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Kurds Caught Between Islamists and the PKK in Syria

Syria Deeply — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:25:14 +0000

As part of our collaboration with Syria Deeply we are cross-posting a series of articles that capture civilian voices caught in the crossfire, along with perspectives on the conflict from writers around the world.

Azaz, Syria: The Turkey-based Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), and its Syrian political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), have stumbled into a precarious situation. They are now administering a string of towns and cities along the Turkish border after the Syrian army handed the PKK control of the territory last summer.

What should have been a dream come true for Kurds—who have long been discriminated against in Baathist Syria and aspired to have an independent state—quickly devolved into an even more oppressive replica of their lives in Assad’s Syria.

Bewar Mustafa, second left, Shawqi Othman, second right, and other Saladin Brigade members. Credit: Mohammed Sergie

“We can’t open our mouths,” said Walato, a pro-democracy activist from Jinderes, a Kurdish town north of Aleppo. “We have less freedom under the PKK than we had under the Assad regime.”

For activists like Walato who live in PKK-controlled towns, coexisting with the new rulers means operating with even more secrecy than under the Assad regime. Kurdish towns like Afrin, Amouda and Kobani came out in large protests early in the Syria revolution, but these displays of defiance and solidarity with the rest of the country have become rare.

“The PKK even erased the word ‘Yasqut’ [meaning in Down with Assad] from the walls,” Walato said. “Activists are often harassed for nonpolitical efforts like organizing humanitarian aid.”

(For more on the Kurds in Syria click here for a recent study by the International Crisis Group and here, here for two reports from the Henry Jackson Society).

Commanders of the Saladin Brigade, which fights in Aleppo, weren’t surprised when the PKK ended up controlling Kurdish towns. The PKK was the only group with the arms and organization able to fill the vacuum. But there was a reason it was so organized. Colonel Shawqi Othman, who heads the Saladin Brigade, said the PKK was supported by Hafez al Assad, in order to fracture Syria’s Kurds and to pressure Turkey by bolstering a secessionist current within Kurdish politics.

There is also a sectarian reason why the Assad regime backs the PKK, according to Othman. Most of the PKK’s leadership hails from a rarified minority: Alawite Kurds. Abdullah Ocalan, one of the PKK’s founders who was based in Syria and is now in a Turkish prison, is an Alawite, Othman said. Kurds make up more than 10% of Syria’s 23 million citizens, and the vast majority of them adhere to a moderate version of Sunni Islam.

Although PKK officials deny ties to the Assad regime, its top spokesman was cagey when asked where their weapons come from, according to a Washington-based researcher who covers the group closely and met with its leadership recently. Syria Deeply wasn’t able to interview PKK officials on the ground inside Syria.

Though Kurdish activists and rebels say they are stifled and threatened by the PKK, they have decided not to confront the group in order to avoid an internecine conflict among the Kurds.

Tensions remain high among armed factions, however. Captain Bewar Mustafa, the first Kurdish officer to defect from the Assad regime, and a founder of the Saladin Brigade that fights in Aleppo, says he’s on the PKK’s hit list, as are some of his comrades.

Othman says his group will try to avert bloodshed with its ethnic brethren and are willing to wait for the local Kurdish population to turn against the PKK. It might not be too long now. Walato says that the excesses of the PKK, such as enacting taxes or tying prisoners to poles in town squares for days at a time, are denting the group’s popularity. Still, the threat from extremist Islamists has forced Kurds to be cautious of withdrawing support for their most powerful militia.

“If the choice is between Jabhat al-Nusra or the PKK, I will always choose the PKK,” said Mohammed Suleiman, an activist who works closely with the Saladin Brigade and who calls the PKK mercenaries and criminals.

Kurds have a reason to be worried. Deadly clashes between rebels and PKK fighters erupted in Ras Al Ain last week. Islamists brigades used a tank to the shell the city (video below), which borders Turkey in Syria’s northeast and has been under nominal PKK control for months. Kurdish and Arab opposition leaders urged an end to the violence and Abdulbaset Sieda, a Kurd and former president of the Syrian National Council, said that fighting in Ras Al Ain is futile because it won’t settle the war against the Assad regime.

This isn’t to say Kurds don’t have some admiration for the Islamists. Indeed, the Saladin Brigade has fought with some groups. Sharvan Ibesh, a doctor who operates surgery centers in Aleppo and near the Turkish border, credited Jabhat al-Nusra with maintaining momentum and repelling regime counterattacks in Aleppo.

“The Islamist brigades are carrying the heavy load in the fight,” he said.

(Corrections: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the string of towns in Syria are controlled by the U.S. and the PKK., and also stated that Ocalan was Syrian. He is Turkish. The mistakes are corrected in this version).

Conversations: The Mayor of a Christian Syrian Village

Syria Deeply — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:58:56 +0000

As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and Abu Skandar, the mayor of Al Ghassanieh, a predominantly Christian village just past Jebel Akrad in Latakia province.

Jabal Al Akrad, Latakia. Photo credit: Shaam News Network

During the past few weeks, the village has been caught in the crossfire between the FSA and regime forces. After a round of coffee on chairs positioned in the middle of the street (cars aren’t driven here anymore), Abu Skandar brings me to see a TNT canister resting in a field. We walk the town’s deserted streets as he points out the fresh bullet holes and rocket craters that dot many of its houses. He tells me, nervously, that the village is just one kilometer from the ever-shifting line that marks regime-controlled territory.

We are also joined by his friend, Abu Ahmad, the leader of the FSA’s local El Wad El Haq battalion. Both discuss the spike in violence and sectarian tension along the hard-hit border between Latakia and Idlib provinces.

“I’m a Christian. There’s a big difference here between Christians and Alawites. Alawites are special cases, they are always number one,” Abu Skandar says.

“Before the war, we had a good relationship with them. We also had a good relationship with the Sunnis. There’s an old Arabic saying: ‘we sleep in the same house.’ There were a few Alawite families here before, but when we started the revolution, we threw them out of this village.”

Why, I ask.

“The Alawites are all out for our houses, they’re all out for money.”

There has been a rapid escalation in violence, leaving Abu Skandar hoping for a swift resolution to the conflict.

“One house was bombed here a month ago, and in the last two days, rockets have started falling here and in a [nearby] village. I hear that the man in charge of that village was killed. But no one is scared, we want just to finish this regime.”

“[The FSA] is trying to push civilians to make a civilian protection council,” adds Abu Ahmad. “We want to protect our villages. Our problem is the sky. Here, and throughout Syria. There is nothing we can do. The situation here is a lot worse than Jebel Turkman because here, we are mostly just 2.5 kilometers from the regime.”

Abu Skandar casts an eye upward on the cloudless blue day. It’s perfect weather for an aerial assault — when it rains, war planes don’t tend to fly overhead.

“Maybe the helicopters will come today. Then I’ll want all of the public to know my story.” He says a member of the village was killed in the last month by regime forces, who are “beginning to shoot rockets into the church.”

On the street where we drink coffee, the occasional man goes by, the occasional boy pedals fast on a bike. For now, that’s all that’s left of his village.

How Many More Syrians Must Die?

Syria Deeply — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:22:29 +0000

Bessma Momani is a senior fellow at CIGI and Brookings Institution and an associate professor at the University of Waterloo. You can find her on Twitter as @b_momani. Momani shares her thoughts on the ongoing crisis in Syria here:

As a political analyst, I can comprehend the plausible geostrategic and political reasons to explain why, despite international recognition for the Syrian National Coalition, the reality on the ground will change little. And why, despite the over 60,000 Syrians killed, the red line for the international community remains the use of chemical weapons.

The use of chemical weapons sets a dangerous precedent in a region with significant stockpiles and plenty of conflict. By labeling this as the red line, international governments are trying to send a warning signal to all regional players about the boundaries of acceptability.

I can also understand the Obama Administration’s quick move to identify the extremist group, Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist organization. At one level, the move can be seen as a strategy to quell a testy Congress that had become obsessed with the government’s failure to predict a blowback of radicals in Libya who took the life of state department employees. Recognizing the Nusra Front as a terrorist organization, before the US government acknowledged the Syrian National Coalition as the recognized representative of the Syrian people, reassured Congress—and the world—that the Obama Administration would not ignore extremist forces.

At the same time, the US has resisted labeling the Assad army as a terrorist organization, a move that has enormous implications if there is a negotiated solution to the end of this crisis. The US government is keenly aware that it failed in Iraq by encouraging de-Baathification following the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Keeping the Syrian army off a terrorist list will allow some elements of the brass to play a “legitimate” role in a new Syria and encourage more defections within the armed forces and Assad regime in the coming months.

But, these so-called geopolitical explanations are also excuses for inaction.

Courtesy of Shaam News Network

The sad truth is that many more Syrians will die and the international community, including us analysts, will find plenty of reasons to justify inaction. None of these reasons will comfort Syrians who remain perplexed by why the world ignores their plight, day after day. Over half a million people have fled the country, an average of over 800 a day, with millions of others trapped and internally displaced. There is an unknown number of political prisoners, but estimates of 25,000 are noted, being held in Assad army camps. Many Syrians I’ve interviewed estimate that nearly 20 children have been killed nearly every single day in Syria over the past two years.

But, while the geopolitical considerations for inaction are many, reasons to act are plenty as well. Inaction can lead to long-term consequences. Thirty-six percent of the Syrian population are children under the age of 14, and 24% of the population is between the ages of 14-24, according to the World Bank. Not only is their education interrupted, but they are living without homes and with increased hopelessness. The long-term psychological damage on an entire generation of Syrians has yet to be played out.

Syria is being destroyed, one beautiful city after another, right before our eyes. Schools, hospitals, parks, private businesses, and entire public infrastructure are completely gone. There are fewer homes and places of work for Syrian refugees to return to, with each passing day.

Already, this instability is spilling into Lebanon. Already, this helplessness has taken root in extremism. It’s been too long that we’ve tried to justify our ‘Syria strategy’.

How many Syrians must die for the world to act?

Social Media Buzz: The Fallout of Assad's Speech

Syria Deeply — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:01:16 +0000

Millions of Syrians are using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype to disseminate and discuss the conflict. Each week our Mohammed Sergie monitors the online conversation in English and Arabic, pulling out the highlights in a feature called the Social Media Buzz.

President Bashar Al Assad gave a rare speech on Sunday, his first since June, igniting Facebook and Twitter discussions that provided a jolt to both his supporters and opponents. Assad reiterated his argument that there is no revolution in Syria and that those seeking his ouster are criminals and terrorists working for foreign enemies. He laid out a peace plan that echoed his stance for the past 21 months, refusing to engage the armed rebels and functionally insisting on staying in power.

The online discussion followed a predictable flow. Assad opponents dismissed the speech, pointing out that nothing new was said, while Assad supporters were invigorated, gleeful at the defiance of their embattled president.

Although the fate of Assad and his family’s decades-long rule remains the core demand at the heart of the Syrian conflict, the debate in Syria has touched on broader issues — none more sensitive and potentially deadly than the sectarian enmity brewing in the country. Subhi Hadidi, a prominent Syrian writer for the London-based daily Alquds Alarabi, sparked some testy exchanges this week.

It began when Hadidi said that Alawites should examine the roots of the violent behavior of some in their sects, a comment that was a reaction to the apparently endless stream of videos showing Syrian soldiers taunting and killing unarmed prisoners.

Many took offense to his statement, including Samar Yazbek, an Alawite writer who supports the revolution, and labeled him as sectarian. Yazbek asked why people fell silent after it became known that one of the alleged soldiers was Sunni. His response tries to clear up the point but its aggressiveness doesn’t seem to have been effective.

Asaad Abu Khalil, author of the Angry Arab blog and a fierce opponent of the Syrian revolution, linked to Hadidi’s tweetsand alerted readers to their “sectarian quality.”

The unmistakable signs of Islamism continue in Aleppo. The image below shows rebels emptying liquor bottles into a drain, a picture that has many liberal supporters of the revolution concerned that they may not be able to drink alcohol in a post-Assad Syria.

Conversations: A Road Trip to Idlib

Syria Deeply — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:09:37 +0000

Below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and a Syrian university student. She’s from a conservative Sunni family in Aleppo. She hopes to leave the country, but first had to get a passport from her family’s registered home address in Idlib. She told us her observations about the road between Aleppo and Idlib:

The driver took us to Idlib from all the “liberated” villages. We passed from a village called Kafar Halab, which has a big hill nearby. The landscapes there were amazingly beautiful. I want to buy a house there after the revolution..

There was graffiti everywhere we passed through. Some of the writings support the regime and others are supporting the opposition. Each one of them tries to erase the other one and write in its place. It is very childish. You can never trust anyone of them.

I saw the shamsin bread factory on my way and there was an unbelievable crowd in front of it. There were thousands of people fighting and pushing each other for bread. Then I saw the Magic Land restaurant complex. It has a billboard, that now reads “We are a nation whom Allah gave the pride of Islam”.

We passed from a Free Syrian Army checkpoint, and then we reach the Icarda intersection, where was located al-Nusra Front Islamic jihadist group’s checkpoint. Surprisingly, they were nice to us. Perhaps they saw my hijab and modest clothing and they respected that. We passed from Binnish and Taftanaz, both are targets of heavy aerial bombardments, however, life is still normal there and people seem not bothered at all from living under shelling. They are insisting on not leaving their homes. Some university student girls from Binnish joined our vehicle and told us their stories of how they are going to Idlib everyday for their lectures, fearing all the way that a shell, a barrel or a car bomb will take their lives…

Finally we reached Idlib, but my passport wasn’t ready yet. I wandered around and had a tea near the souk. They have a nice souk (covered market), which is exactly a smaller copy of our old souk in Aleppo. There were a lot of people and life was bustling there, just like it used to be in Aleppo before the big fire in the old city and the historic souk two months ago. I bought a Derby chips (a very famous Syrian produced potato chips) and the seller started to chat with me when he heard my Aleppo accent.

He asked me about the situation in Aleppo and I replied that it is still not good. He replied saying that when they were being shelled in Idlib we were making barbeques and eating kebab in Aleppo! I got mad and left the place.

Aleppo, Syria. 28th December 2012 — People gathered around a bakery in the street. — After the loss of water, fuel and electricity cuts in areas controlled by the Free Syrian Army, Syrians try to resume normal daily life in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War. (Source: Mike Blacktoviche)

I bought some bread from there to bring it home with me, because there is no bread in Aleppo. Before, we used to bring home sweets and other luxuries from our trips, but now a piece of bread is more valued than anything else… I hold the bread with both hands the entire road as if it is a treasure. On my way back to Aleppo, in the front seat of the bus there was very obsequious man, who used to greet every checkpoint we were stopped by. He sucked up to them whether if they were army or rebel checkpoints.

I cannot say how my heart was tearing apart on the road every time I saw these people and our beautiful country burning everywhere. I am sick of all the propaganda, applause, analysis, and everything from both sides. What I saw on the road was enough for me.

These people want to live!

An Alawite Nurse in a Sunni Hospital in Syria

Syria Deeply — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:01:21 +0000

Traveling through rebel-held parts of Latakia province, in the Jebel Turkman region, we met 34-year-old Umyara, an Alawite nurse working in a field hospital. In Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, Sunnis and Alawites have lived side by side for centuries. Now, with intense fighting in the Alawite-led regime and the mostly Sunni-led Free Syrian Army, many fear the animosity could spread to civilians across the religious divide.

The nurse, who asked us not print her full name or photograph, speaks on the stairwell outside the hospital’s new surgery room, built with donations from two American medical NGOs. She met us alongside Dr. Mohammed, the Sunni orthopedic surgeon, who serves as her boss and the chief of this hospital.

The hospital has only been open for 20 days; the surgical unit is located underground for safety, as the area is heavily bombed and rocketed by regime forces.

But the fact still stands that should Assad be removed from office, Alawite civilians like Umyara could face reprisals from angry Sunnis. “I am surely afraid for my safety after Assad falls,” the nurse says, despite assurances from local FSA leaders.

For now, within the hospital walls, Dr. Mohammed doesn’t see a distinction.

“Most of our patients are Sunni, but it’s no problem with us if someone who comes in is an Alawite…this is why she came to work with us.”

Every day, he says, his staff see 20 to 35 patients, most of them injured in the war. A few days ago, he treated a patient with cancer and has seen others with diabetes and hypertension. But the hospital doesn’t have the medicine or resources to properly treat those patients – part of what he describes as a crisis in specialized care, one that now affects nearly every Syrian city.

When we met, the doctor had just performed surgery on a young rebel fighter whose palms had practically been blown to pieces in an explosives accident.

The nurse says that as a Sunni fighter, his treatment would have been varied, at best, at her old regime-supported hospital. “I am working here now to help people, all people. Before, the treatment was specialized just for the Alawites.”

At the Assad Hospital, they might treat Sunnis, “but afterwards, the Assad forces come and get them and take them away. This has happened since the beginning of the revolution, since March of last year. I feel better now,” working here.

The Last Survivors of Aleppo’s Infantry School

Syria Deeply — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:34:17 +0000

Rural Idlib, Syria – Adel and Ahmad, two 24-year-old college graduates from Idlib, are survivors of a showdown between the rebels and the regime. When the battle began for a military school near Aleppo, they were inside, serving time in the Syrian Army.

They had been on both sides of the revolution, joining in peaceful protests against the Assad regime, but they had refused to join in the armed conflict against the government.

“It was impossible for me to shoot at the army,” said Ahmad, the more loquacious of the two. Syria Deeply is withholding their surnames and photographs at the request of their parents, who still live in the regime-controlled Idlib city.

In May 2012, they were nabbed at a military checkpoint and were forced to fulfill their mandatory military service, which both had been deferring. Syria’s army was in dire need of boosting its officer ranks, Ahmad said, and placed the two educated young men in the infantry school on the outskirts of Aleppo.

Idlib, Syria Revolution Memory Project

Roughly 500 cadets were in Adel and Ahmad’s class, 90 per cent of them from the Alawite sect, according to Ahmad. Adel and Ahmed, on the other hand, are Sunni. Training for the first two months involved fitness exercises and classroom instruction, but that was interrupted when rebels swept into Aleppo late in July and Syria’s largest city was plunged into brutal urban warfare.

Most of the cadets were dispatched to man checkpoints in the city. Adel and Ahmad, the lucky ones, were ordered to guard the three square kilometer campus. “The Alawites, even those who were our friends, seemed to be afraid of us,” Ahmad said. “When we went on patrol, especially when it was one Alawite and one Sunni, they used to watch us more than the fence ahead of us. You could sense that they didn’t trust us.”

Most of the supervising officers were Alawites, Adel said, and the commanders told cadets that the fight was against armed terrorists, many of them foreign, who were bent on destroying the country. Unable to call their parents or watch foreign news channels, the cadets had no way to verify this assessment. “They would insult Sheikh Arour,” Adel said, referring to the firebrand and sectarian Sunni cleric who has a TV show on a Saudi satellite station.

http://youtu.be/SHxq4VDw2lM

(A Syrian officer defects from the infantry school).

As war raged in Aleppo and news trickled into the infantry school of comrades who died or fled the battle, cadets from all sects quietly talked about plans to defect and speculated on when Assad would fall, Ahmad said. By November 1^st, the battle reached the infantry school.

Rebels implemented a siege of the campus and methodically forced Syrian soldiers and officers to contract into defensive positions, in what was known as the “Battle of the Trenches.” Colonel Ali Saeed, the school's commander, cancelled all training and classes to focus on breaking the siege. According to Ahmad, he explained the retreats as tactical and promised cadets that the military’s best tanks and Republican Guard units were just hours away from destroying the “terrorists.”

“They lied to us,” Ahmad said. “By November 18, the siege was tighter and we knew that we were done. Soldiers and officers began to defect every day.”

Food sources were depleted and cadets began to eat powdered mixes used to make Tang-like drinks. Water was short. Bread was flown in, but the commanding officers kept the bulk of the food for themselves, Ahmad said. “Even the Alawite students were hungry,” he said.

On December 15, rebels surged into the final stronghold left at the school. Ahmad and Adel used the confusion to flee, disobeying orders from the commanding officer, Major Ibrahim Haidar, to fight to the death. The rebels provided food and water to the survivors, Adel said, and took them to Aleppo for a week before sending them back to their families in Idlib.

http://youtu.be/KK8u6lEZmLU

(Rebels use a tank to shell the infantry school).

One rebel commander, Abu Furat, who died that day after gaining control of the school, had previously broadcast a public plea to the parents of the cadets, urging them to defect. But Ahmad’s mother said she never heard the message, which is unsurprising given the lack of power and unreliable Internet services in much of the country.

Ahmad and Adel’s friends in rural Idlib are now hardened fighters. One of the rebels said he was glad that his friends are alive and is certain that they weren’t criminals, but he doesn’t accept them as revolutionaries. He called them selfish, complaining that they stayed in the Syrian Army because Ahmad was scared of losing his job, while Adel wanted to be near his new fiancé.

Both men are thinking about leaving the country, but their families no longer have the resources to help them start a new life, and competition for jobs in neighboring countries is fierce. They are relatively safe for now, filling their nights by serving food and tea to rebels who were trying to kill them only a few weeks before.

Social Media Buzz: The Crimes We Don’t See in Syria

Syria Deeply — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:26:53 +0000

Apart from the relentless rounds of global diplomacy, recent headlines on Syria have focused on the rise of extremist brigades calling for an Islamic state and fears about the fate of Syria’s minorities. They have overshadowed episodes of civilian suffering, like the estimated fiftieth air strike of a bakery in a Sunni neighborhood. That’s led to complaints across Syrian social media that some crimes are being amplified while others are ignored.

Some of those online voices are calling attention to one visual element often overlooked in the press: videos leaked from the Syrian military. Just as rebels record some of their worst behavior, Syrian soldiers and pro-Assad militias have documented their brutality. By some act of defiance or deliberate messaging, those images make their way to the Syrian public. These leaked videos show how soldiers stomped on unarmed protesters and lit unguided ”barrel” bombs with their cigarettesbefore tossing them out of a helicopter. One video that went viral was allegedly shot in Al Hiffa, a Sunni town in the Alawite mountains that was shelled by the Syrian military in June after rebels took control of the town. A Syrian soldier confronts civilians in the street.

It’s a short scene (above). A man is kicked and punched. Three women, including a teenage girl, were a few meters away. The soldier turns his attention to them, slaps the girl and rips off her veil, while hurling obscenities at the women. He tells the man that he plans to violate his sister. Another soldier mocks the women and calls them jihadis.

Some of Jihad Makdissi's direct messages to Syrian activist Rami Jarrah on Twitter

In the realm of high profile defections, conflicting stories have emerged about Jihad Makdissi, the deputy foreign minister and spokesman, in the weeks since he left Damascus. Did he defect, is he on a three-month vacation, did Hizbollah nab him in Beirut or is heproviding intelligence to the U.S. in Washington? As we wait for the man to speak for himself, here’s a purported private Twitter conversation Makdissi had with Rami Jarrah, a well-known activist, who blogs under the pseudonym Alexander Page.

Makdissi gives Jarrah a glimpse of his mindset, sympathetic to the “heroic actions of the Syrian people.” Jarrah tells Makdissi how he was detained by the security apparatus in Syria and slapped with a travel ban years before the revolution. He urges the diplomat to defect or take a real stand with the people. More of the interaction is posted at @AlexanderPageSY. Global Voices Online covered the story here.

Our last snapshot of the week examines the now familiar tensions between Islamist and more secular opposition groups in rebel controlled territories in Aleppo. Protesters gathered on Friday at their usual spot in Bustan Al Qasr, a working class neighborhood in Aleppo that has been shelled repeatedly since July. They start singing songs of revolutionary defiance. But fans of the more extremist Islamist fighting groups refused to join the secular chants and tried to force the crowd to repeat their own calls for an Islamic state. An argument ensued.

Despite the reports of live fire used on the crowds, no serious injuries were reported. But activists condemned the violence and equated the Islamists’ behavior with the Assad regime’s crackdown on peaceful protests.

Islamic chants in Al Bustan

Continuing on the Islamist theme, pro-Assad outlets and anti-Islamists have been circulating videos of alleged protests in Aleppo that repeat the chant: “The Free Syria Army are thieves, we want the official army.” The first video was broadcast on state TV, though the audio seems to be looped and doesn’t match the video. Then the same audio seemed to be dubbed onto a protest in Aleppo from April 2011 and re-released as anti-rebel demonstration in December 2012. All is fair in the virtual war for Syria.

Yesterday, I Defected from Assad's Army

Syria Deeply — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 09:46:03 +0000

As part of our collaboration with Syria Deeply; we are cross-posting a series of articles that capture civilian voices caught in the crossfire, along with perspectives on the conflict from writers around the world.

Below is a conversation between News Deeply and a 20-year-old man who defected from the Syrian Army’s Sulas Military Base and joined the rebel side. At his request, we will not use his name in this article.

We met at a house used by the FSA deep in the mountains of Jebel Turkman, in Latakia Province. While bombs rattle the windows he shed light on the complicated mindset shared by many of Bashar al-Assad's soldiers: young men, forced into mandatory military stints, desperately wanting to join the opposition.

“It's my first time seeing a journalist or an American,” he says shyly. “I've been in the Syrian Army for one year. From the first time I joined, I wanted to defect—when I saw the FSA growing. Before I joined, I thought the revolution would end and Assad would win.”

He says one shabiha [regime thug] minder was assigned to each new soldier, to ensure that they don't defect. It comes after a recent stream of defections that apparently rattled the army's confidence.

“The soldiers, they're scared of the FSA. A lot of them would like to defect, but the shabiha, they stay with us, they watch us like security so we don't go.”

The destruction of Douma, Damascus. Courtesy of Shaam News Network

The young soldiers hardly spoke of it among themselves.

“I would only talk about this with my family. I couldn't speak of it with the others, though we all wanted to leave. My family is in Damascus, and they are all with the revolution. They are happy I left the army.”

He never wanted to shoot to kill the rebels he secretly supported, and says some of the army's soldiers came up with tactics to avoid causing serious harm.

“I would never do it [shoot to kill]…I'd shoot into the air, shoot everything but the fighters. A lot of people do that—the guys watching don't notice.

“The officers have power and they keep saying, ‘we'll be successful, we'll go back to our houses [once we win]’. But the fighters, they know it's coming close.”

He served most of his army time in Idlib, and was stationed in the mountains of Latakia for the final two months. In that time, he says, “I never had a vacation. I never went to town.”

Before he was brought in for our interview, I'd been concerned about my safety in speaking with him. How could the FSA battalion leader who introduced us guarantee that his new fighter wasn’t actually a double-agent, informing on us to the regime? “I have spoken with his father in Damascus,” the leader told me. Trying to assure me, he said that given the security at the regime bases, and based on the physical terrain, only the most faithful of men manage to escape. He said “it is very, very difficult to defect.”

“Some Hope for a Solution in Syria” – Michel Kilo

Syria Deeply — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:19:10 +0000

Michel Kilo is one of Syria’s famous dissidents, a political opponent of President Bashar Al Assad. He rose to prominence inthe Damascus Spring, a brief flourishing of political freedom and expression in 2000.

Kilo left Syria eight months into the revolution and now lives in Paris with his family. He answered questions from Syria Deeply via Skype. For more on his story we’ve included a link to a video interview about his time in prison, jailed for his prominent political dissent.

SD: Are you officially backing the Syrian National Coalition? What do you see as their strengths and weaknesses?

Kilo: I’m not a member of the Syrian National Coalition, because I think its weakness lies in the exaggerated representation of the Islamic movement. It does not represent the various trends of the opposition forces, especially democracy and secularism.

SD: When you look at the state of the war in Syria, what do you see?

Michael Kilo

Kilo: I see a slow shift in the power relations between the opposition and the regime, with a possibility of many surprise twists. That includes desperate operations [by the Assad regime], such as the use of internationally banned weapons, as it loses control of more Syrian land. Fighting has also arrived in Damascus, encircling the main centers of power.

SD: Do you have any hope for a negotiated solution? What is the best-case scenario?

Kilo: Yes, I have some limited hope of a negotiated solution. Some members of the system have disassociated themselves from the Assad regime and extended their reconciliation to the opposition, accepting a transition to a democratic system.

SD: How do you keep Sunnis and Alawites from fighting each other? Is there any way? Any hope?

Kilo: I do not know how we can prevent sectarian clashes without a national program that brings in all parties. This integrated program does not exist today, since the opposition had missed the opportunity of drafting and implementing it [early on]. Today I think we need a kind of program, that will encourage everyone to collaborate in a joint national project, in order to cut the route to a sectarian conflict or at least reduces the possibility [of it erupting].

SD: Are there members of the current system that you think could and should stay on in a future Syria?

Kilo: Yes, there are people in the system who can play a role in the future of Syria…some of those who are now in power, especially those who are defecting from power and Assad’s family to join the people.

SD: What is holding up the Assad regime today?

Kilo: The resilience of Assad’s military strength comes from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian support and the lack of a critical western position against it. That enables them to play that supporting role without real impediment, with a green light that allows Assad to oppress people and destroy Syria.

SD: Do you think the Assad regime would really use chemical weapons for its political survival?

Kilo: Yes, there is no doubt that he would use all kinds of weapons, including chemical weapons, because he does not respect the lives and rights of human beings. Otherwise he wouldn’t have destroyed his country.

SD: How do you think Assad will exit the picture?

Kilo: My fear is that we will move from a crisis to overthrow the regime to a new crisis, extending civil war and chaos, political and armed. Plus, we shouldn’t forget that Syria is destroyed, and much of the people are homeless, hungry, or displaced, and this atmosphere will encourage chaos.

SD: What is your biggest fear in the coming phase in Syria?

Kilo: Assad wants to make a decisive victory over his people, this is the goal of the war waged since nearly two years ago. It excludes all kinds of political solutions that had been offered by the opposition. He fancies that he can still win the war.

SD: What does the international community need to do for Syria?

Kilo: The international community should develop clear, practical and applicable positions to stop the killing in Syria and work on a political solution to the crisis without hesitation. [World powers] have demonstrated their inability to do anything, abandoning their responsibilities under the pretext of a weak opposition and divided Syrian society.

SD: If you could tell US President Obama to make one change on Syria policy, what would it be?

Kilo: I’ll tell him committed to what I said repeatedly, that U.S. policy must be based on respect for human rights for people, everywhere.

SD: Should the international community enforce a no-fly zone over northern Syria? Should the world intervene to take out Assad’s forces from the skies?

Kilo: But I do not think we need it. The Syrian people have proved over the past two years that they can [defend] their homes without external interference and are supported by the minimum of weapons needed for victory. They no longer depend on foreign countries to get their freedom. They believe that Western countries don’t want Assad to leave, and that he’ll stay until he destroys the whole society and what holds it together.

An Alawite Outcast: How One Syrian Girl Lost Her Mother

Syria Deeply — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:13:07 +0000

Loubna Mrie paid a steep price for her place in Syria’s revolution. As an Alawite who took a stand against President Bashar Al Assad, she pitted herself against her community; many Alawites have remained staunchly behind Assad, as the leader of their sect and the protector of their privileged position of power.

From the start of the uprising, Loubna’s parents took opposite sides: her father and uncles stood with Assad, while Loubna and her mother supported the growing protests.

It was a position Loubna’s father made it clear he wouldn’t tolerate: he demanded her loyalty to the Assad camp. In August, Loubna left her hometown of Latakia, in western Syria, fleeing across the border to Turkey. Her father kidnapped her mother and threatened to kill her as punishment. When Loubna refused to return her father followed through on the threat. Her father killed her mother, and cut her off from the life she had known before the uprising.

Loubna is now a filmmaker with Basma, a media activist group. She travels around Syria with a camera, chronicling the revolution on film. We met up with her in Gaziantep, Turkey, to talk about life and war in Syria. Below is a portion of that chat.

SD: What was it like in Latakia at the beginning of the revolution?

Mrie: It started like every other city in Syria. The demonstrations just had the normal, peaceful slogans like, “we want better schools”, “we want better jobs”, “we want democracy”. We didn’t even say the line “al shaab yureed isqat al nizam”—“the people want the regime to fall”.

SD: Were there many Alawites protesting?

Mrie: No. There were hardly any. Latakia is full of Alawites, and most of them were supporting the regime. We had just a small slice of society that was against the regime, but they didn’t go to demonstrations because they were so afraid. From day one, the regime was trying to convince people that this is not a revolution–it’s just terrorists or an Islamic movement against you.

SD: When did it all happen? When did your family fall apart?

Mrie: It happened last November. It was so traumatic, I couldn’t even think about anything. I felt guilt, huge guilt. I kept crying for three days, but then I realized that my mom didn’t die just to see me crying in my bed the whole day. So I chose the other option: to grab my camera and go back to Syria.

SD: Did she speak to you in the final month?

Loubna

Mrie: No, they kidnapped her in the middle of August. I didn’t hear from her again since then. Even my aunts and my grandma didn’t call me because they were so afraid that if the government found out they were in touch with me, they would harm them. Even my neighborhood and my old friends didn’t talk with me at all. They didn’t say we are sorry, we feel sad, we feel anything. They were saying that you deserve that. So it’s not only the loss of my mom that broke my heart, it’s also the attitude of the people that I was growing up with.

SD: What was your father’s argument?

Mrie: I have no idea. But maybe they were just convinced by these stories that the regime has been telling them: that this is an Islamic movement and they will kill you, and that you will lose everything. I think that for the big families– my family is one of them—they are so afraid. They know that when the regime will fall they will lose almost everything, because when the regime was in control they knew they could do anything and no one would punish them. They could do all the stealing, the cheating, the robberies.

For me, I understand the rich families or the families that are in power, but I don’t understand the poor families who support Assad. I remember my neighbors…they were so poor. I’d wonder, why are you supporting this regime? What did the regime do for you?

After a while we discovered it’s like a religious thing for them. In the last years, it was Hafez Al Assad, and now it's Bashar Al Assad The people worship these guys. Since the revolution began, I kept telling people that the protesters who are in the streets, the opposition, they are not monsters. I fled to Turkey with the help of the Free Syrian Army. They were so nice to me and they helped me. They knew that I’m an Alawite, but they didn’t kill me as the government is always trying to say.

SD: Do you think they are changing their opinion at all? Do you think the community is changing its opinion at all?

Mrie: Now they are stuck in the middle. They are losing their children in battle. They are losing their generation in the army. So they know that the government is not making any good for them, but at the same time they are so afraid of the opposition. We have Islamist elements in the revolution, and it makes them afraid. They are in the middle. They know that the government is not helping them, but at the same time they are afraid of the opposition.

I have been hearing stories about how, when the dead bodies come to the villages of the Alawites, all the village starts to curse Bashar Al Assad and curse his government because he’s not protecting them and they are sacrificing themselves for someone who is not making any efforts.

SD: From what we keep hearing, the regime has scared the Alawite community so much that they think it’s a battle for survival, life or their death. How do you think that you can calm down those fears?

Mrie: The problem in this community is that they won’t understand. All they know is that if you were an Alawite and you were against the regime, your punishment will be doubled.

If they just saw the stories and just turned on the TV and heard the slogans, they would know that this is not a revolution against them.

SD: Right now in the Alawite community, if somebody stands up, like you, and supports the revolution, what happens?

Mrie: They would kill his mom.

SD: They say that?

Mrie: No, but it happened to me. I’m not a terrorist. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just stepped out from my small community and said that I am with the revolution, I am with my people. I’m not going to witness all this bloodshed and keep quiet. It’s not a political cause, it’s now a human cause…this is a revolution for us, for our children, for our grandchildren.

SD: The whole regime could change tomorrow. Whenever it happens, how is this community going to react? How is Syria going to change if you have so much fear within the Alawite community?

Mrie: Right now we have liberated areas. There are Alawites in those liberated areas, so you can see samples of a new Syria, how it’s going to be. [The opposition is] not killing the Alawites, they are not kicking them out of their houses. We are all one. We are just a good community. Not because of Bashar Al Assad, because we are a peaceful people.

SD: There are some Alawites in the coalition, in the opposition. Are they people that the larger Alawite community respects? Are they people that can be leaders and help the community?

Mrie: The community hates the Alawites who are with Moaz al Khatib. They say these are not even Alawites—they are outcasts.

Loubna

I’m living the same situation myself. They broke into my house. They stole all my things. They stole my papers from my college. All I got from my Alawite community, who are supporters of the regime, was just bad words on Facebook.

SD: What did they say?

Mrie: That you deserved it and we wish that the same thing that happened to your mom will happen to you.

SD: There might always be some anger against the Alawites for standing behind Assad? What does that mean for Syria?

Mrie: In Syria the shelling is still going on and everyday we have more dead people. So we can’t really decide now the shape of the future Syria. We know that revenge doesn’t build a country, doesn’t build democracy. We went in the streets and made sacrifices to make a new country; revenge will not help us to do this. But we will punish the people who did make mistakes, who killed.

A New Year of Syria’s Turmoil

Syria Deeply — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 09:13:00 +0000

As the world celebrated the dawn of 2013, in Syria, the regime and the rebels were fighting for the suburbs of Damascus. President Bashar al Assad’s reportedly launched air raids that struck across the country, killing at least 160 people. Aleppo’s International Airport shut down, said AFP, reportedly after a rebel assault. The bottom line: more deadly fighting, with neither side really able to take control.

All the predictions for a new year in Syria have been bleak. Nearly 50,000 people have been killed to date; UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned another 100,000 people could lose their lives this year. Analysts say President Bashar al Assad could go on fighting for months. A round of voices, including rebels on the ground, tell us that even if the regime falls, it’s likely the fighting won’t stop. There’s been too much bloodshed, weapons flooding the country, and religious rivalries – Sunni vs. Alawite – turning into active fault lines.

Courtesy of Shaam News Network and the Syrian Revolution Memory Project

In major cities, food and fuel are scarce, people are going hungry and freezing inside there homes. Syria’s social fabric has been torn to shreds. Brahimi himself warned of a failed state in Syria – hellish conditions, if there’s no solution soon.

There’s a flurry of diplomatic headlines: hope for UN peace deal, Russia and the Assad regime talking about talks. But the rebels are skeptical, to say the least – it’s hard to negotiate, when each side harbors no trust for the other.

The trends we saw in 2012 have carried over: diplomats and world powers keep talking, people in Syria keep dying, and the chaos on the ground keeps mounting – in ways that get harder and harder to eventually control.

On Twitter, Syrians spelled out their anxiousness in their New Year messages.

Sarina tweets:

@xxSxx_S: It's very upsetting knowing that #Syria will again be going into the new year the way it is and not peacefully like it used to :'(

@Psypherize shares this photograph from a protest in Syria. The banner reads [ar]: Wishing you a happy new year where your sons are not killed. Wishing your children warmth and bread

The 47th shares similar sentiments:

@THE_47th: Happy new year, Syria.. Happy new year defenseless mothers, fathers.. Men & women in the struggle.. You are everything.. We are nothing.

Rafif Jouejati adds:

@RafifJ: Happy New Year! Come to the Damascus Suburbs, where there are fireworks every day of the year. #Syria

And Sakhr notes:

@syrianews: Excuse me if I don't celebrate a ‘happy’ new year. Save the party for when the war is over and Syria is free.

Cats, Guns and Spoils of War in Rural Idlib, Syria

Syria Deeply — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:49:08 +0000

Maaret Misreen, Syria–Omar, a former marketing student at a private university in Damascus, is living a life he never could have imagined. He’s originally from Idlib, one of Syria’s smaller cities in the heart of the northwest olive groves. Now he’s living in the line of fire as a media activist, documenting violence and escorting foreign journalists and human rights workers through Syrian terrain.

Citizen journalist Omar Abu Al Huda plays with his cat at his safe house in rural Idlib Credit:Mohammed Sergie

The role of media activists have bloomed in Syria. For scores of young revolutionaries, the most effective way to serve in the uprising is to essentially become an itinerant cameraman, capturing scenes in battle and uploading them to a global audience. Many become fixers for foreign news outlets as a source of income. Omar, for one, didn’t ask for money. He was just glad to have a professional journalist, especially one with Syrian roots, join him for the ride.

In Idlib province, where Omar does most of his work, the Assad regime has kept control of the major city, but lost the surrounding terrain. Its army, security forces and irregular militia members, or shabiha, have pulled back to the provincial capital. The city itself has swollen in number from 200,000 to 750,000, as rebels fighting for control of the towns and villages in Idlib have sent their families to relative safety. They can’t openly express themselves there, but they are free from the regime shelling and air strikes that pound the rebel held areas.

Omar, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Al Huda, has memorized the topography of Idlib province, charting its farm roads and villages during the revolution. A lively tour guide, he points out the landmark battles for military bases in the countryside and highlights the aftermath of MiG strikes and barrel bombs.

“You are riding in a martyr’s car,” he said, explaining that the hole in the driver’s seat was made by the bullet that killed his 27-year-old brother Mouayad Al Ghafeer in June. Omar used to have his own car, but it was stolen a few months ago by other rebels, or perhaps by a rogue armed gang. He’s constantly on the lookout for the vehicle, and his friends alert him when they see the same make and model on the road.

“It was my car from before the revolution that I paid for from the sweat of my brow,” he said.

Mouayad, his dead brother, is buried in his parent’s farm, located in a hamlet right outside of Idlib city. A few hundred meters away was the fresh grave of Abdullah Allawi, who was killed on December 27, hours before we arrived, after a firefight with Syrian army forces at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Idlib. The rebels said the army entered their stronghold in search of defectors and opened fire on Abdullah, who was 25 and had two children, and then retreated after the battle. The video of the fight is below

Omar documented the fight and compiled the footage later that evening, sharing the raw scenes with the rebels who huddled around his laptop – catching a glimpse of themselves in action. Moving from farm to farm along the same road where the deadly battle occurred hours earlier, the rebels had dinner at one of their family homes. Their fathers were beaming with pride over their sons’ perceived glory in battle.

The fathers tried to pipe in their advice on battle formations, like football coaches on the sidelines, but the rebels largely ignored the older men. A power line was downed during the fight, and the fathers talked about fixing it themselves. But there was no urgency because power rarely came through those lines as of late and service was largely cut off.

Rebels said they captured this truck when the Syrian army attacked their stronghold in late December. Credit: Mohammed Sergie

Shifting to yet another house (this one belonged to an officer in the Syrian army but is now considered the spoils of war) they used a satellite Internet connection to upload the day’s videos. The connection was faster than most cable services in the U.S. Rifles were cleaned and magazines replenished as the fighters and activists relaxed and discussed the future.

Omar was pessimistic about the future, predicting a cycle of violence after the fall of the Assad regime. “I want to leave Syria when its over and finish my studies,” he said. But he was also torn because of his connection to the land and people, a bond that has become deeper through his work, which not only depicts violence but also focuses on softer stories such as humanitarian conditions and the state of Syria’s antiquities.

Away form the violence, life is hard for all Syrians. Rebels and media activists, much as the rest of the population, struggle to find food and fuel at reasonable prices. Bread is expensive, but available.

Gas stations have long been shuttered in northern Syria. Credit: Mohammed Sergie

Prices for petrol, used for transportation and to generate electricity, fluctuate between $12 and $15 per gallon over a 24-hour period. Gas stations no longer exist in much of Syria – the lack of electricity renders pumps useless, while supply lines to refill them are highly unreliable. Fuel is now sold by street vendors and shop owners who have no other wares to offer. Diesel, or fuel oil, which was mostly used to heat homes, is now a luxury that most Syrians can’t afford. Nights are cold and dark, and frequently interrupted by the sounds of artillery shells lobbed from Idlib city into the countryside.

Some fighters rose early to join a battle nearby while others who kept watch during the night slept in for bit. After drinking a small glass of tea and playing with the house cat (which all Syrian rebels seem to keep), Omar holstered his pistol and repeated his dangerous daily cycle: travel, battles and Internet videos.

Social Media Buzz: Rebels Lose a Charismatic Commander in Syria

Syria Deeply — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 08:04:41 +0000

Rebels scored a major tactical victory this week, taking control of the Syrian Army’s infantry school north of Aleppo after many weeks of battle. Colonel Yusef al-Jader (alias Abu Furat), a former commander of a Syrian Army tank brigade, was the architect and leader of the operation. He died shortly after sharing observations on winning the battle.

In a buzz-generating YouTube video shown below, Abu Furat is quiet and contemplative, as he’s shown among lively fighters fresh off their victory. When the cameraman in the video asks him about his feelings he said: “I am bothered. These are our tanks and these soldiers are our brothers. I swear to God that every dead human I see from our side or theirs, I feel sad… Because if that bastard (Bashar Al Assad) had resigned, Syria would have been the best country in the world. But you’re holding on to the chair, you bastard, why?”

Abu Furat defected after he received orders to shell a village in Latakia earlier this year. He joined the Islamist Tawheed Brigade, the largest rebel group in Aleppo, and would often pop up in videos from the frontlines, always ready with an uplifting and compassionate message.

Prior to initiating the infantry school battle, he asked parents to call their sons inside the school and tell them to defect to the rebel side. He even provided two mobile phone numbers to facilitate communications. “We don’t want bloodshed. These are our sons and brothers,” he said, adding that there would be no discrimination in regards to sect or religion. (Hundreds ofsoldiers and officers heeded his call to defect before the final battle).

In previous appearances, Abu Furat, who served in Latakia for two decades, talks about his close ties to the Alawite community and difficult circumstances of soldiers. There was an outpouring of grief on social media networks, and blogs such as Free Halab and Darth Nader delved deep into archives to eulogize Abu Furat.

One of Abu Furat’s final acts was filled with symbolism. The veteran officer got into one of the tanks that he captured from his former comrades, and after a long career of pledging allegiance to Assad, he defiantly taunted Bashar and said: “Didn’t I tell you I was going to enter this school. I told you, but you didn’t believe. Here I am inside the school and now I’m taking your tanks.”

Sheikh Adnan Arour, the Salafi “televangelist” whose popularity and sectarian rhetoric raises many concerns about a post-Assad Syria, caused a stir this week when he said those who refuse to add “Allahu Akbar,” or God is Greatest, to the revolution’s flag are heretics. Activists responded by posting “I am a heretic” on Facebook and Twitter. Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a prominent Syrian writer, joined in and then elaborated on these very real tensions with Islamists in a later post.

A more creative activist responded by switching the stars on the flag with universally loved Syrian objects: a pomegranate, a hookah and shawarma.

As this column is intended to cover the social media activity of all Syrians, this week’s featured item from the pro-Assad side is by Rafiq Lutf. Although he is little known outside of Syria and rarely speaks to foreign press, Lutf has gained a large following among Assad supporters, undoubtedly helped by being given hours of airtime on Syrian state TV to interrogate prisoners and debunk the lies being told about the country.

So who is Lutf? A member of the Arab Journalists Union in America (which doesn’t appear to have any activity other than its association with Lutf). He first appeared on the scene in April 2011, revealing that activists and journalists conspire to organize protests, fabricate videos and attack the police through an online chat room called Paltalk. He receded from view for many months, only to return with a special on the secrets of Baba Amr, where he interviewed and extracted confessions from Ali Othman, an activist who helped foreign journalists cover the besieged neighborhood in Homs.

Lutf also said that a group of CNN journalists were involved in blowing up an oil pipeline in Homs. These days he is devoted to covering the victories of the Syrian army in Aleppo and it’s this work that’s created some buzz this week. Lutf, one of the Assad regime’s most prominent defenders inside Syria, came across the military statistics below.

A Light in Syria’s Internet Blackout

Syria Deeply — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:46:45 +0000

Patrick Hilsman has a light on in Syria’s internet blackout, which cut off the country from the rest of the world on November 29, 2012. The 29-year-old New York native landed in Aleppo to report on the conflict from the rebel-held section of the city, one of the city’s hardest hit neighborhoods. He hopped online and did a Google Hangout with Syria Deeply, describing his journey.

“Shells have been going off all around us today. A school nearby was struck by rockets off a MiG jet overhead,” said Hilsman, speaking on Skype from a safe house in Aleppo.

But while he was online, reporting on the escalation in regime strikes, Syria’s internet blackout was taking hold across the rest of the country. Syria cut off access to internet service, isolating the country from the worldwide web. Internet traffic in and out of Syria dropped to zero, shortly after 12 noon local time. Web-monitoring service Akamai confirmed. “Syria is effectively off the internet.”

Hilsman stayed online through a satellite internet connection, using equipment brought in from Turkey, paid for by a French supporter of the Free Syrian Army.

The internet shutdown is an unprecedented move in Syria, the latest salvo in the cyber war between rebel force and the government of President Bashar Al Assad.

“The regime has tried everything else…they have been increasing surveillance, increasing censorship. That’s why there’s this feel that this is a sign they’re getting desperate,” said Jillian York, an internet freedom expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

With the internet blackout, information from Syria has slowed to a trickle. Syrian cyber activist Dlshad Othman estimates that less than one thousand people were online on Thursday in Syria, out of a population of 20 million.

Syria Disappears From the Internet
This graph shows failed DNS queries to Syria Domains, a sign that the world cannot get through to Syrian internet users. (source)

That left journalists unable to report on the escalation in fighting.

“It’s a very serious problem. Journalists who don’t have this uplink are completely blacked out,” said Hilsman. As the blackout took effect, shelling intensified in Aleppo, which mirrored heavy fighting in other parts of the country.

The US government condemned Syria’s internet shutdown and said it is supporting the opposition with communication gear.

“They are all designed to be independent from and able to circumvent the Syrian domestic network precisely for the reason of keeping them safe, keeping them secure from regime tampering, from regime listening, from regime interruption,” said State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Othman, the cyber activist, says there aren’t enough of those kits in Syria to keep a significant number of people online. Plus, he says there are safety risks in using them to stay online.

“We’ve asked people to turn off their satellite connections,” said Othman.

“The regime may be scanning for those connections, so we’ve asked people to turn off their satellite connections to stay safe.”