Voices of the Arab Spring: Personal Stories From the Arab Revolutions

Syrian expatriates created what would be the most visible Facebook page, “Syrian Revolution 2011 against Bashar al-Assad,” and they set Tuesday, March 15, to be the start date for revolt. But the timing was not propitious, and nothing unusual happened during the day. Syrians joined the Arab Spring as a response to the events that took place in the southwestern city of Daraa. On March 5, 2011, about fifteen elementary school children wrote antigovernment graffiti that reads in Arabic, “Ijaak al door ya diktoor” (Now it is your turn, Doctor [Bashar al-Assad]), referring to the Syrian president’s profession as an ophthalmologist before he was handed power after the death of his father, Hafez, in 2000. The children, who were arrested, had written revolutionary slogans on the walls of their school, slogans that they had heard or seen from the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, which were widely reported on Arab and international TV channels.

The treatment of the children in confinement was key to the quick spread of visible protests in Daraa, which sparked the revolution. Before they were freed from prison for writing graffiti, their families were humiliated by the regime’s men in Daraa. One of these men was Brigadier General Atif Naguib, the president’s cousin, who was later released from his duties without any trial. The children were harshly beaten, their fingernails were pulled out, and their parents were reportedly told to forget them or to have children other than those in prison. People in Daraa took to the streets, and the Facebook’s Syrian Revolution 2011 page started calling for more protests. But when the security forces fired at the peaceful demonstrators, killing several men, even more people became outraged. Other areas of Daraa joined the uprisings, particularly on March 18, called the “Friday of Dignity,” denouncing “the thieves of the country.” By the end of March, the security forces had shot dead more than twenty protesters, injured hundreds, and arrested dozens. The protests spread to other cities, and the crackdown grew more violent. This was typical of how the Syrian regime responded to any challenges to its dominance. Since assuming the presidency in 1971, Hafez al-Assad controlled Syria by giving the top positions in the army and the state offices to his family members and loyalists, thereby forcing the Ba‘th Party on the country. In 1982, after an Islamic uprising in Hama, a city in west-central Syria, Hafez al-Assad sent the military and the air force to shell and bomb the city, killing between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand people.

On March 24, the Syrian regime officially responded to the uprising in Daraa, and this time it was not President Bashar al-Assad, son of Hafez, addressing the people, but his political and media adviser, Buthaina Shabaan. The reforms he announced to pacify the 2011 uprisings in Syria were mainly economic. The government raised state salaries by 1,500 Syrian pounds per month, the equivalent of $32.60. (As the sanctions imposed on the regime began to show results, the value of such a raise in early 2014 was less than $11.) Many of the demonstrators in Syria were killed by snipers. Many people blamed the regime, but government media claimed that armed gangs and infiltrators were responsible for the killings. Using this pretext, the Syrian military was sent to those cities that held overwhelmingly large demonstrations. The regime’s hired thugs, called ihabiha, became major players in creating what seemed to be the out-of-control onslaught of civilian protesters. These shabiha were used to beat the organizers and leading figures of demonstrations. As a result, thousands of army soldiers, and some officers, defected and began fighting the regime forces and the shabiha in such cities as Homs, Idlib, and Deir al-Zour. By the end of the second year of the uprisings, even most of the suburbs of Damascus had come under the control of the rebels. This now had turned into a brutal conflict between the government forces and Syrian army defectors, who called themselves the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Some Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, wanted the international community to arm the FSA to help it overthrow the Syrian regime, which received a big blow on July 18, 2012, when the FSA claimed responsibility for bombing the National Security Headquarters in Damascus. Four high-ranking members of the regime defense and security offices were killed, including al-Assad’s brother-in-law, who was the deputy defense minister, and the defense minister. Other important figures of al-Assad’s inner circle were wounded. But the regime survived, and in 2013, it began to retake some of the opposition’s strongholds, such as the strategic city of Qusayr, on the Lebanese border, in June. Al-Assad had the help of Hezbollah, a militia that supported the Syrian regime, which a year earlier had publicly denied any involvement in the events in Syria.

By the third year of the Syrian revolution, with the inclusion of many Islamist groups, the FSA had become more of a loose umbrella organization than an organized army. The leading Islamist brigade, Jabhat al-Nusra, was accused of being connected to al-Qaeda in Iraq and thus was declared by the United States and some European countries as a terrorist organization. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (often abbreviated as ISIS, with Levant standing for Sham in Arabic) is another al-Qaeda-linked group, which was active throughout 2013, particularly in taking over the northeastern city of Raqqa after it fell into rebel hands in early March. ISIS caused a furor across the country for forcing its suspicious agendas on the Syrians, clashing with some FSA units, and operating mainly in already liberated areas. Meanwhile, moderate Islamic rebels in the country began uniting in groups like the Islamic Front or Islamic Army, making the fighting force against the regime appear to be largely Islamic. As the war has dragged on, more Syrians have become radicalized and more radical people have entered the country, eclipsing what once was an exclusively peaceful protest movement seeking democracy and the establishment of civil rule and human rights for all Syrians.

A major turning point in Syria was on August 21, 2013, when chemical weapons were used in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus, killing more than fourteen hundred people. Through social media, images and videos of the victims were seen around the world, initiating an international response against the Syrian regime. The Obama administration reacted aggressively because it had earlier warned the regime not to use its chemical weapons, characterized by President Barack Obama as “crossing a red line.” Ten days after the incident, which the United Nations had begun investigating, Obama announced that the United States should take action against al-Assad, stating that he would seek Congress’s approval before issuing military orders for such an attack. But on September 9, this crisis came to a conclusion when Russia, after negotiating with the Syrian regime, announced that Syria would turn over all its chemical weapons to be destroyed.

Because the United States remained relatively unengaged with the Syrian opposition after this incident, al-Assad seemed to have avoided the second-largest threat to his rule since the uprisings. He repeatedly announced that he would not resign, offering only dialogue with the disorganized opposition. The opposition refused his offer and the fighting continued. UN-brokered peace talks were held in Geneva, Switzerland, in January and February 2014, with the goal of ending the conflict and installing a transitional government. So far, though, Syria remains in a stalemate, with neither side capable of winning the trust of or defeating the other.

“I am shamed by the women of Quraish” is a widely used idiom in our popular culture. It has a sense of defiance: a person engages in an act—despite warnings of its dangers and negative effects—and insists on continuing unless he or she is told to retreat or desist. Here, insistence springs from value-based factors or egoism, which gives primacy to values, the actor, or other utilitarian concepts that may lead to retreat. Historically, the source of this idiom is a folktale about the meeting between Prophet Mohammad and Antara ibn Shaddad, whose courage, generosity, and poetry were praised by the Prophet.¹ According to the tale, Antara asked to become a Muslim in order to be more virtuous, although later, after much reflection, he eventually decided against the idea. He told the surprised Prophet: “I am shamed by the women of Quraish, for they might say that Antara became Muslim for fear of being sent to hell.” In the Syrian revolution that began six months ago, many women provided other examples of the impetus behind such irrational enthusiasm as that filling Antara. These are the women that I encountered during my participation in the revolution.

The first major demonstration in the Syrian revolution, supporting Syria’s political prisoners, took place on March 16, 2011, in al-Marja Square in front of the Syrian Interior Ministry building. I was walking quickly toward the demonstrators as security agents were trying to drag away one of the young people. I called to them, though without raising my voice, “Excuse me, guys, excuse me!” Suddenly I felt a huge pain in my back near my left kidney, pain that stopped the rest of the phrase in my throat. I turned to see the person who hurt me, but because I was wearing the traditional Kurdish scarf around my head, I could only partly see the square and the Ministry of Interior Building. Even though my friend Mazin Darwish was close to me, his voice sounded as if coming from afar: “Stop it, stop it, guys!” Then the person who had caused such stifling pain left me there and headed toward Mazin, but someone else had already put a stick on Mazin’s neck and started dragging him. I was struggling between the men and the pain that almost engulfed me. I moved back toward a corner that was still sunny on that March morning.

In that moment of horror, I suddenly remembered all my loved ones. I took a deep breath and plunged my head between my fists. The pain in my kidney subsided and then suddenly stopped. I heard the screams of a child thrown to the ground. He was our friend Siba’s son. A moment earlier, he had been safe in his father’s arms, but now a woman was harboring him in her bosom. I saw her as five men came at her from different angles, trying to take the child from her while she seemed as though she was making another lap from her soul to protect him. They could not lift Siba’s child from the lap of the Syrian novelist, Samar Yazbek, who was protecting him from any possible harm.

I could not see Samar’s golden hair because she bent her head down to protect the child. (A few months earlier, Samar, the author of Clay, The Smell of Cinnamon, and The Sky Girl, began following an old Bedouin tradition of not dyeing her hair or using makeup until the sorrow was gone from her country and people.) I could not see her green eyes because all her senses were directed to the child, who became like her own child. The regime attackers finished their assault without harming him. As I got near Samar and tried to check on the child, she instinctively pushed me away and rewrapped her hands around him. I smiled to help her calm down, and she exhaled the remaining air in her chest, air that she perhaps kept in to help the child breathe if he needed it.

After the second day of the Syrian demonstrations, there was no news about Samar. How many other children did she want to put in her lap? How could she live without doing so? Nobody knows. I remember seeing many women like Samar at different moments in the revolution. The demonstration in Marja Square gave recognition to Syrian women, complementing achievements like those of Sara Mu’ayyid al-‘Azm,² who gave meaning to Syrian political freedom from French colonialism by socially freeing Syria from a Middle Ages mentality.

Because we came from the south side of Damascus, the security forces prevented us from joining the rest of the demonstrators, who came from the north.³ It was in the afternoon on Wednesday, July 13, 2011, during what was called the “the Battle of the Intellectuals Demonstration.” When we got near the crowd, I saw the Syrian actress Mai Skaf, who screamed loudly, and then a skirmish broke out between the crowd and some of the security agents and the shabiha, the armed gangs working for the regime. Eyad Sharbaji, a journalist who became a vocal dissident in Syria, reported what happened in those moments:

The officers asked us who was representing our group. With my colleagues backing me, I went forward and told him in a clear tone that each of us represented himself or herself. They began to look at us in a challenging way, but we did not care. The officer asked us to leave immediately and disperse because we did not have the license to demonstrate. Before we could answer him, one of the shabiha rushed forward. Wearing camouflage pants and a sweater emblazoned with the map of Syria and a picture of the president, he started to talk to us in a challenging and provocative voice: “Did you come to destroy the country?” “We came to express our position,” I answered him.

He immediately replied: “Then why are you in front of the Hasan Mosque? All the people here are criminals, and I was attacked last week by these dogs that came out of the mosque.” I replied: “It seems to me that you do not pray. Can you tell me why you came to the mosque last week?” When I said this, he shook and sparks flew from his eyes. He was preparing to attack me while the officers kept silent and seemed to endorse him. Then Fadi Zeidan, Sasha Ayoub, and Yam Mashhadi rushed to the officers, arguing, “In what capacity is this person speaking to us?’ At this point, one of the officers gestured for the shabiha member to back off, and he left. But one of them said defiantly to Mai Skaf while making an indecent gesture to her: “You signed the milk statement, right? You want milk? Let me give you some.” Mai Skaf screamed back at him: “Respect yourself … we are Syrians just like you.” He said back to her: “You are Syrians while you speak badly about our brave military that is killing those bitches?” We all violently disagreed with what he said and started screaming. And another officer pointed to him to keep silent and he did.

In those moments we—our group of about two hundred young men and women—started to retreat. Those who were nearby crowded around Mai Skaf, but they were violently taken by the security agents. We gathered in the main street in Midan and were about 330 feet away from the security agents and the shabiha. From that distance we could hear the cries of those being arrested. What made me feel very hurt and scared was the yellow look in the eyes of the residents watching from their balconies. Most of the women spontaneously put their hands over their mouths in shock. A few seconds later, the men rubbed their foreheads. In those harsh moments, our screams gradually increased: “God, Syria, Freedom, and that’s enough. God, Syria, Freedom, and that’s enough.” I had left the people who came with me to Midan. I caught a glimpse of a nearby girl who was biting the edge of a cloth; you could tell by looking at her that she was overwhelmingly conservative. In great panic, she hesitantly stepped in and out of the crowd. I still do not know what caused her to suddenly relax, but her fear subsided. I saw her raise her hands with us, and then a sob escaped her throat and she began to cheer with us.

Meanwhile, security forces arrived in order to divide us; they slowly advanced while we slowly retreated, but then they began rushing, so we hurried up too. As they got close to us, we started to run. I stumbled as I watched where I was going, as did the girl who was near me. The distance between me and the security agents then was about 150 feet, so I went in one of the buildings on the street. Running upstairs to the highest floor, I heard steps behind me on the stairs and started to repeatedly ring the bell of one door. A voice came from behind the door: “Who is it?” I replied, “Please, Aunt. Please let us in,” as the steps behind me got closer. I looked down and saw young people like me climbing up the stairs; the woman opened the door and we all entered her house at once. We then sat in the hallway panting, and the woman gave us water, saying, “May Allah protect and save you,” before silently sitting down next to us. There was no chance for any conversation. Suddenly a partly veiled girl came out of one room carrying with her a black cloth. She told her mother, “Your headscarf, Mother!” The mother looked at her daughter, took the cloth from her hand quietly, and set it aside without putting it on!! We stayed for a few minutes in silence, and the woman repeated, “May Allah protect and save you.”

I thought, “What do Mai Skaf, the young woman, the older woman, and this country all have in common?” Mai Skaf abandoned her acting career because she considered the acting community to be shameful and hypocritical and not worthy of her presence. She then established an acting institute that has dozens of graduates, artists who are committed to people, not to ideology. The conservative woman did not see anything wrong with joining an audience of young people she did not know. I could not find anything they shared except the spirit of this country and the expected meaning of it.

Since the early days of the revolution, we would gather in the afternoon on Fridays in front of Qasmu Mosque located downtown in the Qamishli governorate, an area in northeast Syria that has a majority Kurdish population. Usually the crowd outside the mosque was bigger than the number of people praying inside. We would begin the demonstration after the Friday prayer was over and walk for about a mile toward the western side of the city, along Aamouda Street, which was originally called Hashim al-Atasi Street. Since the beginning of May, the afternoon sun had become increasingly harsh for the demonstrators, with a temperature reaching more than 122°F. In addition to the sun beating down on the demonstrators’ faces, their action raised the temperature, as throughout the slow, three-hour march they did not stop raising their hands, bodies, and voices. This continued even during the month of Ramadan, and many of them fainted while marching the one mile. But from the buildings on both sides of the road, women standing at the windows sprayed the demonstrators with water as they marched between Qasmu Mosque and the Hilalyia neighborhood. The demonstrators walked through the water and the shadows, and the women joined in chanting and raising their hands. The women looked elegant as they smiled at the demonstrators and received greetings in return. Sometimes there was more than one woman at the window and they would fight for the water hose, but the most beautiful moment was when they sprayed the water straight up so it came down lightly and slowly on the bodies of demonstrators!

I looked around me as if I were seeing my friend’s house for the first time. It is located in the heart of Damascus, where a feeling of claustrophobia had settled in the aftermath of the demonstration that we joined on Wednesday, July 13, 2011. Our plan for the day did not completely succeed: We were supposed to meet at my friend’s house at the end of the demonstration, but some of us were arrested, and others escaped and disappeared in the alleys. We went to a café instead. I was trying to recover my calm in my own way: sitting silently and drinking coffee. People differ in how they compose themselves: my friend Rami prefers to remain alone, and Wassfi drinks a glass of whiskey.

My friend Awos insisted that we go to dinner. One of my friend’s cousins did not want to go, arguing that two of our friends had been arrested and it was not an appropriate time for dinner. Awos was clear and direct in his response: “The revolution can take a long time, maybe another year. We want to live. Do you want us to sit at home every time someone is arrested? No, after the demonstration is over and after two or three days, or maybe a week, our friends will be released.” I myself wanted to go to dinner and to stay with my friends. I had almost been arrested in the demonstration and still was terrified. Each demonstration is scary. Fear does not die. Or maybe I was just a coward. There was a young man among us whom I did not know. My friend offered him some whiskey. “Thanks, but I don’t drink alcohol,” he replied, because he was a practicing Muslim. After the young man was offered a cup of tea, Awos made a decision that concluded our debate and plan for the night: “We will go to the funeral (in al-Qaboun) and then go have dinner.”

I left Damascus in September 2010 to study in the United Kingdom. The revolution began in Daraa on March 15, 2011, and I returned to Damascus in early July for a long stay. I had developed an increasing obsession with following news of the revolution, but visiting and participating were two different matters. I saw that Syria and its people were undergoing a remarkable change. Thousands of Syrians had become activists for freedom. Their keyword is freedom, which means to get rid of the head of the regime, Bashar al-Assad. And this freedom got its meaning on the ground, in the streets where masses of people call it out. Syrians do not need books to explain the meaning of freedom; they are working on it and redefining it with their revolution. I understood the meaning of freedom for the first time when I participated, also for the first time, in a demonstration, chanting: “Long live Syria! Let the regime of Bashar al-Assad fall.” I could not help but philosophize about this revolution. In fact, it was something like “I participate in the revolution; therefore I exist.”

Odai, I will not tell you what to do. It is your life and you are free to do whatever you want. But if they arrest you, you will not be able to go to Britain to finish your PhD until the revolution is over. And it is possible, God forbid, that something bad will happen to you. I do not want to think about these bad scenarios. Think about your future.

I was careful, but I had gone to Damascus in order to participate in the Syrian revolution. I wrote several articles when I returned to Britain, using my real name and sharing with others what I experienced and what I know, but there is nothing like taking part in demonstrations. They have a major role in the revolution, and in them I felt like a complete human being. But I was scared to go to the funeral because the Syrian security forces had interrupted several of them and arrested or killed dozens of people. In fact, many Syrians go to these funerals as if they are going to a demonstration. Slogans against the regime and fear of arrest are common elements. I asked myself how the martyr’s family would feel if the security forces came to the funeral.

I think about the first time, as a boy, I visited al-Qaboun with my mother. The neighborhood is different now. There are checkpoints on the way, even though we got only a meaningless look from a soldier who did not do any checking. When I arrived in al-Qaboun, I parked my car next to the fence of the Police College. I felt nervous when I heard the famous slogan of people wanting to topple the regime. As soon as I got out of my car, I met more than ten of my friends. People there were chanting “Curse your soul, Hafez, curse your soul!” Some people were carrying their mobile phones and taking pictures, so we smiled at the camera and chanted with them. Two days earlier, on July 15—what the Syrian activists called the Friday of Freedom of Prisoners—dozens of people were killed in Damascus, eight of them from al-Qaboun. There were so many people at the funeral, reportedly about fifty thousand opponents of the regime. Unlike the other suburbs of Damascus, like Douma, al-Qaboun has no clear borders with Damascus, which means that the revolution was at the gate of the capital. A young man hugged me as we arrived at the funeral and welcomed me. “We are not terrorists. Bashar al-Assad and his dogs are the terrorists,” he said. The funeral had a tent where the family of the martyr and his relatives received people’s condolences in person.

After the Friday of Prisoners of Freedom on July 15, al-Qaboun became one of the centers of the Syrian revolution, and when they lost twelve martyrs, it was a big number in the Damascus area, a number exceeded only in catastrophe-stricken Douma, which was under heavy attack by the regime for its people’s dissent. At the time, it seemed that President al-Assad was punishing the Syrian people for organizing a conference in Turkey for the opposition. He wanted everything to be under his watch, as if saying to Syrians: “We will kill your sons and daughters if you do not comply.” But as I looked around me, seeing thousands of young people opposed to his regime, I felt I heard them saying, “No, Bashar.” I felt proud because we, my friends and thousands of young people we had not met before, were making a new Syria and changing its history. The twelve martyrs were not lost; they will stay with us in our hearts.

Before arriving at the tent, we chanted to show our resistance to the regime: “Hey, we don’t prostrate ourselves except to Allah,” “Death but not humiliation,” “Syria is ours, not for al-Assad’s family.” Thousands of youths were shouting against the regime. Most of them came to the funeral, even though they did not know the martyrs or their families. At the tent, I asked one person: “Where is the family of the martyr so I can express my condolences to them?” He replied: “My brother, we all are family of the martyr.” I could not hold back my tears. What a stupid question! There were feelings of joy for being able to demand freedom, the feelings of anger, sadness, and fear expressed in the eyes and trembling hands. I wondered how people could have and express all these different feelings at the same time. People were afraid of the regime’s barbaric reprisals. I still think to this day about those people whom I met in al-Qaboun, some of whom were killed later or were captured and tortured.

In these crowds, I rediscovered myself. Revolution, first and foremost, is a liberating act, and I felt that these people were being liberated from tyranny. The Syrian revolution made me fly with joy. I am liberated. I no longer am just a single number in the population of Syria. Each Syrian has discovered his or her potential. They all have faced death, and their voices have shaken the earth under the feet of their oppressors. Tens of people who chanted “Death but not humiliation” have in fact died and became martyrs. But the journey of freedom was continued by other people who followed them. Everyone demonstrating in the street knew that he or she faced death, detention, or torture. But they have never given up. They are liberated from any authority, and they face the regime with all possible means. They have one of two fates: they either will continue rebelling or will abandon the revolution. If the revolution fails, they will pay the price, which they will pay even before the revolution is over. So they have never hesitated to continue.

Syrians also have become liberated from the collective. Each individual chooses his own road. It is true that before it was fueled by thousands of detainees, missing people, and martyrs, the instigators of the revolution were the children of Daraa. The revolution has a straightforward and simple moral purpose, which is that we will not accept the killing of our brothers who peacefully demonstrate in the streets. What unites us with the rest of the Syrians is our common sense of dignity. Every Syrian citizen is a symbol for each and every one of us. Each martyr is from us and will remain with us. For the revolutionaries, the Syrian citizen has the highest value. But all martyrs have a special value, and their fathers and mothers refuse to abandon them. We will always have hope for a better Syria. In the crowds, I rediscovered myself, asking, “What binds me to these people I do not know?” It is obviously a decision we made together, to oppose the regime. We were shouting, “Long live Syria, let the regime of Bashar al-Assad fall.” Whether in Homs, Daraa, or other stricken Syrian cities and towns, these people have the same goal, for which they face live ammunition.

I was thinking how the individual (the president) also lost the collective people. Total loneliness has been the obsession of many intellectuals and thinkers. The Japanese short story writer and novelist Kawabata Yasunari wrote about the feeling of loneliness while one is still surrounded by people. A story in one of his books, Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, is about a married woman waiting for her husband. She feels lonely even though she has people around her. I smiled happily at this thought and remembered the lyrics of the famous Lebanese singer Fairouz: “On the crossroad, people are waiting for others. It rains, and they are still waiting for them. But in the fair weather, nobody is waiting for me.” The Japanese author and the Lebanese singer demonstrate loneliness, the harsh fate awaiting those who are doomed, those who think they are above the people.

I believe that the Arab Spring has some philosophical dimensions that merit contemplating. In the West, individuality is deeply rooted in the culture, and although it frees the individual from the authority of the group, it probably leaves him or her alone. Here in the East, the individual is still under the authority of the collective. The Arab Spring is the first attempt to form an individualistic concept of the human being. Can Arabs avoid the sin of individuality? I answer myself with a smile and with a yes. Years ago, before my trip to Britain, I was reading Henrik Ibsen and John Stuart Mill. I did not understand then their criticism of twentieth-century individualism. For me, at the time, I thought that we in the Arab world needed a large dose of individuality so we could unleash the possibilities of the Arab individual. After two years in Britain, I learned a lot and felt sorry for those in Europe who live in isolation. It is probably because I am a talkative person and always in need of company, and in Britain I missed the crowds, the noise, and the curious people. In sum, I lost human communication with the collective.

Can the Arab Spring create an innovative vision of the problematic relationship between the individual and the collective? Yes. These individuals do not exhibit an ideology, not even a masked or hidden one. They do not fight in the name of any ideology, either. In other words, they are not leftists, Marxists, or Islamists. The Arab Spring is actually driven by love, not ideology. The people have love for other people, for the collective. They have love and desire for a decent life for themselves and their fellow citizens. No leaders or parties or programs are behind the revolutions of the Arab Spring—only love in the heart of every individual participating in it.

Am I exaggerating? In this historic moment, perhaps there is nothing wrong with overstatement. The world is changing, so let’s hope. Day after day, the revolutionaries prove that they will not allow anybody to steal their dreams. From Tunisia to Egypt, the revolution is not over yet. It is continuing. What is important is that the Arab individuals in the street will never return home satisfied with what their leaders tell them. The Arab individual is changing the concept of citizenship. Now every citizen is responsible. It is a historic moment, and these young people in al-Qaboun, Homs, Daraa, and Banias are making the future as well.

When I went to the Ghouta, the agricultural area surrounding Damascus, I saw uprisings in the rural areas. I realized that history is waking up. History seems too unclear for our tyrant—he thinks that he will write the conclusion of these events. He thinks that he is our history. But Syrians will write another history. We always write the beginnings. We have the oldest city and capital, Damascus, and we have the first alphabet in the world. We do not write endings because the future is ours. The future is a beginning, and we are good at beginnings. But our dictator has a history full of endings. Damascus is a beginning, and its tyrant is an ending. There is no sublime beginning for the tyrant, and there is no tragic end for Damascus. We will survive.

After participating in this revolution with my soul and mind, I left Damascus on Monday, August 1, which also was the first day of the month of Ramadan. In the evening I reached Liverpool Street Station in London. The last time I heard the news I felt optimistic, as the revolution had spread to many cities in Syria. Hama and Deir al-Zour joined the revolution and were somehow free from the regime’s control. I felt that life was smiling at us and that the regime would not be able to break the will of the Syrians. I knew that the only option for the regime was to send the military to attack civilians. I thought that the regime might not do that for fear of unmanageable defections. But I knew that Syrians would pay a high price if this happened. I was sure that the revolution had successfully passed the first stage and that what we needed was for Aleppo and Damascus to join.

While waiting for the train to Norwich, I felt tired as I tried to collect my thoughts. I was thinking about how to continue my studies and research in addition to helping the revolution all I could. I looked at the TV screen, which usually shows silly ads with sexy girls trying to convince us to eat McDonald’s or buy Kia cars. But this time I did not see scantily clad girls or the nymphs, as one my friends calls them. I became anxious as I moved closer to the big screen. I saw images of bombings and artillery damage caused by the Syrian army. There also were dead bodies on the ground. I could not believe what I saw. The Syrian army had stormed into Hama and killed more than a hundred civilians. The number of wounded was unknown. I sat on the ground of the station in humility, helpless, tears pouring from my eyes like a child. People cry when they have no substitute or anything else to do. I was crying in a way that does not represent who I am. I could not believe what was happening and was unable to think. Hama, again! I calmed down for few seconds and listened to the news anchor, who said that nobody expected Hama to be invaded by the military because it had been destroyed in the 1980s. All signs indicated that the regime would try to control Homs and Deir al-Zour and avoid Hama. I burst into tears again. “Oh my God. The regime decided to fight until the end.”

A week later, the army entered Deir al-Zour, then the villages of Idlib and Homs. I realized that Syrians needed to prepare for a long and bloody battle. After the storming of Hama, I published my first article using my real name. Then I wrote more articles opposing the rule of the Ba‘th Party in my country. My friends did so as well, even before I started. We all believe that part of the revolution is to tell the regime that we are not afraid of its power. If the revolution fails, we will pay the price. There are no compromises or half solutions. The Syrian people know that they are betting on their future. The regime adopted a strategy of sowing fear among people by kidnapping and torturing activists, besieging cities, and intimidating the rebels’ families. In short, it followed the strategy of destroying livelihoods and killing people. But the Syrian revolution will have the reverse effect: the greater the regime’s oppression is, the greater participation in the revolution will be.

When oppression is intense, there is a need for truth. Wisdom appears in the face of evil and people are reborn. Thousands of ordinary people became heroes in every sense of the word. I learned a great deal of wisdom from them. The revolution taught me to resist with what I have and can do. We are not seeking a war and will not get into a civil war, because of the wisdom of our people on the ground. We may fail, but we do not really care about the results. We are following the light, and in the revolution there is always a clear vision: right is clear and wrong is clear. We know what to do, and this tree of knowledge has been baptized with Syrian blood. I learned not to compromise and to be decisive in standing for what I see as right. It seems to me that an entire generation of Arabs has learned the meaning of action. We will act to become free and will not forget the thousands of martyrs and detainees and missing persons. As part of the Arab Spring, young Arabs have become active agents. We will not be marginalized again.

The city of Deir al-Zour, just like the entire region around the Euphrates River, is magnificent. But this eastern part of Syria suffers from poverty and unemployment: 40 percent of its young people are in other countries looking for jobs. Most of the people in the towns work in agriculture, and some of them are expatriates living abroad to support their families. Both the educated and the uneducated people in this area seek jobs in the oil-producing states in the Arabian Gulf, even though they come from a place that produces oil and is rich in agricultural and dairy products. The regime made Deir al-Zour a forgotten city, even though it is considered economically viable with its enormous human and natural resources. For the last forty years, the authoritarian regime tried to buy loyalty; it wanted to enslave people and make them subservient. As a result, corruption and the backwardness caused by the regime prevailed in this eastern region of Syria.

The people of Deir al-Zour are generally passionate and emotional. As the city’s revolution coordination group, we wanted them to boycott the regime, but they joined the revolution by demonstrating. We worked hard to achieve this goal, which could affect the regime’s economic viability, by writing about the benefits of isolating the regime. But many people and even activists did not know about the positive aspects of this strategy. I talked to many people in the city, urging them to boycott: “Why don’t we stop using the mobile phones for one hour? Why don’t we voluntarily close the stores for an hour? Why don’t we boycott the traders of Aleppo, the influential city that did not join the revolution?”

As activists, we continued to try to enlighten our people and encourage them to be more effective. One of our ideas was to have a demonstration in the Euphrates River, which passes through the city, close to downtown. We successfully carried out our “water demonstration.” I personally participated in this innovative protest by using a boat brought by one of my friends from the family of the martyr Abdel Moneim Alhbashan, who was killed by security agents on Monday, June 6, 2011. We went under the Deir al-Zour Suspension Bridge, which was built in the 1920s when Syria was under the French mandate. We held up a placard that read: “The Orontes River and the Euphrates hug each other,” showing our support for the cities of Homs and Hama through which the Orontes passes and where the demonstrations were constantly stifled by the regime.

In September 2011, we were patrolling our neighborhood, al-Rashidyia, and giving food to the youths who joined the revolution. There were some men watching the barriers that we built to prevent the regime thugs and snipers from entering the areas of the demonstrations. We were targeted by security agents, and the bullets directed at me hit a phone booth. My neighbor’s son, Zahir Suleiman, was hit in the chest but miraculously survived. The medical committees played a crucial role in the revolution and the people in the streets appreciated their assistance, but the regime was always targeting them. Its security forces arrested a number of my friends who are doctors and treated those injured in the demonstrations. The regime was following all the uprisings, trying to quash them by any means. Once I was walking by a local market and saw some young people smashing the pictures and symbols of the regime. Suddenly they were hit by a barrage of live ammunition. I ran away and hid in one of the market entrances as I watched security agents beat the young people. I also heard them say, “You ‘Adnan al-‘Arrour dogs want to topple our leader? Allah will fall, but Bashar will not.”⁴

The first day of July 2011 was a Friday, and in the tradition of the Syrian revolution, every Friday has a name. This Friday was labeled irhal Friday, the “Friday of Get Out.” This day had a great impact on me and my friends in the city. We went out from Hamidi Mosque, which is in the heart of Deir al-Zour next to a military security unit and is the place where the governor and some officials used to pray. That is why no demonstration before had been started from this mosque, even though almost all the other mosques had witnessed uprisings. We were proud that we could organize a demonstration from Hamidi Mosque that Friday. We moved our march to Freedom Square and distributed red cards to the participants (the same cards used in soccer matches to indicate that a fouled player has been ejected from the game), indicating our message that the dictator Bashar al-Assad should get out.

On August 19, military security called me at my house and interrogated me. At the end of the call, they asked me to come to their center the next day, threatening me if I even thought about not following their orders. If I did not appear in their office, I was told, they knew how to find me and would bring me there themselves. After this warning, I was worried and feared that they would hurt my family or our house if I did not go, so I went to see them, which was the start of my long detention. They had indicated on the phone that the interrogation would be only one or two hours long and that nothing else would happen to me. After I arrived, they began questioning me, showing some flexibility as I discussed the peacefulness of our activities. The interrogations lasted for two days, one full hour on the first day and seven hours on the second. Some of the questions were, “How much money did you get? Was Nawaf al-Bashir giving you money? Do you know Caesar Hindawi? Why did you write on walls inciting people to riots and revolution? What are the comments you published on Facebook?”⁵ I remember replying to the detective’s questions with the following statement:

Sir, in Great Britain a black man was killed unjustly and many people stepped in to protest this act. Why is Syrian blood irresponsibly shed in the streets? As a protester, I did not see any armed protesters in the demonstrations. Why do we have reforms on paper but none in practice? Why isn’t the security agent a friend to the citizen, not a monster? We are not against any person who governs Syria, but our peaceful protests were strongly suppressed and the chaos increased. Why is there no serious dialogue initiated by the authorities? Mr. Detective, why do you suppress our demonstrations by using only boiling water and rubber bullets?

After the interrogation was over, I was transferred to another detention center and saw prisoners of all ages, young and old, from all the Syrian governorates. One day they brought in an eighteen-year-old man who, we later learned, was the only son with nine sisters in his family. His name was Talal al-Nuoman and he lived in Damascus. He came to Deir al-Zour to take a physics exam at his college, and he was an excellent student. After they arrested him, they tortured and beat him and left him for dead. In the military security center, he thought he would die, so he told us his will or “last words,” asking us to pass them on to his mother and his family. We started to bang on the door of our jail to ask that they bring a doctor to save his life. All that they eventually gave him were some painkillers; he remained unconscious for three days. To our surprise, his health improved significantly and he did not die. After staying in this center for some time, they transferred me to Damascus to the intelligence center called the Palestine branch. There, I experienced the malice of those infidels who severely beat me and insulted me. They burned my skin with cigarette butts and broke my fingers.

You might ask: Why did we start the protests and the revolution? The answer is two words or terms, which day after day have become the source of love and encouragement for Syrians: the Arab Spring and revolution. Daraa began the revolution, and my city, Deir al-Zour, did not stand by as a mere observer. Rather, we joined the revolution at its inception on March 15. As a result of their hatred for the regime, the people of Deir al-Zour held their first demonstration on March 22. I participated in this demonstration, which started at Mufti Mosque at the city’s southern entrance and went down Dalla Street. We were quickly dispersed by the regime’s thugs, who were Ba‘thists and beneficiaries of the regime, which included the members of two proregime families. They attacked more than thirty protesters with sticks and knives.

Then more demonstrations were held. On Friday, April 1, we had a big demonstration that was coordinated with many activist groups in the city and the villages, including students and media professionals. We held up placards and marched from Uthman ibn Affan Mosque, which was later targeted by the regime’s military tanks. Even though we numbered more than four hundred, I was surprised that the number was still so small, which was because the barrier of fear had not been broken yet. The thugs of the Syrian regime tried to take advantage of our demonstration by bringing proregime people to mix in with the demonstration to portray the protests as rallies in support of the regime. They also beat some of my friends, arrested others, and tracked down and followed many of us. Some of my arrested friends were Firas al-Aani, an agricultural engineer, and Mohammed Slaibi, an employee in the health department.

Antiregime groups in Syria called Friday, April 22, “Great Friday,” and it was indeed a great day in the city of Deir al-Zour. We had more people participating and many demonstrations in different parts of the city. Demonstrations started after the Friday prayer at several mosques. Downtown, forty thousand protesters reached the statue of Basel al-Assad, the late son of the former president Hafez al-Assad. Despite the presence of security forces and informants, we stood together and chanted peaceful slogans, some of them in support of the cities where the regime had cracked down. Some of these chants were “From Deir al-Zour to Banias: Syrian people will not be humiliated,” “O Daraa, we are with you until death,” “We are Deirians (from Deir al-Zour) and we do not betray others, but we break the heads of those who challenge us.”

But as usual, the security forces attacked us and provoked the assembled protesters, who in return threw stones at them and wounded several of them. I gave some medical assistance to two people wounded by the security agents, who did not use live ammunition against us this time, particularly because the regime had declared the end of emergency law the day before. Some of the young men bravely mounted the statue of Basel al-Assad and burned it after it fell to the ground. Hundreds of young people were arrested after this demonstration because agents had taken pictures of them. They were tortured and humiliated in different security headquarters, and some were threatened with dismissal from their government jobs. I myself was dismissed from my job as a teacher. But we, about thirty of us who were coordinating and organizing the revolution in our city, stood firm to achieve our goal: freedom for our people. More demonstrations followed after the fall of the city’s first martyr, Muaaz al-Rakadh, who was killed in early June. His death spurred on the demonstrations, and more people were killed. We had many sit-ins in different areas of the city, such as Freedom Square and the Madlaji neighborhood, and many men and women participated in them.

I want to conclude with an anecdote. When I was arrested, I was in a cell in the basement of the security prison, alone and unable to see the light or know the time, except when I heard the call to prayers coming from nearby mosques. (Sometimes my jailers, even though they were cruel, told me the time.) I looked around and saw the walls of the room covered with writings by the prisoners before me. Some of the writings were sublimations and Qur’anic verses. Reading them in my solitude gave my tired soul a great deal of inner piece. I still remember some of them: “Have no grief, for Allah is with us,” which is from the Qur’an, and proverbs like “Patience is the key to happiness.” One person wrote, “I have cried for long years for my children and my mother.” There were so many phrases and verses from the Qur’an that at first I could not find space to write anything. But when I found a tiny spot, I took a piece of the tin plate on which they gave us food and sharpened it to engrave on the wall my signature: “The coordination of the revolutionary youth of the revolution Deir al-Zour. We will not bow down except to Allah. Freedom, and nothing else.”

At the beginning of the revolution, on February 15, the people, mainly young, answered the call to start the Syrian Day of Anger. In my hometown, about five hundred people gathered in the main street for about an hour, and then it was over. Actually, that gathering was extremely dangerous because we had never before publicly criticized the government. However, nothing bad happened, and we felt that we had done our part to start the Syrian revolution. Even though I was busy at that time, I felt extremely happy that we could challenge our fear and the government as well.

The demonstrations in Syria started after the intelligence forces and the secret police attacked the city of Daraa, in southern Syria, after calls for political and civil reforms. Hundreds were killed at the hands of the intelligence forces, and we decided to express our anger at what had happened. People felt it was cowardly to remain silent while our brothers in Daraa were being mercilessly killed. We are the sort of people who refuse any kind of tyranny and brutality. It was very difficult to think of something like demonstrations, because the government had already started killing all the protesters in Daraa, and we knew that this might happen to us. But in those few days, we decided anyway to demonstrate against the killing in Daraa because we felt that it was our responsibility to stand by our brothers and support them by whatever means possible and to have the courage to challenge the government and its police and intelligence departments. By the way, my hometown, which has a population of only fifty thousand people, has six police and intelligence centers.

Demonstrating was a brand-new strategy because the government had been suppressing any kind of opposition. We had no previous experience with demonstrations, but we wanted to create our own, which brought massive destruction to my hometown. We gathered after one Friday prayer late in March and began our demonstration, calling for freedom, political reform, and a stop to the killing in Daraa. The participants were of all ages, and everyone wanted to speak his or her mind and join in the call for freedom. The people were very enthusiastic and excited that their voices might reduce the regime’s brutality against Daraa. The police were shocked that the people of my hometown made that extremely dangerous decision to demonstrate against the government because in Syria, we were not used to demonstrating at all. The head of the police department came to the demonstration and started to talk with the people about why they were demonstrating. He told us, “Please let me know what your demands are, and I will do my best to meet them, and I will call the leadership about them, but please go home and stop demonstrating.”

We were surprised by how kind he was, and we hoped that the government would stop the killing in Daraa, although we already knew that the officer would do nothing because he had no power to do so and because he was a hypocrite. After that, we demonstrated every Friday for three weeks, but the killing did not stop; on the contrary, it spread to other cities, mainly Homs. The demonstrations were all we could do to support our people in the other cities. So we started to demonstrate more than once a week and gathered in one main place. At every demonstration, we called for freedom, reform, a stop to the killing, and a better country. We also sang and listened to speeches and poems mourning the martyrs in Homs, Daraa, and other Syrian cities. We were peaceful, which we decided was the best way to express our opinions and calls for freedom. At the end of each demonstration, we prayed to Allah to protect our people and have mercy on us and the martyrs.

Most of the time, these peaceful demonstrations were led by the educated people in my town: a pharmacist, a dentist, university graduates, and students. The demonstrations were going well, with no attacks by the police forces. But the police used to spread rumors that the army and intelligence would attack the town as they did in Daraa and Homs, which meant that a lot of people would be killed. Every time people heard that rumor, most of them, out of fear for their lives, would close their shops and markets and go home. Then it would turn out to be just a rumor. But people’s fearful reactions indicate how severe that rumored attack might have been and also how brutal the army had been in Daraa, Homs, Latakia, and other cities.

Then what we expected did happen. On April 27, the police arrested the imam of the town’s main mosque because he had participated in the demonstration. In fact, the imam was not only the leader of the prayers in the mosque, but he was also one of the most distinguished people in town, and most people liked and had great respect for him. Everyone was angered by this, so they decided to demonstrate and call for his release. To our surprise, the government had brought in police from the air intelligence forces—one of Syria’s most brutal intelligence departments.

They started shooting the protesters with live rounds. The gunfire was quite heavy and lasted for five hours. The protesters ran away, and the demonstration ended, but the firing continued for such a long time because the police wanted to terrorize everyone and send a message: This is what will happen if you continue to demonstrate against the government. I will never forget that day; the firing continued into the night. The police also shot randomly at houses to terrorize residents. My house was shot at and one window was broken, but thanks to Allah, we were in another room. On the second day, the air intelligence forces left town, assuming that we would not demonstrate again, but they were wrong; we began demonstrating again on the same day they left. We had not expected to be targets of the police and their brutality. We had nothing to deserve that attack; we were peaceful and we called to stop the killing and for the regime to fall, but nothing changed and the Syrian forces became more merciless each day. We called for the president to leave, for a democracy in which to choose our future president freely, and for an end to police intervention in civilian life and control of every aspect of our social and political life. We asked that corruption end and that the police and army officers who had killed innocent people be brought to justice, but none of that happened.

Then, in the middle of May, the news spread that the regime had decided to attack the town with tanks and huge numbers of troops; it was no longer a rumor. The troops arrived at the border of my hometown and started attacking us with tank bombs. I was asleep, and a very large explosion woke me up. Everyone was terrified, and most people tried to escape for other towns or to Lebanon, which is close by. The government also blocked the Internet, cell phones, and landline phones. Meanwhile, the army surrounded the town from all sides with tanks and thousands of soldiers. My family decided to stay home, but we could not see the troops and the tanks because they all were still on the outskirts of town. Periodically, the shooting stopped.

Then my neighbor, who is a taxi driver and had already been outside the town, came home in the evening and told us that he had seen more than one hundred tanks surrounding the town from one side only. He added that more tanks were in other parts of the town. We expected the worst and decided to escape immediately and go elsewhere, to a relative’s house, which was not far away. The trip there seemed endless. When we left, we were afraid because we had to pass through several checkpoints. At any moment, we could be shot dead—not by a gun but by a tank bomb. The atmosphere was full of fear, danger, and prayers to Allah that we would be able to get out safely. We were stopped at two checkpoints, and fortunately, for some reason, which I still don’t know, they allowed us to leave without causing us any trouble. My guess is that those soldiers were, among many others, forced to participate in this attack and that they let us through because they knew that what the army was planning to do was totally wrong.

That night, the soldiers launched the main attack. I could hear the sounds of the bombs and the tanks’ heavy shooting. It was a horrible night. The shooting lasted for more than five hours and stopped at three in the morning. Before that, another cruel thing happened: those who fled to Lebanon had to use a road overlooked by a progovernment village. The villagers started shooting at the fleeing people, and they shot dead a mother and her son. As a result, people tried to avoid using that road or even driving. Instead, they walked through the fields for almost three to four miles till they reached the Lebanese border.

My hometown is surrounded by a number of villages, most of which support the government. The army made use of this fact and attacked my town from those villages. In addition, the army gave Kalashnikov and PKC rifles to those villagers who participated in the attack. We were attacked by the army and our neighboring villagers, who decided to become yet another killing machine.

On the second day of the attack, the army finished surrounding the town and started shooting again, but this time the shooting was from all sides and lasted all day, but with short respites. On that particular day, the many people who had not been able to escape the day before decided to leave on the second day. But by then, the army forces were everywhere. The people who fled had to pass through army checkpoints; they were humiliated, beaten, and insulted by the soldiers before being allowed to leave town. When the army entered our village, they arrested people in their homes and took them to the National Hospital, which had been turned into a military base for the army. People were humiliated in the worst ways one could ever imagine. The army did not even give water to them unless they agreed to “sacrifice their lives for the sake of President Bashar Assad.”

Even proregime doctors and nurses helped torture those arrested. The doctors held guns while nurses assaulted the wounded; one of them took her high-heeled shoe and hit one man in his eye, which bled and he went blind. After that, citizens were taken to proregime villages. The people of those villages also tortured the arrested people, stamping on their faces and backs, urinating on them, and insulting their honor by calling their mothers and sisters names. Another man, a lawyer, was arrested when he tried to escape town, and out of hatred, a soldier killed the man by smashing his head with large rock. The man died instantly. What was really painful and shocking to me was that three friends of mine were shot several times. Soldiers arrested them and, because they still were alive, handed them over to the intelligence forces, who executed them mercilessly.

That was the most horrible thing that happened. I used to hear that the army was executing the wounded, and I suspected, and later discovered, that the Syrian army and intelligence forces were much more brutal than anyone could ever imagine and that they would do anything to suppress the revolution. My cousin, who was waiting for his brother outside their house, was shot in his hand and thigh by a sniper, who, fortunately, missed his head.

The army left our town after killing more than twenty people and arresting about a thousand. When people returned from Lebanon and other Syrian cities, they suffered at the hands of the soldiers at the checkpoints, who opened fire randomly in order to terrorize the town’s inhabitants. They also conducted raids and arrested innocent civilians. It was a situation from hell. Consequently, people stayed in their homes most of the time in order to avoid being shot.

My family stayed out of town for two weeks, which were the longest days in my whole life. Everything we heard while we were away came from people who had been able to escape. Our town was being bombed by tanks, and many people were arrested. Since my family had escaped to a nearby village, I could hear the sounds of the extremely heavy shooting very clearly, especially at night. On the sixth day, the army left, leaving casualties in their wake. They abandoned several checkpoints, instead arresting people who had demonstrated against the regime or were suspected of having done so. For these reasons, I could not go home for almost two months.

I had to stay in an apartment in the city of Homs for fear that I might be arrested and because I wanted to continue working on my thesis. I even tried to avoid passing by any checkpoints in Homs for fear that I might be arrested. I also usually walked instead of taking buses or taxis because the forces often stopped them and asked the passengers for their IDs. I walked only on streets with no known checkpoints. That was the only way to avoid arrest, especially when I knew that the intelligence forces were looking for anyone from my hometown who had fled to Homs. I was restless and afraid of arrest during those two months because arrest could mean death. I prayed to Allah that I and my family would be safe.

Despite everything that had happened, I joined my friends in Homs and participated in demonstrations there. Although I was afraid of being arrested, my belief in the revolution and my trust in Allah pushed me to continue. Yes I was afraid, but I also believed that it was time for Syria to change into a better, freer, and more democratic place and that I had to help build my new country, which was being born again. Whenever I remember what happened, I just say “Alhamdulillah” (thanks to Allah) because escaping both the town and arrest was like a miracle. But the most impressive and thrilling miracle was that the Syrian revolution has continued despite the killing. Although I was in very dangerous situations that could have cost me my life, I knew that I was not more valuable than the martyrs who gave their lives for the sake of all Syrians.

The roots of the Syrian Arab Spring can be traced back to the moment of tawreeth, the inheritance of the presidency in Syria, a nightmare that Syrians feared before it happened and that later became both a reality and a torment for all Arabs living in republican states. The citizens of these republics worried that the same fate would befall them. In 2000, the Syrian regime could get away with this unprecedented transition of power to Bashar al-Assad after his father, Hafez, died while in office. In the same year, the Damascus spring began after the young president took control of the country with promises of a new Syria. As a response to Bashar al-Assad’s promises of reform, civil society groups and forums emerged in the capital to establish a new democratic era in Syria.

The Damascus spring phenomenon was over by 2001, when the regime shut down these societies and put many of the members in prison. So we Syrians did not see any of these reforms materialize, and the few freedoms that had been given to us upon the arrival of President Bashar al-Assad were abruptly taken away. The regime also took advantage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 by enhancing its authority over Syrians. When the Bush administration threatened that Syria might be a target after Iraq, the regime silenced every call for reform during that time on the pretext that the country was resisting foreign intervention in the region.

In 2005, opposition intellectuals released a statement called the “Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change.” This declaration was signed by more than two hundred Syrian activists; some belonged to organized opposition groups and some were independent figures. The Damascus Declaration, which was directed at the regime on behalf of the Syrian people, sought democratic change in the country and demanded political reform. Even though the statement made only modest and legitimate demands, the regime did not respond or even pay attention to them. In 2006, however, the regime took yet another advantage of the Israel’s war with Lebanon, exercising more pressure and suppressing any opposition activities. Then in 2008, many of the most prominent opposition leaders in charge of drafting the Damascus Declaration were imprisoned shortly after they held a conference at the house of one of them, in the suburbs of Damascus. The Syrian regime was constantly taking advantage of regional events, using them as opportunities to oppress and control people. In contrast, the regime missed several opportunities for reform, which the opposition had already tried to start.

After the revolution began in Tunisia, the Syrian president was interviewed on January 31, 2011, by the Wall Street Journal. He stated that the Arab Spring would not come to Syria and that we needed to be realistic and wait for another generation to bring reform. But I and my fellow activists could not accept waiting another generation for reform; we insisted that it start now. President Bashar al-Assad’s statements in this interview incited me to participate in the sit-in that took place in front of the Interior Ministry in Damascus on March 16. I felt that perhaps there was a chance to set the wheels in motion. We counted on the president’s prediction in an earlier interview that if reforms were delayed, people would be expected to express their dissatisfaction. The sit-in I was part of was based on a call by a group of human rights activists. They used media communication networks and social networking to announce the event, which also was mentioned in news broadcasts by Al Jazeera. The pressing reason for the sit-in was to submit a letter to the Interior Ministry for the release of political prisoners in Syria.

Security forces cracked down on our sit-in and treated us harshly. I was arrested with six of my friends, two of whom were women; one was five months pregnant. During the arrest, they did not beat us, although many other participants were assaulted. But my friends and I were beaten at the security center where we spent twenty-four hours before they transferred us to a prison. The beating I received in the center did not reach the degree of brutal torture. During their investigation, I was very honest in answering the questions they asked me. I told the security investigator all my demands, including my objection to the lack of freedoms and democracy and the problem of corruption.

The next day, they transferred us to the Justice Palace, a building in downtown Damascus belonging to the judiciary, not the security forces. When we gathered in front of the judge, fourteen men and ten women were detained for the same charges. The judge recited a variety of charges. When my turn came, he told me, “You are accused of harming the sovereignty of the Syrian state.” I answered him by saying, “On the contrary, I did what I did to guarantee a better sovereignty for my country. If the state frees the political prisoners of conscience, it will enhance its sovereignty.” After the session was over, we ended up being locked in the same prison where the political prisoners, whose freedom we had sought, were detained! We stayed there for two weeks.

In the prison, I was placed a cell with twenty other young men. Some of them were medical school students and others were studying engineering, and they came from different regions of Syria and different backgrounds. Two of them had been only bystanders and were arrested with us even though they had not participated in the sit-in or the demonstration! During this time, we talked with one another in what can be described as a two-week session of political brainstorming and intellectual exchange. We performed our Friday prayers in the prison, which was a chance to meet with all the other prisoners in one place.

Some people who support the regime claim that the revolution is a conspiracy. I do not agree with them. But even if it is a conspiracy or plot against Syria, I believe that the most important player is the regime itself, as its actions have contributed to the success of this alleged conspiracy to devastate the country. There were many solutions for the crisis before it got out of control, and the regime could have avoided much of what happened later. But it did not.

Nonetheless, the revolutionaries themselves have helped tarnish the image of our revolution. Some of them have started breaking such taboos as “Do not criticize the revolution,” and some opposition groups accuse others of treason if they do not agree with them. Other groups reject any criticism directed at their practices. Sometimes if someone refuses to call for the regime’s downfall of the regime, he or she is immediately accused of betraying the revolution. If someone does not say that we want to hang the president, then he or she is not brave. This happens even on social media: If someone criticizes the revolution on Facebook, some people cannot choose “like” because their other friends are in favor of the revolution. They cannot tolerate criticism, and they consider it a crime unless it is directed against the regime. I think this means that we have replaced an idol, the regime, with a set of idols, the regimes of the revolution, instead of breaking and ceasing to worship any idols.

The Syrian revolution broke through the wall of fear, and as activists, we need to have the courage to lead the revolution, to be in front of the people. But too much courage will leave us out in front with nobody else behind us. I personally can accept all the slogans calling for freedom, democracy, and a civil state, but I cannot accept slogans that insult the president or threaten him with penalty of death because these do not accord with my democratic, civilized goals. Furthermore, I do not chant the insulting slogans if I cannot take responsibility for them if interrogated in the security centers, in front of a judge, or before Allah.

Recently an activist I know was called to one of the branches of state security. The interrogator asked him, “Do you have Internet?” He said, “Yes.” “Do you have a Facebook account?” He said, “Yes.” Then he asked him about the main reason for his arrest, “Do you participate with activist groups in the revolution?” He said, “Yes.” “Do you support the revolution?” He said, “Yes.” The interrogator was holding some documents to shove in his face if he denied any of the things he was asked about, but when the activist confirmed all his opposition activities, the documents became worthless. He also was asked, “Do you want to overthrow the regime?” He said, “Yes.” “What about the Syrian National Council? He said, “It has problems, but it is the best possible option for the opposition.” His interrogation lasted for six hours, but he was allowed to go home because he was truthful when questioned about his role in the revolution. He did not think that they would release him, and he thought his statements would make his release impossible. In fact, he told me that he said what he said because he was ready to die. I do not claim that all people who are arrested will face the same treatment and will be released, but this kind of honesty, regardless of its outcome, is missing today in our revolution.

I refuse to depict the regime as a beast. If you say that these men of the regime are beasts, then you are not looking for a solution; rather, you want to kill the “beast.” This person whom some antiregime people wanted to call a beast was in fact a Syrian citizen who went to school with us. We need to deal with one another with honesty. Our slogans at the beginning of the revolution were something like “Death but not humiliation.” What I understand from some of the current slogans is that we will have either a civil war or death.

As I have repeatedly said to my friends and family, I am ready to die for democracy, but I am not ready to die to bring death to someone or for someone to become the new ruler of Syria. I believe that if every citizen is honest, our cause will be clear and there will be no confusion about the Syrian revolution. I do not want to kill anybody, and I do not want to persecute anybody. All I want is freedom and democracy for all people. I assume that many Syrian people have been left behind by the revolution, but that is because we have been too far ahead of them. So we need to slow down in this continuing revolution.⁶

The Arab Spring was a big surprise for those who never believed in the will of the people. On the contrary, it came as a dream come true for those who always believed in and worked for change. I was one of those who believed in change. I know deep down inside me that the day will come when we are free. All the suffering from oppression will end. For me, there has always been a small light at the end of the tunnel, even when all my friends started losing hope. I have always believed that we can be what we want to be. I also know that freedom has a price, and I personally have been, and always will be, ready to pay that price for the future of my people and a better future for humankind.

I also still remember the day (February 11, 2011) when Hosni Mubarak stepped down and the Egyptian people celebrated in Tahrir Square. That moment I cried, and my mother saw my tears of joy. She probably sensed what freedom meant to me and my generation when she saw my tears. I was mesmerized in front of the television and laptop following news feeds with all the updates from television, Facebook, and Twitter. It felt like the whole world was celebrating with our Egyptian brothers. We Syrians have always felt close to Egypt in many ways but probably were a couple of years behind. The question that stayed in the minds of a huge number of Syrians, especially young Syrians, was, Why don’t we have something like that? Why can’t we get rid of our regime from which we have been suffering oppression and corruption since the 1960s? But neither I nor other Syrians could ignore the fact, which we used to believe, that our regime was more brutal and oppressive than those in other Arab states. I also was not sure how we could even start a revolution that would continue the highly celebrated Arab Spring. All I knew was that we should do something. What happened in Tunisia and Egypt was an opportunity, and we needed to use it to begin our own revolution.

I should mention that these thoughts about change were not new for me. I was part of a group of young, educated, active Syrians from Daraya, a town fifty miles from Damascus. Our group was working on inciting social and even political change in the Darayan community by setting up town-cleaning campaigns and fighting corruption and bribery. We also were raising awareness of current affairs by, for example, organizing a silent rally against the American troops in Iraq in 2003. Of course, all these activities, as useful as they are, are prohibited by the Syrian regime. But my group broke all these taboos, causing a furious reaction from the Mukhabarat, the Syrian regime’s brutal security apparatus. That is why most of the group’s members, twenty-five of them, were put in prison. Some stayed for two and a half years in the worst conditions imaginable.

The regime wasn’t afraid of the activities themselves, they were afraid of the mentality of this Darayan group, as they had never before encountered it during the forty years they ruled Syria. They had never seen such a sincere and pure wish for a change that was engraved in the minds of those young activists. “Do you know why we did this to you?” one high-ranking general in the Mukhabarat asked me on my second day in detention. After having spent a horrible night and being abused in unimaginable ways, I said no. He answered, “Because you were courageous yesterday during our first interrogation session.” It turned out that they did not like the way I expressed my opinions and that I was not afraid to show my desire for a change in my country. I was twenty-three years old at the time. That’s what they did not like, and that’s what made them angry. That’s what they have been trying to kill inside us, our pride, spirit, and longing for change and freedom.

When the Arab revolutions started, my friends and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. In February 2011, those friends, who were more active than I, met with other groups of activists in Syria to coordinate what they might do. All of them were young Syrians looking for change. Each one shared a dream of a free country no longer ruled by the same undemocratic practices that have defined Syria. This was something they had longed for all their lives, and now they had a chance to start achieving it. All these groups wanted to ignite a revolution in Syria, an idea that had seemed impossible a couple of months earlier. Nevertheless, at the time it seemed worth trying, so we began organizing meetings, at which the main subject was how to launch such a revolution. I still remember that meeting (March 2011) when a couple of friends from Douma, the biggest suburb of Damascus, came to Daraya to meet with our group. Knowing that there were other groups throughout Syria just like us, both groups focused on how to gather all the groups in the Damascus suburbs to collaborate and consolidate our efforts. We tried to make sure that when we started a demonstration, it would be so big that the security forces would not be able to arrest or kill all of us. The members of both groups were highly educated Syrians, and we all agreed to

1. Choose a group leader who would be responsible for coordinating the two groups.

2. Choose one person to meet and collaborate with the other groups.

3. Find out whether other groups would join our movement.

4. Create a Facebook page functioning as a “closed group” in order to communicate with one another.

The two groups secretly met several times after that. Avoiding security agents was a big concern for all of us because we were not used to working in secret, but we had to learn how. The final outcome of our meetings with all the groups was the agreement to begin the demonstration on March 18, 2011, after the Friday prayer, from the Grand Mosque in Douma. Some of Daraya group members went to Douma, and some of them started their own demonstration in Daraya, the first ever. As expected, the security forces came with canes and machine guns to both demonstrations and to many other demonstrations around the country. They fired on the crowds and struck some protesters, causing casualties and injuries. But all in all, it was a successful demonstration, despite the cruelty of the attack by the security forces. I personally had the privilege of being there, and I had the great feeling of being able to shout for freedom. Like my fellow Syrians, I had never tasted freedom before. I saw my comrades’ eyes glowing with courage and happiness despite the fear of being killed. They knew how brutal this regime was, as they still remembered the Hama massacre (February 2, 1982).

Activists uploaded the first videos of the demonstration to YouTube, and we were able to tell the world that there was a spark of revolution in Syria. We realized, though, that our revolution needed to be organized better. As a result, the groups in each town and city began to emerge and become better organized. These groups were the core of what are now known as the “local coordination committees.” I was dazzled by the Syrian talent that emerged after being buried for decades. I had always been proud of my Syrian people, but after the revolution, and for the first time in my life, I felt more than pride.

The following week (Friday, February 25), the plan was to start the demonstrations after Friday prayer, with more people coming out from more than one mosque in Daraya. Each of the activists created his or her own group, and all the groups coordinated to attract more demonstrators. All the participants in the demonstrations gathered in the main street of Daraya and walked to Shrady Square, which activists now call Freedom Square. We knew that the security forces would come soon to disperse and shoot at us. We knew we were putting our lives in great and immediate danger, but after tasting freedom, we did not care anymore.

I still remember that during one of the demonstrations, while we were gathering at Freedom Square, the security forces came and started shooting at us and using tear gas and guns to break up our peaceful demonstration, creating chaos. The result was three martyrs and around forty wounded. The next day, the whole town mourned the martyrs with sadness and grief. Every time I looked at them, I cried and cried. But this did not break us; instead, it made us more determined to reach our destiny: freedom, and dignity.

In March 2012, I was captured by the Syrian security apparatus, the Mukhabarat, and was taken into detention by the military police, where I faced horrific prison conditions. When they found out that I was postponing my mandatory military service because of my continuing study, they forced me to enlist in the military. After I had spent a week in prison, they gave me a one-day leave and ordered me to go to the Air Defense College in Homs to start my military service. I decided to defect because I did not to be part of such a criminal army. In fact, I considered joining the army as being a despicable service for President al-Assad to kill my own people. So I crossed the border into Jordan. My escape was dangerous, and many people had been shot while crossing the border illegally, but I would rather be shot dead than participate in the killing of my own people.

The revolution kept raising the bar, and the number of hot spots (places where demonstrations were held) noticeably increased around the country, except in some city centers where the security forces had tightened their control. Security forces fought the demonstrators with increasing brutality. The number of martyrs and detainees grew, and no one was able to stop the regime from killing us, nor could anyone in the world stop us from overthrowing this regime and gaining our freedom and dignity. This is our goal, and this is what we are determined to achieve and will achieve, and may God help us in this endeavor.

When the wave of Arab Spring uprisings brought monumental changes to Tunisia and Egypt, analysts thought Syria would be next. The mass demonstrations that began in Daraa seemed to gather together the country’s disparate groups in a call for human dignity. Respect for human rights, equality, and protection from corruption underpinned all the popular revolutions of the Arab Spring, including Syria.

The Syrian revolution had less to do with unemployment than with honor and dignity. An entire people had been brutally oppressed and systematically terrorized by the leaders of their own country, oppression that spanned decades. While the conventional wisdom behind the Syrian leaders’ behavior was that dividing and repressing the people would weaken their challenges to the regime, the decades of their abuse actually helped galvanize the revolution. Nonetheless, the legacy of the al-Assad regime still haunts the revolution today.

The Syrian revolution did not spring up overnight. Rather, the resentment of the Syrian people had been building behind the continued humiliation and exclusion by their government. Indeed, there is a history behind the Syrian manifestation of the Arab Spring, and I am honored to have been part of the movement. From the outset, I dedicated myself to documenting human rights violations in Syria. The culture of silence and fear inculcated by the regime had left the Syrian people broken and slow to unite. Indeed, what is the incentive to risk your life in the name of a free Syria when all you know is that the regime is capable of crushing you and your loved ones? The Syrian revolution first broke down the wall of fear that had allowed the regime to remain entrenched, and the Syrian people showed their incredible bravery in the face of a brutal government crackdown. While the numbers in the first Daraa protest represented a new dawn in Syrian political action, the struggle for human rights and dignity already was being waged quietly by a group of dedicated activists.

Before the term “Arab Spring” was coined, I participated in the Damascus spring, a period of increased political discourse, especially calls for reform, that came after the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000. I founded the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria in 2005, an organization through which I helped document and publicize the government’s human rights violations. Through the persistent issuing of reports and statements revealing the al-Assad regime’s abuses, I helped chip away at the wall of fear that had kept the Syrian people from rising up to demand their rights.

Of course, my efforts did not go unnoticed by the regime. In typical fashion, the regime sought to terrorize me and my family in order to stop my publicity of the government’s corruption. Since 2008, my family—including my mother, brother, sisters, in-laws, nieces, nephews, and so forth—all have been banned from leaving Syria because of my political activities. Because I have stood up for human rights and reform in Syria, my family has been made to live under even greater fear and harassment. Nonetheless, I have remained a leader of the Syrian opposition, relocating my efforts outside the country. Meanwhile, my family has been trapped, and I worry constantly.

My older brother Yassein was arrested in August 2011 because of my activities. Although Yassein is in no way politically involved and is a businessman, security forces arrested him outside the mosque where he had been performing his morning prayers. Yassein had been praying inside Mustafa Mosque in Daraya, southwest of Damascus, while a protest was taking place outside. Security forces moved in to disperse the demonstration, arresting Yassein, who had not been participating but had taken refuge during the crackdown.

After his arrest, my brother was taken to the headquarters of the Syrian Air Force Security. The Air Force Security is notorious among activists for its brutal torture of dissidents, and it was responsible for the deplorable mutilation and murder of thirteen-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb. The security forces, intelligence apparatus, and regime at large have no qualms about torturing and killing political detainees en masse; furthermore, the terror did not stop with the massacres. Just as my brother Yassein was arrested because of my speaking out against the regime’s abuses, the security forces also threatened al-Khateeb’s parents, saying, “Much of what has happened is because of what your son has done. You know what will happen if we find out that you have spoken to the media.”

My family and I experienced similar harassment as the regime tried to exact retribution for my exposures of its human rights abuses. But retribution is not the only goal of this harassment; the main purpose is to perpetuate the culture of fear that plagues an un-free Syria, depriving Syrians of their human rights of freedom of expression and conscience. There is no respect for human rights in Syria, where, as in the rest of the world, a violation of one person’s rights is an affront to human dignity in general. The regime has targeted those determined to make the world aware of Bashar al-Assad’s crimes and has sought to oppress them by means of torture, murder, and fear. Consequently, after repeatedly receiving threats, in 2007 I left my country. Since I have been living in exile—the pains of which are not difficult to imagine—my family in Syria has received the brunt of the punishment for my activities. Because of my research and human rights documentation, my brother Yassein has been held incommunicado since his arrest in 2011, a man innocent of any crime.

This perpetual wall of fear was broken at the outset of the Syrian revolution in 2011, and many of us have been working to build momentum toward ending the fear, encouraging Syrians to speak out for their rights. But the regime is relentless and is aware that its very existence depends on terrorizing its population into silence. Although the wall of fear has been brought down, the regime is scrambling to rebuild it, and so the legacy of terror continues to plague the Syrian revolution.

The Assad regime has systematically created or deepened the divisions in Syria politically, economically, and socially in order to maintain a divided people incapable of rising up together against his unjust rule. Since the outset of the revolution, I have poured my energy into building a strong Syrian opposition. The Syrian National Council (SNC) has greatly evolved since its foundation and has formulated a sophisticated strategy to guide Syria through a post-Assad transition to democracy. Most significantly, the SNC has worked to overcome the imaginary divisions entrenched by the regime, and the SNC leadership and general membership now include representatives of every political, religious, and ethnic group in Syrian society. Furthermore, it has emphasized transitional justice and respect for human rights, especially accounting for possible attempts to seek retribution against the Alawite community.⁷

While the SNC has been remarkable in its growth and improvement in such a short time and under such daunting conditions, the international community has not responded in kind. Bashar al-Assad has mounted a long, relentless, brutal campaign to restore the wall of fear, slaughtering civilians en masse by shelling neighborhoods like Bab Amr and even carrying out mass executions. The world may never know the true extent of al-Assad’s brutal crackdown, as he has not limited himself to terrorizing only Syrian defenders of human rights. Instead, he has likely ordered the assassination of foreign journalists seeking simply to document the crisis for the world to see.

We, the Syrian people, yearn wholeheartedly for a future free Syria, and we hope this revolution will be the turning point in a long history of oppression and fear, toward a future that guarantees human rights for all Syrians. But we are in dire need of action in solidarity from the international community. Now that the Syrian people have finally been successful in breaching the fear barrier, they have been left alone. The current international stalemate is not only frustrating; it is tragic. Every day that international inaction allows the Assad regime to rebuild its wall of fear is another day on which innocent civilians are killed, their families terrorized, and their human dignity defiled. The Syrian revolution holds the key to reform toward a free Syria, in which human rights are championed and the government fulfills its social contract with all its peoples. The Syrian revolution is not political. It is existential. It is about human dignity, justice, and respect—values that when threatened anywhere insult humanity everywhere.

1. Kurdish political, cultural and societal rights.

2. Overall democracy in Syria.

3. Stronger bonds of brotherhood between Kurds and their fellow Arabs.

4. Women’s rights in Syria.

5. The abolishment of all racial discrimination against Kurds in Syria.

The PDK-S’s struggle for these objectives has always been peaceful, as we believe in the spirit of democracy and that any political, cultural or societal gain can be obtained only through democracy. The Syrian regime, however, being fascist and totalitarian in a country led by the Ba‘th Party, has put all power in the hands of the president. This regime relies strongly on persecuting people, stealing their freedom, denying their most basic rights, and turning them into a lifeless crowd or mob that only does what it is told.

It is tragic that the Kurds are persecuted and suppressed in Syria. The regime took everything from us, even the right to speak our native tongue—the language of our fathers and grandfathers, the language that ties us to our cultural heritage. Our language and culture are deeply ingrained in history, and they define our identity as a nation. We were banned from practicing our cultural traditions and prohibited from celebrating our national and cultural festival days. To save our Kurdish identity, we spoke our language and celebrated our national and cultural festival days in secret. And if the regime discovered us engaging in any of these activities, we would be imprisoned and tortured, and even the organizers of such events were sometimes killed. This depressing situation motivated me to become an active member of the PDK-S advocating the Kurdish language, culture, and rights. My work was recognized by my other party members, and their votes made me a leader of a district where I held two meetings each month for the party members. One was mainly political and intended to strengthen the ties among party members, and the other was educational and cultural, at which the Kurdish language was taught and different literary and artistic talents were recognized and nourished.

I was seventeen when I encountered the regime’s brutality firsthand. My membership in the PDK-S party and my political views, which were reported by some of my classmates who were members of the Ba‘th Party, brought about my arrest by the intelligence forces. I was arrested and interrogated in a very inhumane, terrifying, painful, and degrading way. I was tortured and asked to become a reporter for the regime and to spy on my classmates and other members of PDK-S. My refusal made them detain me for twenty long and painful days. At the end, probably after they had given up and realized they could not recruit me, I was released after I signed a document stating that I would avoid political and cultural activities. But the pressure at school increased and, becoming unbearable, forced me to drop out. I then worked with my father until I opened an office for business administration while getting more and more involved with PDK-S.

The politics of the Middle East, an area infested with dictatorships, received its first and biggest blow with the demise of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. As a Syrian Kurd, this event boosted my hopes for the long awaited freedom and democracy in Syria. The PDK-S increased its efforts by expanding its membership base and its activities. The goal was to make our people ready for the freedom ahead of us. All our activities were peaceful yet were carried out in complete secrecy. Even so, members of the PDK-S and the other Kurdish parties were still being arrested. Of course, the Syrian regime never thought that the day would come when our struggle, along with the struggle of the rest of the Syrian community and parties, would become as strong as it is now.

On March 12, 2004, the Kurds revolted against the Syrian regime’s discriminatory, racial, and persecutory practices. Then, after a soccer match, security agents intentionally shot at Kurdish fans who had come to the stadium to cheer for their local team. The Syrian security and intelligence forces planned this incident to engender animosity between Kurds and Arabs in the area. The Kurds rebelled all over Syria, from Qamishli in the northeast to Afrin in the northwest. The Syrian intelligence and security forces spared no effort in suppressing the protesters and did not hesitate to kill as many as it took to undermine the Kurdish call for equality and their political and cultural rights. Many Kurdish protesters were killed and more were arrested.

I attended the funeral of a Kurdish martyr who had been killed in one of the protests. The funeral turned into a demonstration that condemned the regime’s brutal practices. The security forces intervened quickly, shooting at the protesters and arresting them. I was among those arrested. As expected, we endured unbearable torture and humiliation, which concluded with each of us signing a document stating that we would not participate in any protest or antigovernment activities once we were set free. In fact, if it had not been for the massive pressure coming from different public and political figures, we would have stayed in captivity for a long time. After all that I had witnessed during my arrest, I became more and more determined to do everything it would take to achieve freedom and democracy for the Kurds and Syrians. The 2004 uprising and protests thus became a day that Kurds celebrate every year.

The Kurds and their fellow Syrians had to wait seven more years before the advent of the Arab Spring that was launched by a desperate street vendor who set himself on fire. The spark soon spread like wildfire and, soon after, took down the Egyptian regime and Libya’s dictator. Now it was Syria’s turn to taste freedom. March 15, 2011, signified the onset of the Syrian revolution, when some elementary school students drew on the walls of their schools what they had seen and heard on television about the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan revolutions, simple phrases like “People want to topple the regime.” The ruthless security and intelligence forces arrested and inflicted severe torture on them. The children were later returned to their homes with signs of torture and their fingernails pulled out. The security forces wanted to make an example of them. But on the contrary, what those little heroes did broke the fear that the regime had for decades worked on building and strengthening inside every Syrian. Daraa is where all this started, and the revolution gained momentum and soon was in almost every city but Aleppo and Damascus, where the regime’s iron fist was tightening its grasp on almost every district, street, alley, and block.

At this point, I made a short visit to the United Stated and witnessed all the freedom, democracy, and plentiful opportunities available for all people to express themselves, their beliefs, and their political views. I wished the same were true in my country. Via the Internet, I kept a close eye on the revolution’s development. What I read and saw about the revolution and its objectives made me decide to go home and work side by side with the protesters and members of the PDK-S, putting all the power that my position in the party gave me to support the revolution. The PDK-S declared its support of the peaceful revolution in Syria against the regime and began meeting, cooperating, and strengthening its ties with other parties that shared our position. These efforts culminated with the formulation of the Kurdish National Strife Charter/Agreement in Syria, which consists of the following parties:

1. PDKS

2. The Union of the Kurdish Nation in Syria

3. The Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria

4. Yakity

5. The Kurdish Accordance

6. The Kurdish Future Movement in Syria

7. The Kurdish Reformation Party

These parties declared their support for the revolution and youth movement, in which youth groups were formed and prepared for the noble tasks ahead, through education, sharpened skills, and encouragement to stay the course, as freedom and democracy are closer than ever before. The youth groups consisted of both party and nonparty members. My role was to form new revolutionary groups, organize them, and coordinate the groups of which I was in charge with those in other districts in Aleppo. I also advocated the teachings and objectives of the revolution. All this had to be done through secret communication channels. The revolution grew in the various Syrian cities. But because the regime views Aleppo as its financial backbone, more security forces were pumped into the city, which made it harder for the revolution to grow and gain momentum as it had in other cities. Nevertheless, we were determined to push harder and harder to increase the scale and number of peaceful protests and thus win our city and eventually our freedom from the security and intelligence forces and Assad’s thugs.

During August 2011, which also was the month of Ramadan, we planned a protest against the regime in my district, al-Ashrafiya, and we decided on a time and location. But the difference in numbers between us and Assad’s thugs prevented us from protesting, so we postponed it. I continued working secretly to gather more people, until Thursday, October 9, the day on which the Syrian Kurdish opposition figure Mishaal al-Tammo was killed by the regime in Qamishli. He was the head of the Kurdish Future Movement Party, a member of the National Syrian Council, and an ally of the Kurdish National Charter/Agreement in Syria. His murder confirmed that the regime had declared war against the Kurdish movement and that we all were possible targets. In retaliation for the cowardly act of murdering Mr. Tammo, we decided to protest on the following Saturday, which we named after him. Although we knew when we protested that we faced arrest or death, that did not stop us from organizing a demonstration in al-Ashrafiya, capturing it on video, and posting it on the Internet. The protest lasted for fifteen minutes, after which we had to flee when the security forces attacked us with knives, swords, and firearms. Unfortunately, a few fellow protesters were captured.

Despite the protest’s relatively short duration, we were able to deliver the message to the world that Aleppo was a volcano about to erupt. The protest also drew the regime’s attention to the fact that our district was becoming a hot spot. I and the groups I was in charge of participated in a number of other protests in different parts of the city (especially in the Salah al-Deen district, Sayf al-Dawleh, and al-Shaykh Maksoud. Meanwhile, the Kurdish National Charter/Agreement in Syria, the youth and patriotic groups, independent nationalists, and Syrian and Kurdish figures succeeded in forming the Union of Democratic Parties in Syria (also known as Mishaal Tammo’s Center). Our position was expressed through a number of views and objectives that also were adopted by these aforementioned parties.

The regime retaliated against the formulation of the new union by increasing the brutality of its crackdown and violent attacks on protests and also by tightening its grip on our life in Aleppo. Our mobility became harder, as did life in general, as more reporters/spies and intelligence forces spread out all over the city. They targeted protest organizers and youth groups, and I knew they were going to find me soon. I consulted with the party leaders, and they recommended that I hide or leave to save my life. In the little time I had left, I managed to get my wife and only child a visa to the United States.

It was a winter night when I sat in a café with four friends and heard on the news that Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, president of Tunisia, had fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011. It was a strange piece of news! We looked at one another, and all of us were thinking the same thing: “Could it happen in Syria?” But nobody dared to say it out loud. We continued late into the night, and then everybody went home. After a few months, three of us were protesting and could not believe it was really us!

Less than two weeks later, on January 25, the Egyptian revolution started. I was watching television and could not believe the huge numbers of people who were protesting in the streets, with the radiance of bravery on their faces. “Could it happen in Syria?” I thought again. On February 11, Hosni Mubarak delivered his final speech during the eighteen-day revolution, before his newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman, announced that the Egyptian president had decided to step down. At that moment, a feeling of relief came over me as I realized that the era of dictators was coming to an end. I smelled the pleasant scent of freedom, but in Egypt, not in Syria.

The revolution in Syria finally began in mid-March 2011, sweeping the country and the capital city of Damascus, but only after a strong start in Daraa. The first demonstration was held in my city, Deir al-Zour, on the first Friday of April, with a few thousand people who then protested each Friday. On Friday, April 22, “Friday the Great,” the protesters went to the main square in the city, which is now called Freedom Square, and destroyed the statue of Basel, the son of the former dictator Hafez al-Assad. Around five thousand people participated in this protest before the security intelligence members and the shabiha, the regime’s special forces and thugs, came and dispersed them. I participated in this protest and in many others on subsequent Fridays. Our numbers started growing, reaching more than 200,000.

One particularly important Friday I will never forget was on June 17, which was called “Saleh al-Ali Friday.” Saleh al-Ali (1884–1950) was a prominent Syrian revolutionist and an Alawite notable who opposed the French colonization of Syria in the early twentieth century. We went out into the streets of Deir al-Zour after the Friday prayer. The number of protesters was growing, and by the time we reached Freedom Square, it was like a festival, with protesters’ voices reaching the sky. We demanded that the regime step down, and our chants were loud and clear enough to deliver this message of freedom. There was a celebratory and historic atmosphere, and we felt the pleasure of freedom, especially because the thugs, shabiha, and intelligence forces were absent. We spent around three hours in the square, and even women and children participated.

As we reached the main street, marching toward the sports stadium, some people followed the protesters, handing out bottles of water and juice. I saw one person, who was angry at the crowds and their chants, throw bags of rubbish on the protesters’ heads! They shouted back at him and continued on their way. But the man came back and threw big stones from his house on the third floor of the building, hurting some protesters and cars passing by. The protesters got angry and wanted to go up and fight with the regime supporter, but the protest coordinators prevented them, saying that we had to remain peaceful, even if we got hurt. We passed the al-Hajjanah military unit’s headquarters. On one of its doors were photos of the former dictator Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar.

When one of the protesters went up to the door and tried to take off the photos, bullets showered the place like rain! We ran and tried to hide in the side streets. I could not identify the source of the attack. It was like a war, and a group of women protesters got scared and hid in a small street among the trees. Apparently, the soldiers inside the military unit had started to fire at us, but they were shooting mainly into the sky. With the bullets spraying in all directions, some of the protesters were injured. The shooting lasted for about an hour and a half, and I barely managed to get home, using side streets. After about forty-five minutes, I passed al-Nour hospital and saw a group of young men carrying an injured person there. While I waited outside for a few minutes, a young man came out shouting: “Allah akbar [great]. He is a martyr of freedom!” I got close to the car, where I saw a man lying with blood on his head. I realized that he was the protester who tried to take off the photo of the dictator! The people gathered around the hospital and began shouting against the president and the Ba‘th Party. An atmosphere of anger and anguish came over us, and one of the protesters shouted, “Until when should we wait? Until when? We have suffered enough from this regime!”

I went back home and heard the news that another three martyrs had fallen on that bloody Friday. My family was scared to death when I joined that protest, and they were relieved when they finally saw me entering the house. My sister shouted at me and said that my mother fainted when she heard the shooting around the city. I was lucky enough to get home safely after that protest. I was thinking of all those protesters and the martyrs, wondering how many people would die before we got our highly priced freedom. I thought about the black days when we suffered greatly from the regime and its intelligence forces, the evil forces that shaped our lives with misery, poverty, and fear.

I remembered how they forced us to join the Ba‘th Party during secondary school. We did not have a choice: We either became members or were investigated by the security and intelligence forces about our political views. They would prevent those who did not join the party from exercising their human rights and the opportunity to find employment. Others were punished and put in prison.

For several years, I worked outside the country and frequently traveled to Europe and other Arab countries on business. A few months before the revolution, I had to face the regime’s thuggish security forces without having done anything against the regime. One of the intelligence members came to my house around nine o’clock in the evening. He said that I had to go to the intelligence center the next day for an investigation. My family and I were shocked, and some of my family tried to discourage me from going, but I did not have a choice, as they would have caught me any place I went. Luckily, I made phone calls to some influential persons who know people in the government and the intelligence center, and they supported me and told me not to worry, that it would be only a routine investigation.

I could not sleep that night, and the following day I said good-bye to my family as if I were going to my death. I could hardly hide my tension and fears, but I nevertheless tried to calm down my mother and family. I reached the intelligence center around nine o’clock in the morning. The officer at the door told me to leave everything with him: keys, watch, glasses, and mobile, which was switched off. He said I had to wait for the investigator, and then he put me in a cell! When I went in, I said to myself, “This is the end.” The underground cell was twenty-two-by thirty-two square feet, and the bathroom was inside. It was dirty enough to make you scared to sit on the floor, which was full of dirt and dead cockroaches. I sat down on a piece of paper and started counting the minutes, which were like years. One hour, two hours, passed and still the investigator did not come. Suddenly, a big man opened the small iron window attached to the door and gave me a spiteful look. This man was the one responsible for torturing people. I got up and walked slowly toward him and asked him: “May I make a phone call?” Then he looked at me with a dirty smile and said, “Do you think you are at the Sheraton?!”

Another few hours passed, and I wondered why I had come back to my country, Syria. It is a strange feeling when you blame yourself for coming home. My work and business were outside Syria, but I still loved my country, family, and the place where I was born. That is why I always felt the need to come back. Around one in the afternoon, the investigator came and the big man took me from my cell to the investigation room. I could not reveal to the investigator that I was against the regime because that would be the end of me. He started asking me about my life, work, travels, relatives, and so on. I stood in a small spot, and on the walls I could see the tools of torture spread all around the room. It was obvious that they did not have anything against me. They were just expecting that I would collapse and ask forgiveness for doing something against them, which they did not know. This is a mind game they play with many other people.

After an hour of investigation they returned me to the cell, telling me that they would check my name with all the intelligence centers to see if I had committed any crimes or violations. I stayed calm and did not show that I was nervous or tense. After a few hours, they released me. Later, I found out that the people I had called had connections in the intelligence center and that they intervened to ensure my release. Back at home, my family was happy that I had not been hurt and received me like a soldier returning from war.

I endured many other difficulties and pain at other intelligence centers, which I cannot describe here, for security reasons. The questions I always ask myself are, Will the revolution succeed under these circumstances, after more than a year of killing and destruction? While the world and the United Nations keep silent in the face of the Syrian regime’s tyranny and arrogance, is it still possible? History has proved that no tyrant can resist forever the will of the people and the winds of change. We have nothing to do but to continue our revolution. We must keep praying for success even if the entire world has closed its eyes to the continuing crimes of our tyrannical regime.