Sunday, 26 June 2011
Syria caught in crossfire of extremists Pro-democracy protests are being infiltrated by armed jihadists, provoking the army into lethal gun battles
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Hala Jaber in Ma’arrat Al-Nu’man, Syria Published: 26 June 2011
Anti-government activists on the streets of Daraa (Anwar Amro)
They came in their thousands to march for freedom in Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, a shabby town surrounded by pristine fields of camomile and pistachio in the restive northwest of Syria.
The demonstration followed a routine familiar to everyone who had taken part each Friday for the past 11 weeks, yet to attend on this occasion required extraordinary courage.
The previous week four protesters had been shot dead for trying to block the main road between Damascus, the capital, and Aleppo, the country’s largest city. The week before that, four others were killed.
So enraged were the townspeople at the blood spilt by the mukhabarat, or secret police, that intermediaries had struck a deal between the two sides. Four hundred members of the security forces had been withdrawn from Ma’arrat in return for the promise of an orderly protest. The remainder, 49 armed police and 40 reserves, were confined to a barracks near the centre of town. By the time 5,000 unarmed marchers reached the main square, however, they had been joined by men with pistols.
At first the tribal elders leading the march thought these men had simply come prepared to defend themselves if shooting broke out. But when they saw more weapons — rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers held by men with heavy beards in cars and pick-ups with no registration plates — they knew trouble lay ahead.
Violence erupted as the demonstrators approached the barracks, where the police had barricaded themselves inside. As the first shots rang out, protesters scattered. Some of the policemen escaped through a rear exit; the rest were besieged.
A military helicopter was sent to the rescue. “It engaged the armed protesters for more than an hour,” said one witness, a tribal leader. “It forced them to use most of their ammunition against it to relieve the men trapped in the building.”
Some of the gunmen were hit by bullets fired from the helicopter. When it flew away, the mob stormed the front of the barracks.
A fierce gunfight ensued. Soon, four policemen and 12 of their attackers were dead or dying. Another 20 policemen were wounded. Their barracks was ransacked and set on fire, along with the courthouse and police station.
The officers who escaped the onslaught on June 10 were hidden in the homes of families who had been demonstrating earlier, the tribal leader said. He and his sons and nephews retrieved 25 men and drove them to the safety of their headquarters in Aleppo.
Last Friday I watched Ma’arrat’s latest demonstration for democracy. Only 350 people turned up, mostly young men on motorbikes who raced along the main road towards a line of army tanks parked in some olive groves. Among them were bearded militants.
They shouted provocation and were greeted with stoicism. Local people said the tanks had not moved since they had taken up position 10 days earlier.
The significance of the low turnout was not lost on the tribal elders who have been organising the protests, hoping political reform will bring government money to their neglected town of 100,000 people. Thousands of ordinary people who had backed them were now staying at home for fear that armed elements would pick another fight.
Reports of gunmen opening fire at protests in at least four towns appear to mark the emergence of a disturbing pattern in a country already torn by three months of protests that have left nearly 1,400 dead and spread trepidation among its neighbours, from Israel to Turkey.
Activists interviewed last week by The Sunday Times fear the gunmen — including some jihadists — could divide the opposition and give Syria’s security forces an excuse to continue firing on their own people.
I arrived in Damascus last Tuesday, the first western journalist to enter Syria with the authorities’ knowledge since the trouble began. Senior officials promised that I could move and report freely.
Putting this to the test, I talked to opposition figures and activists as well as members of President Bashar al-Assad’s government. I found a country whose vibrant people are increasingly determined to secure change and whose leaders seem unsure how to respond.
It was not through the government sources that I established the presence of extremists, but through opposition figures and the evidence of my own eyes.
In the souks and cafes of the ancient capital, life and work continue largely as normal. What struck me as new was that for the first time in more than 20 years of visiting Syria, I heard officials acknowledging their mistakes. The criticism ranged from government corruption to the security forces’ killing of civilians.
“They see demonstrators in the hundreds or thousands, chanting anti-government slogans or tearing pictures of Assad — something that only a few months ago would have landed people in jail — and they react heavy-handedly and shoot randomly,” a security official said.
Yet the killing continued during demonstrations on Friday, when 20 people died, most of them in the town of Kiswa, south of the capital. Two more died in funerals there yesterday and three in Damascus house searches.
The Kiswa demonstrators carried a large Syrian flag to show that they were combining protest with patriotism. Five young men led the chanting and witnesses said that, for a few brief minutes, the atmosphere was almost carnival-like.
But within half an hour security forces in leather jackets had arrived, carrying AK-47s. The protesters responded by cursing Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother, blamed for the worst atrocities of the crackdown.
Cries of “We’re not afraid of you” were followed by shooting from Kalashnikovs and pistols, according to one witness.
“In just a few minutes I saw 10 protesters on the ground, bleeding heavily,” he said. “I saw a child covered in blood.” Hassan Sheeb, 13, reportedly died of his injuries shortly afterwards.
Men screamed, “Oh, God,” while women watching from windows shrieked. “For a moment I felt I would die and would never see my family again,” the witness said. “I heard the bullets and smelt the tear gas. It was hard to live this moment as I watched three young people bleeding on the ground.”
The images of bloodied protesters being dragged away by their friends have caused even more international concern than similar scenes from other countries across the Middle East during the Arab spring.
Syria is pivotal to many of the issues causing instability in the Middle East. A staunch ally of Iran, it backs the militant groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza strip. Chaos in Syria, which borders Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, means trouble for the region. Last week the United States expressed concern over reports that Syria was moving troops to the border with Turkey, where more than 12,000 people have crossed to seek sanctuary from the violence.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said that unless Syrian forces immediately ended their attacks, “then we’re going to see an escalation of conflict in the area”.
As the funerals of Kiswa’s 14 dead got under way yesterday, the mood in the town remained defiant. Demonstrators rejected any suggestion that armed jihadists had provoked the security forces in protests there or anywhere in Syria.
“The regime keeps saying we are armed groups, Salafi groups or armed criminals,” said a 25-year-old university student. “I ask the world to come and see if we raise a knife or a stick in our demonstrations.”
Some opposition figures have reason to disagree. Mohammed Saiid Hamadah, 44, is a journalist who has been imprisoned for criticising the Assad government. Hamadah and his wife, Um Joud, were among the first protesters in Damascus. Her father has spent 31 years in jail for opposing the regime of the president’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled from 1971 to 2000.
Last month Hamadah visited Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, his home town, to check on its protest movement and found it had no leaders. He formed a group of intellectuals in Damascus to direct the protests and ensure they did not come under the influence of insurgents.
On June 10, the day of the attack on Ma’arrat’s barracks, Hamadah saw several large cars on the main road nearby. Each contained at least six men with guns, some speaking into walkie-talkies, he said.
After the trouble had died down, Hamadah was driving near the town at midnight when a blinding flashlight forced him to stop.
Armed men surrounded the vehicle and demanded identification, and then blindfolded him, tied his arms behind his back and his feet together and dumped him in a car boot. After a 20-minute journey, he was pushed into a building with steep stairs and was informed that he was in the hands of “Syria’s revolutionary interrogation section”.
Hamadah said he was hit on the back with electric cables and cursed as a “dog” for spreading his message about peaceful protest. “You tell people not to fight the army when they come,” his interrogator said. “This is not Syria’s army, this is Bashar’s army, and we intend to burn and kill it with fire and iron.”
Hamadah endured further torture. Burning plastic was dripped over his back, thighs and ankles. He was electrocuted through his toes.
Among the contacts in his mobile phone, his assailants found the name George. This led to another beating for mixing with “a Christian infidel, a crusader and a pig”.
Hamadah was warned that if he turned out to be from the Alawite minority that forms Syria’s elite, his baby daughter would be cut to pieces in front of him. Finally, he was hung upside down while electrodes were applied to his back and buttocks.
“The pain was excruciating and I would scream and lose consciousness, then be woken with cold water splashed on me. They forced my eyes open and threw salt in them.”
After seven hours Hamadah was driven back to his vehicle. This weekend he vowed to continue working for peaceful protest despite the threats of his captors, who he insists were jihadists. “I reject such an alternative for my future and the future of my children,” he said.
The threat of an upsurge in Islamic militancy is worrying those who have seen insurgents or watched videos purporting to show them beheading security force members and mutilating their bodies.
Some Syrian analysts believe the hatred of Sunni extremists for Alawites and Christians may ultimately fracture the country along religious lines, raising the spectre of a civil war like the one that devastated its southern neighbour, Lebanon.
What is certain is that most demonstrators are ordinary people with no time for religious extremists, and that much innocent blood has been needlessly shed.
On the bloodiest day of the uprising, three weeks ago, more than 50 people were killed by government forces in the city of Hama — the scene of a massacre of 10,000 to 20,000 rebellious members of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, when Assad’s father was president.
According to officials, the latest shootings happened after the security forces became sandwiched between two groups of protesters.
One official claimed that after one protester shot into the air, the security forces were ordered to hold their fire. But when further shots followed, allegedly directed at them, they fired into the crowd.
Two days later the officer responsible was arrested with 19 other members of the security forces. They remain in prison, and Assad is said to be determined they will face trial.
Last Monday, in only his third address since the trouble began on March 15, the president promised reform, a national dialogue, changes to the constitution and a clampdown on corrupt officials.
Nearly 1m supporters were said to have demonstrated in favour of his speech, while the protest movement rejected it outright. Others speak of wanting to change the system but not necessarily the leader.
Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, Syria has not seen the defections of senior members of its military, political or diplomatic establishments. Syrian analysts see no immediate threat to the regime, but failure to enact reform could encourage armed elements, including jihadists, to exploit frustration. The government’s more moderate opponents insist they would not allow security to break down in this way.
“If these reforms are not translated as promised within the next few months, we will bring the regime down,” said one man at a meeting of tribal leaders last week. The others nodded in agreement.
Islamists battle Syrian regime 26 June 2011
Islamists battle Syrian regime
Attacks by extremists on government forces in Syria has raised fears of a jihad against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad
Hala Jaber in Damascus Published: 26 June 2011
Syrian protesters hurl stones in a Damascus suburb (Syrian News Agency Sana)
Syria caught in crossfire of extremists
A series of attacks by extremists on security forces in Syria has triggered fears of an Islamist insurgency against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Heavily armed gunmen have opened fire in at least four towns in retaliation for the killing of peaceful protesters by Assad’s forces.
In one attack, four policemen died in the northwestern town of Ma’arrat al-Numan when militants with machineguns and rocketpropelled grenade launchers stormed a barracks.
The development comes after three months of a violent crackdown on demonstrators demanding greater freedoms and democracy. Nearly 1,400 people have died.
Opposition figures emphasise that most protesters are unarmed and have no allegiance to Islamist groups. But last week I saw bearded militants among protesters taunting soldiers in Ma’arrat.
Extremist clerics in Saudi Arabia have called for a jihad against the Syrian regime, and there are growing signs of weapons being smuggled into the country from Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.
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