Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad

by Åsne Seierstad

  All other parties were to remain banned. Homage was to be shown to the new president. His image was hung on walls and lampposts, in bazaars, in offices, schools, and hospitals. Everywhere you turned, Bashar al-Assad looked down upon you, just as the face of his father before him, the old pilot, once had. The only update from his father’s time was that the young Assad posed in sunglasses à la Top Gun.

  * * *

  Osman had just turned nineteen when Bashar took power. Osman had left his parents in Atmeh to train in Aleppo as an electrician.

  Syria had become a backwater. The barren areas in the north were stagnant, there was hardly any industry; people lived off what the land could offer—beans, lentils, and chickpeas. But things were stable. You had a fair idea how the autumn harvest would turn out and knew the price of a goat and what news would be broadcast on TV. The new president promised reforms in his Five-Year Plans, but the benefits of any economic growth were concentrated in the hands of the few, the hands of those holding Bashar’s.

  One Syrian man in four was unemployed. Osman figured out there was more money in being a trader than an out-of-work electrician. Cheap Syrian products fetched a good price in Turkey; likewise, you could buy goods that were hard to find in Syria for a reasonable sum in the neighboring country. He got married and moved back in with his parents in Atmeh, who owned an olive grove close to the Turkish border. It was this proximity to the border that created the conditions for profit: Income was earned from legitimate trade, from more dubious dealings, and from smuggling.

  The border guards looked the other way as long as their palms were greased; otherwise Osman made use of herding tracks and crossed the border on foot. As living standards increased in Turkey and stagnated in Syria, there was more money to be made each year. The price of a carton of cigarettes was many times higher across the border, and there was good money to be made in the diesel trade.

  In Atmeh, the identity of the smugglers was an open secret. Nobody was making a fortune. There were too many at it for that. Every family had one member involved in “the business,” while the rest toiled in the olive groves, worked the barren earth, or just sat around.

  Then everything changed. Syria, as people knew it, would disappear forever.

  * * *

  One late afternoon in February 2011, after school was finished, a group of boys in Dar’aa, a city in the far south of the country, met up to play football. Afterward they sat around talking. One of them got an idea—to write a message of protest against the president on the wall of the school. Iyak al-dawr ya, doktor the fifteen-year-old spray-painted on the wall before they all ran home. Soon it will be your turn, Doctor. The headmaster read it the following morning and called the police. The pupils were taken in for interrogation in groups of ten. After one of those accused of being complicit, a fourteen-year-old, was beaten bloody, he named the others involved.

  The boys were arrested. And disappeared. Their parents went to the police, who merely shrugged. Gradually people began to gather outside the police station to demand the release of the boys. When the fathers again marched in to see the police, they were told to forget their children. “Send your wives and we’ll make some new children for you,” was the response of one of the station chiefs.

  The demands for the children to be returned escalated into protests. The security forces opened fire. The first two lives in the rebellion that would later claim hundreds of thousands were lost in Dar’aa.

  After a month in prison, the boys were released. Their schoolbags along with their schoolbooks were returned to them, and they were informed that the president—al-Doktor—was granting them an amnesty because it was Mother’s Day. The boys came out with a vacant look in their eyes. They had been burned, cut, beaten; some of them were missing fingernails.

  This was how it began. With the letters of a child on a wall.

  The protests did not spread as they had in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, where public disorder took place in the capital cities. Damascus was controlled too effectively for that. Informants and plainclothes policemen were everywhere, and any form of protest would be reported within seconds and put a stop to within minutes. Buses carrying men from the security forces drove around the city, the men ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

  In satellite towns and provincial cities, where levels of preparedness were not as high, people raised their voices. They did not demand Bashar step down—that was too dangerous—but they did demand reform, liberty and democracy. With the exception of Friday prayers, gathering in groups in Syria was forbidden. Consequently, the first demonstrations began after congregated prayer, with men marching in silence. As time went on, they began chanting slogans.

  Some rallies became celebrations. Local singers entertained on makeshift stages, poets stood aloft on ladders among the crowd and recited verse, little girls swayed on their parents’ shoulders, and women stood on balconies waving their shawls, all on a high of emotion.

  Extremism came later, jihadism came later, as did the weapons. First came the dream of freedom.

  War began as it often does, with scattered skirmishes. One person killed, one family grieved. Two people killed, the people continued dancing. Three killed, they will never break us. Four killed, the women stayed indoors; five killed, the children disappeared from the demonstrations; six killed, the singing stopped; seven killed, funerals turned into protest marches; eight killed, the dead had to be avenged; nine killed, young men took up arms; ten killed, they learned to kill.

  Then the slaughter began.

  The murder of the demonstrators throughout 2011 was carried out with a brutality that stirred the collective memory of the Syrians and brought to mind the massacre in Hama a generation before. The difference now was that it was being captured on camera, people filmed it with their mobile phones, recordings were smuggled out and spread on the internet. The Assad regime was no longer able to kill in the darkness. Not that the international community lifted a finger. Although world leaders condemned the violence, it was left up to the Syrians themselves to oppose it. In response to the regime meeting demonstrators with tanks, the Free Syrian Army, FSA, was formed.

  At the beginning the rebel army was composed of soldiers, officers, and a few generals who refused to open fire on their own people. These deserters wanted the Arab Spring to come to Syria—an end to the Assad regime. As new demonstrators were killed, more civilians joined the armed resistance. Poets no longer regaled the crowds; they learned how to fire live rounds. Barbers no longer shaved; they let their beards grow and cleaned their weapons. Engineers manufactured bombs and medical students mixed Molotov cocktails. The Free Syrian Army was open to all: Sunnis, Shias, Alawites, and Christians. It had no program other than a free, democratic, secular state.

  The regime’s response was to steer the conflict onto a sectarian track, in order to foster division within the disparate coalition. Bashar’s strategy was to pitch extremists, who had little support in Syria, against the moderates, who represented the majority of the population. The eye doctor feared democracy more than Islamism.

  State propaganda consistently referred to the revolutionaries as terrorists, and as early as spring 2011, when the revolt was in its infancy, the authorities released hundreds of militant Islamists from Sednaya prison outside Damascus. They soon formed militias and demonstrated their gratitude—prisoners often didn’t get out alive—by refraining from attacking the soldiers of the regime, training their weapons instead on the armed, secular opposition. A new front was opened against the FSA—jihadists funded by the oil wealth in the Gulf.

  The forces fighting for democracy implored the West for arms support. Europe’s leaders were irresolute. Obama was reluctant. The world looked away.

  * * *

  The border town of Atmeh, where Osman lived with his parents, wife, and two daughters when the civil war broke out, was conquered by the Free Syrian Army in October 2011. Owing to its location on a strip of Syrian land jutting into Turkey, t
he town had been spared Assad’s air strikes. Their long-range rockets were imprecise and the Syrian regime did not want to run the risk of hitting a NATO member. The town became a revolving door for foreign combatants, fired up on the way in, wounded on the way out. Trucks carrying weapons from Turkey came through, while oil from the fields the militias had taken over was driven out.

  When Sadiq arrived at the end of October 2013, Atmeh was split between the FSA and a motley assortment of Islamists, with Jabhat al-Nusra and two other militias, Ahrar al-Sham and Suqur al-Islam, the biggest actors. The front lines between the militias were fluid, hence the constant exchanges of fire. Young men wearing different headbands, always armed with loaded weapons, glowered at one another in a fight for territory. Fuses were short and hostility ran high. If one side fired a shot, the other side responded. Here we are! This is ours! Keep out of our way!

  Atmeh, once a sedate village surrounded by olive groves, was on speed.

  In Osman’s living room, morning turned to afternoon. Eventually they agreed on a price for the minders, the weapon, and the vehicle, the same Škoda pickup from the night before.

  “You are my guest,” Osman said, grinning, because no one’s lodgings came free. The first order of business was to bring Sadiq around and introduce him. The war had its own bureaucracy; foreigners could not be in Syria without belonging to a group, somebody had to vouch for you. If you operated on your own or delayed in choosing a side, you could easily be suspected of being a spy.

  They went first to Jabhat al-Nusra. Al-Qaida’s branch in Syria was the most powerful militia in the area and took its orders from the leaders of the terror organization. Their income was derived from oil trading, hostage taking, looting, smuggling, donations, taxes, and appropriation of property. At their headquarters, one of the Assad regime’s public buildings, Osman and Sadiq were met by Abu Islam, a young man with thick glasses and a plump, pear-shaped body.

  They placed their shoes outside and walked barefoot into a carpeted room where some commanders were having a discussion over glasses of tea.

  Sadiq related his story. Unfortunately, Abu Islam had not heard of any Somali girls. Foreigners usually passed straight through the area and traveled farther on, he told them.

  “Farther on to where?”

  “Al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham,” he replied. “Daesh.”

  He elaborated for Sadiq: “They’re the ones who recruit women. Not us.”

  Daesh is used as the derogatory name for the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, Greater Syria—an area also comprising parts of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey. ISIS and ISIL are different names for the same organization, as “al-sham” is often translated as the Levant.

  Daesh and al-Nusra, having both arisen from the same source—al-Qaida—were theologically similar. When the war in Syria began, the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) dispatched a group into the country to start the offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra. Then ISI itself entered Syria. After asserting its independence, the group was expelled from al-Qaida and, under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, renamed itself ISIS. They had created al-Nusra and now they demanded the group’s reincorporation. Jabhat al-Nusra refused. They preferred to remain with al-Qaida.

  The recruitment of women was one bone of contention. Al-Qaida’s men would welcome women in Syria, but only when the war was over and the true caliphate established. ISIS wanted them to come right away.

  Abu Islam showed the visitors to the door, nodding all the while, promising, “We’ll keep an eye out.”

  Their next port of call was Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist militia that was more moderate than al-Nusra and had no connections to al-Qaida. Ahrar al-Sham also wanted an Islamic state but rejected global jihad and a caliphate beyond Syria’s borders. Their sole aim was sharia in Syria.

  The leaders of the organization had spent years in Sednaya prison being subjected to brutal torture. When Assad opened the gates, the prison comrades formed a militia. They set themselves apart from more hard-core Salafists by promising to protect religious minorities and cooperate with secular forces. They were labeled closet pragmatists.

  “Do you have any inkling where the girls might be?” the commander, Abu Utham al-Atar, asked.

  “Only that they’re in Syria, I don’t know where,” Sadiq replied. “They’ve likely passed through this area. Someone may have kidnapped them.”

  “A father who comes to a war zone to get his daughters. Respect,” the commander said, and promised to keep a lookout.

  Sadiq showed him the worn photocopy of their passport pictures. But the photos were probably of little use; the girls were likely now wearing niqabs.

  The headquarters of the Free Syrian Army was just a few minutes’ drive away, at the local police station. The force, having initially wrested control of the town from Assad, was losing territory. The FSA had support from both the United States and Saudi Arabia, but the Assad regime, with its heavy artillery and air force, and the Islamists, with their superior weaponry and greater number of vehicles, had both intensified their attacks on the group. Many young fighters, persuaded by the Islamists’ aggressive propaganda or tempted by the resources available, had defected from the secular side to their ranks. In addition, the FSA was weakened by internal divisions. The army had also been infiltrated by bands looting in their name, and popular support was waning. This stood in contrast to Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, which were winning over the local population with acts of charity.

  The smell of cigarettes hit Sadiq as he entered their headquarters. Finally he could light up. Osman took one too. The atmosphere at the FSA was otherwise gloomy. They had been attacked the previous night, and Sadiq and Osman now had to wait for the brigade leader to finish a meeting. After they’d waited long enough to smoke several more cigarettes, a tall, thin man in his sixties with a walrus mustache approached them.

  “Sad, very sad,” Abu Alush said, upon hearing Sadiq’s story. The colonel had been among the first to desert Assad’s army.

  “There are a lot of bad things happening that are out of our hands, but I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

  “They’re almost certainly being held hostage,” Sadiq said. “Most likely by a criminal gang.”

  The colonel nodded. “Yes, yes, no doubt, but you have to leave now.”

  * * *

  There was one group left: the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

  Their headquarters was in a villa once owned by an Assad general, situated behind high walls and a large gate. The building was surrounded by a desiccated garden in which only a few almond trees had survived untended. Inside, there was a homey smell—a couple of young boys were preparing dinner, lentil soup with black beans and bread.

  They were welcomed by a tall emir, Abu Saad al-Tunisi, the last part of his name indicating his country of origin. Sadiq put great effort into choosing the right words. By this stage he had fashioned a good story, emphasizing the parts that had made an impression on his previous listeners, leaving out the weaker points. He focused on his daughters being kidnapped and held against their will.

  Abu Saad offered food, but no promises. Trays were brought in. Sadiq could hear the sound of several others eating in the adjacent room. The sounds of men in high spirits, their weapons put down but not, as he remembered from his time as a soldier, far out of reach. He recalled how you held your gun close, like a girlfriend, if you became unsure, checked it was loaded, that the safety catch was not on. Putting the safety off took three seconds, but in that time you could be dead.

  Abu Islam, the pear-shaped Islamist they had met at the Jabhat al-Nusra base, was the one who had arranged for them to meet with ISIS. He now entered the room and greeted them briefly before leaving the villa. Even though the two jihadist armies were able to share a meal and enter into tactical alliances prior to a battle, their relationship was tense. The power struggle between their leaders was bitter and uncompromising; instead of pointing their weapons in the same direction—against th
e Syrian army—the jihadist groups had been fighting that summer for control of Syria’s northern areas.

  Green headbands were replaced with black ones. Men shifted their loyalties to those they received the most from. After a few months, ISIS began attacking their hosts: the ones who had given them everything—even their daughters—in the hope of forging lasting alliances.

  * * *

  The days passed. Wait. Pay. Wait.

  Until his wallet was empty and he no longer had protection.

  “Go to Hatay and take out money,” Osman said.

  In war, cash is king, money in the bank is worth nothing. Sadiq had to make the run again, two miles over, two miles back.

  He called Mehmut. The taxi driver promised to be waiting on the other side.

  The sun was about to set. There were several others ready to try to make it across. A few of them tried but turned back, discouraged by the many patrols. Eventually Mehmut called him from the Turkish side. “Sadiq, don’t try it tonight, the guards are out in force.” One Egyptian took a chance and was caught, as were a few others. A Turkish prison awaited them. A crestfallen Sadiq returned to Osman and was given a day’s board and lodging on credit.

  The following night he ran. Mehmut had arranged for him to be picked up by a motorcycle halfway across. He hopped on and rode pillion while the driver, a youth, drove as fast as he could over the gravel and stones. The mile on the back of the motorbike cost him twenty Turkish lira. He dearly hoped that NAV had put his rehabilitation allowance for November into his account.

  The ATM dispensed the cash. He returned to the border, paid, and, for the second time, ran into the war zone.

  Back in Idlib province, Osman continued to help him with his inquiries, at brigade after brigade, village after village. Sadiq described his daughters. Tall. Proud posture. Probably wearing niqabs. He shared his story with whoever would listen. By now he was becoming a familiar figure to the people in Atmeh. There goes the father looking for his daughters, they would say.