Fighting for truth against Syria's disinformation régime

 

 'A Twitter user identifying as a Syrian Christian from Aleppo boasts on his banner an image of Bashar al-Assad drawn as Napoleon. He claims that the man who sits in the presidential chair as his country has spiralled into a decade-long brutal civil war is the only force in the republic that can defend Syrian values and bring stability back.

 After years of destruction and overwhelming evidence of war crimes, is it possible for Assad to still have fans and admirers within Syria? Online, supporters describe him as the only legitimate source of power or, while acknowledging his shortcomings, lamented the times when Syria was stable.

 This is a narrative the régime and its allies have gone to great lengths to ingrain in people’s minds: trying to present a ‘consensus’, where the ‘majority’ of Syrians support Assad against the ‘minority’ who want to see him and his establishment gone.

 With the state tightening its grip on media freedoms and the support of Russian disinformation masterminds, it is hard to tell if support is genuine. In March, the régime passed a bill that would see citizens accused of spreading ‘anti-Syrian’ content spending at least six months in jail.

 In a state that counts almost 100,000 disappeared for their alleged involvement in anti-régime causes, most of the opposition is already silenced.



 Since the beginning of the conflict, the régime has used online attacks and disinformation, denying protests were taking place or making false claims about the revolution, according to the executive director of The Syria Campaign Laila Kiki.

 “Syrian state media, or state-affiliated outlets, as well as supporters of the régime online, are largely responsible for spreading disinformation among Syrians,” Kiki said.

 RT- formerly Russia Today-, RT Arabic, other pro-Putin media and a few accounts belonging to western users also play a huge part in the amplification of such content. The accounts and forums that engage in disinformation regarding Syria are largely aimed at influencing the opinion of those residing outside Syria.

 Lots of this activity is done in English, with the circulation of hashtags such as #SyriaHoax, conducted by a mix of ‘Wagner stan’ accounts, pro-Putin individuals, conspiracy theorists, ‘anti-imperialists’, and a few ‘Syrian’ accounts.

 Groups have been set up on Facebook with thousands of members where users post daily pro-Assad content and smears against the opposition.



 However, disinformation is not solely reserved for the stranger parts of the Internet, but also for the mainstream. Such content has been allowed to proliferate on social media platforms for years.

 In a report released by The Syria Campaign, researchers found that “this content was shared directly with an audience of 3 million, 1.8 million of whom are unique followers.19,000 original disinformation posts published by these actors were retweeted over 670,000 times”.

 Discussing how this compliments domestic disinformation activity, Kiki added that pro-régime accounts are also responsible for amplifying some of the western disinformation accounts and spreading false information among Syrian audiences.

 “The Syrian régime’s main disinformation narrative revolves around smearing all its opponents as ‘terrorists’ or foreign agents. Individuals including doctors, journalists, and ordinary civilians have been targeted,” explained Kiki.



 Syrian doctor and Action for Sama co-founder Hamza al-Kateab recounts the régime’s vicious and relentless smear campaigns from the first days of the revolution in 2011 to Aleppo’s siege, which he experienced as an ‘on-the-field’ medic, to today, when the régime has reclaimed large swaths of territory.

 “They target everyone. They just won’t stop,” he told The New Arab, pointing out that disinformation has been a consistent problem that has altered the way Syrians, other Arabs, and the rest of the world view the conflict.

 Initially, the régime and its allies used a tactic of denial. State-controlled media were silent about the uprising taking place. “Once people and foreign media platforms started live-broadcasting the events and posting about the protest on social media, that’s where the régime had to change tactics,” said Hamza.

 They started manipulating imagery and making false claims about the context of the protests. Eventually, with protests spreading from governorate to governorate, the régime went into a full-scale attack against the protesters, claiming that they are outsiders and agitators or members of terrorist groups.



 “This is how they justified conducting attacks outside the areas the régime controlled. Attacking protesters, doctors, hospitals, and other civilian facilities,” said Hamza. Talking of his time as a doctor, he explains how the régime managed to create doubts about the war crimes happening, obfuscating the situation for outsiders and other Syrians.

 The régime denied the existence of hospitals or branded them as dual-use facilities where anti-régime combatants were stationed. It denied civilians died in the hospitals targeted, questioning the credibility of the identities of humanitarian workers and medics.

 The Syria Campaign report found evidence that most of the disinformation materials circulating are directed toward the humanitarian volunteer group ‘White Helmets’, especially in relation to the chemical attacks that happened in Ghouta in 2013. White Helmets were operating in contested areas, where the régime and Russian airstrikes were particularly deadly for non-combatants.

 They were also documenting military operations and bearing witnesses to what amounted to war crimes, dismantling claims that the régime and Russia only target Islamic State (IS) strongholds. By claiming that the White Helmets were terrorist affiliates, the régime justified its usage of double-tap strikes on first responders recovering civilians from the rubble, explained Kiki.

 “They deny our existence and when we prove it they start smear campaigns,” said Hamza, who has been on the receiving end of fake allegations many times, which have compromised his safety.



 Whilst online disinformation is alienating outside observers, the effects of digital disinformation and propaganda have real-life consequences for those living within or fleeing the country, altering the way the conflict is addressed.

 In their report, The Syrian Campaign researchers indicated that disinformation will have a big impact on the process of transitional justice, where victims will be put in a position where they have to prove that crimes happened against them, by erasing the history of the conflict and undermining the validity of their experiences.

 Hamza stressed that dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity becomes ten times more difficult when you add the disinformation aspect to it: “It’s very absorbing to have to prove the legitimacy of your actions, your identity, that you are a good person. Disinformation takes a toll on common sense.”

 Disinformation has compromised humanitarian aid and many agencies have been forced to cease operations or seen funds reduced or cut. Hamza’s life-saving work was jeopardised because of this.



 “Disinformation affected the funds the hospitals were getting or could be getting. Governments stopped or withheld funding because they needed to investigate us. So we had prolonged amounts of time where the hospitals had no funding.”

 Additionally, by raising doubts about refugee camps and areas, disinformation is used as a justification by Western governments to turn away or send back Syrian asylum seekers.

 Delegitimisation of any act of opposition will make any transition or negotiations impossible, meaning that the régime will not be replaced or reformed, which after a decade of extreme brutality seems unthinkable.

 “People start thinking it’s ‘too complicated’, when in fact, it’s a simple situation where a dictatorship is targeting hospitals, besieging cities, enforcing aid blockades and doesn’t allow UN observers in,” Hamza said.



 The first step in fighting back against well-orchestrated disinformation campaigns is to highlight the damage that is being done.

 “This is what The Syria Campaign’s report ‘Deadly Disinformation’ aims to do. By documenting the real-world harm caused by online disinformation we can raise awareness and demand that social media companies and governments do more to tackle disinformation,” Kiki told The New Arab.

 However, documentation alone isn’t enough. One of the main challenges in all advocacy work is that Syria is no longer being prioritized in recent years.

 “Although the conflict is ongoing and humanitarian needs are greater than ever, the public interest in Syria has declined and is viewed as a less pressing matter,” she added.

 That’s why they also launched a petition to appeal to social media companies to address disinformation about Syria on their platforms. Kiki explained that when it comes to the war in Ukraine, social media companies have been quick to take action to remove content or ban accounts sharing disinformation, often the same ones spreading false news on Syria.



 But for Syria, “lies have been allowed to remain on platforms unchallenged for years and disinformation actors continue to spread false information with harmful consequences,” she said.

 For Hamza, there needs to be drawn a clear line between what constitutes ‘freedom of speech’ and justifying or supporting war crimes. “When people are disputing events like the chemical attacks, this is not freedom of speech, people lost their loved ones, people suffered,” he said.

 Hamza warns that, even with Ukraine, years will pass and the world’s attention will divert to other matters, and disinformation will start gaining traction and clouding the truth.

 The winners of disinformation will be those seeking to evade justice and accountability.'

My fame helps give meaning to my journey as a refugee

 

 Jay Abdo:

 'In my homeland of Syria, I thought my fame would protect me. But after I received attention for seeming to speak out against the totalitarian and violent Assad régime, being famous suddenly became a curse. It sent me on a punishing journey I never would have chosen but which has had its own unexpected rewards.

 I knew everything was about to change when the head of a major Syrian movie studio ordered me to appear on television and apologize for something I would never have dared to say in public. An August 2011 front-page article in the Los Angeles Times had begun by saying I had openly accused Syrian “security forces of torture and corruption.”

 Not until the third paragraph did the journalist make her writerly reveal: I was actually delivering a line of dialogue playing the hero in a soap opera whose title roughly translated to “Torn From the Womb.” That it was a character speaking, not me as myself, would not matter to the government.



 Since the Syrian uprising against Assad had begun months earlier, the secret police had tried to recruit me and many other public figures for its propaganda machine. I resisted and avoided speaking out against the régime. But the article had made one truth clear: I did not support the villainous Syrian President Bashar Assad or his henchmen.

 There would be no TV apology from me, and life as I knew it would soon be over.

 The secret police began repeatedly threatening me, making the land beneath my feet feel like it was quaking. I knew that the Syrian régime was like an octopus’ mafia — if you were able to escape one tentacle another one would ensnare you.

 I was also acutely aware of the harrowing punishment being meted out to other artists. Ali Farzat, a famous political cartoonist, was badly beaten, his fingers deliberately broken by pro-Assad gunmen. A few months later, Zaki Kordelo, an actor and my treasured friend, was forcibly disappeared overnight.

 At any moment, I expected a horrifying death to come my way.

 

In my 50s, I was forced to flee my country, leaving behind my elderly parents, a vibrant acting career, my house, all my assets. And I began a journey of survival as a refugee, becoming one of the more than 89 million people in the world who have had to escape persecution, war and natural disasters.

 Fortunately, my wife was already in the U.S. studying public policy at the University of Minnesota, and I joined her there in October 2011. When she asked me to sign an application to apply for asylum in the U.S., she shared a painful truth that horrified me: “There is no more home to go back to.”

 Soon, I would even leave behind my given name. Every time I introduced myself to someone in Minnesota, they would react with incredulity. So Jihad — a common name back home — became Jay. If only reinventing yourself in another country was as simple as changing your name.

 The asylum process dragged on for years. Life was brutal and perpetually on hold. We struggled to find work. I got pizza and flower delivery jobs, but I didn’t even make enough to cover our groceries. Visits to the doctor were an unaffordable luxury. We were starving, scared and very much alone.

 But we had each other, and we found strength in knowing that the high price we were paying was because we had taken a moral stand, along with other innocent people, against the killing machine that is the Syrian régime.



 In an attempt to resuscitate my acting career, we made our way to Los Angeles in 2012. I would go on more than a hundred auditions without landing a part. Finally, I connected with the director Werner Herzog, who cast me in his 2015 film “Queen of the Desert,” starring Nicole Kidman. Parts in other films featuring such actors as Tom Hanks and Ben Affleck would follow.

 My wife eventually secured a good job in her field, which freed me to pursue acting. Nearly a decade would pass before we became U.S. citizens. By any measure, we are a success story — refugees who were able to build a productive new life in America.

 Since I became a refugee more than a decade ago, the global refugee population has more than doubled. By one accounting, more than two-thirds of us have come from just five countries. It’s not surprising to me that Syria leads the list, with nearly 7 million displaced people. Millions live in refugee camps, essentially forgotten by the world at large.

 In every moral challenge, some people find the fortitude to stand up while others don’t. Some Syrian artists who were once my friends became cheerleaders for the Assad régime. They chose to remain on the dark side of history. I chose to seek the light.



 In the short drama “Facing Mecca,” I play a Syrian refugee who struggles to bury his wife in accordance with Muslim rites. When it won a Student Academy Award in 2017, it made me believe I could turn to film to raise awareness about the plight of refugees and highlight other injustices in the world.

 Fellow refugees often tell me my story helped them hold on to hope in their darkest moments. That has made me realize I already inhabit my greatest role: speaking out for refugees and those who are unable to escape the violence and chaos in their home countries, whether through activism or the film projects I pursue. And this is why my journey as a refugee will never end.'

Muhammad Najem With a Graphic Novel

 

 'After going viral for his documentation of the Syrian War, Muhammad Najem has returned, with a new graphic novel that chronicles his experience.

 In 2018, a then 15-year-old Muhammad made headlines and caught the world's attention with his social media footage of the Syrian War He documented the ongoing destruction, using only a camera phone to chronicle what was occurring around him. His efforts to spread awareness and tell the full story of what was happening in Syria went viral and garnered international attention.

 Teaming up with co-author Nora Neus, a reporter who was largely responsible for breaking his story, and illustrator Julie Robine, Muhammad will share further of his story with the release of Muhammad Najem, War Reporter. The graphic memoir focuses on much of Muhammad's life, beginning with his childhood in Syria.

 As the book reveals, Muhammad was just eight when the Syrian conflict began. At the age of 13, his father was killed in a bombing while praying. Two years later, Muhammad started documenting the war, feeling a determination to reveal what families were experiencing. Although Muhammad currently resides in Istanbul, he has continued his journalism work.

 Muhammad revealed that Nora had approached him about creating the book in 2019. “I never did a book and I had never even met a writer, so the idea was unbelievable…I was shocked."

 To create the book, Muhammad shared stories of his life with Nora. As for which scene is Muhammad's favorite, he pointed to one particularly harrowing video that occurred when a bomb fell directly behind him. “I was shooting videos,” he says, adding, “It was kind of scary, but at the same time, I didn't even feel that the bomb had fallen, because I was shooting. That was one of my favorite videos.”

 Nora pointed to a tender family moment as her favorite scene, “Muhammad's brother found this parrot and brought it home as a pet and their father didn't want them to keep it. He thought it was gonna be a mess. And over the course of the beginning of the book, their father falls in love with the parrot as well, and teaches the parrot to speak."

 Reflecting on what originally inspired him to begin filming, the journalist says, “It was kind of fun at the beginning. Later on, it turned into something I must do. It's kind of hell for my people.”

 He hoped to show a different side to Syria through his videos, saying, “Syria, is a heaven for me, and media shows the bombs, the killings, and this other side of Syria. We are not a violent people, we started the war asking for democracy, and I think everyone should have democracy. We have to get our freedom. Without freedom, we cannot live. Other people should look at Syria differently. We are a generous, kind people."

 Muhammad says that he has dreams of continuing his journalism work into the future. For those eyeing his journey and contemplating starting something at a younger age, he has some words of encouragement. “Age is not important,” he says. “A lot of children are responsible for the children in our world, and if you look at the Syrian Revolution, it started because of children. Children can do a lot of things.” '

Syrian ex-prisoners haunted by horrors of 'salt rooms'

 

 'When a Syrian prison guard tossed him into a dimly-lit room, the inmate Abdo was surprised to find himself standing ankle-deep in what appeared to be salt.

 On that day in the winter of 2017, the terrified young man had already been locked up for two years in war-torn Syria's largest and most notorious prison, Sednaya.

 Having been largely deprived of salt all that time in his meagre prison rations, he brought a handful of the coarse white crystals to his mouth with relish.

 Moments later came the second, grisly, surprise: as a barefoot Abdo was treading gingerly across the room, he stumbled on a corpse, emaciated and half-buried in the salt.

 Abdo soon found another two bodies, partially dehydrated by the mineral.

 He had been thrown into what Syrian inmates call "salt rooms" -- primitive mortuaries designed to preserve bodies in the absence of refrigerated morgues.

 The corpses were being treated in a way already known to the embalmers of ancient Egypt, to keep up with the industrial-scale prison killings under Bashar al-Assad's régime.

 The salt rooms are described in detail for the first time in an upcoming report by the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison, or ADMSP.

 At least two such salt rooms were created inside Sednaya.

 Abdo, a man from Homs now aged 30 and living in eastern Lebanon, asked that his real name not be published for fear of reprisals against him and his family.

 Speaking in his small rental flat in an unfinished building, he recounted the day he was thrown into the salt room, which served as his holding cell ahead of a military court hearing.

 "My first thought was: may God have no mercy on them!" he said. "They have all this salt but don't put any in our food!

 "Then I stepped on something cold. It was someone's leg."



 Abdo, fortunate to have survived, described the salt room on the first floor of the red building as a rectangle of roughly six by eight metres (20 by 26 feet), with a rudimentary toilet in a corner.

 "I thought this would be my fate: I would be executed and killed," he said, recalling how he curled up in a corner, crying and reciting verses from the Koran.

 The guard eventually returned to escort him to the court, and Abdo lived to tell the tale.

 On his way out of the room, he had noticed a pile of body bags near the door.

 Like tens of thousands of others, he had been jailed on blanket terrorism charges. He was released in 2020 but says the experience scarred him for life.

 "This was the hardest thing I ever experienced," he said. "My heart died in Sednaya. If someone announced the death of my brother right now, I wouldn't feel anything."

 Around 30,000 people are thought to have been held at Sednaya alone since the start of the conflict. Only 6,000 were released.

 Most of the others are officially considered missing because death certificates rarely reach the families unless relatives pay an exorbitant bribe, in what has become a major racket.



 Another former inmate, Moatassem Abdel Sater, recounted a similar experience in 2014, in a different first-floor cell of around four by five metres, with no toilet.

 Speaking at his new home in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, the 42-year-old recounted finding himself standing on thick layer of the kind of salt used to de-ice roads in winter.

 "I looked to my right and there were four or five bodies," he said.

 "They looked a bit like me," Moatassem said, describing how their skeletal limbs and scabies-covered skin matched his own emaciated body. "They looked like they had been mummified."

 He said he still wonders why he was taken to the makeshift mortuary, on the day of his release, May 27, 2014, but guessed that "it might have been just to scare us".



 The ADMSP, after extensive research on the infamous prison, dates the opening of the first salt room to 2013, one of the deadliest years in the conflict.

 "We found that there were at least two salt rooms used for the bodies of those who died under torture, from sickness or hunger," the group's co-founder Diab Serriya said during an interview in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.

 It was not clear whether both rooms existed at the same time, nor whether they are still being used today.

 Serriya explained that when a detainee died, his body would typically be left inside the cell with the inmates for two to five days before being taken to a salt room.

 The corpses remained there until there were enough of them for a truckload.

 The next stop was a military hospital where death certificates -- often declaring a "heart attack" as the cause of death -- were issued, before mass burials.

 The salt rooms were meant to "preserve the bodies, contain the stench... and protect the guards and prison staff from bacteria and infections," Serriya explained.

 US-based professor of anatomy Joy Balta, who has published extensively on human body preservation techniques, explained how salt could be used as a simple and cheap alternative to cold rooms.

"Salt has the ability to dehydrate any living tissue ... and can therefore be used to significantly slow down the decomposition process," he said.

 A body can remain in salt without decomposing longer than in a purpose-built refrigerated chamber, "although it will alter the surface anatomy", said Balta, who founded the Anatomy Learning Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.



 The ancient Egyptians are known to have used the mummification process, which includes the immersion of the body in a salt solution called natron.

 The tonnes of rock salt used in Sednaya are thought to have come from Sabkhat al-Jabul, Syria's largest salt flats, in Aleppo province.

 The report by ADMSP is the most thorough study yet of the structure of Sednaya, which has manufactured death on a terrifying scale for years.

 It provides detailed schematics of the facility and of how duties were split between various army units and wardens.

 "The régime wants Sednaya to be a black hole, no-one is allowed to know anything about it," Serriya said. "Our report denies them that."



 The fighting in Syria's brutal war has ebbed over the past three years, but Assad and the prison that has become a monument to his bloody rule are still there.

 New layers to the horror of the war are still being uncovered as survivors abroad share their stories, and investigations into régime crimes by foreign courts fuel a drive for accountability.

 "If a political transition ever occurs in Syria," said Serriya, "we want Sednaya to be turned into a museum, like Auschwitz."

 Prisoners recall that, aside from torture and disease, their biggest torment was hunger.

 Moatassem said his weight more than halved, from 98 kilograms when he was jailed in 2011 to 42 kilograms when he got out.

 The ex-inmates also see as a sickening irony the fact that the salt they craved so badly formed an integral part of the horrific death machine that was decimating them.

 The wheat, rice and potatoes they were sometimes fed were always cooked without salt, or sodium chloride, a lack of which can have serious health impacts on the human body.

 Low sodium levels in the blood can cause nausea, dizziness and muscle cramps and, if sustained, coma and death.

 Detainees used to soak olive pits in their water to salt it, and would even spend hours sifting through laundry detergent to pick out tiny crystals which they treated like a delicacy.

 Former inmate Qais Murad recounted how, on a summer day in 2013, he was called out of his cell to see his parents, but on his way to the visitation area was shoved into a room.

 Inside, he stepped on something like grit on the floor. Kneeling with his bowed head against the wall, he caught a glimpse of guards dumping around 10 bodies behind him.

 When a cellmate returned from a visit later that day, his socks and pockets stuffed with salt, Murad understood what the substance was.

 "From that day onwards, we always made sure to wear socks, and trousers with pockets, for visits in case we found salt," Murad said, also in Gaziantep.

 He remembered how the excited cellmates ate boiled potatoes with their first pinch of salt in years that day, oblivious to its provenance.

 "All we cared about was the salt," Murad said. "Salt was a treasure." '

Wives, Widows Of Syrian Detainees Lead Shackled Life

 

 'In the decade since Syria's régime pronounced her jailed husband dead, Ramya al-Sous was threatened by security forces, locked out of her spouse's estate and forced to flee abroad.

 The mother of three, now a refugee living in Lebanon, was never told how her husband died and is unable to sell or rent the properties confiscated by authorities.

 "By virtue of me being a woman, everything becomes nearly impossible," she said, echoing a plight shared by many wives and widows of Syrian prisoners.

 But the 40-year-old wants to put up a fight.

 "My children wouldn't have suffered as much if it had been me who was detained. They were left with nothing, but I insist on winning something back," she said.



 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's régime waged a brutal crackdown on an Arab Spring-inspired uprising in 2011, sparking a war that has killed nearly half a million people.

 Around that number of people, mostly men, are estimated to have been detained in régime prisons since, with tens of thousands dying either under torture or due to poor conditions.

 Outside prison walls, their wives are anything but free, facing a maze of red tape in a society and legal system that favours men, said Ghazwan Kronfol, a Syrian lawyer living in Istanbul.

 Without their husbands' formal death certificates, widows cannot claim inheritance or property ownership, he said.



 Nor can they access their dead husbands' real estate if it was confiscated or escrowed by the state, the lawyer added.

 Worse still, guardianship over their children is not guaranteed, with judges often granting it to a male next of kin.

 "All of this comes on top of financial blackmail and sexual harassment" by security officers, Kronfol said.

 Syria's 2012 anti-terrorism law stipulates the government can temporarily or permanently seize the properties of prisoners accused of terrorism -- a blanket charge used to detain civilians suspected of opposition links.



 The government is believed to have seized $1.54 billion worth of prisoner assets since 2011, according to an April report by The Association of Detainees and The Missing in Sednaya Prison.

 The Turkey-based watchdog was founded by former detainees held in Sednaya, a jail on the outskirts of Damascus which is the largest in the country and has become a by-word for torture and the darkest abuses of the Syrian régime.

 Sous's home and farmland were among the properties escrowed after her husband was arrested in a raid in 2013 and later hit with terrorism-related charges she says were trumped up.

 A few months later, authorities handed her a "corpse number", she said.

 Alone and poor, she spent years being bounced around from one security branch to another as she tried to clear bureaucratic hurdles.



Sous said she was met mainly with harassment and intimidation.

 "Women are easy prey," she said.

 Fearing persecution by security forces, she fled to neighbouring Lebanon in 2016, clutching the old red and white plastic bag in which she keeps her property deeds and reams of other official documents.

 She has little money left but continues to pay bribes and lawyer fees in an attempt to reclaim assets from the state.

 "I want to sell them, not for me but for my children."

 Salma, a 43-year-old mother of four, also fled to Lebanon after her husband disappeared inside the black hole of Syria's prison system.

 The one time she enquired about his fate in 2015, security forces locked her in a room and threatened her.

 "I never asked about him again," Salma said, asking to use a pseudonym due to security concerns.



 When she tried to sell her husband's car and home, she found they had been seized by the state.

 "I sold all my jewellery to buy that house," she said.

 In their ordeal, some women have found a rare silver lining with the empowerment that being left to their own devices has brought about.

 Tuqqa, a 45-year-old mother of five whose husband also disappeared in prison, argued her life was already hard before the war due to social and religious conservatism.

 "I wasn't even allowed to open the front door of the house, let alone go out to buy groceries or bread," she said.



 But all that changed when she became the sole guardian of her children.

 She eventually moved to Lebanon, where she secured work and attended livelihood trainings and workshops run by aid groups, a leap from her previously sheltered life.

 When she was sexually harassed by her landlord, she blamed herself: "That is what we were taught: women are always to blame."

 Her children may not inherit a family home from their father but Tuqqa is adamant they will inherit new values from her.

 "I am not raising my children the way I was raised," she said.

 "War has given women strength. They are learning how to say 'no'," said a Damascus lawyer who asked not to be named.

 While the odds are stacked against her, Tuqqa said she feels ready to face the challenges ahead.

 "I lost a lot, but I became a strong woman," Tuqqa said.

 "I am no longer the woman living behind closed doors." '

Syrians in Idlib protest Assads Ghouta chemical attack

 

 'People gathered at the city center of the opposition-held northwestern Idlib region on Sunday to protest against the chemical attack by the Bashar Assad régime in Syria on Aug. 21, 2013, in which more than 1,400 civilians died in the eastern Ghouta region of the capital Damascus.

 Protestors carried banners with messages written in Arabic and English: "We will not let the torch of justice go out," "We raise our voices on behalf of the victims and demand justice for them," "The massacres committed by the Assad régime with chemical weapons are not only against the victims but against all humanity" and "The souls of the victims are still waiting for justice."

 Firas Halife, one of the participants in the demonstration, said that they lit candles to keep the memory of the Assad régime's chemical massacre on Aug. 21, 2013, in the eastern Ghouta region.

 According to the data of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), more than 1100 of those killed in the attack by the Assad régime were women and children, and 5,000 civilians were affected by poison gas, Halife said.

 "Civilians were killed while they were sleeping. We want the perpetrators behind the massacre to be punished. It is not possible to forget the murderers. It is on the agenda until they are punished. We will keep holding these protests."



 Ismail Abdullah, one of the participants in the demonstration, said that they organized a demonstration so that the voices of the families of the survivors of eastern Ghouta and all chemical weapons massacres could be heard.

 Abdullah said that they are seeking justice by raising their voices, "We demand decisive steps from the international community."

 After the massacre, eastern Ghouta became the region where the Bashar Assad régime implemented the most strict blockade and used almost all weapons in 2018.

 The opposition in the region had to evacuate eastern Ghouta in April 2018 as a result of the forced agreement with the Assad régime and Russia.

 Civilians who emerged from the five-year siege are currently struggling to survive in the areas under the control of the opposition in the north of the country.



 According to the report of the SNHR, the Assad régime carried out 217 chemical weapons attacks on the settlements under the control of the opposition after the start of the civil war in Syria.

 Salim al-Muslat, the National Coalition for Syrian Opposition and Revolutionary Forces (SMDK) chair, also called on the United Nations to hold the Bashar Assad régime accountable for the attack. In his speech published on the official accounts of SMDK, al-Muslat accused the international community of being silent about the régime's chemical weapons attacks.

 He stated that the international community could not give serious and concrete reactions to the eastern Ghouta massacre.

 "This situation paved the way for the régime to commit massacres in various regions of Syria. Weapons prohibited by international law were used against civilians in these massacres. Today, the Assad régime and its allies still continue their massacres."

 Al-Muslat argued that the Assad régime violated the U.N.'s decision to use banned weapons in Syria 2,810 times and demanded that the U.N. take responsibility and hold the Assad régime accountable for its crimes.

 The head of SMDK emphasized that the political transition process in Syria should be implemented within a certain calendar within the framework of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2254.



 Meanwhile, the U.N. High Representative for Disarmament, Izumi Nakamitsu, declared that "no progress has been made" in the dossier of the chemical weapons program in Syria.

 Speaking at the UNSC session on chemical weapons in Syria at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, Nakamitsu expressed his regret that the 25th round of consultations in Damascus could not be held after the "Syrian authorities" did not issue entry visas each time to the chief expert of the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

 "We have not made any progress in this regard. I urge the Syrian government to cooperate with the Technical Secretariat and facilitate arrangements for weapons deployment, as outlined in Article VII, paragraph 7 of the Chemical Weapons Convention."

 "Using chemical weapons is a serious violation of international law and an insult to our common human values. We must be vigilant to ensure that these terrible weapons are never used again and are destroyed everywhere, not just in Syria." the high representative stated that the U.N. is determined to work with all member states to bring those who use these weapons to account.

 Nakamitsu also shared the information that the Syrian régime did not cooperate with discovering a chemical substance found in Barzeh facilities in November 2018.



 The Syrian régime joined the OPCW on Sept. 13, 2013, and the same month, the UNSC adopted Resolution 2118 on Syria's chemical weapons and the massacre it carried out in eastern Ghouta a month before it joined the OPCW.

 With the decision taken at the OPCW Meeting of States Parties on April 21, 2021, some membership rights of this country were suspended after it was determined that Bashar Assad régime forces used chemical weapons in al-Lataminah in March 2017 and Saraqib in February 2018.'

Protests Over Turkey's 'Reconciliation' Proposal

 

 'Widespread protests were called in Syria's rebel-held north on Friday over a proposal from Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for reconciliation between the Syrian government and opposition.

 "We have to somehow get the opposition and the régime to reconcile in Syria. Otherwise, there will be no lasting peace, we always say this," Cavusoglu said Thursday, in remarks to diplomats.

 The comments -- an apparent easing of Ankara's longstanding hostility to the Damascus régime -- have sparked calls for protests after Friday weekly prayers in key cities that fall under the control of Turkish forces and their supporters, including in Al-Bab, Afrin and Jarablus.

 Similar calls were made in Idlib, controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other rebel groups, to gather at border crossings with Turkey.

 Small protests already began overnight in some areas, including Al-Bab, where dozens gathered holding opposition slogans and chanting against Turkey.

 Some demonstrators burned a Turkish flag, while others took down Turkey's colours hung up around the city.



 Dozens of others gathered at the Bab al-Salama crossing to Turkey, many shouting "death rather than indignity".

 In a statement Friday, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic wrote: "Turkey played a leading role in maintaining the ceasefire on the ground" and in talks on drawing up a new constitution, although they have made no progress.

 Ankara "threw full support behind the opposition and the negotiation committee throughout the political process" he said.

 "Currently this process is not moving forward because the régime is dragging its feet. The issues expressed by our minister yesterday also point to this," he said.



 Turkey's top diplomat revealed on Thursday that he had held a short meeting in Belgrade in October with his Syrian counterpart Faisal al-Meqdad, adding that communication had resumed between the two countries' intelligence agencies.

 But he denied direct talks between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, despite long-standing calls from Russia for such dialogue.

 Cavusoglu added that Turkey would continue its fight against "terrorism" in Syria, following warnings from Ankara since May that it could launch new strikes on Kurdish-held areas in north and northeast Syria.

 Ankara has launched successive military offensives in Syria. Most have targeted Kurdish militants that Turkey links to a group waging a decades-long insurgency against it.

 Cavusoglu's comments have sparked widespread anger among the opposition, with renowned figure George Sabra writing on Facebook: "If Cavusoglu is concerned with reconciling with the Syrian régime, that is his business. As for the Syrians, they have a different cause for which they have paid and continue to pay the dearest price." '

Syrian régime enforcer faces wrath of emboldened Druze

 

 'At least 13 men have been killed in the last two days in southern Syria attacks by armed groups opposed to Bashar al-Assad. The fighters launched attacks on loyalist militias in the governorate of Suweida near the border with Jordan.

 The violence indicates the difficulty the régime has had in controlling a province largely inhabited by a religious minority it has sought to recruit to its side in the civil war, while portraying the opposition as Sunni fanatics bent on destroying the country’s many non-Sunni sects.

 Suweida is largely inhabited by the country’s Druze population, a Middle East minority sect which is also present in Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.

 Syria's civil war has gone on for more than a decade, sparked by a violent suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations that erupted in the south of the country in March 2011, demanding an end to five decades of Assad family rule. The economy in régime-held areas has been in free-fall, with the national currency trading at 4,200 Syrian pounds to the dollar, compared with 50 pounds to the dollar in early 2011.



 Armed men reportedly attacked several buildings and roadblocks belonging to a militia headed by Raji Falhout, a pro-régime enforcer in Suweida.

 They say Mr Falhout, whose forces are overseen by Military Intelligence, had been spearheading the persecution of members of the Liwa Party, an anti-régime group that has been trying to rid parts of Suweida of kidnapping gangs and drug rings.

 The attacking forces freed several Liwa Party members from a detention centre run by Mr Falhout’s group, they said, adding that the attackers lost four men while nine Falhout loyalists were killed.



 Suwayda24, a local news network run by civil activists, reported that Mr Falhout has been on the run after the attackers set fire to his home on Wednesday. It said that one of his headquarters that had been seized contained a Captagon factory.

 “Mass discontent has reached its peak against the behaviour of the security agencies in the province and their support for gangs like Falhout’s,” said one resident of Suweida.

 “For years these bandits have been choking Suweida,” he added.



 Suweida has been spared much of the violence that the régime has employed to crush opposition to President Assad as it has sought to portray itself as a bulwark against Sunni extremism, although it employed force to crush protests in the region in 2011 and 2012.

 A de facto waiver of mandatory military conscription has helped placate Suweida but in the last few years lawlessness has spread as the economy in régime-held areas has deteriorated. Kidnappings and armed robberies are becoming common, residents say.

 The tiny Druze community comprised about 3 per cent of Syria’s 20 million population in 2010, the last year for relatively reliable statistics. Members of the Alawite minority, the same sect as the president's, have dominated Syria since a 1963 coup.

 Peaceful protests over deteriorating living conditions, mainly by young men and women, renewed in Suweida in 2021 and in 2022 before they were crushed, with tacit support from the Druze religious establishment and Russian forces in the area.



 A Syrian military defector in Amman said that losses Assad's loyalists have suffered in Suweida are significant politically.

 He noted that Druze religious elders, as well as the Russian military, have this time not objected to undermining Mr Falhout's militia.

 “He has been playing a valuable role on behalf of the régime,” he said. “But he has overextended to the point that he became expendable to his backers.” '

Syrian homes looted after regime recapture

 

 'Ghassan Hammoud, aged 46, fled Kafr Nabel in southern Idlib province in 2019, as régime forces captured opposition-held areas in Syria’s northwest.

 He left behind a house he had built a few years earlier, and now lives in a displacement camp near the Turkish border, where he works as a day labourer to look after his seven children and his niece.

 Hammoud’s life is hard; he relies on loans for almost half of his monthly expenses and is struggling to cope with abysmal living conditions and cuts to humanitarian aid. But it is what he has recently discovered about his old home, left behind in Kafr Nabel, that upsets him the most.



 “I discovered my roof was stolen,” he said, still in disbelief. After hearing from friends and residents that Syrian régime forces had looted abandoned homes, Hammoud had been looking at Google Maps on his phone to view his old neighbourhood.

 “Then a friend of mine who passed by the area sent me a picture which confirmed everything,” Hammoud said, his voice trembling. “It makes my blood boil.”

 And Hammoud said, he was not the only one with a missing roof.

 “I don’t think I was personally targeted; they looted the entire neighbourhood!”



 Displaced Syrians who fled southern Idlib and Hama province over the past four years, along with human rights monitors, have accused Syrian régime forces of ransacking the ruins of their neighbourhoods and auctioning off agricultural land.

 The Syrian régime has not commented publicly on the accusations.



 Drone pictures show hundreds of houses and buildings in southern Idlib province stripped down to their concrete foundations. The glass windows, roofs, aluminium frames, and everything in between are all gone.

 Some of the drone pictures show pickup trucks near scrapheaps of metal and bricks. Watchdog groups and monitors have shared photos on the ground of régime forces looting not just the foundations of the houses, but washing machines, refrigerators, furniture, and even steel pots and pans. Photos that surfaced on activist pages and on social media show construction workers drilling through homes and mosques to remove their roofs.



 Syrian troops and state-backed militias have looted some three dozen towns and villages in southern Idlib over the past three years, after their residents fled northwards. Stolen goods are then sold online or in flea markets.

 “We call them the army of looters,” 32 year-old journalist Ibrahim al-Soueid said, as he scrolled through footage he had collected from years of covering the conflict in northwest Syria with pro-opposition television station Syria TV.

  Al-Soueid was born and raised in Kafr Nabel, and had to flee further north in 2019, when régime forces reclaimed the area.

 “It’s so overwhelming seeing your own home defiled,” he said. “I didn’t think we would never return when we left, so we kept most things, even the children’s toys.”



 The house al-Soueid inherited from his grandfather and shared with other members of his family was partially damaged in an artillery strike, but he says the doors, windows, kitchen appliances, and aluminium frames he put in were all looted.

 But it was the messages on Facebook that most upset him.

 “People who say they live in Kafr Nabel and appear to be pro-regime in their profile would send me defamatory messages,” al-Soueid explained. “And they would send photos of my looted home with threatening messages written on the walls.”

 Looters in military garb sprayed the word “confiscated” and al-Soueid’s name on his living room wall.



 In another photo, they had tagged “the home of the traitor has been confiscated”. Another picture they sent the reporter was a truck loaded with his furniture.

 Local governments and security committees are publicly auctioning off land they claim to be vacant, but which the NGO says is in fact the property of residents who fled into opposition territory or out of the country.

 Even people with their land deeds, other documents, and house keys have no way of claiming their property or land back.



 Experts and activists say that Syria’s régime, struggling economically, has resorted to auctioning off property to generate revenue, while pro-régime militias have sold valuable looted raw material from homes for profit.

 Most displaced Syrians do not have much to return to, having lost not just their homes, but their livelihoods. Meanwhile, human rights organisations have documented returnees being arbitrarily detained, forcefully conscripted into the army, and a host of human rights abuses.

 Even with no political solution on the horizon, and the leader he detests entrenched in power, al-Soueid hopes to be able to return to Kafr Nabel.

 “We hope to go back to our towns and homes, and rebuild this home that they took from me,” a dejected al-Soueid said. “My home is just one of thousands of homes that was looted.” '

Syrian man recalls incarceration horror in regime prisons

 

 'With pain and fear writ large on his face, a former inmate of Syrian prisons run by the Bashar al-Assad régime recounted the torture and abuse he faced during incarceration.

 On the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture observed on June 26, Muhammed Salih Assaf, who was released on June 9, recalled the inhumane torture and cruelties he witnessed during his imprisonment.

 In 2017, Assaf was detained by PKK/YPG terrorists during a family visit in Afrin at the age of 17 and was handed over to the régime's security units.

 Assaf spent about five years in régime prisons.

 After footage of the "Tadamon Massacre" carried out by the Assad régime forces surfaced in April, the régime passed a "repentance law."

 Syria's military intelligence service conducted the massacre in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013, with Palestinians among the 41 victims, according to a report by the British daily The Guardian. Members of military intelligence Branch 227 made civilians run toward a mass grave while shooting at them.

 According to the latest figures released by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), the Assad régime released only 539 people under the amnesty law. The organization said that at least 151,462 people are still held in régime prisons.



 Assaf said he was handed over to régime forces by PKK/YPG terrorists during Operation Olive Branch launched by Türkiye in the northwestern district of Afrin in early 2018.

 "They (régime forces) interrogated us and some of us were tortured to death. They wanted us to admit that we participated in armed actions, but we did not."

 He said that on the first day, he was tortured to the extent that he suffered memory loss due to a blow to the head.

 "They were inflicting all kinds of torture. They tortured (inmates) with plastic water pipes and sticks. I had wounds all over my body. They enjoyed the torture they inflicted on us."

 The régime forces tortured older prisoners even more, Assaf said, adding: "Those who enter the prison either become disabled or die before they can see their families."

 Underlining that he was randomly selected under the so-called amnesty law, Assaf said fellow prisoners asked him to inform their families of their whereabouts. "All I want is for everyone to be released and their torture to end," he said.'

Syrian overcomes detentions, barriers in path to Yale

 

 'Most days, Karam Alhamad, a graduate student at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, can be found at Mediterranea, a restaurant and shisha bar on New Haven’s Orange Street that entices passersby with big bay windows lined with colorfully embroidered pillows. “I have a window to home here,” Alhamad says.

 Home, for Alhamad, is Deir Ezzor, a city in eastern Syria, where he was a student, a photographer and journalist, and a democracy activist in a country riven by conflict. After being detained by Bashar al-Assad’s government four times — the last for nearly a year— he fled to Turkey in 2014. Since then, he has worked in international development; spent time in the United States on a fellowship; finished his degree in Berlin; got married; started a blockchain nonprofit; and, after being admitted to the Jackson Institute for the fall of 2020, spent a year and half waiting to take his place at Yale.



 In 2011, when protests in the country began, part of the pro-democracy movement around the region known as the Arab Spring, Alhamad took to the streets as well. He carried his camera to document the movement and, to protect his identity, wore a mask in the style of the main character from the movie “V for Vendetta.”

 “We have a saying in Syria: ‘Even walls can hear you,’” says Alhamad. “You can’t trust even your family. There is always this state of fear that someone would try to report you.”

 As the protests, met with force by the army, escalated into armed resistance, Alhamad remained dedicated to opposition in the form of reportage. “I saw my friends holding guns,” he says. “I decided to continue holding my camera.” He provided photographs to the Washington Post, Reuters, and the Associated Press, using the pseudonyms Karam Jamar or Zendetta — a portmanteau of Deir Ezzor, his hometown, and Vendetta.



 In 2011 and 2012 he was detained three times. The first lasted only a day. The second time, security forces took his brother Karem in, too, confused by the similarities in their names. His brother was released after 14 days, but Alhamad was detained for 70, interrogated and tortured by intelligence officers. Two days after being released, he rejoined the protests. “The idea of detention is to put you down and make you fear, but it just fuels you,” says Alhamad. “I’ve seen people dying with me, I don’t mind dying now in the demonstration.”

 After his third detention, he decided to limit himself to areas controlled by revolutionaries. He continued his studies, established a media office for the city, and was elected to the Deir Ezzor provincial council. The position gave him the opportunity to work closely with international donors and to travel to Turkey for training and meetings with diplomats and humanitarian organizations, giving him new perspective on Syria’s conflict.

 Then, in August 2013, he returned briefly to a régime-controlled area to visit his mother — who he hadn’t seen for months — and to get a passport a family member had helped him secure. Within hours, the family member arrived — accompanied by several cars full of soldiers. They again took Alhamad and his brother. “This time was the most horrifying one,” says Alhamad. The brothers were transported by military plane to Damascus and held at the Palestine Branch, a prison operated by Syrian intelligence agents.

 Alhamad recalls the year he spent in the Palestine Branch calmly but vividly: the heat of the small room, where detainees crowded together; the constant fear and anguish of watching others die and knowing you might be next. The extreme stress caused his brother to wake up one day having lost three years of memory: he had no idea where they were or why.

 Alhamad, along with Karem, was finally released in July of 2014, and a month later he’d made his way to Turkey.



 What fuels him is the sense that he’s in a position to make a real difference for all Syrians — a position that is anchored and amplified by the Jackson Institute. “The freedom the curriculum gives is amazing — there is a lot of support here to do what you have passion for,” Alhamad says. “I can’t think of any other school that could possibly help me grow in my chosen field like that.”

 He points to classes like Robert S. Ford’s “Arab Spring, Arab Winter,” which brought together students with a variety of backgrounds working in the region, including military service. “I like to engage with people who have a different experience, so I can learn from them,” Alhamad says. “But at the same time, I try to be vocal about my ideas about American diplomacy, invasion, military operations, so they can learn from me.”

 Alhamad’s move to New Haven, for all its rewards, also has its strains. His wife remains in Berlin, and the nature of his visa — which needs to be renewed every three months — means that his status in the U.S. still feels tenuous. He suffers from survivor’s syndrome: guilt that he managed to make it out of detention when so many others did not, and a feeling of responsibility for those left behind. He finds refuge and respite in the shisha bar. “I know it’s unhealthy,” he says. “But there’s a lot of stress — it’s not all milk and honey. It’s hard to continue working on Syria, focus on what’s going on in terms of the detainees and advocate for a free Syria, do the educational aspect of my work, and study as well.” '

The SDF, the PKK, and the Syrian régime

 

 'Mohamed Ismail [member of the presidium of the Kurdish National Council (KNC) in Syria and head of the KNC delegation to the intra-Syrian-Kurdish talks]:

 "The SDF cannot do anything without the Americans. It can take some movement on the side. The Americans could allow this: “see the régime, see the Russians,” Ismail says. There are relations between the SDF and the Russians, logistical in certain points, and the US gives a bit of space, but as a result, it doesn’t do anything without US consent, likewise for the régime

 The SDF tries to hand over areas to the régime, and this is leaked news from their circles, and they also announce it before the Turks come, to hand over areas to the régime. The régime is preferable for the SDF in comparison to Turkey. I do not know to what degree the Americans agreed or not

 The relations with the régime are of two types. Relations between the PKK and the régime are ongoing and have not stopped for a single day, and they exist at all levels. The SDF’s relations with the régime, as well as their tactics with the régime, are what the US allows them to do on the sidelines. So, they will not bother the Americans.

 Sabri Ok, visited Damascus recently. He is a Turkish PKK. He lives inside inside Syria, of course, how can one go to Damascus and go back?"

 Abdallah al-Hafi [the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Local Councils Unit Director in Azaz]:

 "In the Western part of Northern Syria, the YPG coordinates with the Russians, while in the east with the American. There was a before Ayn Daqna, and there was an after Ayn Daqna. There was no intention of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to enter Afrin. There were no problems at all. Not between the Assad -opposed Kurds and the Assad -opposed rebels. Firstly, the YPG made a Russian base in Afrin, in Kafr Janna, and Russia entered. Secondly, when the régime was besieged in Nubul and Zahraa, they let them escape. Thirdly, there was Ayn Daqna. It became a war. One sees his brother’s corpse, or his cousin’s, or his friend’s, and the YPG militants put the corpses on a loader and parade them. After that, it was over. The peace ended. They tried to take Azaz, if they could.

 The battle for Tel Rif’at was with Russian and régime airplanes bombing Tel Rif’at, and on the ground, the Kurdish YPG took it. There was coordination between Russia, the régime, and the YPG. The bombing caused the people to flee, and there was a total war in the area. They organized it completely. Furthermore, the Russians have a military base in Tel Rif’at, and régime soldiers entered Tel Rif’at. The same happened in Afrin. This is proof that they are coordinating among each other."



 The defected security director of Qamishli:

 "I got orders to hand over all police departments to the PYD/YPG. We even handed them the new weapons and equipment we received months ago."



 Koran Ahmad [the Kurdish chairman of the board of Bahar, an NGO working in opposition-held and SDF-held parts of northern Syria]:

 "It was in June or July 2012, the PYD announced a curfew, so the people wouldn’t leave the house. We heard a few shots. I was standing on the balcony, there was nothing on the ground. Two hours later, they said we had the victory over the régime and we took the areas. Now, there is no Syrian régime here anymore. And really, the next day, when we went out on the street, the régime wasn’t there anymore. So, this happened within one day? Within three or four hours, not a day. They said we won from the régime with the fact that the régime elements stayed but changed their clothes from military to civil and stayed among the people. Afrin was special in all of northern Syria. There were seven security branches. Even military security was present in Afrin. State security, criminal and political security, etc., were all present in Afrin."



 Rena Netjes:

 "From the early 1980s until 1988, Hafez al-Assad’s régime hosted the PKK in Yafour, Zabadani, and Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Assad’s objective in supporting the PKK was to gain leverage over its much larger northern neighbor, so as to influence various territorial and water disputes. The PKK’s long-standing presence highlights the contrast between the Syrian régime’s treatment of domestic Kurdish political and militant activity and its treatment of externally-oriented Kurdish political and militant activity on Syrian soil. The former was harshly suppressed in most cases; the latter was supported. Such support was naturally conditioned on the PKK staying out of Syria’s domestic politics. Instead of mobilizing Syria’s Kurdish community against Damascus, the PKK harnessed it for its war against Turkey. From the PKK’s point of view, the Syrian Kurdish community became a recruitment pool for its war in Turkey." '

 Taken from "The SDF, the PKK, and the Syrian regime" by Rena Netjes in MENA Affairs.

Displaced await day YPG occupation of Manbij ends

 

 'Locals displaced from Manbij, northern Syria by the PKK terror group's offshoot in the country, the YPG, are now waiting for their homeland to be cleared of terrorists so they can return.

 YPG terrorists forced tens of thousands of civilians to flee to areas close to the Turkish border from the Manbij district of Aleppo, which they occupied six years ago with the help of the United States under the guise of fighting Daesh.

 Residents have been forced to migrate from Manbij, where more than 90% of the population is Arab, due to the YPG's practices, including forcibly recruiting young people into its armed ranks under the pretext of "compulsory military service."

 Displaced people from Manbij have been living away from their homes for about six years in makeshift tents they set up with their own means around the al-Bab and Jarablus districts on the Turkish border.

 Abdullah Shilash, the leader of the Beni Sait tribe in Manbij, said that they are ready to do their part to rid their district of terrorists.



 "We want the city to be liberated as soon as possible. We have been displaced for many years. We support the statements of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan," he said, referring to the president's recent announcement that Turkey plans to rid Manbij and Tal Rifaat of YPG/PKK terrorists.

 Emphasizing that the YPG is detaining Arab youth with practices such as "compulsory military service," he said: "Everyone is ready (for the operation). Those in the district and the displaced are ready."

 Turkey is ready to rid northern Syria's Tal Rifaat and Manbij areas near the Turkish border of terrorist elements in a bid to eliminate the terror threat from the region, Erdoğan said last week.

 "We are taking another step in establishing a 30-kilometer security zone along our southern border. We will clean up Tal Rifaat and Manbij," he said, adding that the planned military operations will gradually continue in other parts of northern Syria.

 Erdoğan has said that since the U.S. and Russia have failed to live up to their commitments to provide a safe zone along the border region, Turkey is ready to mount an operation to protect the nation and locals in northern Syria from the YPG/PKK terrorist threat.

 In October 2019, Russia committed to removing the terrorist group from Tal Rifaat and Manbij after reaching an agreement with Turkey during Operation Peace Spring. Moscow also promised that the terrorists would be pulled back 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the border on the M4 road and in the area outside the Operation Peace Spring zone.

 Likewise, then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence pledged to Turkey that the YPG/PKK terrorist group would withdraw from the Operation Peace Spring region.

 Ali Suleiman from Manbij said that thousands of young people were forced to migrate because of the so-called compulsory military service.

 Waiting for the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) to take action so he can return to his district, he said: "We are counting the days to regain our lands."

 Another displaced person, Cuma Hatib, said that he supports any military operation that will allow displaced civilians to return to their homes and stop fleeing the persecution of the YPG.

 "I haven't seen Manbij for years because of the terrorist organization YPG/PKK. I hope that a military operation will begin as soon as possible to clear the district from terrorists."

 The YPG terrorist organization harasses the predominantly Arab population of Manbij with its impositions, prompting the people of Manbij to organize demonstrations from time to time against the terrorist group's practices such as conscription.

 Pressuring the people of Manbij to accept their demands, the terrorist organization monopolizes the fuel in the district, which had a prewar population of 1 million, depriving residents of the resource.

 Most recently, locals living in Syria’s Azaz district held a demonstration against the Bashar Assad regime and the YPG terrorist group on Sunday.

 Having been forcibly displaced from their lands by the YPG in northern Syria, the people of Tal Rifaat gathered in the district center of Azaz and asked the TSK and SNA to clear their lands of the terrorists.

 The Syrian opposition forces have also said that they are ready to join the Turkish military in a potential new cross-border counterterrorism operation against the YPG in the north to liberate largely Arab populated towns and villages from the terrorists.

 The YPG/PKK mostly carries out terrorist attacks in Manbij, Ain al-Arab and the Tal Rifaat district of Aleppo. The terrorist group even uses these regions as bases for its attacks. The YPG, which occupies roughly a third of Syria's territory with the support of the United States, frequently targets Azaz, Marea, al-Bab, Jarablus, Afrin, Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain in the north of the country with heavy weapons.

 In their attacks, the terrorists use advanced heavy weapons such as TOW missiles, multi-barrel rocket launchers, Katyusha and Grad missiles as well as U.S. and Russian-made rocket launchers and mortars.

 

 The YPG has controlled much of northeastern Syria since the forces of Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad withdrew in 2012. The PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the U.S., Turkey and the European Union, and Washington's support for its Syrian affiliate has been a major strain on bilateral relations with Ankara. The U.S. primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria to fight the Daesh terrorist group. On the other hand, Turkey strongly opposed the YPG's presence in northern Syria. Ankara has long objected to the U.S.' support for the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Turkey and that terrorizes local people, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee.

 While acknowledging Turkey’s security concerns, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price has voiced concerns about Turkey’s plans, saying a new operation could undermine regional stability and put American forces at risk.'

Mass graves are still being dug in Syria

 'Mass graves are still being dug in Syria today, filled with victims of the ongoing conflict and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's régime, an anonymous whistleblower known as "the gravedigger" told US senators during a congressional hearing about the conflict on Wednesday.

 Dressed fully in black from head to toe with his face and head completely covered by black cloth, the gravedigger spoke of the horrors he witnessed working as one of the civilian workers at a mass grave site in Syria from 2011 to 2018. While the gravedigger left Syria in 2018, he said he has spoken with others who fled the country more recently, and said they told him the mass graves are still being dug. The gravedigger gave a prepared statement through a translator.

 Before the war, the gravedigger worked as an "administrative employee at the Damascus municipality," but, in 2011, the "régime intelligence officials" visited his office and ordered him to work for them.

 "When the régime asks for something, you don't say no. I was not prepared for the horrors of my duties," the gravedigger said through a translator.

 "Every week, twice a week, three trailer trucks arrived packed with 300 to 600 bodies of victims of torture, bombardment and slaughter. Twice a week, three to four pickup trucks with 30 to 40 bodies of civilians that had been executed in Sednaya prison also arrived for disposal in the most inhumane way," the gravedigger said.

 The gravedigger was able to escape Syria in 2018 and "follow his family to Europe." He testified before a German court in Koblenz about the horrors he witnessed. Because of other people he worked with who have recently escaped, he knows there are still mass graves being dug today, he said.

 "My heart is heavy with the knowledge that many at this very moment are experiencing inhumane torture at the hands of the Assad régime," the gravedigger said via the translator. "In some, I know exactly where they are piled up into mass graves that are still being dug today. I know this because others who have worked with me on the mass graves have recently escaped and confirmed what we have been hearing."

 The gravedigger said the longer the war goes on and Assad is in power, the more it also enables Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Enabling Assad enables Putin, in stopping Assad hurts the Russian dictator. We must finally learn from the past and not let this never again moment happen yet again," he said.

The gravedigger recounted horrors of his time working at the mass grave sites. In one instance, a man who was dumped from a trailer truck with other dead bodies made a movement, signaling he was still alive.

"One of the civilian workers said, started crying, said that we had to do something," the gravedigger said. "The intelligence officer supervising us ordered the bulldozer driver to run him over, the driver could not hesitate or else he would have been next. He ran over the man in the trenches, killing him. As for the young man in our workshop who dared to shed tears over the victim of Assad's régime, we never saw him again."

 The gravedigger called on the senators to "take action."

 "Although hundreds of thousands have already been murdered and disappeared and millions displaced, the worst is still yet to come. It can be prevented. But I beg of you do not wait a second longer. I beg of you to take action," the gravedigger said.

 "These massacres are still happening. The Syrian people have suffered enough. Men and women, children and elderly, innocent people slowly tortured to death, screaming in the darkness, while the world looks the other way." '

Syria’s eastern factions unite

 

 'Following a series of reshuffles within the Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkey-supported alliance of armed opposition groups in northern Syria, four armed groups with roots in Syria’s eastern provinces, Ahrar al-Sharqiya, Jaish al-Sharqiya, the 20th Division, and Suqur al-Sham’s eastern affiliate, announced the formation of the Liberation and Construction Movement (LCM) on Feb. 15, 2022.



 Saad al-Sharae:

 "Some factions in the LCM joined the Azm Operations Room initially. However, they soon realized that the eventual outcome of the formation of Azm would be to reduce the professional hierarchy of the SNA and to erode the corps’ hierarchy. The groups that constitute the LCM do not support this because we wanted to move away from factionalism toward something institutional. As a result of the creation of Azm, there was the creation of the Thaeroon coalition, which led to further polarization within the SNA. Therefore, it made sense for the eastern groups to respond to that situation by creating the LCM in order to create a balance within the SNA and to steer the SNA back to the established corps system.

The creation of the LCM came after several weeks of meetings between the different leaderships. The LCM is a unique experiment. There have been many operation rooms in the past, but there has not been a full merger of several factions. In terms of the gradual approach toward a full merger, we are at 40-50% already."



 Abu Barzan:

 "First let me provide a bit of background on how we see the concept of unification. At the moment, there are roughly 1 million people from eastern Syria either in northern Syria or Turkey. These people have strong bonds of blood and tribal connection that keep them together. The eastern region of Syria is split into territories under control of the YPG [People’s Protection Units] and Iranian-led militias. Our goal in the LCM is to unite the eastern armed groups as well as the society of eastern people that has been displaced. We therefore understand this not only as a military merger, but also as a social merger. So the merger of the military factions is only one step toward a wider project, which has a political, administrative, and civilian nature.

 The LCM is not just about representing Arabs from the eastern provinces. We have taken steps to reach out to different groups with the aim of enabling participation or letting them become part of the LCM. The eastern provinces include people who are not Arabs or Muslims. Among others, there are Christians, Kurds, and Chechens. The LCM has been engaging with these groups in Ras al-Ayn and Afrin. For example, Abu Hatem recently hosted a celebration of Nowruz with fellow Kurds. Myself and Saad recently held meetings with Christian leaders in Ras al-Ayn. We also have meetings with the SOC’s Abdulahad Astepho, who is of Assyrian origin, and with other actors with the goal of achieving dialogue. One practical example for these efforts is a workshop that the LCM will hold soon to reach out to ethnic and religious minorities."

 Abu Hatem: 

 "Yes, the Arab identity is prevalent on account of the armed groups themselves being Arab, therefore it is natural that the identity of the Syrian revolution is an Arab one. However, we have pluralism in terms of the constitution. The LCM includes Arabs not only from the eastern regions but also from other provinces such as Homs and Damascus."



 Abu Barzan:

 "We have to diagnose this situation very carefully because we don’t want to create a narrative similar to the one the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] helped to create, suggesting that there is an Arab-Kurdish struggle. We don’t want to see this repeated in northern Syria, where there is now talk about an Arab-Turkmen conflict. I wholeheartedly reject this idea. Turkmens are part of the Syrian people. The relationship of certain Turkmen individuals with Turkey might be very good because of linguistic and cultural factors, but overall and with regards to the SNA, there is no preference for Turkmens over Arab."

 "We can see that the popular base is putting pressure on armed groups to be more in tune with the needs of civilians. Of course, the LCM is part of the SNA but the battles will not continue forever. We carried weapons not as a goal but as a means to an end and we are ready to carry the pen and enter parliament. So, yes, generally speaking we are ready to move to a more overtly political stage."

 Abu Hatem:

 "At the same time, the LCM is a military actor, which means that a fully-fledged transition to a political party is unlikely. However, there is a possibility that the LCM will work with other political actors to form a common political platform."



 Abu Barzan:

 "The beauty of Syria is in its diversity. We want a democratic Syria. This is not just a political slogan, I genuinely mean that. To achieve this, one aspect is important to consider: 65% of Syrian society is tribal. Yes, there are urban centers such as Damascus, Homs, or Aleppo. But everywhere else, society is organized along the lines of clans and tribes. Syria doesn’t have political parties in the true sense; it doesn’t have labor unions or any other kind of social organization structures. We only have the clans and tribes as a way of mass mobilization. If we are able to provide the necessary support for these institutions, I think a lot can be achieved in terms of democratic change of Syria.

 You need to engage the tribal society more proactively. We are not talking exclusively about Arabs here. The Druze are organized in clans and tribes as well, same for Kurds and, for example, Chechens in Ras al-Ayn.

Many of the Gulf countries would not have become states if the clans and tribes of these areas did not unite behind a political project. In Iraq, the parliamentary system was established by the support of the tribal leaders in 1920. History has some precedents for this kind of approach."



 Saad al-Sharae:

 "With regards to increasing the number of certain groups within the SNA, this is a decision taken in consultation between the leadership of the SNA and the Turkish military. We are proud of our alliance with Turkey because the Turkish army stood side by side with Syrians, and Turkish soldiers were killed side by side with our fighters. If Turkey gives the green light to expand, that is due to Turkey’s appreciation for the strong nature of groups from Syria's east because of the military experience they have gained in the last years in their fight against the régime and ISIS as well as the Iranian militias.

 The political wing of the LCM just concluded a visit to the SOC in Istanbul, where meetings were held with the SOC leadership. There will be a meeting of the LCM leadership soon where the options for representation in the SOC will be discussed. If the leadership council agrees that this will be a positive step, the LCM aims to get an additional seat in addition to the existing representation that we have, which is Abdelbaset Abdullatif, who was previously secretary-general of the SOC."



 Abu Hatem:

 "ISIS has kicked us out of our land. Of course we dream about going back day and night — this is our goal and our ambition. But the question is how. This will be decided by events and how they will unfold. We see that there are racist policies adopted by the SDF. We see how they are stealing natural resources and implementing discrimination against Arabs, in addition to the bad security situation. ISIS is very active in Deir ez-Zor, as is the distribution of drugs and drug abuse in the eastern region. We are not against Kurds in general, but against the PKK as a terrorist organization. In my own family they have married into Kurdish families since the 1960s."

 Abu Barzan:

 "We need to differentiate between Kurds as civilians and the PKK and its affiliates as an organization. Kurds are an ancient people; they are Syrian and we recognize them as such. We have been living together with Kurds for decades. The LCM has sought very hard to include the Kurds and to make them feel welcome and not enemies of the LCM. But just as Sunni Arabs have been blighted by ISIS, the Kurds have been blighted by the PKK. If there is a political solution to administer eastern Syria that the Kurds can be part of, we would obviously welcome that. But let us get rid of terrorists, whether it is ISIS or PKK.

 The problem I see in terms of the foreseeable future is that Kurds as a society are unable to get rid of the control of the PKK, even though they suffer from it. For instance, the PKK sends IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and car bombs to the Peace Spring area, and I don’t think the average Kurd would approve of such actions. Having said this, if there were international will to resolve the question of eastern Syria according to the Syrians who live there, we would be open to dialogue. But we don’t accept the idea of sitting around the negotiation table with a Kurd who comes from the [PKK headquarters in the] Qandil Mountains. That is to be rejected, just as any negotiation over the future of our country with foreigners.

 A lot of injustices have befallen the Peace Spring area because of the EU and U.S., as they have been blocking any humanitarian and stabilization assistance to this area for the last three years, including SRTF [Syrian Recovery Trust Fund] projects. In all the regional and international formats we are involved in, including the Astana platform, we have called for the lifting of this embargo.

 The Peace Spring area relies on agriculture; most people make their living from rearing livestock or growing crops. We haven’t had heavy rainfall since 2018, which has led to poor harvests. This, in turn, means that there is insufficient animal feed, causing a reduction in livestock. Under these circumstances, a large project to resettle Syrians seems unlikely.

 But if there were concerted efforts to resettle and rehouse Syrians, we would be the first to support them and we are ready to take action. Our leadership has decided to support local councils in any way that we can. At the same time, we don’t interfere in the affairs of the local councils or civilians. Abu Hatem is personally responsible for the implementation of this decision.

 After the last Astana round, I met with Salem al-Muslet, the SOC’s president, and he told me that an amount of money was assigned to be spent in the Peace Spring area, but that it was vetoed by the U.S. I heard rumors in the last weeks that this position has changed, but I haven’t seen anything concrete so far.

 Because of this embargo, the LCM has taken things into its own hands. It has established a clinic in Nusf Tal that serves 37 villages, especially to treat Leishmania, an infectious disease. We also implemented a number of further projects, such as setting up a bakery and constructing homes for IDPs in the areas of Adwaniya and Hurubi. The LCM is perhaps the only armed group that is doing such projects out of its own pocket.

 What crime have the local civilians committed that they should pay the price for Western estimation of local governance and whether it is legitimate? Why should they go hungry and not receive services like in other places because of the political estimation of local governance? You can see in other areas that the U.N. can implement projects without empowering local governance structures deemed illegitimate. This is an issue of justice."



 Abu Hatem: 

 "In addition, I want to stress that it may be true that the international community views the local governance structures in the Peace Spring area as insufficiently legitimate, but the people on the ground believe they are. Who decides what is right and wrong in that case?



 Abu Barzan: 

 "Most crucial are medicine, food aid for people and livestock, and education. Thousands of children are not getting the education they deserve. Many school buildings were being used as headquarters by the PKK and got blown up hours before the PKK withdrew. The infrastructure has been badly eroded. The LCM has tried to convert homes into schools but this is inadequate.

 Around 300,000 people live in the Peace Spring area, but this number is increasing because there is a movement of people fleeing from régime areas, often through SDF territory and from there to the Peace Spring area. Some of them settle, others use it as a transit point to try to get to Turkey. The issue of migration is becoming more and more relevant. If the EU and the West were serious about solving the migration issue, they would turn their attention to this area. It is becoming a transit route."



 Abu Hatem: 

 "Sanctions were imposed way before the LCM was founded. However, we see this as an act of injustice and it has been detrimental to us and hurt us in several ways. Not just financially, but also with regards to the willingness of external parties to engage with us in recent years. We are pursuing legal channels to overturn the sanctions. There is a law firm in the U.S. that is following up on the matter and we are refuting the allegations through legal means. I cannot disclose more than this because we have an agreement with the law firm to maintain discretion given that there is an ongoing legal process."

 Abu Barzan: 

 "What we count upon is to seek a de facto lifting of the sanctions. And this can only happen through a reform process of the SNA and the avoidance of past mistakes that happened especially in areas that had been newly conquered."



 Saad al-Sharae: 

 "All the factions that formed the LCM were the first to fight ISIS, even before the international coalition was formed to fight terrorism. All elements of the LCM, without exception, have official records certified by the National Army. These records include fingerprints, personal photos, and complete profiles." '