Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War PDF
Preview Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War
Burning Country Burning Country Syrians in Revolution and War Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami First published 2016 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami 2016 The right of Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3627 5 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3622 0 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1800 9 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1802 3 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1801 6 EPUB eBook This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed in the European Union and United States of America Contents List of Abbreviations vi Acknowledgements vii Preface viii Maps xi 1 Revolution from Above 1 2 Bashaar’s First Decade 16 3 Revolution from Below 35 4 The Grassroots 57 5 Militarisation and Liberation 77 6 Scorched Earth: The Rise of the Islamisms 108 7 Dispossession and Exile 147 8 Culture Revolutionised 163 9 The Failure of the Elites 183 10 The Start of Solidarity 210 Epilogue: October 2015 222 Further Reading 226 Notes 229 Index 258 List of Abbreviations ANA Activists News Association ASP Arab Socialist Party CDF Committees for the Defense of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria FSA Free Syrian Army GCC Gulf Cooperation Council HRAS Human Rights Association in Syria ISI Islamic State in Iraq ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Daesh) KNC Kurdistan National Council KRG Kurdish Regional Government LCCs Local Coordination Committees NCB National Coordination Body for Democratic Change PFLP-GC Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command PKK Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) PLO Palestine Liberation Organization PYD Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrator) SHRIL Syrian Human Rights Information Link SNC Syrian National Council SSNP Syrian Social Nationalist Party SRCU Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union SRF Syrian Revolutionaries Front SRGC Syrian Revolution General Commission SRY Syrian Revolutionary Youth UAR United Arab Republic vi Acknowledgements We would like to thank all those, named or anonymous, who shared their stories with us. For various kinds of logistical help, we thank Razan Ghazzawi, Lina Sergie (Amal Hanano), Yassin al-Haj Saleh, AbdulRahman Jalloud, Wassim al-Adel, and Olmo. For their reading and comments on sections of the text, we thank Hassan Hassan, Thomas Pierret, Yasser Munif, Rime Allaf, and particularly Muhammad Idrees Ahmad. Our friend and trusty IT expert Alasdair MacPhee of macpheeit.co.uk made the maps. We thank everybody at Pluto Press, most of all our editor David Shulman, who initiated this project as an act of solidarity with the Syrian revolution. His support throughout the process of researching and writing the book has been invaluable. vii Preface Bristol, June 2014. A compact old lady in red hair and a flowery dress is attending an evening of Syrian texts. As a description of Damascus is read out, she preserves her bright smile but begins nevertheless, quietly, to weep. Afterwards she comes up to talk. She’s a Damascene herself, she says. ‘I’ve lived in England for over thirty years, and I didn’t realise until the revolution that I had a fear barrier inside. Then I noticed I’d never talked about Syria. I’d tried not to even think about it. But those brave youths gave me courage; they gave me back my identity, and my freedom.’ This is where the revolution happens first, before the guns and the political calculations, before even the demonstrations – in individual hearts, in the form of new thoughts and newly unfettered words. Syria was once known as a ‘kingdom of silence’. In 2011 it burst into speech – not in one voice but in millions. On an immense surge of long-suppressed energy, a non-violent protest movement crossed sectarian and ethnic boundaries and spread to every part of the country. Nobody could control it – no party, leader or ideological programme, and least of all the repressive apparatus of the state, which applied gunfire, mass detention, sexual assault and torture, even of children, to death. Revolutionary Syrians often describe their first protest as an ecstatic event, as a kind of rebirth. The regime’s savage response was a baptism of horror after which there was no going back. Not silenced but goaded into fiercer revolt, the people organised in revolution- ary committees and called not just for reform but for the complete overthrow of the system. Eventually, as soldiers defected and civilians took up arms to defend their communities, the revolution militarised. And then where the state collapsed or was beaten back, people set up local councils, aid distribution networks, radio stations and newspapers, expressing communal solidarity in the most creative and practical ways. viii Preface For a few brief moments the people changed everything. Then the counter-revolutions ground them down. The regime’s scorched earth strategy drove millions from the country; those who remained in the liberated zones were forced to focus on survival. Syria became the site of proxy wars, of Sunni–Shia rivalries, of foreign interventions. Iranian and transnational Shia forces backed the regime; foreign Sunni extremists flocked to join the organisation known as ‘Islamic State’. (Or ‘the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’, or ISIS, or even ‘the Caliphate’. Syrians call it ‘Daesh’, by its Arabic acronym.) Nobody supported the revolutionaries. Abandoned by the ill-named ‘international community’, usually ignored or misrepre- sented in the media, these people have been our chief informants. Their voices and insights make the core of this book. Their input was sought not only because it goes so often unheard, but because they have made history, and in the hope that we may learn from them. If one woman in particular illuminates these pages, it is Razan Zaitouneh. In the years before the revolution Leila worked closely with Razan. She knew her as so many others did for her honesty and self-effacing modesty. Razan was softly spoken, penetratingly intelligent and uncompromisingly independent. She worked 16-hour days, chain-smoked Gitanes and had a will of steel. In those days she was a human rights lawyer who advocated for political prisoners and befriended these damaged souls after their release. In the revolution she became a leading light. She attended some of the uprising’s first protests in Damascus, and was a founding member of the Local Coordination Committees. She was also the driving energy behind the Violations Documentation Centre, recording and transmitting information to the world. For two years she lived underground; then in April 2013 she came into the open, basing herself in Douma, a liberated suburb in the Ghouta area outside Damascus. There she worked with the Douma Council and other revolutionary administrative structures, offered human rights training to armed groups and fearlessly criticised anyone who abused the people’s freedoms. She witnessed the regime’s bombardment and starvation siege on the Ghouta suburbs, and in August 2013 its massive sarin gas attacks. ix
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