Survivor of Assad's Chemical Attack on Ghouta

 Ali Zawawi:

 'Before the revolution, I was an English teacher. I was continuing my studies at the University of Damascus. I was married, and lived in Damascus. During my time in Damascus, I always dreamed of leaving Syria, and travel abroad somewhere where I could be more free, and have more freedom. Because in our country, people are not treated like a human. They are treated like anything but a human. You can't talk about politics, you can't talk about religion, you can't talk about the economy. You can't talk about anything related to the régime.

 It was a taboo to talk about these subjects. People didn't feel comfortable living in Damascus, or in Syria in general. You are always under threat of being taken if you talk about any of these topics, or if you touch anything that's related to the régime. I felt that I have to move, but I had to finish my studies first, and in Syria, military service is obligatory, so I had to go to it. I didn't know how to run away from it.

 As long as you are studying, you can avoid it, until a certain age, which was 26 or 27, my age at the time, when it's mandatory, you have to go through this service. It doesn't go through anyone's mind that you're serving the country; actually you're serving the officers, you're serving this sectarian  régime that's controlling Syria.

                                *****************************************************

 The revolution was at its very beginning as I was due to go for military service. At that moment, I decided to go to Ghouta, which was seemingly liberated. I wanted to join people who were resisting the régime at that time. I wanted to help them in any means. So I took my family and moved to Ghouta.

 There were so many who wanted to go from the régime to the liberated areas, but they didn't know how. Alhamdulillah I had some friends in Ghouta, who told me how to get inside, because the routes almost all had checkpoints or were blocked, so I had to go through different routes. So I took my family. It was very dangerous to go inside Ghouta, because there was so much bombing, airstrikes. I had never been in this situation, my family with me, my wife and my child at that time. I had only one child at that time.

 Prisons in Syria were already full before the revolution. There are taboos you can't talk about. So whenever someone talks about Islam, you practice it in the correct way, they don't like it. So you are taken to prison, where you might spend years and years. If you talk about the economy of the country, if you talk about the politics of the country, if you talk about the régime, they might take you to jail and spend years and years there, or you might be killed inside the prison. It's the main reason, not just for me, but for many people, and for the guys who got involved in the revolution.

 

                                *****************************************************

 In the beginning, Ghouta was half way besieged. There were two roads open with checkpoints. Nothing large could enter, for example big amounts of food or fuel couldn't go inside unless they were smuggled, inside cars or under the cars. After two years there was a complete siege, and they blocked all the roads, and it became a military area. 

 There were 400,000 people inside Ghouta, and all of them were besieged. You can imagine how difficult it was. Life became so primitive. There was no electricity. There was no fuel to run cars, to run generators. We didn't have any access to food supplies, even to clean water.

 So life was very difficult for everybody. Three or four months after the siege started, you could look at people in the street as if they had gone through a severe diet. They became very skinny and pale. 

 Some of my friends lost their lives trying to get some plastic. Plastic had a very high price in there, because they would melt it down in a special way, and turn it into gas, diesel and gasoline. So at the end, Ghouta became free of plastic. You could see no plastic at all. So the guys had to go between us and the army, in places where the army could see you sometimes, to take a plastic tank or something like that. One of my friends lost his hand, he got a sniper shot in his hand under the shoulder, and other people died, just trying to get some plastic.

                                *****************************************************

 At the beginning, it was only the Syrian army, but as soon as the Syrian army got very weak, because some of the soldiers started to run away from the army coming inside Ghouta, or to go to other towns to join the revolution, Hezbollah came in from Lebanon, and started fighting for the régime. Also, just after a few months, we heard people coming from Pakistan. Shia people coming from Pakistan and other areas. After that, Russia started coming in and helping the régime with airstrikes. 

 Damascus is the heart of Syria, and it really threatened the régime if it was taken, the régime would fall right away. We were just two kilometres away from the heart of Damascus. So if they couldn't get rid of the rebels inside Ghouta, it would have been a big problem for them.

                                *****************************************************

 The chemical attack in 2013 was the biggest one, and I was in the area where we received this chemical attack first. I was in Zamalka city, and I can remember it was a very awful day. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, and I was sleeping, and it was very quiet at the beginning. Suddenly I heard someone running in the alley, and he was shouting, and I could hear that he couldn't breathe very well. I was shouting that there was a chemical attack. Until that moment, I was waking up, and I couldn't comprehend what he was saying exactly, I couldn't comprehend what was going on.

 Just a few seconds later, I felt that I was out of breath; and my wife next to me woke up, and she had the same symptoms, she couldn't breathe well. So I understood there was a real chemical attack. I asked to run away upstairs to the roof. She didn't know why, but suddenly they started throwing more missiles, these are chemical missiles. So I told her to go upstairs right away, and I carried my son upstairs to the roof. She shouted at me to go downstairs, because this is what usually happens when there is a bombing. I shouted at her, look this is a chemical attack, and we have to go upstairs. This is the first measure we were told if we were hit by a chemical attack, because the gas usually goes down.

 It's true to some extent, as when we went upstairs, after just five minutes, I felt I was going to faint. I couldn't breathe well. My two children also couldn't breathe well. I had a very small child, just one year old at that time. I tried to put a mask on him, but he couldn't take it, he doesn't know how to deal with it.

 So I decided to leave the neighbourhood, alhamdulillah I had a car at that time. It was destroyed later by an airstrike.So I took my family and some of my friends in my car. We went north to a town seven kilometres away from Zamalka city. We stayed there for eleven hours. I couldn't breathe well at that time. I had very strange symptoms. My pupils were very, very small. All the people who were around you had small pupils. We had problem breathing, our bodies were very weak.

 The first thing I went to a far area just to get rid of the gas that was around us. I went to a clinic there, but the clinic was full of people, and the symptoms like the ones that I had were mild in comparison, and they didn't treat me. Usually they give you an injection that helps you to breathe better. So I didn't get an injection, I just went back to my friends house. Subhanallah the symptoms we had very very mild, but when we came back home after twelve or thirteen hours, it was a disaster.

 The next alley in the neighbourhood where I used to live, the families all were dead. Some of them were dead in bed, some were dead out in the street trying to get help. Some of the medics were also out in the street dead, they were trying to help other people. Some families were dead, and they couldn't find them after three or four days, because they didn't know how to react, so they went inside the bathroom and closed the doors to keep the gas outside, but sarin got inside and killed all the families.

 There are some very sad stories. I have one of my friend. He was was newly married. He died with his wife and his mother-in-law, in the same house, very close to my house.


                                 *****************************************************


 I think it is a much bigger number of dead than the UN confirmed. Medics would say there were about two thousand people who died at that time, and really you could see the hospitals, the clinics; they were full of children, of women, of different ages; they were dead. They choked, they couldn't breathe.

 We had some remarkable stories of people who were considered to be dead, this sarin gas stops their heart, and after two hours the heart is beating, but very faintly, so the doctors think the person was dead. So they said that some people were buried alive. I'm not sure of this story, but it's what I heard, and we saw some people who were between the dead people, ready to be taken to the graveyard to be buried, but somehow they made a movement, and some people realised they were moving, and picked them up from among the dead people.


                                  *****************************************************

 From the very beginning, the Assad régime started to be very weak. They tried to get help from Shia groups and militias from Lebanon, from Pakistan, from other countries, but it was useless. Even though the fighters who were fighting the régime didn't have big experience in fighting, but they had a cause.


Subhanallah we had a cause to defend. And at the same time, the feeling that we had after moving from the authority of the régime to a different authority of Allah, even though we were bombed with airstrikes with tainted barrels, with all these types of weapons that we never thought we would be bombarded with, we felt happy. We felt free. We wanted to defend that feeling. We wanted to have our freedom.


They used chemical weapons because they wanted to take Ghouta on that day. They were planning to take Ghouta, and they thought by throwing these chemical weapons, and killing massive numbers of people, we would be weak. And this is exactly what happened. When they bombed us with the chemical weapons, after three hours they began a huge military offensive on Jobar, Zamalka and Ein Tarma. These are three big frontlines, but subhanallah they were not successful, and many tanks of the régime were hit, and some the soldiers left the tanks working and ran away. Hundreds of soldiers were killed at that time. So basically they wanted to take Ghouta, they wanted to finish this issue.

                                 *****************************************************

 The main attack was this one in Zamalka and Ein Terma where two thousand people died, but the régime continued using chemical weapons, more than a hundred or two hundred times. We didn't have ISIS inside Ghouta, so it was all coming from the Assad régime. They used different types of gases, but the worst one was sarin. They used chlorine gases too, too much actually. They used it on a daily basis when there was a military offensive. 

 Of course, there is no accountability, and this is what we were shocked by. How the international world is not reacting to these kind of attacks. And not only that, the reaction that they gave and showed wasn't up to the level. Killing two thousand people in one day, this is horrible. It's a horrible thing.

 The other thing that shocked us is they only talked about the chemical attack. They didn't talk about other things. There were about twenty people death toll every day from different kinds of weapons. What about these people? Is it permissible to kill people with tainted barrels? Is it permissible to kill people with airstrikes? So we don't understand how the international world acts.

 People here on the ground, Syrian rebels and civilians, they actually know what's happening, and they understand how the international community is acting, and why they are acting like that.

                                 *****************************************************

 One day, there's a highway between us and the régime. We had ribaat over there, and some of the guys had ribaat on the frontline. So the régime, suddenly sends a woman, and she was naked. They sent her to cut the highway, to come to the liberated area. The guys are looking at her, and are shocked at how she is coming in. There are régime snipers, and suddenly they shot her in the leg or somewhere, and she passed away. The guys tried to reach out to her, with ropes, with metals, to grab her, but it was very difficult. So they decided to send one of the brothers there. He ran very quickly to her, but he received another bullet, and he died just next to her.

 Then another brother ran to her to cover her body, but he also got killed. Then they sent a brother with a rope around his waist, and he ran over there to grab the woman. The brothers told me that he died later on, but they could drag the woman inside our area, and they buried her. It turned out she was one of the sisters in prison, and they wanted to humiliate us with her, by sending her naked to our areas.

 During this revolution, the régime killed about 1.5 million people, and displaced more than 14 million others inside and outside Syria. This is not new, this régime did the same thing in 1982. They killed more than 40,000 people in Hama. There was an uprising that year, and they killed them in only seven days. So this régime has been like that, not just recently, but for a very long time. 

 It's true that Assad has taken these areas, and they are not in the grip of the rebels any more, but the situation is not very clear in the media. They say it has settled down for the régime in these areas, for example, in Ghouta, in Homs, Hama, different parts of Syria especially Daraa, but the situation is different. Every now and then there are assassinations of high-ranking officers. Soldiers are very afraid to go inside Ghouta. Every now and then you hear there is a checkpoint attacked by rebels who were left behind.

 So it's not settled any more, and even people who are inside are fed up with this régime. They thought that maybe the people who were left behind there, they thought at the beginning they might have a better lifestyle when the régime comes back after they break the siege, but it turned out to be so much different. Now they are regretting the days of the siege, and want the rebels to come back to their areas, but unfortunately it's not happening now. 


                                 *****************************************************

 We are still working, and here in Idlib people, displaced people and even the people of Idlib, are helping us, and we are working together, inshallah, to go back to Ghouta, to Daraa, to Homs, to Hama, to all these cities that were with us before. Inshallah we will get rid of this régime very soon.'

Normalizing Assad Is Dangerous Not Just for Syrians

 

 Marwan Safar Jalani:

 'Less than 10 years ago, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed, spoke up against the régime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for massacring civilians.

 In November, he hugged him.

 The embrace — on the first visit of an Emirati official to Damascus since the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution — felt like a blessing of the al-Assad régime’s atrocities and a stab in the back for those of us who suffered war and displacement.

 Though many of us Syrians watched the hug with a sense of betrayal, we were not surprised: It’s just the latest in a wave of international moves to rehabilitate relations with the al-Assad régime.

 In June, the World Health Organization appointed Syria to its executive board. Interpol readmitted Syria to its network in October. Algeria and Egypt have pushed to reinvite Syria to Arab League membership, and other Arab nations have gestured toward a rapprochement with Mr. al-Assad. And throughout, Mr. al-Assad’s relationships with Iran and Russia appear to have deepened.



 These international bodies and nations appear to have either forgiven, forgotten or chosen to ignore the reasons Syria was cast out from their community. But in doing so, they normalize the atrocities committed by or on behalf of Mr. al-Assad’s régime and risk emboldening other leaders to act without fear of major censure or retribution — as we are seeing with the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uighurs in Xinjiang.

 By dangerously conferring legitimacy back to a régime that the United Nations in 2013 linked to war crimes and crimes against humanity against its own people, the international community is shattering the norms and customs that hold our world together. Western and Arab powers must keep the al-Assad régime in isolation and pressure any nations and organizations wavering on that commitment to do the same.

 We are a long way from where this started. For at least a short period, the world had seemed to be on our side.

 I was 13 when protests erupted in our eastern Damascus neighborhood of Al-Qaboun, back in 2011. I remember feeling hopeful watching Syrians call for a country free of the al-Assad family, which had ruled us for 40 years. When the régime violently cracked down on protesters, countries severed ties with Mr. al-Assad and froze his régime’s assets abroad. The Arab League suspended Syria from its membership.

 But it soon became clear that Mr. al-Assad was willing to do anything to stay in power. Little was done to stop him beyond imposing sanctions and selectively arming rebels.



 My neighborhood, Al-Qaboun, experienced heavy fighting between rebel forces and government troops in mid-2012. Government helicopters dropped bombs nearby, reducing buildings and our reality to rubble. We feared our house would be next.

 After surviving a two-month-long siege, my family and I left the country. We packed our memories in suitcases, dragging them on the broken asphalt past the fresh bullet holes on the walls of our neighborhood. A year later, the government was reportedly dropping rockets containing chemical warheads on suburbs of Damascus, including Jobar — just a few miles from our home.

 Back then, I felt betrayed by the al-Assad family, who we’d long been told was Syria’s protector. Now, nine years after fleeing my home, I feel betrayed by an international community that is inviting Mr. al-Assad back into its fold.

 Normalization, though, has implications far beyond the borders of Syria. It reshapes and rewrites international standards of how state actors may treat their citizens.

 Accountability mechanisms like special courts and norms around punishing crimes against humanity were ushered in after World War II through the 1945 signing of the London Charter, the Nuremberg Trials and the special tribunals of Rwanda and Yugoslavia. They were put in place to prevent another mass murder of civilians, to show dictators and war criminals that they cannot get away with atrocities or use state armies to lethally and systematically suppress dissent.

 Yet what has happened in Syria exposed the deep contradictions and flaws within the international human rights system.

 There is ample evidence that the al-Assad régime committed egregious crimes, most notably the use of chemical weapons. That act alone requires the international community to intervene, following the United Nations’ principle of the responsibility to protect. But Russia’s and China’s veto powers on the United Nations Security Council have prevented the U.N. from intervening to save Syrians under bombardment or end the bloodshed in Syria.



 The recent moves by the U.A.E. and others to normalize relations with Syria go even further. They show that with the passage of time, dictators will be embraced again if it suits countries’ national interests.

 Arab nations might be embracing Mr. al-Assad for a number of reasons. It could be an attempt to counter Iran’s economic and political influence in the region. Or they see him as a lesser evil when faced with Islamist militant groups like ISIS. Or U.S. hesitance to unequivocally support its authoritarian allies is pushing Gulf countries to seek common ground with other powers like pro-Assad Russia. Or they’ve decided the potential economic opportunities — like investing in Syria’s reconstruction projects — are too great to forgo.

 But the costs of legitimizing an accused war criminal are much higher than any far-fetched economic or political benefits.

 A régime that has been known to bomb hospitals cannot be a member of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization. A régime that tortures and tracks its dissidents at home and abroad through intelligence services must not regain access to Interpol’s databases.

 Mr. al-Assad’s régime has not shown a willingness to change. This month, in the world’s first trial prosecuting state-sponsored torture in Syria, a German court convicted a former Syrian intelligence officer of crimes against humanity. The régime continues to be accused of human rights violations — including against Syrians returning to the country.

 International bodies must not give Mr. al-Assad something for nothing. They must pressure him to stop human rights abuses. They must develop and apply mechanisms, like the principle of “universal jurisdiction” — as Germany recently did in the landmark case — to seek some measure of justice.

 The United States, France and Britain stress that they are against normalizing Mr. al-Assad, but shy away from urging allies and international organizations not to do so. This issue should be high on — if not at the top — of their foreign policy agenda, because the rehabilitation of Mr. al-Assad poses a direct threat to the post-World War II order — which already faces challenges on other fronts, like with recent Russia-Ukraine tensions. This issue is an easy one to take a stand on. Syria is not a nuclear power or the regional power it once was. Nor is it a major energy supplier. Standing firm against his rehabilitation does not cost much.



 If governments and international organizations normalize relations with the al-Assad régime, Syria’s story risks replicating elsewhere and the ruins of Al-Qaboun risk becoming our new norm.'

Assad the head of captagon trafficking in the Middle East

 

 Jean-Pierre Filiu:

 'Crimes against humanity, war crimes, organized massacres, systematic rapes, campaigns of enforced disappearances, expulsion of entire populations, the list is long of the crimes already attributed to Bashar al-Assad. Convinced of his impunity, the Syrian dictator has now added the offence of massive production and aggressive marketing of narcotics. The Syrian territory under the control of the Assad régime has indeed become the main production area for captagon, an amphetamine for which Saudi Arabia is the world's largest market. It is then the networks affiliated with the Assad régime which, especially from Lebanon, are responsible for transporting shipments of this drug to the Arabian Peninsula.

 When Hafez al-Assad sent his army to occupy a good part of Lebanon in 1976, he wasted no time in taking his tithe on the already flourishing hashish in the Lebanese plain of Bekaa, then he encouraged the development of poppy cultivation there. Laboratories for transforming locally produced opium into heroin are set up under the control of the occupying Syrian army. The barons of the Assad régime who manage this traffic with great profit recruit for this purpose in Syria bands of gangsters, nicknamed shabbiha, the "ghosts". General Ali Douba, head of military intelligence, is at the head of this de facto cartel, before being marginalized by Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez, in 2000, as absolute master of Syria. The withdrawal of the Syrian contingent from Lebanon in 2005, under popular pressure, completed the closure of this first mafia cycle of the Syrian dictatorship.

 A second cycle began a few years ago, this time in Syrian territory under the control of the Assad régime. The supply has in this case adjusted to the very strong demand for captagon in Saudi Arabia, where the popularity of this amphetamine is undeniable. This synthetic dopant, initially based on fenetylline, is referred to as the “Father of the Two Crescents” ( Abou al-hilâlayn ), because of the two crossed Cs which constitute its trademark. The descent into Syria's militia hell was accompanied by the flowering of local captagon manufacturing workshops, first to supply the fighters with artificial stimulants, then to ensure a source of foreign currency for the local forces. It is in this context that Daesh jihadists have developed their own manufacture of captagon, smuggled either to Turkey or to pro-Assad areas. But the territorial reconquest of the Assad régime, with the major help of the Russian air force and, on the ground, of the pro-Iranian militias, poses it today as the undisputed leader of the captagon on a regional scale.



 The international sanctions affecting the Assad régime have pushed it to a proactive policy of production and marketing of captagon. Operational responsibility lies with the president's younger brother, General Maher al-Assad, head of the Fourth Division, the régime's praetorian guard, already involved in numerous killings and abuses. The captagon production workshops are protected by Syrian soldiers in uniform, even installed in a military zone with restricted access. The tight network of Fourth Division roadblocks throughout the territory under the control of the Assad régime allows the smooth circulation of cargoes of amphetamine. An investigation published last month by the “New York Times”designates two notorious war profiteers as the main “civilian” relays of such trafficking: one, Amer Khiti, was rewarded for his loyal services with a seat as a deputy during the legislative “elections” of July 2020; the other, Khodr Taher, has, in the same spirit, been decorated by President Assad with the Order of Merit.

 This mafia reconversion has enabled Bashar al-Assad, firmly supported by his brother Maher, to manage the tensions which have recently shaken the ruling circle, with the ambitions displayed by the "first lady", Asma al-Assad, and the unprecedented revolt of Ibrahim Makhlouf , cousin of the Head of State. The already close ties between the Syrian dictatorship and the Lebanese Hezbollah have been further strengthened by the need to export captagon from Lebanon to Saudi Arabia. The latter, exasperated by the growing number of seizures of amphetamine, camouflaged in fruits and vegetables from Lebanon, decided, last April, an embargo on agricultural imports from this country. The Syrian régime then fell back on the Jordanian border which, as soon as it reopened in August 2021, was the scene of attempts to infiltrate major captagon shipments. A drone loaded with amphetamines was even shot down as it left Syrian territory. And, last Sunday, a Jordanian officer was killed in a clash with Syrian traffickers. Jordanian authorities estimate that a fifth of the drugs destined for Saudi Arabia could be consumed in Jordan during transit, a catastrophic prospect for a country hitherto spared from narcotics.

 It would obviously take more to dissuade the Assad régime from pursuing, or even intensifying, such a lucrative traffic. The Syrian despot can in any case boast of having transformed his country into the first narco-state worthy of the name in the Middle East.'

The exiled sculptor of 'all that is no longer there' in Syria

 

 'A Syrian neighbourhood targeted by régime bombing lies in ruins, with bodies and broken toys poking out of the rubble; tall, grey buildings are reduced to crumbling, empty shells, their walls blown away or pockmarked by the blast.

 The scene, captured in devastating detail, has been created by artist Khaled Dawwa, a Syrian exile and prison survivor who now works in France.

 In his colossal work entitled "Here is my heart!", Dawwa is still battling oppression, urging viewers "not to forget the revolution by the Syrian people and all their sacrifices".

 "When I'm working on this piece in my studio, I'm in Damascus. I do everything I can here, while not being there...," the 36-year-old says.

Deeply scarred by the years of repressive rule and violent crackdowns and the loss of friends killed, missing or imprisoned, Dawwa's work is both an act of revolt and memory, targeting "the international community's inaction against dictatorial régimes" in Syria and elsewhere.

 "In the face of the disaster that is happening in Syria, I feel a responsibility because I have the tools to express myself," he says.

 Among several of his massive installations -- including one in bronze -- being exhibited for the first time this year in France, "Here is my heart!" has been on display in Paris and soon transfers to a big national museum.

 Dawwa began the piece in 2018, as régime forces retook the rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta, on Damascus' outskirts.

 At nearly six metres (nearly 20 feet) long and more than two metres high, it is imposing.

 Using polystyrene, earth, glue and wood, covered in clay, he details the destruction inside and out -- the shattered doors, blown-away balconies, right down to the overturned chairs.

 In the debris, crunched-up bicycles and the wreckage of a bus can be seen -- but also the bodies of a child lying next to his ball and of an old woman.

 "My battle was to not abandon the project, otherwise it was as if we were giving up hope," he says.

 It was during that period he came to understand the impact his sculptures could have.

 Posting a photo of his work on Facebook, he was surprised to see it shared hundreds of times.

 Although risky, he continued to create and post pictures, but then destroyed the sculptures "in order to leave no trace", he says.

 Then, in May 2013, he was seriously wounded in his studio by shrapnel and, on leaving hospital, jailed, spending two months in various prisons.

 "There were thousands of people. Every day, at least 10 would die," he says. "Their bodies would stay for two days next to us, no one removed them from the cell... on purpose."

 Of the horror of the experience which still gives him nightmares, he says: "They broke the memories in my head."

 After his release, he was forced into the army but escaped beforehand, fleeing to Lebanon, then to France in 2014 where he was granted refugee status.

 His street-scene artwork, he says, is an attempt to convey "all that is no longer there; families, memories".

 The Syria conflict, which broke out in 2011, has killed close to half a million people and spurred the largest conflict-induced displacement since World War II.

 Veronique Pieyre de Mandiargues, a founding member of France's Portes Ouvertes Sur l'Art association, which supports artists in exile, said Dawwa "wanted to create a fixed image of what was happening in Syria so that it remains in our memories".

 Lifting her hand to her heart, Syrian psychoanalyst Rana Alssayah, 54, also a France-based refugee, expresses her emotions on first seeing the piece.

 "The magnitude of the destruction that Khaled has recreated, it's so real... I couldn't look at all the details inside the buildings, it was too hard."

 Through this work, "he is saying the sorrow and pain that we can't talk about, he has rebuilt our history." '

January reminds us the torch of freedom is still burning

 

 Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh:

 'As soon as the month of January comes upon us, the memories of the Arab Spring are revived, despite all the painful blows that followed as the collective conscience of the Arab people was confined. Nevertheless, the memories remain, and the revolution is part of our history.

 The uprisings that spread in 2011 led to the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen. Some others would have fallen but for outside intervention, such as the butcher of Syria, Bashar Al-Assad, who was close to being overthrown before the Russians saved him. He preferred Syria being occupied by Russia rather than following his predecessors out of Damascus.

 Assad was not the only one who trembled; the kings and emirs in other Arab countries did too. They feared that their people would also want freedom, dignity and democracy and they would lose their thrones. They found a new ally in Israel, which also worried about the Arab Spring uprisings, especially in neighbouring Egypt and Syria. The counter-revolutionaries based themselves in the UAE, and turned spring into a bloody autumn, not least in Syria, Libya and Yemen. They wanted to intimidate anyone tempted to organise a demonstration or even think about demanding freedom, democracy and a decent life.

 Saudi Arabia and the UAE stood against the will of the people and supported the tyrants, including Assad. The revolution in Syria is the greatest of all the Arab revolutions. It is unprecedented in that the country and people have made so many sacrifices while being menaced by regional and international states, each seeking a share of the spoils. The Syrians paid for this with their blood. Even the self-styled "friends of Syria" abandoned them.



 The Syrian revolution started in Daraa in the south west, when a number of children wrote graffiti on their school walls, with slogans popularised in other countries, such as "Leave, Bashar" and "The people want to overthrow the régime". The régime responded by arresting the children, none of whom was more than 13 years old. They were abused and tortured; fingers and genitals were cut off. Eleven years after being displaced from Daraa, these children were men defending Idlib, the only liberated part of Syria, and protecting it from the brutality of the régime and the Russian occupation.

 When their families asked about the youngsters, they were insulted, humiliated and kicked out by security officials who told them to forget these children and have some more. Protests followed, with hundreds and then thousands of Daraa residents joining in. The brutal régime responded with live ammunition and killed dozens. The people grew angrier and the city of Daraa was besieged. The residents of local towns and villages protested in solidarity with Daraa.

 Hundreds were arrested, including Hamza al-Khatib, 13, whose body was handed back to his family with signs of torture; his neck was broken and his genitals had been cut off. Pictures were shared on social media and shocked millions of Syrians, so they too took to the streets in most of Syria's cities. Hamza al-Khatib became the icon of the Syrian revolution.



 Statues of the killer Assad and his father were toppled, and his pictures were torn down, trampled on and burned. The security forces were unable to disperse the protests so the army stepped in. Thousands were killed.

 This changed the course of the peaceful protests, which became an armed revolution to protect the people. The Syrian authorities were responsible for this, leaving weapons lying around and releasing Islamists from prison so that Damascus could claim to be fighting a "war on terror" against armed terrorist groups. The régime thus turned the revolution into a civil war, in which it was supported by Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and some of the Shia militias from Iraq and Afghanistan. When it could not bury the revolution, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps appeared led by the criminal Qasem Soleimani. Entire villages were destroyed and thousands of Syrians were killed; thousands more were displaced, most of them Sunni Muslims. He turned it into a Sunni-Shia war, but was still unable to kill the revolution. The Assad régime would have fallen without Russia's military intervention that shifted the balance of power with its aircraft and missiles that reminded us of its war in Chechnya and the scorched-earth policy that was also implemented in Syria. The criminal régime used chemical weapons and explosive barrels dropped on the heads of people and they died under the rubble of their homes.



 With the entry of Russia, the balance tilted towards the régime, and the liberated cities began to fall, one after the other. After controlling just twenty per cent of the country, the régime now controls eighty per cent; only Idlib remains for the revolutionaries. They are pouring in from other cities after international interventions and the understanding between Russia and Turkey. Idlib is not yet rid of the crimes of Assad's military and the ongoing attacks by Russian forces, despite agreements.

 This is the story of the Syrian revolution in a nutshell, the story of the struggle of a great people who seek freedom and dignity and have sacrificed what is most precious to them only to be betrayed. However, the story has not ended. Revolutions, like wars, have battles and various rounds until matters are decided, the winner is declared, and the curtain falls. The revolutionary embers still glow in the heart of free Syrians waiting for their moment to come again.

 That is what I am reminded of every January. The torch of freedom is still burning, and we should not forget it.'

Activists tell stories of displacement over lost decade

 

 Asaad Hanna:

 'Hani Abbas is a double displaced person. His family was first displaced from Palestine to settle in Syria, and after the Syrian war broke out, he also was displaced from a refugee camp near Damascus. Today, Abbas is one of the world’s recognized cartoonists. In 2014, he was selected for the “Cartoon for Peace” award by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

 Abbas' story began in Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees where he was born and lived with his family. Drawing and painting images, he powerfully captured and illustrated the hopes, fears and disillusionment of a new generation.

 During the Syrian uprising, he was inspired by what was happening around him and the stories of those who left or died. He described his feelings when he was painting a new piece in Syria. “Imagine every piece you are painting could be your last piece, or maybe you will not be able to finish it. All those emotions and passion blended into me doing my best art at that time,” he said.

 After being presented the award in Geneva, Abbas sought asylum in Switzerland, hoping to find safety and security for his wife and two children.

 “I still remember my last few months in Syria. I was besieged in the Damascus countryside, and bombardment was taking place in the area. Drawing under shelling was terrifying,” he said.

 Abbas said he cannot compare the art he makes now to the art he made in Syria. “My art is now different, or maybe I should say the feelings about it. When I was drawing in Syria, I was in direct touch with the actions, living in danger. That gave me energy and hope in the change that might come.”

 Still, he expressed profound disappointment at the lack of international efforts to hold the Syrian régime accountable and to get them to relinquish control. He wrapped up his interview saying, “I am dreaming every day about going back to Syria … but I will never return before that criminal régime is toppled.”



 College student Anas al-Kholi was among the first to take to the streets, alarmed at the rising brutality pitted against people’s daily lives. His phone was his weapon, documenting the unfolding days, the demonstrations, attacks, fighting, fire, or from time to time, the celebration of a wedding. He wanted to be close to the frontline, on the frontline, where Syrian life was being ripped apart — bullets flying in every direction, bombs falling, rockets exploding. He was repeatedly injured by the shelling and bombings, but kept on pulling threw and documenting again.

 Kholi was documenting abuses on all sides, both governmental and opposition. Opposition groups wanted him to cover only the régime violations, but not theirs. When he turned his camera on them, they arrested and imprisoned him.

 He tells of his forced evacuation from his hometown of Ghouta, in Damascus countryside, along with thousands of others, when chemical weapons were reportedly used.

 “On April 1, 2018, the evacuation began from my town after a bloody time and chemical attacks killed hundreds of civilians. I was evacuated to northern Syria.”

 He stayed in northern Syria until early 2019 when his journey brought him away from his country. “I crossed to Turkey seeking medical attention for my daughter and myself. At the same time, I applied for asylum at the French Consulate in Istanbul.” He was one of the luckier Syrians. “My request was accepted, and I moved to Strasbourg in France in June 2019,” he added.

 His work was a mix of humanitarian, political and fun stuff from time to time. But now he is away from any political work; he thinks there is no reason to do political activities these days as long as the international community has no will to take down the Syrian government. “I believe that if the international community wanted to take Assad out, they could have done that since 2012. The political work from Syrians now is useless; even doing it now after all that destruction and loss is just wasting time.”

 He still has his sense of humor, even after all the horrors he witnessed and suffered. “Always the first 100 years of a revolution will be tough, but then it will get easier, or we get used to it,” he concluded.



 When the revolution broke out in 2011, Mohammad Abdullah, or as he prefers to be called Artino, was working as a supervisor at the Apple store in Damascus. The revolution drew him and his camera into the streets, documenting the unfolding history. In 2013, he was filming clashes between the Free Syrian Army and Syrian forces when he was hit by a mortar bomb.

 He lost his knee, broke his leg, collarbone and finger. That triggered his treacherous journey to find medical care, leading him far from his homeland. “I had to leave Syria because I needed many surgeries that are impossible to do in a besieged area,” he said. “I was smuggled through many Syrian towns and across the border to Lebanon.”

 Artino still holds Syria close, saying, “I would love to go as soon as possible to see my family, my neighborhood, the streets where I used to play. But as long as this régime is there, I would not be able to go back.” '

The Human Cost of Normalizing Assad

 

 'The first time Yousef was detained in Lebanon, he had just been smuggled across the Syrian border. An anti-régime activist from Syria’s Damascus countryside, Yousef co-managed an opposition Facebook page during the 2011 uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. When a trafficker brought him to Lebanon three years later, Yousef knew he may never see his homeland again. But as he now sees countries taking steps to normalize relations with Assad, he worries he’ll be forced back prematurely.

 Shortly after crossing into Lebanon, Yousef was stopped in the border town of Arsal at a checkpoint run by the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah, the most powerful political actor in Lebanon and a key ally of Assad. Passed to the custody of Lebanese military intelligence, Yousef was held in detention for 33 days and faced repeated beatings. He’s one of hundreds of Syrians rights groups say Lebanese authorities have arbitrarily detained and tortured, some of whom have been subjected to sleep deprivation, electric shocks, and mock executions. Yousef was released on the condition he find an employer that week to sponsor his stay in Lebanon. Seven years later, he has yet to find one.

 Now 30 years old, Yousef has lived illegally in Lebanon ever since. He’s hardly alone—only 16 percent of Syrians over the age of 14 currently in Lebanon have been granted residency, according to the United Nations (down from 20 percent in 2020). This isn’t an accident: Lebanese authorities have passed a series of regulations since 2015 discouraging refugees from staying. Permits are out of reach for most Syrians, who can’t afford the $200 annual renewal fee. “It’s all about money,” said Yousef, whose fine today would be $1,600.

 Most Syrians lack work permits too. Even if Yousef had one, he would still be barred from most jobs—and certainly any his business administration studies would warrant. Lebanon only authorizes Syrians to work in the construction, agriculture, and cleaning sectors. Yousef has worked his share of gigs in the informal economy over the years—as a barber, in a cafe, at a telephone shop—though he’s currently unemployed. “The wages didn’t even cover my taxi to work,” he said. At only $2 to $6 a day, they certainly couldn’t cover the $800 a potential sponsor demanded for patronage under the kafala system, which connects foreign workers to local sponsors.



 Yousef’s lack of residency status led to his second detention. In Beirut without a sponsor, he turned to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), hoping to at least qualify for aid. (Yousef said he hasn’t received any as a single man, with most of the money going to families.) The UNHCR “recorded” him for assistance, since Lebanon stopped allowing the agency to “register” refugees in 2015—another effort to restrict residency claims.

 But soon after being recorded, Yousef moved from Beirut to Tripoli, Lebanon, citing the cheaper cost of living in Lebanon’s second largest city and less discrimination in the Sunni-majority north. (The Syrian opposition is largely Sunni against Assad’s Alawite minority government.) When he had to return to Beirut in 2018 to renew his UNHCR certificate, Yousef was stopped at a checkpoint and taken into custody. This time, he was only held for three days, but once again, he was given one week’s notice to find a sponsor—and again, he couldn’t afford to pay one off.

 Because of Yousef’s refugee status, the warning was mostly symbolic; it’s against international law for Lebanon to deport him. But that hasn’t stopped Lebanese authorities from trying to force Syrians out. Policies have aimed to make their lives as difficult as possible and promote “voluntary return,” which Lebanon has provided buses back to Syria for.

 Over the past few years, dozens of municipalities have evicted Syrians and instituted curfews and wage caps. Authorities have demolished concrete tents in refugee camps and shuttered nonpermitted workers’ shops. “We’ve really never seen such blatant discrimination by authorities against Syrian refugees in both rhetoric and practice the way we’ve seen it in Lebanon,” said Sara Kayyali, Human Rights Watch’s Syria researcher.

 Lebanese authorities have said policies that single out Syrians aim to protect their workers’ security and economic well-being. A spokesperson for Ras Baalbek, a municipality that issued a 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for Syrians in November 2021, told L’Orient Today that the decision “was set as a measurement to reduce the rate of thefts happening in the area.” Ras Baalbek also issued a daily wage cap of less than $2 per day for Syrian men at Lebanon’s black market exchange rate, which the spokesperson said was because “Syrian workers are already getting international aid and are paid in dollars every day from foreign funds.”

 Some policies have actively removed Syrians too, and more than 6,000 refugees who have arrived since April 2019 have been deported under a ruling by the Higher Defence Council. The COVID-19 pandemic halted most legal crossings and deportations for 2020 and 2021, but Yousef has watched recent regional developments with alarm. He worries more and more that the decision to return to Syria won’t be his to make—and he fears if he’s forced back, his 33-day detention the last time he crossed will feel like nothing compared to what lies ahead.



 Yousef can hardly imagine a situation worse than the one he lives with in Lebanon—except across the border in Syria. Refugees who return there face arbitrary detention, torture, rape, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings, according to recent reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Yousef said he can never go home under the Assad régime; he’s wanted by Syrian authorities on “terrorism” charges and would still have to complete the mandatory military service for men ages 18 to 42.

 Yet with Assad now controlling around 70 percent of the territory and with fighting reduced, some European countries have started to inch toward Lebanon’s playbook. “They want to turn the page and pretend the last decade hasn’t happened,” Kayyali said.

 Denmark, in particular, has stripped the “temporary residency” status of refugees from Damascus or the Damascus countryside—Yousef’s home—even as dozens of human rights abuse cases are documented near the capital. Nobody else has followed Denmark yet, but “other countries are looking at Denmark’s model and wondering if they can do the same,” Kayyali said.

 Meanwhile, regional dynamics are shifting in the Middle East. In November, Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Assad in Damascus, making him the most senior Emirati official to travel to Syria since the war began. This followed a phone call one month prior between Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Assad, also the first in a decade. Bahrain has now appointed its first ambassador to Syria since early in the war.

 Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat, said in an interview he doesn’t expect the international community to change its position on refugees for now. However, he expects repatriation will be central to any future international agreement to end Syria’s civil war. “The time’s not ready yet” for most countries to try to send their refugees back to Syria, he said. “But Syrian refugees will be the price to settle the Syrian crisis.”

 Assad’s close relationship with Iran also complicates refugee return, Barabandi said. If the mostly Sunni refugee population returns, Syria’s demographics will complicate Shiite-power Iran’s regional ambitions. “Iran wants to have a big influence on Syria’s future,” Barabandi added. “A large Sunni Arab population makes that almost impossible. That’s why Iran never talks about the refugee issue.”

 Arab states are welcoming Assad back into the fold in part to counter Iranian influence, Barabandi said, though he also emphasized that each state has its own distinct interests—such as diplomatic influence for the United Arab Emirates, which has also made gestures toward Iran, and economic benefits for Jordan. Several members of the Arab League are now pushing to readmit Syria, whose membership was suspended in 2011.

 The United States has publicly denounced its allies’ overtures toward Assad and maintains its own sanctions on Syria. “What we have not done and what we do not intend to do is to express any support for efforts to normalize relations or rehabilitate Mr. Assad or lifted a single sanction on Syria or changed our position to oppose the reconstruction of Syria until there is irreversible progress toward a political solution,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in October 2021.

 But some think U.S. allies would not act without a tacit go-ahead from Washington. “When the UAE and Jordan came for their own reasons to the Americans, the U.S. didn’t have any reason to say no,” Barabandi said. “The Americans don’t want the régime to collapse in Syria—that’s one of the lessons they learned from Iraq.”



 Assad may remain in power, but he rules over a country in shambles. Syria’s economy—driven to ruin by corruption and a decade of war—has only further decayed since 2020 with the pandemic, new sanctions, and a parallel crisis next door in Lebanon. (Many rich Syrians’ money is trapped in Lebanese banks.) Syria’s currency is in freefall, and more than 12 million Syrians, of the 18 million who remain in the country, now face hunger. Basic item prices soared by 236 percent and oil prices by 500 percent over the course of 2020.

 Although Assad might not want refugees who oppose his rule of return, he does want the aid dollars and investment that will come with them, both Barabandi and Kayyali said. “The Syrian government has adopted a legal and policy framework that’s designed to co-opt aid to their benefit,” Kayyali added. “Any aid that goes in benefits the Syrian government, its projects, its plans, to the detriment of people on the ground in need, to the detriment of their human rights obligations.”

 Currently, that aid goes to refugee host countries like Lebanon and Jordan. But after so many years of Syrians’ displacement, “donor funds are drying up,” Kayyali said. Yearly international funding for countries hosting Syrian refugees dropped by $1.39 billion between 2017 and 2021. For Lebanon, the timing couldn’t be worse; it’s dealing with its own economic meltdown, which has driven three-quarters of Lebanon’s 6.7 million residents (only 4.5 million of whom are Lebanese citizens) into poverty.

 These hardships have amplified the already rampant discrimination against Syrians in Lebanon, who form the second largest per capita refugee population in the world (behind Venezuelans in Aruba). With more than 815,000 Syrians registered as refugees in Lebanon—a number the Lebanese government estimates is closer to 1.5 million—Lebanese politicians have used Syrians as scapegoats for the country’s illnesses. They portray refugees as competing for jobs, receiving disproportionate aid, and sucking the state’s limited resources. “We will not be replaced on this land, which bore prophets and saints; not by a refugee, nor a displaced person, nor a corrupt person,” tweeted Gebran Bassil, the head of Lebanon’s largest Christian party and the son-in-law of Syrian President Michel Aoun, in 2019.

 The numbers tell a different story: Nine out of 10 Syrian refugee households in Lebanon now live in extreme poverty, with roughly half of all families food insecure, according to the United Nations. The COVID-19 death rate for Syrian refugees is four times Lebanon’s national average, as refugees struggle to access medical care. Refugees have been victims of hate crimes and their camps targets of arson attacks.

 Larger geopolitical dynamics are out of refugees’ hands, who just struggle to get by day to day. But they’re the ones who most bear the costs of these changes on the ground. Stuck between a bad situation and a worse one, some have decided to risk the journey home to Syria. That so many double back to Lebanon, however, is testament to their harrowing experiences.



 Down an alleyway of the Shatila refugee camp filled with garbage and sewage, Nada lives with her husband, six children, brother-in-law, and his wife in a two-bedroom apartment that is falling apart. Above the home’s entryway, two pipes burst out of a ceiling that lacks plaster. In the kitchen sit the remnants of a gas cylinder that caught fire in November 2021, burning the family’s food supply.

 All of the families in this overcrammed, three-story building in the center of southern Beirut’s largest Palestinian refugee camp are Syrian. Their situation isn’t unique. According to the United Nations, 57 percent of Syrian refugee households in Lebanon live in “dangerous, substandard or overcrowded” conditions.

 On this November day, Nada’s husband, Khaled, isn’t home. As he does almost every day, he left in the morning to wait under a bridge near the refugee camp, hoping for somebody to hire him. He’ll move furniture, mix cement, carry bricks, or work in fields—whatever they’ll pay him to do. He’s not educated. He’s not literate. His options are limited.

 With bad eyes and shoulders though, Khaled can’t do the toughest jobs, and with stiff competition, he only finds work 10 to 15 days a month. He provides the family’s only source of income, yet the $2 to $4 wages usually can’t cover a day’s living expenses. “If we are very lucky, it gets us through one day,” Nada said. But even then, it’s just the basics: bread and water, potatoes or tomatoes. Certainly no luxuries like diapers for her newborn baby.

 None of Nada’s children are in school. Like their parents, none of them can read. Lebanon doesn’t make education easy for Syrian refugees, having adopted policies that block thousands of refugee children without residency or educational records from the classroom.

 To survive, Nada lives off debt. At least living among Palestinians, she said she doesn’t endure the same racism many Syrians find from some Lebanese. At the nearby corner store, there’s trust—they let her get the diapers and pay later.

 But back in 2018, her husband was barely working. They couldn’t make the rent, and their landlord cut their electricity and water. The children were hungry; they missed open spaces. “For the kids, Shatila was like jail,” she said. “There were no places to play.”

 Khaled still fears arrest and forced military service back in Syria, but as a woman in her mid-30s, Nada wouldn’t be conscripted. She wasn’t wanted for anti-régime activism either. So she took her children home to Syria.



 This wouldn’t be the first time Nada and her children lived in Syria without Khaled. In 2015, he first crossed into Lebanon without them. They hoped life would get better in Syria and Khaled could come back. But it got worse. Their town in the Aleppo countryside was under the Islamic State’s control and Syrian government bombardment.

 After a year, Nada decided she couldn’t live without her husband. Smugglers took her and the kids (there were four at the time) by boat up Lake Assad to the Manbij, Syrian, countryside—which was under Kurdish control at the time—for $300. Nada and her daughter were in one boat, and her three sons were in another. But during the journey north, bombs rained down. For four days, Nada thought her sons had been killed.

 She ended up finding them with relatives in Manbij, and after another six months and another $300, the family headed to the Syria-Lebanon border. Like Khaled, they exited Syria legally—though Syrian border police demanded an extra bribe per person—and entered Lebanon illegally.

 Nada lasted less than two years in Lebanon. Despite the last journey’s trauma and the fact that she was pregnant, she had had enough. “My family told me to stay in Lebanon,” she said, but she didn’t listen. On her way out, Lebanese border patrols issued her the permanent reentry ban now given to Syrians who exit legally without paying a fine.

 More than 280,000 refugees have returned to Syria since 2016, according to the United Nations. That’s likely an undercount, since many refugees, such as Nada, do not inform authorities of their comings and goings. (It’s also just a fraction of the estimated 6.8 million Syrian refugees worldwide.)

 After she entered Syria, Nada faced checkpoint after checkpoint, but she eventually made it back to her home village. There, she found her home completely destroyed. It had been bombed and looted. The furniture had been stolen. The home was unlivable—but Nada and her kids lived there anyway. With neighbors, they made cement and makeshift bricks of hay and mud to partially rebuild.

 But they had almost no electricity. No gas. No telephone lines. The village’s infrastructure was destroyed. Nada found day work in the fields picking crops, yet she never earned enough to survive. There were food shortages, Nada was in debt and the kids were hungry, more so than in Lebanon. The nearest doctors and pharmacies were roughly 60 miles away in Aleppo, Syria, risking passage through many checkpoints.

 Nada also didn’t feel any safer after returning to Syria than before she left. She lived with the same sense of fear and insecurity that permeates everyday life in the country. She was never detained or tortured, but a cousin of hers disappeared. She still hasn’t found out what happened to him.

 Before she left Lebanon, Nada couldn’t imagine missing it. Life was so hard there. But it was even harder back home. So in late 2020, Nada once more headed for the border—this time with five kids. With her permanent ban though, she couldn’t go to an official crossing. A smuggler took Nada and her children all the way from her home in the Aleppo countryside to Beirut, through the mountains of Homs, for $250.

 In a survey of Syrians conducted by the United Nations, 70 percent expressed a desire to return home someday. But 9 out of 10 people surveyed also said they don’t plan to go back in the next 12 months—even though they can’t meet their basic needs in their host countries. No matter how tough their situation gets, most refugees said conditions back home will determine their thinking on return; Nada being driven out of Lebanon by discriminatory policies was an unusual case.

 In a July 2021 statement, the UNHCR said “as discussions on the return of displaced Syrians pick up, it’s important to ensure international principles guide any efforts to support the return of those displaced.” The statement added the UNHCR “welcomes all efforts to build an environment that enables refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) to exercise their right to return,” and “all stakeholders must work to collectively address the barriers to return as expressed by refugees themselves, if we are to increase the likelihood that this becomes a realistic, safe and sustainable solution for a larger number of people.”

 But Kayyali said she’s not sure that fostering a safe environment for return is possible while Assad remains in power. “Without serious reform of the Syrian government and its apparatus, I think it’s highly unlikely that conditions will be in place for refugees to return safely and voluntarily,” she said.

 Since Nada’s return to Lebanon, life has only become more difficult than before she left. But now that she’s seen the alternative, Nada has no plans to return to Syria again. “Never,” she emphasized. “I will stay here, whatever happens.”

 Yousef, for his part, hopes that option—“stay here, whatever happens”—will remain.'

Displaced Syrians say they 'will return without Assad'

 

 'Internally displaced Syrians from the northern city of Aleppo rallied for their right to return to their homes on Wednesday, on the fifth anniversary of their displacement.

 Protesters took to the streets in Idlib province carrying signs reading "we will return without Assad [in power]", expressing their will to live free from the rule of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad.

 Aleppo was seized by the Syrian armed opposition in July 2012, before being recaptured by Assad's régime in December 2016 after a five-month siege and battle backed by Russian air power that left the historic city in ruins and killed thousands.

 "The demonstration is very important to remind the world of the criminality practiced against us by the Assad régime and its allies," said photographer and reporter Bilal al-Hammoud, who was displaced from Maarat al-Numan in the Idlib province but also attended the demonstration.

 Though al-Hammoud wasn't displaced from Aleppo, he explained he "share[s] the same feelings with other protesters" due to their shared goal of returning to their homes.



 "I wanted to participate... to tell Bashar al-Assad that I will return to Aleppo... we are continuing our revolution until my daughter can grow up in Aleppo," said Fateh Raslan, a man displaced from Aleppo.

 “On the fifth anniversary... we decided to be present to demand the right of return without the Assad régime... we have left our city by force, but we will continue our revolution until we can return," said Bilal al-Abdullah, also displaced from Aleppo.

 For many forcibly displaced Syrians, memories of the horror they experienced were embedded deep within them, fuelling their motivation to persist and fight for a free Syria.

 "Aleppo is the remains of our martyrs, the remains of our children that remained under the rubble, and it is our duty to remember them always at every moment... the blood of our martyrs is our fuel” said media activist Ibrahim Radwan, also from Aleppo.

 The Syrian revolution began on 15 March 2011, before the Assad régime violently cracked down on peaceful protests demanding democratic reform.'

Under Assad: Syria's multi-billion dollar drug business

 

 'After more than ten years of civil war, Syria is economically on the ground. According to estimates by the UN, more than 13 million people out of the approximately 20 million inhabitants are dependent on humanitarian aid. The régime under ruler Bashar al-Assad and his followers found their own answer to the economic misery caused by war and sanctions: the illegal drug Captagon.

 As current research by the New York Times (NYT) shows, Syria has developed into a new drug state in recent years with a mass production of Captagon in particular. This synthetic drug is of particular concern in the Gulf region and increasingly also in Jordan. This multi-billion dollar drug industry was built by powerful associates and relatives of Assad. In addition to Captagon, according to regional security officials, more dangerous drugs such as crystal meth are increasingly finding their way onto the transport routes.

 The system is sophisticated. The production facilities are spread all over the country, and new methods of hiding-place are constantly being used to transport the pills - in hollow pomegranates, in coffee packages and enclosed in lead ingots, which are transported on via our own smuggling networks. As the Economist reported in the summer, production and sales are under the control of the fourth armored division of the Syrian army, which is led by Assad's brother, Maher al-Assad. According to the NYT, Hezbollah also has its fingers in the game. Production sites are militarily guarded or are in a restricted military area.

 The NYT based its research on interviews with law enforcement officers in several countries, incumbent and former US officials and Syrians with knowledge of the drug trade. Based on this information and on the basis of pills also confiscated in Europe, it is shown how much drug exports from Syria have recently increased. Drug experts believe that the material found is only a small fraction of the actual amount. In any case, it shows the enormous increase in the recent past.

 This year alone, according to the NYT, over 250 million pills have been confiscated - more than 18 times what was found four years ago. There were also seizures in several European countries. Only last year were 84 million pills seized in Italy, this May in Malaysia 94 million pills were found sealed in rubber wagon wheels. 

 The main buyers for Syrian drugs in the Gulf States are, however, primarily in Saudi Arabia. The previous transit state, Jordan, is also increasingly becoming a buyer. The amount seized in the previous year has doubled compared to the previous year, according to the Jordanian drug unit. Consumers are primarily young people.

 The Syrian régime could also use this in regional power struggles. Malik al-Abdeh, a Syrian observer close to the opposition, says the régime is using "drugs as a weapon against the Gulf States": "The message is: normalize relations or we will destroy your youth," he told the Economist.



 The drug with the amphetamine fenethylline was used by a German pharmaceutical company from the 1960s as a drug against ADHD, for example. Because it was addictive, it was banned internationally in the late 1980s. It was still produced illegally. During the Syrian war, fighters from all sides took the drug - including members of the terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS). In the Gulf region, Captagon is still heavily consumed in leisure time. The illegal version of Captagon usually includes several amphetamines, caffeine, and other fillers.

 The entire drug business dwarfs Syria's legal exports - especially agricultural products - and is reportedly done with the support of the régime. According to the NYT, the Captagon seizures last year were worth around 2.9 billion US dollars (2.6 billion euros) - more than three times the legal exports from Syria. According to the Economist, the value of all drugs confiscated from Syria was $ 3.4 billion. The magazine cites research by the consulting firm Center for Operational Analysis and Research (COAR).

 “It is literally the Syrian government that is exporting the drugs. It's not thatthey look the other way while the drug cartels do their thing. They are the drug cartel, "said the former US special envoy for Syria, Joel Rayburn, in the NYT interview. Some of the business people involved in the drug business also supported Assad's presidential candidacy in the election in May this year, for example through rallies and poster campaigns.

The drug business is indirectly an important pillar of Assad's stay in power. For Jihad Yazigi, editor of the Syria Report with a focus on the Syrian economy, Captagon is now Syria's most important source of foreign currency. However, this income would not benefit the state. Nothing will change in the economically dramatic situation for the population. Yazigi: "The income is largely invested in the accounts of smugglers and warlords." '

'My brother went to Syria, he was tortured and killed'

 

 'In November 2012, a doctor from South London made his way to Turkey to treat refugees, he then went onto treat those injured from a hospital bomb after crossing into Syria.

 After this, Dr Abbas Khan, from Streatham, was "never a free man again" according to chief coroner, Peter Thornton.

 On November 22, 2012, the 32-year-old father-of-two was captured by Syrian officials and his family reported him missing.

 Just over a year later on December 16, 2013, Dr Khan's family received the news of his death - it has been eight years since.

 The time in between has been pieced together by Dr Khan's mum, Fatima Khan, who visited Syria in hopes of locating her son, as well as witness statements of those imprisoned with Dr Khan.



 What is understood is that the British orthopaedic surgeon, who had worked at Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, was wrongly captured and placed in an underground cell.

 During this time, he was tortured in a prison in Damascus for eight months.

 His resilient mother, Fatima, had gone to Syria to search for him and managed to locate him in the summer of 2013 after visiting a number of embassies.

 Upon meeting him, she found he had burns on his feet, a missing fingernail and weighed just 32kg - conditions in the cell were horrific, with mice, faeces and cockroaches.

 He told his mum that he had been imprisoned on acts of terrorism for treating dying civilians.



 In December 2013, the Syrian régime claimed he would be freed - but just days before his release he was found dead in his cell, with officials claiming he hanged himself.

 Fatima was told her son had killed himself.

 In 2014, a jury at his inquest returned the verdict that he had in fact been unlawfully killed - with Dr Khan's family always maintaining that he was murdered in custody.

 “Dr Khan was deliberately and intentionally killed without any legal justification,” said the jury forewoman.

 The same year, two Syrian prisoners came forward and said Dr Khan was "killed for the brutality he witnessed".

 The British Foreign Office also agrees that he was "in effect murdered" and just this month another witness came forward about the horrific treatment inside the Syrian prison.



 American medical aid worker Kevin Dawes was also detained just days after entering Syria in 2012, he spoke about what he suffered during his three and a half years in detention.

 Kevin met Dr Abbas Khan during his time there and said they were placed in adjacent cells.

 "We were able to speak to each other under the door. They would scald him with hot water and beat him. They did the same to me," he said.

 When Dr Khan's mum Fatima came to see him, he told her to alert the US embassy about Kevin's imprisonment.

 That is when his treatment improved, "I owe Abbas a lot," he said.

 But eight years since his death, there are still questions unanswered and justice is yet to be served.

 Although witness statements have been gathered and a case is being built, it's unclear whether the Syrian régime will ever be held accountable.

 But Dr Khan's sister, Sarah Khan, is hopeful.



 She said: "We've been collecting evidence the eight years, we're receiving new witness statements every few months from detainees who saw Abbas or those who have more details of his murder. We'll be submitting evidence to the Met. We're looking for a mechanism to be able to hold them accountable. There was a famous case recently in Germany which was successful, against a member of the Syrian régime guilty of torturing.

 Kevin Dawes statement is further proof of Abbas' incarceration in a military prison and his torture. We hope and pray for both Kevin and Abbas' family to receive the justice they deserve."

 Today is the eight year death anniversary of Dr Abbas Khan, and there are still thousands of foreigners unlawfully imprisoned in Syria.

 Sarah says: "Although eight years have passed, we feel no different in our want for justice. No family should have to go through what we have and unfortunately there are still hundreds imprisoned in Syria, being tortured and murdered. We will continue to search for evidence and witnesses to push our case. This isn't just justice for Abbas solely, if we succeed in bringing a case against a brutal régime and they are held accountable for their heinous crimes we will be protecting other humanitarian aid workers who put their lives at risk to save others." '