Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect

by Reese Erlich

  By mid-March demonstrations broke out in Damascus and other parts of the country. The demonstrations were nonviolent and secular. In the northwestern city of Banyas, protesters tried to attract the generally pro-Assad Alawite religious minority by chanting, “Peaceful, peaceful—neither Sunni nor Alawite, we want national unity.”3

  The regime faced the biggest crisis in its history. Assad cracked down mercilessly on peaceful protestors. Police and soldiers opened fire with live ammunition. Security forces arrested and tortured anyone suspected of participating in the protests. Then, thinking it occupied a position of strength, the regime offered the occasional olive branch. In late March, Assad lifted the state-of-emergency law, which was declared in 1962 and implemented at the time of the first Baathist coup in 1963. The law had been used as an important repressive tool by successive governments. Assad also legalized the status of some 300,000 Kurds who had been stateless since the 1960s (see chapter 9).

  On July 10, a number of prominent opposition figures from different religious and ethnic backgrounds tested the parameters of the new political openings by holding a conference in Damascus. They were allowed to raise criticisms of the regime, and the state TV network broadcast the conference live. On July 24, the Syrian parliament passed a law allowing additional opposition parties. Since the early 1970s, the National Progressive Front, a coalition of minor leftist parties, had been legalized as a sort of loyal opposition. The regime planned to open this door a bit wider, but the Syrian Constitution still contained a clause stating that the Baath Party was the leading party. So the new parties had little actual power.4

  Steps that would have been hailed as tremendously progressive a few years prior had no impact in 2011. The main opposition groups rejected the weak reforms and continued to call for Assad's overthrow. In July, 400,000 people rallied in the central Syrian city of Hama after security forces had withdrawn. They put forward a nonviolent message inviting participation by all faiths, and the demonstration had a strong presence of women.

  In October 2011 I was able to report from Daraa. The government was in nominal control of the city, but antiregime sentiment remained strong. I tagged along with a group of Ukrainian dignitaries and journalists on a trip organized by the government. We drove out of Damascus at about 9:00 a.m. in a large convoy of buses and minivans, accompanied by a police car lettered Protocol. While ordinary cars were stopped at military checkpoints along the way, we sailed right through.

  Outwardly, Daraa was calm. Its streets had few shoppers, but there were no outward signs of unrest. We met with Daraa governor Mohammed Khaled Hanos and the local attorney general, Tayseer al-Smadi.5 These government officials spun a well-developed narrative to explain events. They admitted that people in Daraa and elsewhere began with peaceful protests and legitimate grievances asking for democracy. But almost immediately, extremists seized control of the demonstrations, they claimed. Extremists began a campaign of shooting and violence against security forces.

  These agitators were armed and paid by Saudi Arabia and the gulf state of Qatar, according to the officials. The demonstrators were politically and militarily backed by Israel, the United States, and Europe. As a result, over 1,200 police, army, and other security personnel had been killed by demonstrators. The government provided no statistics on the number of civilians killed.6

  The regime's narrative contained some elements of truth. Syrian demonstrators never adopted a Gandhi-style campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience. When government forces fired live ammunition into crowds, the protestors hurled rocks. On March 20, less than one week into the protests, demonstrators in Daraa burned an office of the ruling Baath Party and the local courthouse. In Damascus I interviewed Mahmoud, a twenty-six-year-old activist in Daraa who asked that only his first name be used. As the repression continued for months, he told me, “People in Daraa used Molotov [cocktails] and rifles. But it was a reaction to the government arresting and killing protestors.”7

  Mahmoud admitted that tribal groups, who are allowed to own personal weapons, also used them against the government after months of nonviolent marches and rallies. “Daraa is known for big tribal clans. When they use arms, it's to defend themselves. They use them when the government arrests people and invades people's houses. The big families of Daraa oppose the government and they use arms.” But local people taking up arms in self-defense is a far cry from CIA/Israeli/Saudi-sponsored rebels attacking the Assad government. Officials clearly exaggerated the violence in an effort to discredit the opposition.

  While there were sporadic armed incidents during the first eight months of the uprising, protestors predominantly used nonviolent tactics. They held marches and rallies and spread the word through text messages and sometimes with social media. They relayed developments on the ground to satellite TV stations such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya.

  The opposition movement grew as new organizations sprang into existence. The Local Coordinating Committees (LCC) developed spontaneously in many cities as the mostly young activists created grassroots groups unaffiliated with the traditional opposition. The activists included leftists, liberal secularists, and conservative Muslims. They developed an alliance similar to the coalition of secularists and Muslim activists in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

  The LCC in Syria wanted no hierarchical structures. The movement ostensibly had no leaders, no common ideology, or even a short-term political program. But they all united on the need to overthrow Assad, hold free elections, and establish a parliamentary system with civil liberties. I had a chance to meet some secular LCC leaders in Damascus toward the end of 2011. I had taken a circuitous route through Damascus's old city to a clandestine apartment, as described in chapter 1.

  After a long conversation, we took a break to drink tea. I looked around the apartment. The beds were unmade, the dishes unwashed, and dust balls were scattered around the room. It could belong to a single guy in his twenties who hadn't done the housework in a while. I found out later it was an LCC safe house paid for by an upper-middle-class sympathizer.

  I asked Ahmad Bakdouness how they continued to organize, given harsh government repression. Bakdouness is a civil-society activist who was later jailed and tortured by police. He told me that demonstrators gathered outside mosques on Fridays because that was one of the few places people could still congregate. They used code words over mobile phones to organize demonstrations. “We say, ‘We are going to a party’ or ‘Come to the wedding,’” said Bakdouness. “People know there will be a demonstration on Friday. They know the mosques where people demonstrate. For demonstrations during the week, we know each other and call on mobiles.”8

  Protestors only occasionally used social networking sites because they were closely monitored by the government. They said theirs is not a Facebook revolution. They used Facebook and similar social networking sites only to alert the outside world that someone famous would be participating in a demonstration. I asked Bakdouness how people can demonstrate in the same location each week without being crushed by the security forces. “In the same area, there are a lot of roads. They can't block every road. For the big demonstrations, the government can't enter.”

  Protestors adopted innovative tactics to reach the public. One day, activists wrote the word “freedom” on five thousand ping-pong balls. They went to a hilltop in Damascus and dumped the balls on the heavily trafficked park below. Leen, another LCC leader at the safe house, chuckled as she explained that the security forces spent the rest of the day chasing their balls.

  The heady, early days of the uprising saw Syrians reexamining many of their political values. But the society remained deeply conservative in cultural matters. Syrians continued to hold antihomosexual attitudes, even among many opposition activists. That didn't stop a few brave gays from joining the uprising, as I found out when I met Mahmoud Hassino.

  Hassino knew he was gay at age twelve. He wasn't attracted to girls, but he was very interested in his male friends. Later, as a teenager growing up i
n Damascus, his mother figured out his sexual orientation and gave him what he later realized was good advice. “Don't admit your homosexuality,” she cautioned. “You will have trouble finding work and socializing with people.”9 Despite tight cultural restrictions, Hassino told me, he had no problems finding gay partners. “There are gay men everywhere,” he said with a quick smile. “You just had to have good gaydar.”

  Hassino joined millions of other Syrians in the uprising. He marched in demonstrations and participated in underground meetings. Dozens of gay men and lesbians were killed by security forces during the uprising, but most Syrians were unaware of their sexual orientation. Hassino eventually fled to Turkey because of his antiregime activism. He later got word that his Damascus apartment had been destroyed in a government attack. But he continued to write about his homeland in an effort to shine light on its gay subculture and to support the opposition movement.

  Homosexuality remains a criminal offense in Syria despite promises of reform by President Assad when he took office in 2000. In March and April 2010, the government arrested groups of gay men who were having parties at private houses in Damascus. Three of the men were arrested on drug charges. Others were kept in jail for three months “until their families and everyone in the neighborhood knew,” said Hassino. After their release, “some had to flee Syria to other countries.” Hassino said that while gay men undergo harassment, lesbians face even more difficulties. When the family of one lesbian friend found out about her sexual orientation, they “forced her to marry an older guy,” recalled Hassino. “Now she's living like a maid, taking care of him and his children.”

  In recent years, gays organized in an attempt to change the law and educate their fellow citizens. In 2009 some two hundred gays organized a group called I'm Just Like You. “I'm gay and I have a right to my opinion,” gays wrote in an appeal, as quoted by Agence France Presse. “I belong to this society, and it owes me some respect. I'm gay—I don't come from another planet.”10

  While homosexuality remains illegal and gays must lead double lives in Syria, a 2011 UN Office for Human Rights report noted that other Middle East countries are far worse violators of gay rights. Four Middle East nations proscribe the death penalty for homosexual acts.11 As a result, Hassino concedes, some gay men and lesbians still support Assad. They fear that if conservative Islamists come to power, they will face even more repression. Hassino wanted to reach out to gays who are pro-Assad or on the fence. He started an online, Arabic-language magazine, Mawaleh, which means “nuts”—a reference to the food, not a double entendre. The magazine attempts to reach lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Syrians regardless of their political views. “We all want a secular Syria,” says Hassino. And those who support Assad, he argues, “must have a backup plan” in case he falls.

  But as the fighting intensified, the secular forces within the opposition were losing strength. And Hassino's views were very controversial, even among the secular opposition. Miral Bioredda, a secular leader of the LCC in Al Hasakah, a northeastern Syrian city, told me he personally views homosexuality as a private matter, “but Syrian society would say ‘no way’ if gays rose to claim their rights. Developing a civil society will take time.”12 Others are less tolerant. Interviewed in Turkey, Nasradeen Ahme, who considered himself part of the secular opposition, told me: “If I was in charge, I would enforce tougher laws against homosexuals. If someone said homosexuals should be stoned to death as in Iran and Saudi Arabia, I would not object.”13

  As extremist rebels seized control of some cities, persecution of gays intensified. Rebel leaders from Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, two groups affiliated with al-Qaeda at the time, made homosexuality punishable by lashing or even death. Some fifty gays were executed by those groups, according to Hassino.14 He had moved to the border city of Antakya, Turkey, but was forced to relocate to Istanbul after extremist Syrian rebels threatened to kidnap him. Hassino acknowledged that homosexuals face an intense challenge, whoever wins Syria's civil war. “This is a bigger problem than the law now,” he said. “Social traditions are influenced by the religious traditions. Most people reject homosexuality.” Hassino argued that fighting against Assad and for the right to organize will benefit all Syrians and eventually help gays as well. “The intelligence services arrest people if they're discussing any kind of social or political change,” he said. “Without freedom of speech, we can't address these issues.”

  People such as Hassino and the LCC leaders represented only one sector of the opposition in the early months of the uprising. A friend offered to introduce me to another kind of Assad opponent. He typified the shady characters who once supported the government and later joined the opposition. After a few hushed phone calls, we met in an outdoor Damascus café. We sat far away from other customers, and he positioned himself with his back to the wall.

  He called himself “Bashar,” a pseudonym adopted to mock Bashar al-Assad. His demeanor was half-dissident, half-thug. He represented the opportunist opposition, someone who didn't initially support the uprising, joined it when it seemed about to win, and might just return to the Assad camp if the wind changed. With a thick neck and bushy mustache, Bashar looked like a bodyguard. That's because he used to be one. He was vague about whom exactly he guarded, but he bragged of close ties to Syrian security agencies and the police.

  To prove his opposition bona fides, Bashar opened his camera phone and showed me photos of him with a very famous exiled Syrian leader. Other photos showed him at Damascus demonstrations. “I'm an agitator,” he told me proudly. When I pointed out the questionable practice of keeping a cell phone full of incriminating photos, he said, “I don't care.”15

  Beginning in the fall of 2011, he said, some opposition activists armed themselves with hunting pistols and rifles, which they use when police come to make house arrests. He denied that demonstrators shoot during demonstrations: a foolhardy act given the superior weaponry of the army and police. Some sectors of the opposition were now carrying out targeted assassinations of Mukhabarat (Military Intelligence Directorate) agents, informers, and government supporters, Bashar said during our interview in October 2011. Islamist forces in the city of Homs had set up roadblocks and created areas where the security forces dared not enter.

  I obtained confirmation of the difficulties facing the Mukhabarat from an unexpected source. I visited a friend of a friend in Tartus, a city on Syria's western coast near Lebanon. One man turned out to be a member of the feared Mukhabarat. He was a staunch supporter of Assad but admitted that even eight months into the uprising, the security forces had lost control of some cities.

  “We can only go to parts of Homs in large numbers,” he told me.16 He asked to remain anonymous, fearing possible reprisal by the rebels. He told me the conservative Muslim rebel forces controlled the Sunni neighborhoods at night. They knew where police and secret police agents lived and weren't afraid to assassinate them. He had been based in Homs and admitted that the opposition was so well entrenched it might take a year for the government to prevail. That was a stark admission coming from a member of the security forces. Two years after our conversation, the rebels continued to control parts of Homs.

  The shift away from nonviolent protest and toward armed struggle took place gradually. Peaceful protest became increasingly difficult. Security forces surrounded mosques on Friday afternoons to prevent marches. Any attempt to hold a rally was quickly and violently dispersed. Some in the opposition accused the regime of intentionally releasing Islamic extremists from jail in hopes they would take up a divisive, armed struggle.

  In July 2011, defectors from Assad's army announced formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Both sides began to engage in targeted assassinations. On October 2, 2011, the government accused extremist members of the opposition of murdering Sariya Hassoun, son of Syria's grand mufti, the country's most important Sunni religious leader. A few days later on October 7, a government hit squad murdered Syrian Kurdish l
eader Mashaal Tammo.

  In November, the FSA attacked the Harasta Air Force Intelligence Base near Damascus, the first such major battle. By December armed rebels bombed an important security complex in Kafr Soueah Square in Damascus, killing both soldiers and innocent civilians. As armed struggle quickly replaced mass demonstrations, political leadership of the uprising also changed. Political Islam came to the fore. The uprising was becoming a civil war.

  In current discourse in the United States, Islam is often equated with extremism and terrorism. “Not all Muslims are terrorists,” goes the often-repeated maxim, “but all terrorists are Muslims.”17 My, how we show our ignorance. Terrorist tactics have a long history that has nothing to do with Islam. The first modern-day suicide bomber detonated a hand grenade to kill the Russian czar in 1881. The assassin was Christian. The first car bomb was exploded by extremist Zionists fighting the British occupation of Palestine before 1948. The same group, known as Lechi or the Stern Gang, also had the distinction of mailing the first letter bombs in an attempt to kill members of the British cabinet.18 The list goes on. But you get the idea.

  Islam is a religion of peace, as is Christianity, Judaism, and all the religions I know of. Some extremists in the United States have murdered abortion doctors or blown up a federal building in the name of Christianity, but we know their actions are anti-Christian. And so it is with political Islam. Opportunist leaders try to seize power quoting passages from the Koran, but their actions are anti-Islamic. To analyze Islamic extremists, we must focus on their politics, not their religious rhetoric. So I describe them using political terms such as progressive, conservative, and ultra-right-wing. I stay away from the term moderate, which in translation usually means “acceptable to the United States.”

  For many years, the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to be the most influential opposition group in Syria. But during the first weeks of the uprising, the brotherhood was caught with its pants down. Its leaders had been jailed or driven into exile during the harsh government repression of the 1980s. The brotherhood was out of touch with the younger generation, whose members spearheaded the events in early 2011. It initially opposed the uprising as being too provocative and likely to fail.