

 The protesters dispersed. Women opened the doors to their homes so we could hide inside. I remember the feeling of gratitude I felt upon finding refuge in a stranger’s house. Later, after the army had left, we returned to the city centre to continue our demonstration.

 In May, Baniyas became the site of a seven-day siege by government soldiers in which several more people were killed. The régime said it was targeting “terrorists” but the Syrian opposition knew it was a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
But before that happened, I was arrested for the first time. On April 12, my family, unaware that government forces had arrived in our village, sent me out to buy bread.

 My hands were tied behind my back and I was thrown to the ground alongside more than 500 other men who had been rounded up at the same time.

 Soldiers stamped and jumped on my head and body, forcing me to scream out my “allegiance” to the president: “God, Syria, and Bashar!”

 I had said those words for the last five years at the start of each school day, but this time I finally understood the true brutality implicit in them.

 I was held in a detention centre and tortured for two days before being forced to give a false confession and released.



 Over the next year, I was arrested five more times and held for days or weeks until my parents could take advantage of the corruption of the régime to bribe my father’s former colleagues to let me go. I was made to sign papers saying I wouldn’t demonstrate again – but I always did.

 Then, in November 2012, I was arrested for the last time – alongside my cousins: Bashir, 22, Rashad, 19, and Noor, 17.

 We were moved from prison to prison, eventually ending up in the notorious Branch 215 in Damascus, which we called “the branch of slow death”.

 I saw both Rashad and Bashir die in prison, and heard that Noor had also been killed.

 While I was imprisoned, the régime also killed my father and my two brothers, 15-year-old Osman and 19-year-old Mohammad, and set our house on fire. It bombed my school, imprisoned my childhood friends and unleashed slaughter in my village. My mother and sisters were among those who managed to escape, eventually making their way to Turkey.

 In prison, I learned more about the reality of dictatorship than I ever could have done on the outside.

 The guards created an environment in which you had to turn on other people just to survive. My cousins and cellmates were forced to hit me as hard as they could. To eat, you would have to take somebody else’s food. To drink, you would have to take somebody else’s water.

 As a child growing up I had learned that a father would sacrifice his life to save his child. But in prison, I witnessed a father killing his child so that he might survive by eating his food. I saw a boy fighting with his twin brother to get a space to sit in as the rooms were too small to house the number of prisoners there.

 In those prisons, you either die in pain or you live with the pain and the survivor’s guilt.

 In the darkness and filth of my cell, I had many nightmares – of guards executing me or of being forced to kill my friends and family. But I also had dreams. There were nights when I saw the dictator on trial, when I saw myself standing in front of him in a court, when I saw him being thrown into prison.

 Then, on June 11, 2015, after three years in prison, I was smuggled out by guards who had been bribed by my mother. They did it by staging a mock execution.



 Ten days later I made my way to Turkey, where I was reunited with my mother. But to get medical treatment for the tuberculosis I had contracted in prison, I had to make my way to Sweden – first journeying across the Mediterranean in a dangerous rubber boat.

 In Europe, I began to build a new home and a new life. But what I had endured in prison continued to haunt me – in endless nightmares at night and in the knowledge that those of us who have escaped still have to look over our shoulders during the day.

 One of my former prison guards found me through social media. He called me and threatened me to stay silent. In that moment, all the pain came straight back to me but I somehow found the presence of mind to record the call, hoping to use it in any future legal case against him.

 The narrative that the régime puts out is that Syrians who have left their country have forgotten it, but that is not the case. We still remember and are working hard to become the people who will rebuild Syria when the time comes.



 In the last few years, my fellow survivors and I have provided testimony to Swedish police, German prosecutors and to European war crimes investigators about the brutalities of the régime so they can build cases against it.

 One of the results of that has been a series of prosecutions against Syrian war criminals caught in Europe, such as that of Eyad al-Gharib, a former intelligence officer captured in Germany. In February this year, he was sentenced by a German court to four-and-a-half years in prison.

 My fellow Syrians and I have used our trauma as a driving force. We have adapted to our nightmares, and turned them into new dreams. We have made our fear work for us.

 I look at my mother who, despite her losses, has managed to start two new lives in two new countries – Turkey and Sweden. She was the one who, despite her pain, made me feel safe when I was reunited with her; the one I could call when I had a nightmare; the one who told me: “What you went through, and what I went through, is worth remembering.”

 It is worth remembering.'

'We won't give up’: new generation of activists keep Syria's revolution alive

  'Kasem’s teenage years were spent living under siege in the city of Homs, where friends and relatives disappeared in régime prisons and her family lived much of the time without electricity, struggling to secure food and medicine. All the while, Bashar al-Assad’s air force dropped barrel bombs and cluster munitions on their neighbourhood.

 When the city fell, the Kasems were faced with a choice millions more would make during the course of the war: stay and face Assad’s troops, who would treat them like terrorists, or flee to Idlib province – also unstable, but at least outside régime control.

 “I thought we were moving from one hell to another,” said the 21-year-old student. “But at least once we arrived I could focus again on studying, and on how to help rebuild Syria again. My generation is still carrying the same hopes for justice and freedom. We will not give up on what the older generation started.”

 After 10 years of war, Assad, with the help of his Russian and Iranian allies, has clawed back control of most of the country, and the dream of a “Free Syria” is confined to a north-west pocket made up of Idlib city and the surrounding countryside.

An Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, wrested control of the area from other opposition factions in 2019; régime airstrikes and the possibility of a full-scale assault remain a constant threat.

 There are few jobs, and a steady stream of aid cuts have made life even harder for the estimated 3 million civilians trapped between the two forces. And yet, every Friday, groups of people still take to the squares of towns and villages to chant slogans and wave banners in support of Syria’s revolution, reiterating the same demands they had a decade ago. Major celebrations are expected on Monday 15 March – the anniversary of the day in 2011 a few dozen protesters braved the streets of Damascus to call for freedom.

 “The price of joining the revolution was not small. We have paid a huge price and endured huge losses. But we are not just victims. We are survivors,” said Hasna Issa, 36, an activist formerly detained by the régime who now works on gender equality and female leadership programmes at Kesh Malek, a civil society organisation working across Syria’s north-west.

 “We are raising the next generation in a way different to anything we could imagine before. My twin daughters are nine.… They are not just going to be able to vote in free elections in future; they know they can run for office.”

 Kesh Malek, created in the early days of the uprising, runs young citizen workshops in which young men and women can learn about the principles of democracy, human rights and non-violent resistance that underpinned the revolution. The organisers also see the programme as an important bulwark against extremism.

 “I didn’t think we would still be fighting for basic rights so much time later,” said Mohamed Barakat, the manager of a Kesh Malek community centre in the village of Killi.

 “When the revolution started I thought what happened in other countries like Tunisia would happen in Syria too. I thought the régime would step away and give in to the people’s demand for freedom. Instead, they launched military action and bombing, and I realised that we would struggle for a long time.

 “We have to keep the dream alive for the next generation … they are so motivated. Working with young people brings me hope and joy,” he added.

 Syria’s young people bear many scars, both physical and mental. For teenagers, and those in their 20s, it is hard to reconcile past memories of peacetime happiness with the present.



 “I have lost so much in the war. My father, my brother, years of my life as a young woman,” said photographer Hiba Barakat, 23.

 “I love my work as a photographer, but it is difficult to make enough money, and the situation here is unstable and dangerous. During the military campaign against Idlib last year I went to document the bombing of a school, the day the régime targeted five schools on a single day.

 “I have to do something in a situation like this. I have to tell the story. But life here is unbearable. Activists, journalists, social workers. Everyone applies for asylum.”

 Dima Ghanoum, the headteacher of a school in Daret Azza, says all of her students would also leave Syria in a heartbeat if they had the chance.

 “The younger children are very curious about life before the war. My own daughter, she will ask: ‘Did you really go to restaurants where you could order food and sit? Did you really have electricity all the time?’ They are the first generation to be born into freedom, but they don’t understand what it is yet, or the price we have paid for it.

 “Under the régime we lived in an extremely unequal society. I can’t describe properly how it feels to teach in a tent, to have to stop class sometimes just to hug your students to stop them trembling with fear and cold. But I would never go back to régime control. We live in hardship and fear … but it is still better than that.”

 Putting Syria’s pieces back together again for now remains a distant dream. For the new generation, it may not even happen: according to research from Save the Children, one in three children displaced inside the country want to leave, and 86% of refugee children interviewed in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and the Netherlands said they do not want to go back to the country their parents left.

 “We face different things at our age than the older generation of activists did,” said Kasem. “Our childhood was completely destroyed. But we have a duty and ability to keep going … Our efforts to make Syria a better place deserve support from the outside world.

 “Without the Syrian revolution, I wouldn’t be the person I am now.” '

Syrian 'father of martyrs' raises orphaned grandchildren

 
 'Syria's war robbed 83-year-old Abderrazaq Khatoun of 13 of his children and one of his wives, but he was forced to overcome his grief quickly to raise 11 orphaned grandchildren.

 In an encampment in Syria's last major rebel bastion of Idlib, the patriarch says he wears the nickname of "father of the martyrs" with pride, and will do everything to prepare the children for a better future.

 Displaced from his native home in central Hama province, Khatoun and 30 surviving family members have pitched four tents on a strip of land surrounded by olive trees in the village of Harbanoush.

 Inside one of the tents, Khatoun sat on a long thin mattress, his grandchildren aged from one to 14 huddled around him poring over schoolbooks.

 "What did you study today?" he asked the oldest among the boys and girls. "Did you learn the lesson?"

 "We did," they replied in enthusiastic unison.

 Before the war, Khatoun was a farmer and the proud father of 27 children, born from three different wives and some already well into adulthood.

 But Syria's conflict, which enters its eleventh year this month, has torn away a huge chunk of his family for good.

 "Since the onset of the revolution, I have given seven martyrs," he said, referring to seven of his sons who died fighting in rebel ranks against government forces.



 Then air strikes on a petrol station in the town of Saraqeb, where his family had found shelter from advancing régime troops, piled more tragedy on his family.

 "I lost seven more members of my family -- my wife and children," he said, adding that some of his offspring were small children.

 His eyes brimmed with tears as he pulled out his smartphone and played footage of rescue workers searching the rubble in the aftermath of that strike.

 "In an instant, I lost them all," said Khatoun, struggling to remember the exact date of the tragedy.

 A deadly air raid by régime ally Russia hit a petrol station in the town in January 2020.



 Khatoun says he has no regrets.

 "Losing children is devastating, but defending your land requires sacrifice and I'm proud of them," he said of his sons who died on the battlefield. "They were in the flower of their youth."

 He hopes one day, justice will be done for his sons.

 In the meanwhile, "I will teach their children that sacrifice is necessary to defend what is right and demand a dignified life," he said.

 Today the Assad régime controls more than 60 percent of Syria after a string of Russia-backed victories.

 But a ceasefire has since March 2020 largely held in the region of Idlib, where two thirds of 2.9 million inhabitants have been displaced from other parts of the country.

 Inside one of the family tents, Khatoun's 11 grandchildren crouched in a circle for a meal of flatbread, olives, and dried thyme drenched in olive oil.

 The 14-year-old, clutching a toddler on her knee, passed around the bread.

 Behind them, some towels hung on a line strung across the canvas wall.



 "Some days we go hungry, and some days we eat," said Khatoun, explaining that he was too old to work.

 But he said he would do anything for his grandchildren.

 I hope "they live happy lives and that they remember the tales of their fathers sacrificing themselves to defend the land," he said.

 I want them to "have a house, not a tent, and a car to travel around in," he said. "I won't deprive them of anything as long as I live."

 Batoul, one of his widowed daughters-in-law helps him look after the children, after some of his surviving children left war-torn Syria seeking a better life in neighbouring Turkey and Lebanon.'

 "We have suffered a lot," she said, mourning her late husband.

 But "my father-in-law tries hard to provide us with a dignified life." '