The show is hosted by Salah Basalamah and produced by Maher Arar
The guests begin talking around the 8 minute mark. That is a good place to begin.
The order of speakers is:
Prof. Fred Reed – 8:00
What is Syria? What is the Baath Party? Are Alawites Muslims?
Haytham al-Malah – 17:30
The history and reasons for the uprising
Joshua Landis – 31:00
The State of US-Syria Relations. What dos the US want in Syria? Where is US policy heading? Israel? Iran? Are Alawites Muslims and why that question is important?
Question and answer period at the end
Can dialogue with the government be carried out or is regime-change necessary – 58:30 minutes
On his return from Hama, Syria, where he had traveled with the correspondent Anthony Shadid, the photographer Moises Saman, a nominee for membership in the Magnum Photos collective, spoke by telephone with his colleagues James Estrin and David Furst. Their conversation has been edited and condensed.
Rime Allaf : This clip will make you very angry! Such scumbags get away with this thuggery because their superiors are thugs too, and those above them are even bigger thugs, all the way to the top. There is no accountability for their behavior as they rule in their little fiefdoms, but I’d love to see them in a place where there is the rule of law – the bastard would be shaking in his flip-flops!
Friday, July 15, 2011 | 12:16 Beirut Subscribe to NOW Lebanon RSS feeds
Caught on tape: Baath Party leader terrorizes Saida pharmacy
Posted by: Angie Nassar share
Thursday, July 14. 2011
Mustapha Qawas, the head of the Baath party in Saida, assaulted a woman identified as the owner of the Bashasha pharmacy and her staff on Sunday, and the whole incident was caught on tape.
It’s not clear if the pharmacy is pressing charges. But what’s clear is that Qawas and his “thugs” are way out of line: swearing, smashing things, physically assaulting and threatening harm.
The story begins off camera, when Qawas’ nephew allegedly went to the pharmacy to buy medicine, but didn’t have enough money to pay for it. The owner apparently turned the boy away.
The action starts at around 2:53 in the video when a group of men, led by Qawas, can be seen storming into the pharmacy.
Qawas aggressively questions the woman: “So you asked him if he was my nephew or not? (repeats)
When I tell you he’s my nephew, then he’s my nephew (apparently referring to a phone call they’d had after the boy was turned away from the pharmacy).
Woman: “I was asking him….”
Qawas: “I told you he was my nephew, so is he my nephew or not?” (He knocks over a display at the register)
“So is he my nephew or is he not?”
(The male pharmacist can be seen trying to shield the woman from Qawas who becomes increasingly aggressive.)
Qawas to the man: “Where are you putting your hand? … everyone go out… go out, take them out.”
“I call you and you say this to me. I can f*ck god.”
(3:35 — swats something off the table)
“You want to call the police, you want to call anyone you want… I don’t care. When you talk to me you talk to me with respect.”
(As Qawas curses several family surnames, you can see the male pharmacist trying to shield the woman again)
Qawas to the man: “Remove your hand, remove your hand I’m telling you I will shoot you.”
(3:50 One of Qawas’ men grabs the pharmacist’s coat and pulls him across the counter.)
Qawas to the woman: “You don’t say a word.”
“The biggest judge in this country, I will f*ck him. When you talk to me, you talk to me with respect or I will fuck your god. Are you understanding me?”(Repeats several times) “I’m talking to you .”
Woman: “What do you want?”
Qawas: “I want you to tell me, did you understand? Did you understand me? Tell me, did you understand or no?”
(A man approaches the woman and Qawas and appears to want to hit her.)
Woman: “I understand.”
(Qawas walks away and pushes the computer monitor to the ground.)
Qawas: “Yalla, call the police. Call them and see what’s going to happen to you.”
(A domestic migrant worker can be seen going to comfort the owner around 4:30, and then she ends up fainting at 5:15)
A second exchange happens around 5:51 in the video. Qawas and his men return after the male pharmacist had apparently gone outside to apologize to customers.
Male pharmacist: “I was just apologizing to her. I swear I wasn’t telling her anything, I was just apologizing.”
Qawas and his men demand the pharmacist go outside with them.
Male pharmacist: “Why? What’s wrong? I promise I was just apologizing.”
Qawas: “C’mon, go out with respect (as in, ‘don’t let us drag you out the door’).”
Qawas: “I’m telling you. I’m Mustapha Qawwas. God talks to me with respect. You know police? You know the head of the cabinet? (Even they can’t do anything to me) I’m gonna break down this place. I’m gonna shoot both you and the police. I am waiting for you. My soldiers will be waiting. I am the head of the Baath Party. You know what I mean? I don’t even see god. (I’m not even afraid of god). If I hear anyone saying a word, in the name of god I’m going to break down this pharmacy.
At the beginning….(*difficult to understand*) But now it’s against everyone. Wait and see what I’ll do with you.”
(Thank you to NOW Lebanon’s Nadine Elali who contributed to reporting on this blog post.)
The Asad regime’s determination to win the propaganda war has led to the assassination of Hama protest singer Ibrahim Qashoush, says Salwa Ismail
The reported killing of Ibrahim Qashoush by armed thugs (shabiha) of the Syrian regime in the city of Hama on 4 July has stirred deep feelings of sorrow and anger among Syrian activists and has them vowing to continue in their uprising to bring down the regime. According to news and reports circulating on Syrian opposition websites and Facebook pages of the uprising, Qashoush was brutally murdered by regime-affiliated thugs who entered the city on July 4 as part of a military and security assault to bring it under their control. It is thought that Qashoush was targeted because of his fiery songs and performances at night-time protests in Hama.
[youtube http://youtu.be/nM_7rlDvcpM?]
Up until this latest assault on the city, Hama residents were gathering nightly in large numbers of up to 200,000 in the al-Asi Square in the city centre. In these gatherings, Qashoush performed nationalist and political songs that expressed the defiance of the people. He sang in the ‘arada style — a traditional genre that has now been renewed in the spirit of resistance and contestation throughout the country. In this genre, the audience participates by repeating evocative refrains or answering questions and declarations sung by the lead singer. One of Qashoush’s songs, taped and widely viewed on Youtube is entitled Yalla Irhal Ya Bashar (Depart Bashar). In it, he asserts the people’s will to remove the President and their longing for freedom. The song directly addresses the President and ridicules his “third speech” and his talk of reform. Qashoush entreats him to leave, along with “the barbaric gang”, naming three inner-circle members of the ruling clique (Maher, Rami and Shalish).
The full significance of the killing of Qashoush can only be understood in relation to the regime’s two main mechanisms of control: propaganda and violence, which, in their continued use, reproduce the formula of rule of the late President Hafez al-Asad, father of the current President. Under crisis conditions, Bashar al-Asad’s regime deploys and intensifies the mythology and iconography inaugurated by his father. This includes the cult of “the eternal leader” whose photographs adorn all public spaces and for whom the people must shout slogans of loyalty, and make declarations of abiding love and affirmations of their willingness to sacrifice blood and soul. The cult, which was most insightfully analysed by Chicago University scholar Lisa Wedeen in her book Ambiguities of Domination, weaves with symbols of patriotism, equating nation and leader through an endless visual twinning and merging of flags and photographs of the President.
During the current uprising, in addition to the heavy-handed security approach, the regime has organized successive rallies of support and has flooded the public space with its iconography, spinning anew the myths on which it rests. There has been a proliferation of large and glossy images of the President posted on building facades and entrances, on the windows of retail shops, coffee shops, restaurants, banks, cars and so on. Officially sponsored “loyalty-to-the-President” campaigns include the organisation of an event curiously named “the imprint of loyalty on the wall of history” referring to the production of the biggest map of the country coloured with citizens’ handprints and unfurled on the wall of the Citadel in Old Damascus. The “loyalty” campaign has also comprised numerous instances of commissioning and raising large-sized national flags, each reputed to be the biggest ever produced.
The current resuscitation of the cult of the leader contradicts earlier productions of the image of the president which had accompanied his assumption of power in 2000. Upon taking over the presidency, Bashar al-Asad was presented as the youthful leader who was shaped by the ideas and technologies of his time. Write-ups of the President emphasised his previous post as head of the IT society and his western education. Cast in this light, he was made to represent a new style of politics — less personalised, more forward-looking and bearing a reform agenda, the hallmark of which is greater freedom and opening. Yet, with every passing year of his presidency, the cult production picked up pace. The insistence on the cult has been greater at times of crisis.
The adulation and sycophancy encouraged by this propaganda is inextricably linked to the violence directed against regime opponents and the politics of fear that violence generates. As the “beloved” leader, Hafez al-Assad was also a much feared figure. He was feared because of the spectacular violence he was willing to unleash as illustrated in the events of Hama, but also for the hidden but somehow known-about horrors that were committed to maintain his regime. During the period of the late president’s rule, it is estimated that a total of 100,000 citizens were detained for their political activities. Until now the fate of 17,000 of these detainees remains unknown. Imprisonment and torture were ongoing practices.
The level of violence today has not reached the scale witnessed in Hama in 1982 and in other less-known massacres (e.g. Tadmur prison 1980, Jisr al-Shughour 1980), but in terms of its reach and its objects, it shows the same logic and approach to maintaining power. According to this logic, regime survival justifies not only exclusion of opponents but also their eradication through murder, large scale killing, sieges of towns and cities, and the deployment of tanks and soldiers to subdue a population that has risen to demand freedom and basic civil liberties as a matter of right. The defiant public expression of this aspiration undermines the two pillars of the regime, the simulated love of the leader and the unspoken fear of his wrath. The killing of Qashoush represents the regime’s logic of eradication pursued against the spirit of defiance that his songs expressed.
US ambassador in Hama: how Anthony Shadid covered it
Now this is the account of Anthony Shadid: “A video posted to YouTube captured a scene unusual for an American diplomat in the Arab world, where resentment at American support for authoritarian rulers runs deep. In Hama, crowds chanting “People want the fall of the regime” cheered what appeared to be Mr. Ford’s vehicle, and some protesters tossed flowers on its hood. In the background was a huge banner that said, “Syria is free, down with Bashar al-Assad.”” First, would Anthony Shadid dare cover something that is damaging to Israel on the bases of a video posted on YouTube? What do you think? For any news coverage relating to Israel, the New York Times’ editors require standards and scrutiny tougher than those applied on PhD dissertations by committee members (at least in the old days). Yet, for coverage of Iran and Syria, the New York Times applies the most lenient and least reliable standards. Now here is the video in question. Watch it. It seems that Anthony assumed too much from a few minutes of video. Anthony says: “what appears to be Ford’s vehicle”. Exactly. The car is nondescript. How on earth would protesters know that this is the US ambassador’s car? And there are no cars going through the tens of thousands of demonstrators in Hama. This is not going through the demonstration for sure. Secondly, the Syrian people don’t know what Mr. Ford looks like. He is not visible at all, and is not recognizable (except in Hama–if you believe the account in the Shadid article). So Mr. Ford is not recognizable anywhere in the world (I did not know what he looks like until yesterday), except in Hama and Dayr Az-Zur, for some inexplicable reason. Thirdly, the account of the ambassador being greeted by protesters first appeared not in news sites but in the account of the US Department of State’s spokeswoman. That should have at least made Shadid express some healthy skepticism. Fourthly, there is a history of American staging of public spectacles: from Operation Ajax in Iran in 1953, to the most fake staging of a spectacle–the topping of Saddam’s statue in Firdaws Square in Baghdad when US soldiers provided old style Iraqi flags thinking that the Iraqi people would abandon the Saddam flag which has “God is Greater” on them. Fifthly, look at the video itself. Judge for yourself. It is most fishy. The car does not look like the fancy motorcade of a US ambassador in an an Arab country: it is a normal vehicle. There is no way for protesters in Hama to know that this is a US diplomat’s car. And how would the crowd know it is the ambassador? And if you look at the video, the people around the car appear more like the local goons that US embassy hires for security. In Lebanon, the local hired goons were graduates of the death squads of the Lebanese Forces, by the way. And the “protesters” in the video (which zoomed closely in and it concluded with a close up of the face of the ambassador to suspiciously prove to people that it is indeed the Mr. Ford) seemed to be protecting the car more than anything else. They were strategically protecting the car. Otherwise, the whole scene is very weird: there are according to news accounts, several hundred thousands protesters in Hama, and it is not possible that his car went through that crowd. We know how careful US diplomats are about their security, especially the security of the ambassador. Sixthly, how did the people in Hama arrange for the flowers (bushes really) to be tossed on the car? Or do people in Hama protest with trees in their hands? Seventhly, this is not only a staged event for political purposes, there is also a professional reason. Mr. Ford came under criticisms in Congress for visiting Jisr Ash-Shughur so he had to play John Wayne in another city. Enjoy. “
Protests have built up into nightly affairs in Syria’s sprawling capital and activists are pressing boycotts against Syrian insiders, as action against the government moves closer to the political and administrative core of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Protests have started to build in new areas of Damascus and gain breadth across neighborhoods in the city over the past few weeks. Less visibly, young activists started publicizing lists of brands and companies distributed or owned by people they say are close to the ruling regime to boycott.
The boycott list includes brands of cigarettes, canned tuna and dairy products as well as taxi companies and cafes. The list includes several companies linked to Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of the president who has been the target of U.S. and European Union sanctions and who last month vowed to retire from business.
“The solution to mobilizing Damascus is to economically strangle the bourgeoisie and business class that benefit from the regime,” said one activist, who was disappointed to learn his favorite milk brand was controlled by Mr. Makhlouf.
Damascus and Syria’s second city, Aleppo, are keys to the survival of Mr. Assad’s regime. Together, they are home to over half of Syria’s population of at least 21 million. Analysts say that should mass protests mobilize there, the two cities hold the potential to tip Syria into what the International Crisis Group has called a “slow-motion revolution.”
But in Damascus, where many remain loyal to Mr. Assad and others are reluctant to join protests that risk destabilizing their country, antigovernment activists have adopted lower-key tactics, like the boycotts, to draw in supporters.
Protests in the capital haven’t exploded like in other large cities Homs or Hama, where tens of thousands have demonstrated around public squares. Tanks surrounded Hama on Sunday, ending a month-long spree of protests free of regime oversight. Security forces continued to press their campaign there, with 24 people killed on Tuesday and Wednesday and over 700 detained on Wednesday and Thursday, according to global campaigning organization Avaaz.
Damascus has seen small protests since the early weeks of the four-month-long uprising, both in the belt of underdeveloped suburbs around the city and in urban neighborhoods aside from the capital’s wealthiest districts. The military has locked down at least nine suburbs at various points and parts of Douma, Daraya and Moadamiyeh remain under a security siege, residents and activists say.
In the past few weeks, protests have become larger, closer to central Damascus and as frequent as nightly. This past week, two separate protests marched through central Baghdad Street, not far from the parliament building.
Violence against protesters is partly what has motivated more people to join protests, as in other spots across Syria, city residents and activists said. In a show of the regime’s willingness to crush dissent even at a centrally located college campus, security forces stormed Damascus University on June 21, killing one student.
Students described thugs breaking down dorm doors and dragging women out of their beds, just a day after Mr. Assad had delivered a speech at the university acknowledging protesters had legitimate demands and promising reforms.
With pervasive security and intelligence surveillance making it difficult to organize, activists have turned to less-overt expressions of dissent. Unlike calls for a nationwide general strike—which have fallen flat in Damascus and Aleppo—they hope boycotting products and places will allow more people to support the protesters.
Some businessmen are already donating money to protesters or families of the injured outside the capital. Activists say some of their laptops have been provided by Damascene businessmen, who they say maintain a public proregime line to protect their business interests.
“Many, but by no means all, Damascenes have the most to lose economically from the collapse of the regime, compared to those outside the capital, so they are likely to be the last to protest en masse,” a senior Western diplomat in the capital said.
Syria’s economy is already sputtering, as a near-total dropoff in tourism leaves hotels deserted and shopper reluctance has stores closing for what has traditionally been busy evening hours. If a targeted boycott of businesses aggravates those woes and protests continue to grow, analysts say members of Damascus’s business community could quickly switch sides to cut their losses.
Protests are expected to grow in August, when people gather at mosques for prayer daily—rather than weekly—during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
For now, protesters have abandoned attempts to gather at the capital’s two large squares, Omayyad Square and Abassin Square, after a march toward Abassin in April was violently dispersed by security forces.
Omar Idlibi, a spokesperson for the activists’ Local Coordinating Committees, said they don’t aim to settle around a public square in the capital, as Egypt’s protesters did. They have avoided overnight sit-ins, hoping instead to wear out the regime’s military and security with the spread of protests across the country.
“Damascus is likely to be the last place where there will be large scale antiregime protests,” the diplomat said. “The regime’s continued strong grip on [Damascus and Aleppo] also sends a powerful symbolic message to Syrians and outsiders that the regime is still in control of the country.”
The capital’s long-held loyalty to Mr. Assad is pronounced in a growing number of portraits and posters of the president around the city. Pro-regime rallies have also grown in recent weeks.
Some say antiregime protesters are still limited to disgruntled residents of cramped, lower-class neighborhoods even when they march through the boutique-lined streets of al-Shaalan.
Others say surprising constituencies have joined. Unable to gather in public squares, secular activists and even Christians have found sanctity in mosques as a place to gather for protests.
“My Christian and Communist friends and classmates come to the mosque with me every week, just to protest after,” a university student said. “They don’t know how to pray, but they ask me what to do when we’re on the way.”
—A reporter in Damascus contributed to this article.Write to Nour Malas at nour.malas@dowjones.com
IN 2009, National Geographic published an article on Syria by a special correspondent, Don Belt, who had interviewed President Bashar al-Assad. In 2000, shortly after the funeral of his father, President Hafez al-Assad, the son entered his father’s office for only the second time in his life. His first visit had been at age 7, “running excitedly to tell his father about his first French lesson.” The president “remembers seeing a big bottle of cologne on a cabinet next to his father’s desk,” Mr. Belt wrote. “He was amazed to find it still there 27 years later, practically untouched.”
The bottle can be seen as an allegory for Syria itself — the Syria that has been out of sight for the 40 years of the Assads’ rule, a country and its aspirations placed on a shelf and forgotten for decades in the name of stability.
Now this other Syria is appearing before our eyes to remind us that it cannot be forever set aside, that its people did not spend the decades of the Assads’ rule asleep, and that they aspire, like all people, to live with freedom and dignity.
I remember my father, Nureddin al-Atassi, who himself had been president of Syria before he was imprisoned in 1970 as a result of Gen. Hafez al-Assad’s coup against his comrades in the Baath Party. I was 3 years old then, and it took me a while to understand that prison was not only for criminals, but also for prisoners of conscience. My father would spend 22 years in a small cell in Al Mazza prison, without any charge or trial. We counted the days by the rhythm of our visits to him: one hour every two weeks. At the end of a struggle with cancer, for which he had been denied medical treatment, he was finally released. He died in Paris in December 1992, a week after arriving there on a stretcher.
For the great majority of Syrians, the forgotten Syria meant a police state, a country governed with an iron fist. It meant a concerted international effort to keep a dictatorial regime in power in the name of regional stability — preserving the security of Israel and maintaining a cold peace on the Golan Heights, like the snow that covers Mount Hermon.
The forgotten Syria meant thousands of political prisoners packed for decades inside the darkness of prisons and detention centers. It meant disappearances that left families without even a death certificate. It meant the tears of mothers and wives waiting since the 1980s for their sons and husbands to return, even if wrapped in a shroud. It meant daily humiliation, absolute silence and the ubiquity of fear. It meant networks of corruption and nepotism, a decaying bureaucracy and a security apparatus operating without control or accountability. It meant the marginalization of politics, the taming of the judiciary, the suffocation of civil society and the crushing of any opposition.
A terrifying slogan, “Our Leader Forever Is President Hafez al-Assad,” emblazoned at the entrance to every city, and on public buildings, told Syrians that history ended at their country’s frontiers.
History did not end, of course, and occasionally it peeked in on Syrian life. But the regime buried its head in the sand, living the delusion that it could keep history out — if only it abused its people enough. This happened in the 1980s, with the bloody massacres in Hama. It happened in the early 1990s, after the Soviet bloc collapsed while the Syrian regime kept its one-party state. It happened in 2000, with the death of Hafez al-Assad and the transfer of power through inheritance — as if the regime could defeat even the certainty of death. And it happened in the year that followed, when the Damascus Spring was buried alive, its most prominent activists arrested after they called for Syria and its new president to turn the page and proceed toward democracy.
All through the past four decades, the regime refused to introduce any serious political reform. But meanwhile Syria witnessed great demographic, economic and social transformation. The population became larger and younger; today, more than half of all Syrians are not yet 20 years old. Enormous rural migration to the cities fueled a population explosion at the outskirts of Damascus and Aleppo. With unemployment widespread, wealth became concentrated more tightly in the hands of a small class of regime members and their cronies.
Many Western diplomats and commentators expressed doubts that the Syrian people might one day rise up to demand their rights and freedoms. But those skeptics consistently understated the depth of resistance and dissent. It was no surprise that at the moment of truth, Syrians opened their hearts and minds to the winds of the Arab Spring — winds that blew down the wall that had stood between the Arabs and democracy, and had imposed false choices between stability and chaos or dictatorship and Islamic extremism.
History did not leave behind that other, real Syria. Syria returns today to demand its stolen rights, to collect on its overdue bills. Compared to the other Arab uprisings, Syria’s has been perhaps the most arduous, considering the regime’s cruelty and the threat of civil war. At the same time, the people’s unity and their determination to remain peaceful will ultimately enable them to win their freedom and build their own democratic experience. Our exceptionally courageous people, their bare chests exposed to snipers’ bullets, understand the meaning of this freedom; it has already cost them dearly, in the lives of their sons and daughters.
In his interview with National Geographic, Bashar al-Assad did not say what he had done with the big bottle of cologne. It’s a moot point. The regime’s response, and President Assad’s last three speeches, indicate that no one in the presidential palace, not even the president, can move the glass bottle of despotism that has held Syria’s future captive.
My own father governed Syria for four years, but I inherited from him neither power nor fortune. What I inherited was a small suitcase, sent to us from the prison after he died. It held literally all of his belongings after 22 years in confinement. All I remember from this suitcase today is the smell of the prison’s humidity that his clothes exuded when I opened it.
The next time I visit my father’s grave, I will tell him that freedom is reviving again in Syria. I will reassure him that the Syrian people have finally succeeded in breaking this big bottle of cologne, that the scent of freedom has finally been dispersed, that it cannot be drowned by the smell of blood.
Mohammad Ali Atassi is a journalist, filmmaker and human rights activist.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 27, 2011, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: My Syria, Awake Again After 40 Years.
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