Simon Collis
Ambassador to Syria, Damascus
I’ve been British Ambassador in Syria for the last four years. Last weekend I decided to start this blog after Syria passed a terrible milestone. The Syrians have now endured six months of unrest and violent suppression of mostly peaceful protests. As they now look towards the next six months with a mixture of uncertainty, fear and hope, I wanted to share some personal impressions about what’s happening. Some thoughts about why it’s happening. And maybe to spark some debate about what comes next and what can be done.
In doing so I am privileged. Because I can. The last six months have shown the Syrians can too. But in doing so, they face censorship, threats and arbitrary arrest.
The Syrian regime doesn’t want you to know that its security forces and the gangs that support them are killing, arresting and abusing mostly peaceful protesters: The UN says over 2,700 people have died in the last six months, some of them under torture in prison. It doesn’t want you to know that it is preventing many from meeting peacefully to discuss reform. It wants you to hear only one version of the truth – its own. And to see only one way out – the return to authoritarian rule where fear surpasses a desire for freedom. This is a regime that remains determined to control every significant aspect of political life in Syria. It is used to power. And it will do anything to keep it.
People say that in today’s world it’s no longer possible to hide the truth. A lot’s been said about the power of Twitter and Facebook, the inability for information to be censored in Tunisia and Egypt. The cruel reality in Syria is that they are doing all they can to pull the shutters down.
Foreign journalists are refused entry. Any non-Syrian local correspondents are kicked out – sometimes after a beating. Syrian correspondents, bloggers and citizen journalists are systematically tracked down and imprisoned. It’s a criminal offence to have a satellite phone. Mobile phone and internet networks are heavily monitored, or connection reduced to a crawl especially on Fridays. They are cut entirely anywhere the security forces mount mass arrest campaigns or send heavy armour into cities. Websites and satellite TV channels are blocked, with help from Iran. Before the start of this crisis Reporters Without Borders already ranked Syria as the fifth worst place in the world for media freedom. Over the last six months it’s got worse. A lot worse. The regime wants to create its own truth. We should not let it.
Is it a bird, is it a bullet? It’s Syria’s new media law!
I suppose we all learn early in life that there’s quite a difference between saying something and doing it. Like pretty much all of its reform programme to date, the regime’s answer to its critics was to announce that there would be a new media law; and that a committee had been set up to draft it. But you don’t need a new law to decide to let journalists in. You don’t need a new media law to prevent the big brother mentality that prevails here. You just need to decide to stop restricting media freedoms, and then to act on your decision. And until that happens, why should anyone believe that anything will be different?
Mind the gap
I’ve got a feeling that this gap between reality and promise will sadly continue. President Assad has announced a big reform programme, several times. It’s got a lot of stuff in it that sounds pretty good. Some laws are indeed being passed, and there are more to come. But when you read the fine print, what you tend to find is that every path that’s signposted towards increased freedom and openness actually winds back to a chokepoint. Every avenue leads to a regime official who only lets through what he’s told to let through. Everyone else has to turn back. Or face the consequences.
Shine a light
Even so, brave individuals continue to find ways through to get out video clips that show Syrian security forces firing into crowds of unarmed protesters, or abusing detainees – you can search for them on YouTube. I’m constantly amazed at their skill, daring and ingenuity in finding ways to capture and upload pictures of events on the ground in something close to real time. Regime attempts to dismiss most of this as the fabrications of a foreign conspiracy are absurd.
But without context, it can be hard to make sense of jumpy grainy images. And tragically, repetition dulls the senses. Unless we have some information about what’s happening and why, we risk forgetting that another day, another death is real. It is not just an image of people in a street we don’t recognise, in a town we’ve never been to, chanting slogans in a language that perhaps we don’t understand.
That’s where I hope to come into the picture. As far as I’m concerned this blog will be worth it if it helps to get a discussion going – on this page, with your friends, or even just inside your head – about what’s happening, why it’s happening, and why it matters. Thanks for sticking with me this far. I hope you’ll want to take a look at the next instalment.
By Lyse Doucet BBC News, Damascas
Syria is no different from many countries across the Arab world engulfed this year in unprecedented protests.
But getting in to tell this story has been far more difficult. Reporting restrictions means there have been few journalists here to witness this story firsthand.
A rare official permission to enter means we can now report from the ground, albeit with a government minder at our side on the streets.
The roads of Damascus are still choked with traffic. The ancient old city, with its maze of narrow alleys, hasn’t lost its charm or bustle.
Syrians still throng the cobbled streets in the covered markets, browsing in stalls selling everything from fashionable head scarves to the latest fashion in tight-fitting sequined jeans.
But beneath the surface, this is clearly a city on edge, with a people worried about an uncertain future.
Business is bad. Most factories are only paying about 65% of the salaries and have had to lay off employees.
Government supporter confronts Lyse Doucet: “You are not telling the truth about Syria… Syria is very quiet”
“We’re suffering and we know its going to get worse and worse before it ends,” said one of Syria’s top business executives who, like most people, would only speak off the record.
Worried about future
There are almost no tourists in what was once a choice destination for travellers. Some owners of the delightful boutique hotels opened in recent years told us they may be forced to close.
“I am worried about the days that are coming, worried about business, money, our life here. I hope it will be fixed soon,” said one shopkeeper who approached us in the old city.
How would he fix it? “I love [President] Bashar al-Assad. We give him not one chance, but 100 chances to bring about change.”
Another man standing next to an array of burlap sacks brimming with Syrian nuts and dried fruit, turned on us, shouting that the foreign news channels were lying.
“You are not telling the truth about Syria. Everyone loves the president. Twenty-three million people love him.” he said angrily.
Asked about the growing protests, in cities and towns outside Damascus, he conceded maybe “10,000 don’t like him”. He used the phrase used by the government that the protesters are mostly “armed gangs”.
There are few tourists left in a once popular destinationIn a country where it’s never been easy to ask Syrians about politics in public, the only people who wanted to speak openly were those who expressed what seemed to be genuine support for their 46-year-old president. Bashar al-Assad took over from his father Hafez al-Assad on his death in 2000.
But it’s impossible to know what people really think in the midst of such tension. One man who insisted there were “no problems” quickly changed his tune once the government minder was out of earshot. “I can’t tell you what I really think,” he whispered furtively.
There is no visible security presence in the centre of Damascus, but plainclothes police are known to be everywhere. We begin to spot a few familiar faces.
Syria’s immediate harsh response to protests, including the revival of a militia deployed during protests in the 1980s, has blocked protesters here from capturing a strategic square in the heart of the city.
‘One family’
But there have been growing protests, and violent clashes, including targeted killings, in some of the suburbs.
There have also been brave acts of defiance closer to the centre, but even the occasional bold unfurling of a flag or banner has been suppressed within moments.
The only people prepared to speak were those who supported President AssadColourful banners festooning the streets at key intersections proclaim: “Dialogue is the only way to resolve our problems.”
In one glass-fronted shop, we see a new selection of Bashar al-Assad memorabilia alongside the shiny posters of him which have always been ubiquitous. Now there are key chains, and ceramic plates and stickers with “I love Bashar” and “Proud to be Syrian”.
“It’s the truth,” says the shopkeeper who comes out to talk to us. ”
The naufara coffee shop, lying in the shadow of the grand Ummayad mosque, is still packed night and day with Damascenes drinking sweet dark coffee and smoking the popular water tobacco.
The city’s only traditional storyteller still holds court, recounting epic Arab tales of ancient conflicts and heroes of old.
“All Syrians are one family and we have a good future,” effused storyteller Shadi Rashid al-Khallah when I asked him about Syria’s current story.
But it’s a story that’s still being written and is still hard to tell.
- “They killed the rose Zainab,” protesters’ placards say
- Zainab Alhusni’s death is called “appalling” by the United Nations
- The woman was seized to get at her brother, many say
(CNN) — A young woman whisked away by Syrian security forces to coax the surrender of her activist brother turned up beheaded and dismembered, activists and human rights groups say, yet another high-profile display of cruelty in the conflict-wracked nation.
Nineteen-year-old Zainab Alhusni stepped away from her Homs residence last month to buy groceries.
Her family never saw her again until security forces returned her mutilated corpse, two opposition activist groups operating inside Syria and Amnesty International told CNN.
As reports of the torture sparked outrage across Homs and the rest of the world, amateur video surfaced of dozens of woman protesting the death.
“They killed the rose Zainab,” their placards said.
“If it is confirmed that Zainab was in custody when she died, this would be one of the most disturbing cases of a death in detention we have seen so far,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The case also drew the antipathy of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which characterized the incident as “appalling” and as one example of the “targeting and attacking of families and sympathizers of the protesters by security forces.”
The ferocious Syrian government crackdown against dissenters began in mid-March when anti-government protests unfolded. The number of people killed over the past six months has reached at least 2,700, according to the U.N. human rights office. Some activist groups put the toll at around 3,000.
Zainab’s brother Mohammed Alhusni — a prominent opposition activist praised by colleagues for leading anti-government protests and treating the wounded — had been evading authorities for weeks when his sister disappeared, said the Homs Quarters Union, an activist group.
“The secret police kidnapped Zainab so they could threaten her brother and pressure him to turn himself in to the authorities. The government often uses this tactic to get to activists,” a union media coordinator told CNN.
The Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an activist group, said security forces called Zainab’s family to trade her “freedom for her pro-democracy activist brother’s surrender,” LCC said.
Mohammed Alhusni was eventually slain on September 10, when security forces fired on demonstrators in Homs.
When the family retrieved Mohammed’s body from a Homs military hospital, medical officials told relatives about another unclaimed body with the label “Zainab Alhusni” that had been kept in a hospital freezer for some time.
Days later, Zainab’s family received the woman’s headless and limbless corpse, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Amnesty International and the Homs Quarters Union said.
The Homs Quarters Union provided a video to CNN showing the pale trunk of a female body beside a detached head with long black hair among dismembered limbs.
Authorities forced Zainab’s mother to sign a document saying both Zainab and Mohammad had been kidnapped and killed by an armed gang, Amnesty International said in an online statement.
Syrian authorities could not be reached for comment on the Alhusni case. The Syrian government has maintained that armed gangs with foreign agendas, not the regime, are responsible for the violence that has plagued the Arab country for months.
CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video, the claims, or the death toll because the government has repeatedly denied requests for journalists to report inside Syria.
Video hard to watch here
[youtube http://youtu.be/TIqUZJWtZM8?]
A clip on al Jazeera English showing the family of the “Israeli spy” that Syrian television paraded on air. Apparently he was instrumental in the killing of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbullah’s man, a few years back. I think the Syrian claims are nonsense on stilts, as are all their on-air “confessions”. Somebody should tell them that these things went out of fashion around the time that Stalin died.
A rare glimpse from inside the prison: father and son al-Abdallah
When Bashar al-Assad came to power, Mohammad al-Abdallah believed things in Syria would finally change for good. Ten years later, he tells the story of a personal disillusionment.
By Mohammad al-Abdallah
Bashar Al-Assad has now been in power for 10 years. To me, that period equates to the length of time that members of my family and I have spent in Syrian prisons.
From the initial hope that accompanied his ascendance to the country’s presidency to this bitter realization a decade later, Syrians have undergone spiraling feelings of disappointment.
When Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, like many other Syrians I was hopeful that an era of change was dawning. We hoped that the new millennium would bring to an end the dark years of the father’s ruthless rule, when prisoners of conscience could die from torture in detention. But the years that followed showed me how misplaced my optimism was.
In the first year of Assad’s presidency, the Syrians experienced briefly the euphoria of change. The country witnessed an overwhelming number of forums of discussion, planning democratic reform. However, this period, which came to be known as the “Damascus Spring”, was swiftly crushed by the authorities. As the whole world was shaken by the terrorist attacks of 11 September in New York, the Syrian government was busy arresting opponents to the ruling Baath regime. Ten of Syria’s most prominent intellectuals were thrown behind bars for peacefully calling for reforms.
Still, many hoped that they would be released soon. They thought the arrests were the making of the autocratic old guards of the regime. They believed that the young president, who wanted to implement reform and change, would eventually grow stronger and defeat the conservatives.
The Iraq War As Alibi
In the years that followed, we realized that nothing had changed. The calls for democracy and freedom of expression continued to be stifled. Yet Assad was still able to convince the Syrians that he was a reformist president who needed more time to accomplish his vision.
The fall of Saddam in Iraq had strong repercussions in Syria.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 gave him another alibi to delay the implementation of reforms. The so-called existential threat against the Syrian establishment after the crumbling of the Baath regime in Iraq allowed the president to justify the prolongation of oppression on the internal front.
Two years later, a dramatic regional development extended this policy. With the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, widely blamed on Damascus, Syria officially entered a phase of international isolation. Western powers forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the establishment of an international tribunal into the killing of Hariri placed the regime under a sword of Damocles.
It was in this context, in my opinion, that the president showed his tyrannical face. That year was a dramatic time for Syrians, and mainly for my family. My father was arrested in May 2005 for his activities in the Atassi forum, the only space for political discussion that had survived the crackdown on forums in 2001.
A Family Under Arrest
I also went to prison a few months later for merely lobbying for the release of my father. I was released by a military court after a month in detention.
My father was also set free six months after his arrest thanks to a presidential amnesty. I naively believed this would be the end of our ordeals. Little did I know.
Less than half a year later, Assad decided to end the phase of relative tolerance for political dissidents. The secret services were given a green light to crush human rights activists. The message was clear to the Syrians: if you keep on raising your voices, you will end up in jail.
Subsequently, 2006 turned out to be one of the gloomiest years for civil society – and my family, in particular. In one week, all the men in my family were arrested and kept in unknown locations.
My brother was arrested with seven of his college classmates for running an online forum. Five days later, the security services arrested my father and me in two separate raids.
An aerial view of Sednaya Prison (by Google Earth)
It took me five weeks to find my father in the Sednaya military prison near Damascus. He had not been aware of my arrest. My brother was also in the same prison; each of us was on a different floor. I was in a nasty cell two floors underground, my brother was on the floor above me and my father was on the second floor.
After my reunion with my father, we asked to see my brother but the prison insisted that he was not in the same detention centre.
My father and I spent 18 days together in this jail before security agents dressed in civilian clothes transferred us to the Adra prison. There I met 10 other activists who were detained for signing the Damascus-Beirut declaration, a joint statement by Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals calling for the improvement of relations between the two neighboring countries.
I was finally convinced that nothing had really changed between the times of the father and those of the son. We were still living in a dictatorship.
New Waves Of Crackdown
While some analysts might argue that the invasion of Iraq and the assassination of Hariri put the regime at risk and pushed Assad’s government to adopt a hawkish, defensive posture, the relaxation of relations with the west since 2007 proves that this line of analysis is flawed.
As French and US officials poured into Damascus, Assad felt reassured that his regime was no longer in danger. Civil society expected a release of prisoners and reforms to finally ensue. Nothing of the sort happened. New waves of crackdown on activists followed as the US and Europe watched in silence.
After the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, Syria became internationally isolated.
Following my release with my father after six and-a-half months in prison, I tried in vain to visit my brother in jail. Defendants tried by the State Security Court have no right to visits by family or even a lawyer before they are sentenced.
Without seeing my brother, I had to leave for Lebanon where I finished law school. All along, something inside was telling me that I would not go back home.
During my exile in Lebanon, I heard that my father, along with 11 other political dissidents, had been arrested again. This marked the point of no return for me. I applied for refugee status at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, in Beirut. For me the word refugee sounded strange. I had never thought before that my country would push me to become one.
Ironically, despite all the ordeals of human rights activists in Syria, I see the first lady, Asma al-Assad, with her camera-friendly looks, telling the western world that the government is trying “to open more space for civil society.” I don’t know why, but every time I see her photogenic face, I remember my mother lying in a hospital bed suffering from kidney disease, heart problems and cancer. She is alone in her hospital room while her husband is in jail, her son is in another prison and her eldest is in exile.
Recently, Assad celebrated his first decade in power. A month earlier, my family was preparing to celebrate for other reasons. On June 17, my father was supposed to be set free after 30 months in prison. The government, however, decided to keep him instead in the same jail where he is facing again the same charges that had led to his imprisonment for a total of four years after three different trials. The charges are the “broadcast of false information that threaten to weaken the national sentiment”.
Can those who argue that Assad is a true reformer look me and my family in the eyes and say so?
Mohammad al-Abdallah is a Syrian human rights activist and writer living currently in Washington DC.
This is a photo of the mother of Malek Jandali after she was beaten up by thugs of the Syrian regime.
Some who died for a free Syria
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