Spring was nearing its end in 2011 when thousands flooded Hama’s Aleppo Way. It was the old road to the northern city, the route taken by those escaping death in 1982. This time, the masses moved in the opposite direction, south toward Asi Square in Hama’s center. They waved olive branches and palm fronds and held signs calling for the Assad regime’s downfall.
A long red, white, and black Syrian flag extending for almost a quarter mile was held aloft. It was emblazoned with these phrases: “Hama does not want the army to enter.” “No to sectarianism.” “The people want to topple the regime.”1
The crowds marched past the Afamia al-Cham hotel and local Baath Party headquarters, imposing structures erected on the ruins of one of a dozen neighborhoods razed by Hafez after the 1982 massacre.2
The scene of defiant protesters brought tears to the eyes of many Hamwis, especially those with memories of 1982, when at least 10,000 perished and thousands still remained missing.3 The wounded city was having a cathartic moment: speaking out in great numbers against the regime that had terrorized it three decades earlier.
Khaled al-Khani, his mother, six siblings including baby Hikmat, and Aunt Fatima were among those who had returned to Hama in the fall of 1982. Their home and neighborhood was gone; they lived in a relative’s house for a few years. Not only did they have to grieve in silence, but local regime officials made all those who returned, including the Khanis, participate in boisterous pro-Hafez rallies that were supposed to celebrate his victory over the Islamists. Children whose fathers had been executed by the regime grew up singing the glories of Hafez.
The humiliation had no limit. For years, few dared pray at the mosques left standing. Almost eighty-eight mosques and five churches had been destroyed by the regime.4 Before they were reconstructed years later, the sites of several demolished mosques became soccer fields for children like Khaled.5 Most of Khaled’s classmates in primary school had no fathers.
For years after the massacre mukhabarat officers extorted money, gold, and jewelry from women for proof that their husbands, sons, and fathers were alive, or for any scrap of news about them.6 Many of these men were rotting in the hellish desert prison in Palmyra, or Tadmor in Arabic. They were executed in group hangings held in the prison’s courtyard or ravaged by diseases that spread among inmates; the bodies were often dumped in mass graves.7 The death sentences issued by the prison’s military tribunal all bore Mustafa Tlass’s stamp of approval.
Over the years, Hafez started releasing some Hama male prisoners on Muslim holidays. Hafez wanted to be the magnanimous sultan. The prisoners hardly posed a risk. Most had been crushed by torture and malnutrition—they were shadows of their former selves and unrecognizable to their families. They arrived home on buses from Tadmor and were usually released at Hama’s southern entrance. Khaled never forgot the sight of frantic and tearful mothers and wives boarding one bus after another searching for loved ones and shouting out their names.8
Khaled would also never forget what had happened to him in high school.9 A Baath committee came to interview students to join the party. Hama families wanted their children to enroll, both out of fear and also expectation that membership would improve their chance of college admission, as was and remains the case. The sight of Baathist officials in suits was intimidating; even a uniformed traffic policeman terrified many traumatized Hamwis, who also grappled with extreme poverty after the massacre.
“Youth comrade Khaled al-Khani, sir!” said Khaled as he performed a brusque military salute to the officials. This was the customary Baath greeting.
“What’s your father’s name?” asked one of the officials.
“Hikmat al-Khani, sir,” said Khaled.
“What does your father do?” said the official.
“He’s dead, sir,” said Khaled.
“When and how?” said the official.
“He died during the events, he was killed by the army,” said Khaled.
“What!” shouted the man.
All six got up, removed their jackets and took turns slapping and punching Khaled. He was knocked to the floor and screamed as he was being kicked. The principal rescued him.
“I am so sorry, gentlemen. Leave it to me, I am going to teach this scoundrel a lesson,” said the principal as he escorted Khaled out of the room and hid him in his office.
Khaled was supposed to say that Islamist terrorists had killed his father. He was supposed to forget those who witnessed his father being captured by regime forces and taken with thousands of other men to the porcelain factory where he was tortured and gruesomely executed. Hamwis had to live with the regime’s lies even in the privacy of their homes. To cope, many massacre survivors became convinced that Hafez was the nation’s strict yet benevolent father who punished Hama only because he was left with no other choice.
“Childhood was a continuous horror movie,” Khaled wrote years later in his diary after he reconstructed what had happened to his father, family, and city by interviewing dozens of relatives and witnesses.10
The uncontestable truth was that the regime had meticulously planned the assault on Hama in 1982, completely subdued a few hundred Islamist fighters in about ten days, then vengefully massacred thousands of civilians, raped women, looted homes, and razed neighborhoods, and then at the end wanted victims to believe that “terrorists” had done it to them. It was a scenario repeating itself in 2011 from the moment protesters were killed in the southern city of Daraa and in Douma near Damascus. Regime forces and Bashar’s own cousin Hafez Makhlouf shot protesters dead, but the regime wanted the world to believe that the culprits were infiltrators linked to a foreign conspiracy.
“False allegations and distortion of reality” and “fake pretenses,” Bashar told Barbara Walters when she interviewed him in Damascus later in 2011.11
The large protests that gripped Hama in the waning days of spring 2011 were not only from a brutalized city finally speaking out but also from many regime opponents, like Mazen Darwish and Khaled al-Khani, who were desperate to keep the protests peaceful and prevent the country from plunging into extremism and war. It was an attempt to stop the Hama 1982 scenario from repeating itself in almost every rebellious city, town, and village across Syria.
By early June 2011, more than 1,100 had been killed and thousands arrested in attacks on demonstrators as well as in military operations in places like Baniyas, Daraa, Douma, and Homs, among others.12 There were already signs that the regime’s actions were fueling militancy in communities coming under attack and emboldening those pushing for armed confrontation.
A killing in Jisr al-Shughour—a predominantly Sunni town north of Hama where nearly 200 civilians had been killed by Hafez’s forces in the spring of 1980—morphed into armed clashes between, on the one hand, Sunni residents and some Sunni army soldiers and, on the other, the mostly Alawite mukhabarat. Armed townspeople and soldiers who had defected to their side besieged a local unit of the mukhabarat’s Military Intelligence Directorate and eventually stormed it and then executed all those inside, many of them Alawites. Reinforcements were sent to the town, and ultimately Bashar’s forces prevailed as many residents fled to neighboring Turkey.13 The regime said that armed groups killed 120 soldiers in what it called a massacre and claimed that townspeople had asked for the army’s help.14 The regime took foreign diplomats and journalists to the area—an ideal opportunity to buttress its narrative of foreign conspiracy and Islamist extremists.15
Then thousands took to the streets of Hama in early June 2011 to say enough death, no more massacres like Hama 1982. As they tried to traverse the river from Hama’s Hader section to Asi Square, they were met with deadly force by regime snipers and gunmen on the street as well as those posted on the rooftop of the local Baath Party headquarters building.16 More than sixty were killed, most wounds were in the chest and head. Nearly the entire city was on strike for days.17 Regime forces withdrew to the city’s outskirts, fearing the population’s wrath. Larger protests followed in mid-June, culminating in the occupation of Asi Square.
As thousands poured into the square, large loudspeakers mounted on the back of a truck blared a moving song by an activist from southern Syria that had become the anthem of Syria’s revolt.18 “The youth, oh mother, heard freedom was at the gate, and they went out to chant for it… They struck us, oh mother, with live bullets…”
Protesters stayed in the square day and night. In solidarity, restaurant owners distributed free food.19 The numbers on the street grew day by day. It became a carnival-like atmosphere. They danced the local Hamwi version of dabkeh, a traditional Levantine line dance. People were fired up by folksy anti-regime chants performed by a local activist and revolutionary singer nicknamed “the Qashoush.”
“We want to remove Bashar with our strong will because Syria wants freedom! Syria wants…,” shouted Qashoush with a raspy voice and rhythmic cadence.20
“Freedom!” erupted the crowd.
“Souriya badda…” (“Syria wants…”), repeated Qashoush.
“Hurriyeh!” (“Freedom!”), the crowd answered fervently.
Protesters declared the city theirs. They set up citizen patrols and checkpoints to protect protesters and warn of any incursion by regime forces. At first, few of those assuming security functions had weapons. It was mostly batons and sticks. Hama’s Asi Square became the equivalent of Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Similar attempts in Damascus and Homs in April were snuffed out by Bashar with bullets and blood.
At the palace in Damascus, Bashar was stressed out about the growing protests in Hama and the occupation of Asi Square.21
Manaf, sidelined by Bashar for being too soft, had nonetheless remained in his position as Republican Guard general and continued to interact with those around Bashar.
“The president is very disturbed by what’s happening in Hama—why don’t you speak with your contacts and see how we can calm things down,” a fellow Republican Guard commander urged Manaf.22
There was little he could do, regardless of his differences with Bashar over the use of force. For protesters in Hama and elsewhere, who were now demanding Bashar’s departure more fervently than before, the Tlasses were symbols of the regime they loathed.
Manaf was told that the Hama protesters were being joined by people from all over central and northern Syria: Aleppo, Homs, and his native Al-Rastan. Bashar had hoped that the sweeping military campaigns—starting with Daraa in late April—would have quelled the protests. As concessions, he had pardoned prisoners and tasked a committee led by his vice president, Farouq al-Sharaa, to prepare for a conference with opposition figures to discuss his proposed reforms.23 But few if any of them had sway over the street protests.
Before his mood was soured by the takeover of Hama’s Asi Square by protesters, Bashar had been in good spirits. He had resumed his tennis routine and was sleeping well at night and spending more time with his wife and children. He thought his tanks and soldiers had squelched the uprising and he was also emboldened by assurances he received from his two most important allies, Iran and its proxy, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. They were going to defend him—no matter what. They just needed him to remain strong and steadfast.24
“Imagine what would happen if millions of… Arabs and Muslims… gather at the border with occupied Palestine at the same time and we want to cross the fence. What would Israel do? What would Obama do?” said Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah the previous month (May 2011), threatening to harm Israel if the United States were to go after Bashar.25
Nasrallah spoke after Hezbollah and the Syrian regime had encouraged and assisted Palestinian activists and protesters in both Lebanon and Syria to approach the high-security border with Israel to mark the anniversary of what Arabs call the nakba, or catastrophe—the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. In Syria, protesters breached the fence and crossed to the Golan Heights, prompting Israeli soldiers to shoot at them. At the Lebanese border at least ten were killed, and another four in Syria.26 The incident in Syria was unprecedented; the Israeli-Syrian border was the calmest front in the Arab-Israeli war.
The violence achieved several purposes for Bashar, Hezbollah, and Iran. First, the attention it generated deflected from Bashar’s bloody campaign against protesters who derided him for using the army and tanks against them while not daring to do anything similar to Israel, which the regime claimed to be the eternal enemy. More important for Bashar and his allies, it was a message to the Americans and Europeans: expect regional mayhem if you pressure the regime and back the protesters.
Nasrallah said that the incident “terrified” Israel, which he claimed was conspiring to oust Bashar to undermine his “axis of resistance” alliance with Hezbollah and Iran.
It was far from the truth. Israel had over the years come to greatly value and appreciate the predictability of the Syrian regime when it came to the Golan Heights, despite Bashar’s alliance with Hezbollah and Iran. In fact, days before the border breach, Bashar’s cousin Rami Makhlouf suggested that any attempt to get rid of Bashar would be detrimental to Israel’s security. “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,” Rami told the New York Times.27 “Don’t let us suffer, don’t put a lot of pressure on the president, don’t push Syria to do anything it is not happy to do.”
In addition to exploiting the highly charged issue of Israel’s security and its very existence, Bashar and his allies could also count on emerging discord among regional and world powers over how to deal with the cataclysm called the Arab Spring.
The United States and its allies, the same countries that had embraced Bashar starting in 2007 and had held out hope that he could stop the killing and institute real change a few months into the uprising in 2011, were now adopting a more confrontational and threatening posture toward his regime.
Britain, France, and the United States believed that only pressure could restrain Bashar’s devastating force against protesting communities. They tried to gather support for a UN Security Council resolution against the Syrian regime, but Russia, a Security Council member and traditional ally of Syria, signaled that it would veto the resolution.28 The Chinese, who were averse to Western powers interfering in what they saw as the internal affairs of sovereign states, were also likely to side with the Russians. Moscow was already feeling betrayed on Libya. A UN resolution passed earlier in the year in relation to Libya was used by Western powers as cover for massive military support for armed opposition groups seeking to topple Gaddafi, something outside the mandate to protect civilians, according to Russia.
Bashar also found solace in the many fissures among regional powers.
At the start of the Arab Spring, ultraconservative and politically cautious Saudi Arabia watched the revolts with alarm, while the Al Jazeera news channel owned by its neighbor Qatar played a decisive role in mobilizing the masses. The Saudis sheltered Tunisia’s strongman, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, and his wife when they fled their country in the face of street protests, and they looked on with horror as another longtime protégé, Hosni Mubarak, was cast aside in Egypt even as Qatar keenly sought to shape the aftermath in both countries by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Islamic movement. Qatar’s emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani told Western leaders that these were enlightened Islamists who believed in democracy, and that giving them a stake in political life was the antidote to the kind of Al-Qaeda-like extremism that obsessed the West.
While Saudi monarchs blamed Bashar for killing their man Hariri in Lebanon in 2005 and were perfectly content to see the Assad family toppled and replaced with friendlier, more-pliant leaders, the whole spirit of the Arab Spring was anathema to them. What if their own repressed subjects took to the streets and demanded the same freedoms and rights? That’s what people were singing for day and night across the border in Yemen. Saudi Arabia also fretted about its archnemesis Iran, claiming it was behind events in nearby Bahrain, where protests led mainly by the long-oppressed Shiite population besieged the Saudi ruling family’s fellow royals. The Saudis sent troops to crush Bahrain’s budding protests.
Saudi Arabia was already anxious about Iran’s expanding role in Iraq, where Obama planned to withdraw US troops and thereby leave the strategic and oil-rich country in Iran’s clutches, as far as the Saudis were concerned. Israel had many of the same worries as Saudi Arabia, especially concerning Iran and the situation in Egypt.
But by late spring 2011, Qatar’s emir, Hamad, believed in his great power to influence and conceive outcomes in all countries touched by the Arab Spring—and Syria would be no exception. Qatar was hardly a beacon of democracy and human rights—a small sheikhdom whose natural gas fortune is controlled by a ruling clan that has little tolerance for criticism and dissent at home—but the country’s maverick emir saw in the Arab Spring a tremendous opportunity. For years Hamad, who had deposed his own father in the mid-1990s, had been on a quest to turn Qatar into a hefty regional player and upstage his larger and more established neighbor, Saudi Arabia. Hamad was going to ride the Arab Spring wave and benefit from it—not fight it like his fellow autocrats.
In Libya, Qatar joined the Western-led coalition to topple Gaddafi, supplying cash and planeloads of weapons to anti-Gaddafi forces and sending its own commandos.29
Hamad began to turn against Bashar after having invested billions to prop him up and passionately advocated for reengagement with him following Hariri’s murder in 2005.30 The emir had tried for several months into the Syrian uprising to convince Bashar to make bold political reforms and even forge a reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, which Hafez had decimated in the 1980s. Shortly after Bashar’s bloody crackdown on protesters in March 2011, the emir sent his son the crown prince to Damascus. At one point during his meeting with Bashar, Prince Tamim went to the window and pointed to a slum visible from the presidential palace. “Do you see this area?” he asked. “We are ready to help you turn it into the most prestigious neighborhood in Damascus… but please don’t let the situation explode any further.”31
Bashar assured Tamim that things were not as bad as they were being portrayed in the media, but soon thereafter he launched the military operations of April and May against protesting areas. By June, Qatar had lost patience with Bashar, and the emir told one visitor that he was determined to do everything possible to remove the Assads from power, including gathering international support for a Libya-style intervention in Syria, if need be.32
The emir’s ally, Turkey’s Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also sent top officials to urge Bashar to exercise restraint on the streets—but to no avail.33 Like the emir, Erdogan saw the Arab Spring as a unique chance to boost his country’s standing in a region it regarded as its backyard. Turkey also had a big stake in Syria, with which it was bound by blood ties, a shared border, and trade.
As these countries plotted their next moves in Syria, Bashar was nonetheless feeling buoyant and confident; Iran vowed never to abandon him and Russia shielded him at the United Nations. In early June 2011, Bashar wanted to send a message to his enemies that he was Syria’s master and intended to remain so. He received Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt, who came to see him after meeting Qatar’s emir.34 The shrewd and pragmatic Jumblatt had had his ups and downs with the Assads ever since he accused Hafez of assassinating his father during the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s.
Jumblatt and an associate arrived at the official People’s Palace on the Mezzeh plateau. Bashar was waiting in one of the more intimate reception rooms in what was otherwise a cavernous marble fortress. He looked rested and refreshed.
“Do you want press?” Bashar asked after greeting his guests.
“Yes, sure, yes,” responded Jumblatt nervously.
They sat on damask cushions on carved wooden sofas as a photographer snapped photos.35 Bashar wanted to show that he was not isolated and was receiving guests regularly.
“Did you notice that there were no longer any billboards of my father in Damascus?” asked Bashar with a smile after exchanging some pleasantries.36
“Yes, you’re right,” said Jumblatt, not quite knowing what to make of the remark.
But of course it was Bashar’s way of saying: I am paramount leader now. “What’s on your mind?” he inquired.
“You want me to speak frankly and in confidence,” said Jumblatt.
“Yes, speak, do not worry,” Bashar assured him.
“What’s the story of Hamza al-Khatib?” asked Jumblatt.
The round-faced thirteen-year-old boy was among those who had been arrested in Daraa by regime forces at the end of April. He died from severe torture by the mukhabarat, and his mutilated body was handed over to his family a month later. His penis had been cut off.37
Hamza became a symbol of the regime’s brutality around the world.
“We did not torture him,” insisted Bashar. “I met his parents and told them that his body was bloated because he was starting to decompose.”
“But did you kill him?” asked Jumblatt cautiously.
Bashar went on, rather breezily, to explain the shortcomings of his security forces and their lack of training in dealing with protesters on the streets and those taken into custody. The regime’s story was that Hamza had died in street clashes and then his body remained at the morgue in Damascus for a month.
Eager to change the subject, Bashar told Jumblatt how some of the delegations he had been meeting with included a group of actors and directors who were worried about his personal safety. Bashar claimed that they told him they were hearing rumors that he was not in control of the situation—something no Syrian would ever dare say to the regime head, and Bashar knew that Jumblatt knew this. It was a roundabout way for Bashar to make a point. “I told them, ‘Do not worry—I am in full control but I need people to fear me,’” said Bashar.38
“But people must love you, not fear you, Mr. President,” said Jumblatt.
Bashar, however, knew perfectly well that in his regime the love, adoration, and support of most Syrians—the majority of people and not just the committed and diehard loyalists—was as fictitious as Syria’s presidential referendums and popular rallies. Fear was the only real thing. The so-called gray majority, which was in the middle and had not yet decided to join the protesters, must once more fear him and his regime. The fear barrier breached by the courageous protesters and activists had to be reinstated.
“It’s either us or them—we are going to fight until the end,” Bashar’s longtime mentor and adviser Mohammad Nasif told Jumblatt, who dropped in to see him after his meeting with Bashar. The massive protests sweeping Hama in June 2011 only affirmed to hardened old-timers like Nasif that what they were dealing with was no different from what Hafez had faced three decades before.
It was a rejection of any compromise or real political solution as advocated by the United States and its Arab and European allies.39 It was a pivotal moment for Bashar; Iran and Russia were telling him, “Don’t worry, you can count on us to help you crush the protests and confront these outside powers,” yet he still needed to make sure that everyone in his regime was on board for the battle.
By then there was no doubt in Manaf’s mind that his childhood friend had in fact been the one leading regime hard-liners from the start, not the other way around.40 But there was one impediment Bashar faced, at least initially, in proceeding full throttle with his plans to crush the protests. Not everyone inside the regime was ready to embrace the fight-until-the-end game plan. Manaf was not alone in seeing matters differently and advocating for a less bloody approach. Manaf perceived nuances and differences of opinion even inside the mukhabarat. Cracks, dissent, and vulnerabilities within the regime were starting to become evident to Bashar, too. Army desertions and the first few televised public defections by junior officers like Manaf’s cousin did not help the cause. In Jisr al-Shughour, soldiers aided townspeople in the bloody attack on the mukhabarat contingent there.
Most troubling of all, though, was the internal feud that played out between his minister of defense, Ali Habib, and Jamil Hassan, who headed the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, one of the four mukhabarat agencies.41 Habib believed that it was a mistake to mobilize tanks and soldiers to quell the protests, while Hassan, considered a regime fanatic, wanted to use any and all means to obliterate protesters. Hassan had been a first lieutenant in Hafez’s forces when Hama was massacred in 1982, and he yearned for similar solutions under Bashar.42 The standoff between Habib and Hassan came to a head in mid-June 2011, when hundreds of thousands of protesters occupied Hama’s main square.43
Habib started ignoring instructions by Hassan and Bashar’s cousin Hafez Makhlouf to issue formal orders to mobilize army units or provide military resources like tanks, artillery, and heavy weaponry for operations against Hama and other protest towns and cities. Habib was a major general and a decorated veteran of the Syrian military, but at the end he served at the whim of the Assad and Makhlouf families and powerful mukhabarat chiefs, even though some were technically lower in rank.
Habib often delayed implementing orders coming from mukhabarat chiefs and at one point checked himself into the hospital for forty-eight hours, pretending he had a medical emergency in order to avoid the orders. When Hassan called him at the hospital, Habib said, “It’s not my business, do what you want.”44
There was also a rare challenge to the mukhabarat from one of Habib’s subordinates.
Hassan called the commander of military police, Abdelaziz al-Shallal, and asked him to dispatch one of his units for the assault that Hassan and others were preparing on Hama.
“I don’t take orders from you, I report to the defense minister,” said Shallal bluntly.
“Okay, we will settle this later,” replied Hassan menacingly.
It was not only Habib; Manaf felt that there was reticence by several senior regime figures to fully embrace the solutions of the Assad family and the hard-liners. They included Bashar’s vice president, Farouq al-Sharaa, military adviser and former defense minister Hassan Turkmani, and to some lesser extent the head of the mukhabarat’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Abdul-Fatah Qudsiyeh. Manaf also sensed doubt on the part of Bashar’s brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, who held the formal position of deputy defense minister. He was demoted and sidelined by Bashar in 2008 but then asked to help when the uprising started. His wife, Bashar’s sister Bushra, returned from the United Arab Emirates.
Still, nobody dared voice or share their concerns openly. Everyone believed that they were being watched. Extreme caution and self-preservation became the absolute priority for Manaf and all top regime officials, notwithstanding their misgivings. “People started having double personalities to protect themselves,” said Manaf. “It was hard to figure out the truth. You could not tell who was with you and who was out to entrap you.”
Bashar was leading the hard-liners and wanted to decimate the protests, but he had to proceed cautiously, given the internal discord. He had to appear as if he were taking a middle-of-the-road position and catering to both camps in his regime: the bloodthirsty hard-liners and those favoring less violent solutions and accommodation. This was amply reflected in a carefully staged appearance at the University of Damascus. Bashar told students that the majority of protesters were people with “legitimate demands,” and he even spoke of the need to heal the wounds and reverse the injustices of what he called “the dark period” of the 1980s, when his father crushed opponents and committed the Hama massacre.45 He spoke about reconciliation and dialogue.
At the same time, Bashar spoke of traitors, criminals, and Islamist extremists among the protesters, whom he accused of allegedly shooting at the protests to foment strife. In a forewarning that also seemed like a veiled threat, Bashar mused about the number of alleged fugitive criminals wanted by the regime, which he put at 64,000 and then said, “I was shocked by the number… a real army. Imagine the extent of harm they could cause if even just a few thousand decide to bear arms and become saboteurs.”
In another nod to hard-liners, Bashar used what would become a characteristic medical/clinical analogy when he likened his opponents to “multiplying germs.” “We can’t completely eradicate them [the germs], but we can work on strengthening the immunity of our bodies,” he said.
Of course, nowhere in Bashar’s speech was there any mention of the fact that he himself had just pardoned more than a thousand battle-hardened and radicalized prisoners as part of a broader amnesty. With the help of his mukhabarat, many had previously gone to Iraq after the US-led invasion to join Sunni insurgent groups, including Al-Qaeda’s affiliate.46 Upon their return to Syria, many were rounded up and imprisoned so that Bashar could show the Obama administration that he was fighting terrorism. Among the released prisoners were several Hama natives that Khaled al-Khani knew personally and had learned over the years that they had become members of Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq.47 Fresh from prison, they joined protesters in Hama in the summer of 2011 and were among the first to advocate bearing arms in the name of protecting civilians from the regime.
To Manaf, Bashar’s actions were a deliberate effort to poison the protest movement and validate early lies that fundamentalists and extremists were its driving force. Manaf also witnessed something more sinister. The mukhabarat was making weapons, mainly assault rifles, available to elements of the protesters through infiltrators and agents. Leading this effort were people like Rafic Shehadeh, who commanded the powerful Unit 293 of the Military Intelligence Directorate and was eager to outdo his direct boss, Qudsiyeh.48 The emergence of weapons among protesters meant the regime could claim that it faced an armed insurrection requiring military intervention.
In tandem with this, Bashar hunted all articulate, moderate, and secular protest activists in much the same way that Hafez had gone after the professionals and non-Islamist opponents first, people like Khaled’s father, Dr. Khani, and Omar al-Shishakli.
In late spring 2011, Khaled was on the run from the mukhabarat. His neighbors warned him through coded messages not to go to his apartment or art studio. He hid in Damascus and then Hama. The memories of Hama and what had happened to his father and Shishakli had already traumatized Khaled for life. He could not live through such horror a second time. He wanted the regime to fall and was ready to do everything to achieve that, but the regime’s increased viciousness petrified him. Violence was not his domain. After Bashar issued the amnesty, Khaled left Syria for Germany under the pretext of participating in an arts festival there. His visa was for two weeks. After four days in Germany he went to France, even as protests in his hometown Hama swelled. “Bashar is going to fall within a week, and I am returning to Syria,” he told friends in Paris.
Back in Damascus, Manaf could no longer bear Bashar’s lies, logorrheic discourse, and his “philosophical and theoretical musings,” as Manaf described them, but self-preservation required that he maintain a connection to his childhood friend.49 Bashar and the shared history of the Assads and Tlasses were his only protection in the face of threats from Bashar’s brother, Maher, and cousins the Makhloufs. Maher was already calling Manaf “the mutinous brigadier general.”
Manaf, who had been brigadier general for eight years, was passed over in the round of military promotions approved by Bashar in the summer of 2011. It was both a snub and a warning to Manaf.
Still, Manaf and the Tlasses had to demonstrate to Bashar that they were not abandoning the regime—despite their grave concerns over his actions including in their hometown, Al-Rastan. Both Manaf and his father worried about the repercussions for them from the mounting defections by junior officers in their family and hometown, and so they tried to show Bashar that they were doing their utmost to stop this.
One thing was certain: Manaf and his father were drawing a big distinction between Bashar and regime founder Hafez. Their allegiance to Hafez was and would remain absolute.
Both Tlasses, father and son, eagerly supported Bashar’s ascension to power, because this was Hafez’s wish. But over the years they saw Bashar’s shortcomings and the influence accumulated by his brother and cousins and allies such as Hezbollah and Iran. Hafez would have never allowed it, the Tlasses believed. Their dissatisfaction also stemmed from the fact that the others had gained the power due to families like theirs, which Bashar often called the “old guard.” The Tlasses’ concerns over Bashar’s leadership came into sharper focus at the start of the uprising. Their feeling was that Hafez would have never let the situation deteriorate so badly or let hard-liners hijack management of the crisis facing the regime. Paradoxically, there were still those among the hard-liners who viewed Bashar as too soft compared to Hafez, whose response, they thought, would have been swifter and more lethal.
Even as her husband’s loyalty to his old friend wavered, Manaf’s wife, Thala, tried to maintain a line to Bashar. She hoped that it would shield her husband from his enemies inside the regime.
They e-mailed and sometimes talked by phone, and in June Thala broached a subject dear to Bashar’s heart: using the media to alter facts about his bloody crackdown. Thala suggested that his media and political adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, and Ibrahim Daraji, an articulate and young international law professor, be interviewed by a French-language website called INFOSyrie. She said that questions could be e-mailed to them in advance.50 The website was established by a French far-right, neo-Nazi figure who had founded a public relations firm funded by the Tlasses in the 1990s and awarded a contract by the regime.51 The website claimed that it wanted to “re-inform” the francophone public about events in Syria.”52 Bashar welcomed Thala’s suggestion.
But even as they sent signals of their allegiance, Manaf and Thala realized that the confrontation between the regime and its opponents was going to be bloody and prolonged. Regional and global powers were staking their positions, and the Tlasses would have to choose sides if they wished to remain in Syria. The United States and Europe were already indicating they would not just stand by while Bashar continued to slaughter protesters. Manaf was aware that Qatar had started facilitating the defection of army officers by offering safe passage for them and their families out of Syria, as well as protection and financial support once they were out.53 There were already whispers about defection plans by officers and soldiers in Manaf’s own Republican Guard unit.
Manaf and Thala decided to meet secretly with their friend, the French ambassador Éric Chevallier, for the first time since the start of the uprising in March 2011. Chevallier was told to go to an office on the second floor of a building in central Damascus, and he was then taken to another floor, higher up, where Manaf and Thala were waiting for him.54
Manaf recounted to Chevallier his efforts to avert the use of force and initiate dialogue with protesters, especially in suburban Damascus, with what he thought was the blessing and support of Bashar, and how he had been undermined by hard-liners every step of the way, and then felt betrayed by Bashar. “Bashar fooled me,” Manaf told Chevallier. “I am no longer involved in anything—I am out.”55
He did not tell Chevallier that he wanted to defect, but the diplomat sensed that abandoning the regime was very much on Manaf’s mind. Talk of rifts at the palace was real after all, thought Chevalier.
Days later, Bashar and Asma showed up at the Jala’a stadium in Mezzeh, near Manaf’s home. They were dressed casually in jeans and light jackets. The regime had come up with the idea of sending what it said was the largest Syrian flag ever made to Aleppo, a city that had seen few protests so far; it was presented as a spontaneous youth initiative on Facebook.
A few dozen young men and women gathered on the stadium’s turf.56 “Abu Hafez, Abu Hafez, Abu Hafez!” they shouted and pumped their fists in the air as they saw Bashar and Asma arrive. They raced to hug and kiss Bashar. He smiled nervously as he was mobbed and was then handed a little girl to hold.57
“Make way, guys,” shouted one of the organizers.
Then Bashar and Asma got on their knees with the others and began rolling the giant flag so that it could be sent to Aleppo, as cameramen snapped photos.58
“One, two, three—Bashar, you’re my life,” loyalists chanted. “Bashar, you’re after God.”
The following day, on July 1, 2011, several hundred thousand people gathered in Hama’s Asi Square for what was described as the largest protest since the start of the revolt in March. Some estimated the crowd to be as big as half a million.59
Activists decided to call that day of protests in Hama and across Syria the “Friday of Erhal.” Across the Middle East, Erhal (“Leave”) became a rallying cry among protesters who were challenging their autocratic rulers and ordering them to step down from power—to leave. Hama’s revolutionary singer Qashoush rocked the city with his new chant “Yalla Erhal Ya, Bashar!” (“Come on, Bashar, Leave!”).
“Bashar, despicable one, the blood of martyrs is not cheap, pack your stuff in a plastic bag… Come on, Bashar, leave!” chanted Qashoush as he stood on a makeshift stage next to Asi Square’s clock tower.60
“Yalla erhal ya, Bashar!” repeated the crowd with zeal.
People carried balloons and waved flags. There was Syria’s current red, white, and black flag as well as the old green, white, and black one that predated the Baath coup in 1963. There were also Turkish flags to show appreciation for Erdogan’s warning to Bashar to not repeat what his father did in Hama in 1982.
That day, protesting Hamwis declared their city liberated from the regime. Some went as far as to curse Hafez’s soul.
Bashar’s response came a few days later. The city was besieged by regime forces that included army soldiers, mukhabarat units, and the pro-regime thugs known as shabiha. The defense minister, Habib, wanted nothing to do with the operation. The pro-Bashar forces amassed on the city’s outskirts began raiding neighborhoods and arresting dozens of male children and adults. At least sixteen were killed within forty-eight hours.61 Protesters could see tanks and heavy weapons being brought to the city, but they were determined to hold on to their square, their patch of liberty and freedom of expression. So they blocked all roads leading to the central Asi Square with large dumpsters, concrete blocks, and flaming tires. Some of the more militant elements among the protesters, especially those newly released from prison by Bashar, spoke of the need to take up arms to defend Hama against an imminent massacre.
Meanwhile in Damascus, the French ambassador Chevallier met with fellow Western diplomats, including US ambassador Robert Ford, for lunch at the Italian embassy.62 Chevallier and Ford argued it was crucial to go to Hama. They wanted to use the freedom of movement they had as diplomats to assess the situation for themselves. Syria’s foreign ministry had informed all diplomats that they must get permission for travel outside the capital; it wanted to restrict them to fact-finding trips that the ministry itself organized for them. Chevallier and Ford, however, felt that it was important to show solidarity with the large number of protesters in Hama who were coming under assault by the regime.
Chevallier and Ford went separately to Hama. They liaised with opposition activists in the city who found a way to get them in despite the large presence of regime forces, mainly on the southern and western sides.63
On the night of July 7, 2011, Chevallier, a physician by training, made it to the Fida al-Hourani hospital where many of the casualties had been taken. He was cheered by staff and patients. In the emergency ward, he met two teenagers who had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. As he came out of the hospital he was met with more cheers and applause.
“Vive la France!” shouted a crowd that had gathered outside.
People on motorbikes insisted on escorting his car to the Afamia al-Cham Hotel, across the river. He passed through Asi Square, where protesters were determined to stay to defy the regime forces closing in on them. They set tires on fire and put other obstacles on the roads leading to the square to try to impede these forces. The protesters removed them briefly to let Chevallier’s car through.64
The next day, heartened and feeling protected by the two ambassadors’ presence, people gathered once more in large numbers in Asi Square. Many welcomed the Western visitors with roses. Chevallier left but Ford stayed on a bit longer and was mobbed by cheering crowds.65
“Tell Ford he has twenty-four hours to apologize to the Syrian people because he breached diplomatic norms—otherwise I am storming the US embassy,” Mohammad Jaber, who was working for Bashar’s brother, Maher, told prominent Damascene businessman Emad Ghreiwati, whose brother headed the Syrian American Business Council.66
No apology was forthcoming. Jaber and busloads of his men and regime loyalists, including some women, besieged both the American and French embassies. By then Jaber was starting to organize his shabiha thugs into what was called Popular Committees. They gathered with posters of a smiling Bashar dressed in military uniform and flags of Syria and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. One placard read: “To whom it may concern, Syria is the resistance capital.”67
The US embassy is within walking distance from Bashar’s residence, and the French embassy is not far either. This was the capital’s most secure area, bristling with armed agents protecting the perimeter of Bashar’s compound. Nobody interfered when Jaber’s men scaled the US embassy’s wall and attempted also to smash their way into the French embassy. They were turned back by guards at both sites, with those at the French embassy firing shots in the air. The exterior of both embassies was vandalized.68 “Fuk off Amrica,” they scrawled in red on the US embassy wall.
The ambassadors’ visit to Hama bought protesters an almost twenty-day reprieve. On July 29, 2011, hundreds of thousands amassed in the city center. Large banners covered the facades of government buildings around the square. The banners bore slogans addressed to Bashar: “Game Over” and “Leave, Syria is more beautiful without you!”
Two days later, Bashar ordered the army to crush the protests and reclaim control of the rebellious city. By then Bashar had removed his uncooperative and reticent defense minister, Ali Habib, and put him under house arrest.69 Tanks and armored vehicles thundered into Hama’s city center from all directions. A few of the protesters who had taken up arms in the weeks before tried to resist. Others raided armories of neighborhood police stations and took weapons to try to defend their city.70 But they were no match for tanks and antiaircraft guns. Several hundred people, the majority civilians, were killed.71 Within five days, Bashar retook the city that had been passionately chanting for his ouster.
“There’s no God but Bashar,” his forces sprayed on the walls of the city his father had massacred three decades earlier.72