Syria's Secret Library

by Mike Thomson

  Reliable statistics are difficult to come by, and are hotly disputed, but according to local accounts as many as 700 bodies were discovered after the soldiers went on their door-to-door search. Men, women and children were said to have been dragged from their homes and executed. Local activists released video footage which purportedly showed five mass graves. In other videos, dozens of bodies are shown, piled up in a mosque.

  On 25 August, government forces pulled out of the town, leaving behind an orgy of death and destruction. On arrival back in Daraya, Anas’s family were greeted by relatives who were overjoyed that they were still alive. But he was later to write in his diary that many, many others had not been so fortunate:

  I’m told that this massacre has led to the killing of more than 700 people, 514 of whom we can name. The dead includes 39 women and 62 children. 219 others were arrested and 115 people have disappeared. These are terrible days. They are like ones I had previously only heard about in history books. But one thing is for sure, this makes us more determined than ever to get rid of the regime.

  Other reports put the number killed at less than 200. Claims that pro-Syrian government troops were responsible for all the killings were also disputed. When the journalist Robert Fisk, of the Independent, arrived in Daraya a few days later, he reported that according to some locals, FSA rebel fighters had carried out some of the killings because of a failed prisoner swap. Naturally, the Syrian state media blamed the rebels for the massacre, adding that Daraya had now been ‘cleansed of terrorist remnants’. Yet such claims, fiercely denied by the rebels, were inconsistent with other detailed testimonies given by its civilian inhabitants. There were widespread reports that the few people left in Daraya who supported the regime had been tipped off before the massacre that troops were about to move in.

  Over the days that followed the horrific killings, tens of thousands of people, especially the old and those with families, decided to flee the town in case the Syrian army came back. Within a few weeks, Daraya’s population fell from around 80,000 to less than 8,000. Those who chose to remain were mostly dissidents, men escaping conscription from the army and others who had decided to fight the regime. All were now well aware what the consequences of their stand were likely to be.

  Abdul Basit’s family were among the hordes of fleeing civilians. They, like many others, made for the homes of relatives near by. Although entering an area controlled by the regime, they would be unknown to the security services there. He told me:

  My family decided to leave because they were worried about the safety of my brothers and sisters. They left after four days, but I decided to stay. My dad didn’t try to dissuade me, in fact he encouraged me to remain. He told me, Son, you are doing the right thing. My mum was clearly very worried about me, but she didn’t actually ask me to go with them. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the last time I saw her. I kissed her hand and she looked up at me and said, Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? I replied, Mother, in your heart, deep down, you know I should stay here. She didn’t shake her head or disagree. That was the last time I saw her or any of my family. I can’t think of any words, any sentences that can describe what I felt when they left. I had such a happy and stable life and suddenly it was gone, torn apart by the Assad regime.

  Having got to know Abdul Basit, I knew how difficult this parting must have been for him. A dreamy-eyed, gregarious, generous soul, he had lived all his life in Daraya, growing up on a small farm, helping in his father’s household goods shop, going to school and praying in the local mosque. As Anas told me: ‘Abdul Basit is a very social person who loves talking to people and having all sorts of interesting conversations. He is always interested in anything to do with the news, politics, the economy and he loves sport. He is very open-minded and strong-willed and always aims to do the very best he can in anything he undertakes.’

  Like many Syrians, Abdul Basit was very family-oriented. He would take family members to the doctor if they were ill, go shopping with his mother, help his younger brothers with their homework, even buying them a computer with his savings. ‘But,’ he once told me, ‘I suppose I am most proud of teaching my mum how to read and write. And, feeling like a friend to my dad, as well as being his son.’ Watching them leave their home was one of the saddest moments of his life, though he consoled himself with the thought that at least they should be safer away from the battleground that Daraya was becoming.

  Abdul Basit’s family’s instincts were right. The regime now pushed ahead with efforts to seal off Daraya from the outside world, cutting off the town’s supplies of food and medicine. Efforts were also made to isolate the community by disrupting mobile and Internet networks there. There was a fear that calls to relatives in government-controlled areas might be monitored, so those remaining were reluctant to contact their loved ones, lest they be targeted by the security forces. Anyone who tried to flee or forage for food in the surrounding countryside risked either being arrested by the regime’s soldiers at checkpoints near the town or being shot at by snipers.

  The long and terrifying siege of Daraya had begun.

  Chapter Three

  The siege was quick to take hold. On New Year’s Eve, 2012, a light mist hung over Daraya, partially obscuring the scarred countryside beyond. The few civilians on the streets walked briskly in the chill air, listening for the sounds of planes overhead. But the fearful noise people began to hear was not coming from above. Instead the distant rumble of engines and metal-tracked wheels, which shook the ground, came drifting across the fields. As the din grew louder, accompanied by shouting and the squawk of military radios, there came the whistle of shells and then sickening booms as they hit their targets. The Syrian regime was launching another full-scale attack on Daraya. Over the following weeks, its forces pushed further towards the town, threatening to overrun it. Yet the few hundred or so rebel defenders, easily outnumbered and outgunned, stubbornly clung on.

  By 17 February 2013, the UN high commissioner for human rights announced that the death toll in the Syrian civil war had passed 70,000, and that the figure was climbing rapidly. So, too, it seemed, were the levels to which the Syrian government would go in its efforts to win this conflict. In April that year the US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, announced that his government had assessed ‘with some degree of varying confidence’ that the chemical weapon sarin had been used on a small scale in the war–a charge denied by the Syrian regime. But just four months later, on 21 August 2013, as many as 1400 people were killed when shells loaded with that same poisonous gas rained down on Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held area just to the east of Damascus. More than 700 people were also injured by the attack on nearby Daraya. In the wake of international outrage, the Syrian government again denied it had used such weapons. But a UN investigation team, which was allowed into the Ghouta area a few days later, found ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that sarin had been used. In his remarks to the UN Security Council, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that this was the ‘most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them in Halabja in 1988’. Global calls for action against Assad’s regime followed, though just over a week later the UK Parliament voted against the use of any military action. It was just the first of many occasions on which the outside world said much, but did little.

  At the outset of the conflict, Daraya’s rebel force belonged to a bewildering assortment of groups affiliated with the FSA. They were, as Rateb abo Fayez put it to me, ‘simply a bunch of young men who had opted to fight to protect our town from the regime’s attacks’. Astonishingly, with limited help from elsewhere, just a few hundred of them continued to fight the comparatively mighty Syrian army into a standstill. It was not just their lack of numbers that made this surprising. It was also the fact that their members were not, at this point, a trained force. Nor were they initially cohesive in terms of allegiance. As the siege progressed most came to belong to just two rebel forces: The Martyrs of Islam
Brigade or Ajnad al-Sham. These two groups in turn became allied to two larger coalitions–the Army of Conquest and the Western-backed Southern Front.

  Rateb had never experienced war and was surprised when the conflict went quiet for a while after the first couple of attacks. But, he told me, this gave him and his fellow volunteers time to recruit and become better organised. Many of those Rateb fought with were locals, but others came from Damascus and elsewhere in Syria. They didn’t look much like a regular army because none of them wore uniforms. Firstly because, being under siege, they did not have access to the materials needed to make these. Secondly, it was not a priority, given the numerous other urgent tasks that faced them, such as finding food, caring for the injured and, most crucially, fighting a vastly better-manned and equipped enemy. There was another significant reason too, as Rateb explained: ‘We were all really just civilians, former university students. We didn’t want to dress in camouflage like the Syrian army soldiers. Most of us hated the regime’s forces and the last thing we wanted to do was look like the soldiers of a regime that had oppressed us for so long.’

  According to Rateb, the rebel force in Daraya differed from many others across the country in the way that it was run and the relationship he and the other recruits had with their officers, in that it was much less hierarchical. Many of the FSA’s leaders came from the same community as the men beneath them, had done similar jobs, and often lived in the same neighbourhoods. The biggest difference between rank-and-file soldiers and their commanders, it seems, was that the latter had more responsibilities. ‘The relationship between ourselves and our officers was more of a brotherly one,’ Rateb told me. ‘It simply wasn’t like a hierarchy. We lived in the same houses, talked about the same things, we even swapped clothes with each other. Our leaders didn’t talk down to us, they were never patronising.’

  In those early days, he and his comrades fought a hit-and-run style of warfare. They were not yet trained or equipped to take on the regime’s forces in a more conventional manner. When government soldiers launched ground attacks on the town, Rateb told me: ‘We hid in abandoned homes, opened holes in the walls or sat and waited for them to come within range of our guns. We had to fight this way because we only had simple weapons. They had tanks and all sorts of sophisticated arms.’

  When there were no houses to hide in, they would either lay booby traps for the enemy or conceal themselves in ditches they had dug. This way, while unable to break the siege, they managed to stop further major advances by the government forces. Nonetheless, from late 2013 onwards, bombs, rockets and shells continued to bombard Daraya almost relentlessly. Both forces were well dug in, although the front line was rarely fixed. One side would advance and capture a few buildings, or even a street or a stretch of farmland, but would then be beaten back again when the other counter-attacked.

  In urban areas, Rateb told me, the front line would often be just a street. On either side of the road snipers, whether rebel or regime, would crouch, out of sight. Some would hide on rooftops festooned with charred, twisted pipes and cables, or lurk behind peepholes in the walls of crumbling buildings. Sometimes, in more open areas, both sides would build a barricade of dirt and sandbags to screen themselves from the enemy. The front line in the fields around Daraya, however, was totally different and often difficult to decipher. Fighters, whether rebel or regime, often infested innocent-looking farm buildings, or would lie unseen in shallow trenches dug into the fields. Large areas of no-man’s-land often separated both sides, filled with tempting swathes of fully grown crops swaying gently in the breeze. But such crops would be in the crosshairs of hidden snipers, so to harvest them would mean certain death.

  Despite these minor advances and retreats, the government forces fought a war that was often static. Why risk casualties by trying to advance across the ground, when your forces had command of the skies? Let your planes destroy your enemies’ homes and businesses, shattering morale, while your tightening siege slowly starved them into submission. If the bombs did not kill them, hunger eventually would. One of the first buildings to be flattened in central Daraya in the summer of 2013 was the iconic Koushak ice cream parlour and soon after that, just a few doors down, the once-lively Central Toaster store. Koushak’s owners escaped with their lives. Sadly the family who ran Central Toaster were not so lucky.

  From the outset of the siege, Syrian government forces would not allow international or local relief convoys into the town. At first Daraya managed to struggle on, thanks to the rich farming tradition of an area that had been the breadbasket of Damascus. But as the regime’s forces slowly edged nearer, annexing farmland on the way, growing crops became more difficult. Even when the locals did manage to grow something they often could not harvest it due to the constant threat of snipers. The only option left for the resourceful people of Daraya was to grow food anywhere they could within the town, even though such efforts could never be enough. Hunger quickly became a fact of life and continued unabated. Smuggling supplies through rebel lines worked for a while but became increasingly dangerous.

  There were, at least, brief ceasefires during which the bombs and shells stopped falling. While these did not mean that all snipers put down their rifles, it did give residents an opportunity to harvest crops or hunt for food, as well as a merciful break from the carnage.

  It was during one of these treasured windows of calm that a group of young men, nearly all former students, began discussing more positive ways to spend their time. All had treasured their education, yet few had been able to graduate from university before the chaos took over. Most had initially thought that the unrest and then the fighting that followed would be over in a few months, and they would then be able to go back to their studies. When it became clear that peace was unlikely to return in the near future, they asked themselves what they should do in the meantime. How could they both keep their minds sharp and do something useful for their besieged and battered community? As Abdul Basit put it to me: ‘The first couple of months were perhaps the toughest of all. It was hard to think of anything other than simple survival. So we began by planting vegetables, but soon realised that we needed to feed our minds too.’

  This educated group of young people, most of whom were not currently involved in the fighting, did not want to sit around doing nothing but dodging bombs and watching their vegetables grow. They were brimming with ideas on how to make life more meaningful. One suggestion was that they should set up a centre where people could learn foreign languages. Many of those who were fluent in English or French had left Daraya when the fighting started, and language skills were needed to communicate with the outside world. There was still a handful of linguists who could provide lessons. Others suggested they could construct some sort of community centre, where talks could be given on everything from the Quran to history and sport; some proposed appointing a community scribe, who could record what was happening in Daraya as the siege went on. But the suggestion that ignited the biggest spark among them all was the creation of a store to help keep books safe from all the bombing and destruction.

  These former students had studied a wide variety of subjects but they all had one thing in common–a love of books. Whether these dealt with chemistry or economics, poetry or physics, self-help or literature, it made little difference. The joy of gaining knowledge, understanding and empathy through books transcended such boundaries. Nor, I later came to discover, was the pleasure of reading the preserve of dedicated bookworms. Reading, learning, discussing the content of books was enjoyed by almost all who could read, irrespective of class, occupation or education. When Daraya’s much-loved former town library had been destroyed by fire, the community at large had been distraught. Now this group hoped to create one that was even better.

  When I first heard rumours of a secret underground library in Daraya, I thought it must surely be an exaggerated account of events. Yet over the months that followed I interviewed dozens of people there, some of whom sent me photographs,
and it became clear that this really was true. Young people there were risking their lives each day to preserve books of all kinds, in the hope of using them to help build a better tomorrow. I was hugely inspired. I realised that this extraordinary story could more than fill a documentary, never mind a brief report in the news. Happily the BBC agreed and the project was commissioned. However, there were obvious obstacles. Such an in-depth programme would require on-the-ground interviews, copious sound recordings as well as photos and videos of those taking part. Yet, Daraya was surrounded by heavily armed Syrian government soldiers and even if I did come up with a plan to get into the town, the BBC would never allow me to go there, as an assignment of this sort would be viewed as near suicidal.

  A colleague suggested I interview people over the phone, but that was a non-starter. After years of carnage much of Syria’s mobile phone network was in tatters and there were few working landlines. And even if these were repaired, nobody left in Daraya could afford to make international phone calls or texts. While Skype, WhatsApp or other social media calls were free via Wi-Fi, this too was clearly only a partial solution. I had interviewed people in Syria over Skype before, and connections were often dire. Sometimes people could not get online for days and I had only limited time to make this documentary.

  One factor greatly in my favour was the ingenuity of the people I was getting to know, remotely, in Daraya. Most were young, energetic and technologically savvy. Take the ever-resourceful, Malik al-Rifaii, Daraya’s very own Mr Fixit. What many would say was impossible, was a mere walk in the park for this twenty-four-year-old former wedding-card vendor, turned media activist. At times, Malik, whose family owned a local petrol station, would disappear for days or even weeks at a time, leaving me wondering if he would ever return. But I soon learned there was no need to worry. Malik, who was constantly juggling numerous media tasks, always got back in touch in the end. So, one chilly but sun-blessed day in March 2016, I put a suggestion to him. When the Internet went down, might it be possible for local people to write or record answers to my questions on their mobiles, then send the recordings to me when the connection came back. Of course, Malik replied, without the slightest hesitation and in a heartbeat, my problem was just about solved.