by Samar Yazbek
“I was at my grandfather’s house, and there were about 50 soldiers stationed in the Ibn Khaldoun building, 200 metres past the municipality in the centre of Baniyas. The army was sleeping up on the rooftops and we showed them hospitality, at first the people of Baniyas and the military cooperated. In al-Marqab the army carried out searches and sweeps, then they withdrew. It was the security forces that did all the killing. I saw the battle with my own eyes, the battle on Sunday. When the army launched their attacks from the international road, I was standing up on the roof with a telescope, the army units started to attack, out in the open on the international road. It was a weird formation. I don’t think armies usually behave like that. They were like death squads. The army hit the houses and the water tanks and the Ra‘s al-Naba‘a bridge. Bullets were pouring down like rain. They moved into the city in the afternoon and then continued pounding the houses at random. We didn’t know what was happening, some guys who were closer to the action told me that security forces and shabbiha opened fire on people and beat them up. Something like twenty bullets whizzed right past me. That was in the afternoon.
“The next morning at dawn, I went up to the top of the minaret at the mosque and saw security forces on the rooftops. When they saw me watching them I left the minaret. The army moved under the al-Qawz bridge, we ran out of the mosque and the security forces disappeared. An agreement was reached that security forces wouldn’t move in, but that the army could enter the city. On the same day as the battle, some soldiers started turning themselves in to us and to the people. One of them said, ‘They told us we were going to be fighting a gang, but when we saw the muezzin, we realized there was no gang. I knew it had all been one big lie.’ One of the inhabitants of Baniyas told the soldier, ‘We’re the people of Baniyas, we’re not a gang.’ Some army soldiers got killed turning themselves in, and others were killed before they could even leave the army. All their injuries were either from behind or directly to the head.”
I ask him about the images we had seen of people dancing on top of bodies in Ayn al-Baida, “Ayn al-Baida and the pictures that came out, what the state media is saying, what do you have to say about it?”
He laughs mournfully and says, “Of course it’s all real, and what actually happened is even more disgusting than those pictures. That video was leaked by the security forces themselves. One of them sold it for a ton of money and the video went viral. They were filming themselves just to show off, those are security agents. Anyone in Baniyas who had weapons didn’t want them, and I doubt there really were any except for those that were used in self-defence.
“The army reinforced its presence in Baniyas and didn’t come out at first. Baniyas was beyond government control, there was no police presence. We the people were protecting the city. The canteens were only open when necessary. We set up essential roadblocks to protect property but not a single act of vandalism took place in the entire city and the people remained calm. At first there was a limited number of soldiers and it was the people who decided where the army would be stationed. Seriously, when the army first moved in we felt protected and secure and there was amazing cooperation between us and them, but apparently there were others who weren’t so happy with that situation.”
“Who were those others?”
I want to add my own sentence here –the others are Hell, the others are the dead who plunder life from us – but I am still playing the role of journalist, so the novelist in me backs away as I await his response.
“People inside the regime weren’t happy about it. I have an interpretation of the situation, which suggests the existence of two factions within the government; the first is violent and the second is peaceful. I believe the violent current won out over the peaceful and reformist trend. Anyway, the army fully pulled out and a new force arrived in al-Marqab. It was the security forces that killed the four women and wounded scores of others. Then they moved into Baniyas two days later. This army had more equipment and greater numbers. They detained entire families. I think this operation was intended to force the entire city onto its knees because it had been completely outside government control and the protest movement there was strong; the regime asked for the demonstrations to stop but the people refused. We knew the names of some of the shabbiha and the security forces shooting at the women, and they included the following: I.S., H.Z., and I.M.”
“What about the social situation, what was Baniyas like during those days?”
“We were constantly on alert, rotating shifts late into the night in order to protect the people. When the phone lines were cut, the women would prepare for war. There were incursions every couple of days. We weren’t afraid of the army, we were afraid when the security forces carried out their raids. When the army moved in, the people would cheer for them. The security forces were the people’s real problem.
“It’s been said ever since the start of the protest movement in Baniyas that it has a sectarian quality.”
“Every society has people who are simple-minded and stupid, who don’t understand. I’m not going to tell you that among all the people of Baniyas there isn’t a sectarian colouring – sectarianism is present among some individuals, but it had no place in the demonstrations. We were against sectarian slogans. I attended all of the sermons in the mosques and none of A.I.’s sermons had any sectarian incitement and there wasn’t any sectarian character to what we were proposing. An Alawite professor came with us during the demonstrations and we were chanting alongside him and behind him. M.Y. and the people from the village of H. were all there.”
“What’s the story of Nidal Junoud? And why was he killed?”
“He was there in the graveyard with a sniper’s rifle and the people found him after coming under heavy gunfire. The guys told me he had been killing people. I think it was a case of revenge but I also think it was an isolated case of violence.”
“Who were the young men who captured him?”
“They were ordinary young men, illiterate; they hadn’t been with the demonstrators. The city was in a state of anarchy, anything could have happened with all that violence. We demonstrators captured somebody from criminal security, but then we left him alone. One of the soldiers as well; we held him and then let him go. We aren’t sectarian, we aren’t violent, we weren’t inciting people to violence, but there are incidents of violence and ambiguity that take place during such situations. When the guys took control of an army convoy they handed it over straight away to the army; there were papers and maps of Baniyas inside. There was something odd about that bus where soldiers and officers were killed, because the soldiers stepped out in a completely natural way and then suddenly, the shooting started. The bus had come from Latakia and it was shot up for an entire hour. I saw it all with my own eyes and I found it very odd. I couldn’t tell exactly where the shooting was coming from. I was down a way, towards the sea. I watched the soldiers calmly step off the bus. They weren’t prepared for combat. They looked like they had just received orders. They were completely calm. And then they died. After getting off they just stood there until the shooting started, it was machine guns, mostly, and I saw them with my own eyes, they were shooting – it was the shabbiha, I just told you some of their names a little while ago. They were the ones who killed the soldiers along with some others who were with them.”
I think about the fact that the people of Baniyas know who the murderers were, how they live alongside them and how their silence, despite knowing who they are, is not cowardice. I know the city well, I know how proud and self-respecting its people are. They remain silent so as not to respond to murder with more murder, to protect the peacefulness of their protests.
“Were you there when the demonstrations started?”
“Yes. Even before 15 March, Shaykh A.I. would talk about taxes and the rising injustice against the people through this theft they were subjected to by the state. He talked about the pollution from the Baniyas refinery. Then the demonstrations started to spread throughout the
Syrian cities. During prayer on 18 March we noticed a lot of cars outside the mosque and people were streaming inside. Shaykh I. said, ‘By God I didn’t invite anyone to come, I simply spoke the truth.’ Some people, including A. S., left because they didn’t like what the shaykh had to say. They wanted to start demonstrating. The demonstrations were spontaneous and unplanned at first, at the municipal roundabout. But after the events in Dar‘a and the incursion into the al-Umari Mosque on Wednesday, the people rose up once again, and they were energized by what was happening in most of the cities in Syria. We started trying to calm people down and tried to get them to delay making their demands and the shaykh decided that nobody should go out into the streets, telling them, ‘You’ll be turning your backs on God, telling God to shut up.’ But they wouldn’t listen, the energy was intense and Dar‘a was under siege. The people didn’t respond to what the shaykh was saying. In the al-Qubayat Mosque, when Shaykh Mustafa Ibrahim described the demonstrators as riffraff and anarchists, the people brought him down from his pedestal and then they got together and the demonstration happened. We tried to calm everybody down but the people started going out to demonstrate and to demand their rights.”
“When did the army first cooperate and make contact with security and the shabbiha?”
“I don’t know the exact date but it could have been the first Saturday in April. Before they moved into al-Baida, before the communications were cut and the people started getting themselves ready and getting scared. We started setting up roadblocks before dawn. There were threats but no police, no security, no protection for anybody; it was just political security. The women were scared and carried sticks to defend themselves. After dawn prayers people were coming out of the mosque and I was in the garden when I heard the sound of heavy gunfire. I saw someone shooting from a car, bullets were raining down everywhere and I heard from the guys that somebody named A.S. had been wounded in the al-Qubayat neighbourhood. Four others and I tried to treat him, but he died. The guys followed after the car that had been shooting, when suddenly the driver jumped out and left behind the car, which the guys set on fire. We took the car registration. It was owned by shabbiha of the Assads, from the family of S. and the family of H. One of them was named I.S., and we were informed that those guys weren’t just shabbiha, they were very close to the security services. We took pictures of the security agents under the al-Qawz bridge and pictures of some shabbiha pointing out certain locations to the security forces. The shabbiha were armed the whole time, even after this assault.”
“Where was the shooting at the army coming from?”
“From behind. All the soldiers who were killed were shot in the back. The shooting came from the house of a well-known man named F. H. He was close to the shabbiha and the security forces. Baniyas had been shut down for a month. There was a lot of recrimination among the people, who were now ready to die after all this killing and injustice. I mean, in the al-Baida incident, people were subjected to a lot of injustices and humiliation. You wouldn’t believe how many bullets were fired. The army assaulted them and said they were out searching for weapons. Where were the weapons, though? During their search of al-Baida, the only person who got killed was a Christian man named Hatem. Where were the Salafis they were talking about? One of the guys told me that before he was killed the man had said, ‘I swear to God I’m a Christian.’ He had nothing to do with what has going on yet they shot him on the spot! I personally recorded some footage of a 60-year-old woman. I filmed her house and the pictures spread everywhere; it later appeared on the internet. There were hundreds of bullet holes. They demolished her son’s house and hers. I filmed a man sitting in a wheelchair, they broke his chair, broke his cane and stole what little money he had; it also got circulated on the internet. The people who did all of this weren’t from the army, this was the security forces and agents who they say were loyal to Hafiz Makhlouf16.
“I also videotaped three meetings with three girls who were twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, who all told me how the security forces had brutally tortured them. What had those little girls ever done? They tortured a nineteen-year-old. He said their heads were cracked by the security forces’ shoes, ‘They stamped on us,’ he said, and they smashed them down on the pavement. There’s another story from Baniyas about the practices of the security forces there: three visitors from Aleppo and Baniyas were quickly passing through the city. The security forces captured them, broke their ribs, stamped on them and stood on their necks and their faces. They mutilated the face of the guy from Aleppo who had just stayed with his friend from Baniyas and then he died under torture. When he arrived in Damascus his face was pummelled beyond recognition, his nose was gone, his eyes were missing. He had kids, too. The face of the guy from Baniyas who had been his host, A. S., was also pulverized, but he didn’t die. Another guy from the S. family was hit by a strange bullet, which pierced him and came out leaving a gaping hole. The back of his body was torn wide open. This was an explosive bullet that the security forces were using to slaughter people; they used the same bullets in Jableh and Dar‘a and Latakia.”
His face goes slack, and I feel like there isn’t any air left in my lungs. I pour him a glass of water, light a cigarette and motion to see if he is ready to continue, and he nods.
“Did all the media coverage of what happened in al-Baida play a part in preventing the region from being completely surrounded?”
“First of all there was recrimination and anger about all the practices that took place in al-Baida. The state media ignited the people’s anger because it claimed the pictures were fake. We were trying to calm the situation down but the al-Dunya channel and Syrian state television played an incendiary role in stirring up hatred among the people and making them afraid of each other. We alerted the authorities to what the state media and its security appendages like al-Dunya were doing. Abd al-Halim Khaddam17 was banned – as far as we were concerned he was a traitor – which comes through in our slogans at the demonstrations, No Salafiyya and no Khaddam. There were rumours propagated by the regime and if the people were left to their own devices there wouldn’t be a civil war, but what the security forces and the shabbiha were doing was going to lead them there. They didn’t use any guns. Even Nidal Junoud, who did get killed, was killed with knives. There’s an unlikely story going around that the people defended themselves with sticks of dynamite.”
“How did the army search the houses?”
“They moved into al-Baida on 12 April, searching house by house but they didn’t find any weapons.”
“What’s with the story that some demonstrators came out wearing shrouds?”
“People got a little too excited, they began to prefer death over humiliation. I would have liked for the city of Baniyas not to carry out this kind of initiative.”
“There’s a geographical divide in Baniyas between Sunni neighbourhoods and Alawite neighbourhoods. Don’t the Alawites sympathize with their neighbours, didn’t they stand side-by-side with them?”
“Yes, at first, but they were frightened and intimidated. Recently there was a young man who wanted to come out to the demonstrations with us but they threatened to demolish his house and kill his family.”
“How much intermarriage is there between Alawites and Sunnis in Baniyas?
“Not that much. Baniyas is divided geographically and there are a lot of ex-prisoners from the Iraqi Ba‘th, the Muslim Brotherhood, a lot of exiles and fugitives. Historically, Baniyas has been oppressed and marginalized by the state, but not in sectarian terms. What happened in Baniyas wasn’t against the Alawite sect; it was against the Syrian regime. It’s the practices of the state that feed sectarianism. The state is responsible for whatever sectarian strife is taking place. The Alawites in the villages around Baniyas are very poor, they suffer the same injustice. We must recognise that sectarian tension has become a reality ever since the state started nourishing it. On 18 April, I saw a gathering of young men. I asked them what was going on and they told
me that the young men from the al-Qusoor neighbourhood were going to come out to kill Sunnis. I told them that someone from the J. family who was part of the shabbiha had told the Alawites that the Salafis were coming from Latakia to defend the Salafis in Baniyas, that they were already at the Seville restaurant and that they were going to slaughter Alawites. I ran over there to see what was happening but didn’t see anything at all. When I got back and asked if anything had happened, they said the Alawite guys were coming down. So as we got ready, I pulled one of the guys aside and found out what was going to happen; the people weren’t going to remain silent. Afraid there was going to be a sectarian massacre, I took a scooter and went up to al-Qusoor, an Alawite neighbourhood. Seeing the roadblocks, I asked someone, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Nothing.’ Then I went back and Shaykh A. I. said, ‘There is no sectarian strife,’ and asked the Sunni guys to go home, but they didn’t. There were thousands of people hanging around but nothing happened. The ones who wanted to stir up sectarian strife were the shabbiha and the security. The people were smarter than that. Somebody told me that a man from the Alawite village of Barmaya rounded up the Alawite guys and asked them to go home. And that’s how the rumours would grow, fed by the security and the shabbiha, in order to terrify the Sunnis and the Alawites at the same time.”
“Al-Marqab is known as an area for smuggling weapons. Could the people retaliate against what was happening with violence?”
“Anything’s possible, violence begets violence, but you saw how they didn’t retaliate. Besides, it was the people of Ra‘s al-Naba‘a in Baniyas who mobilized and not the people of al-Marqab, despite the fact that that half of the population of al-Marqab is from Baniyas. The army moved into al-Marqab. They had spent three days getting ready. Its forces were concentrated in several locations. We got news that there had been a mix-up in the orders given to the army. The army withdrew and then advanced and when they finally moved in, they came from the direction of the village of al-Zuba.