Cockburn Patrick - Syria : descent into the abyss 2011-2014 : an unforgettable anthology of contemporary reportage

SYRIA: DESCENT

INTO THE ABYSS

2011-2014

An unforgettable anthology of contemporary reportage

Published by Independent Print Limited Copyright Independent Print Limited 2014

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-909668-20-1

SYRIA: DESCENT INTO THE ABSYSS

FEW OBSERVERS expected the Arab Spring to bring happiness to Syria. Even in 2011, the waves of popular self-liberation rippling through North Africa and the Middle-East seemed destined to crash uselessly against the rocks of an immovable Ba'athist regime. When a few brave protesters took to the streets, the assumption was that they would be crushed by President Assad's security services, as ruthlessly and decisively as previous dissenters had been crushed under Assad's father.

But the protests gathered momentum. Against the odds, rebels made inroads. There were desertions in the armed forces. The world condemned the violence of the state's response so forcefully that the status quo seemed untenable. For a few heady weeks, a Syrian Spring seemed a possibility.

Then reality reasserted itself. The regime was indeed too powerful and too ruthless to be overthrown by mere popular fervour. This was a struggle that would be decided by weaponry and brutality.

Both were in plentiful supply - and not just from the regime. A popular uprising became a civil war, which in turn merged bloodily with a wider regional and sectarian conflict to which no end is in sight.

This remarkable anthology of reportage chronicles more than three years of spiralling violence and despair in Syria: atrocity heaped upon atrocity, misery upon misery, and all - so far - to no avail. No faction is without blood on its hands; no crime, from torture to poison gas, has been deemed taboo. The dead are too numerous to count: the UN mid-2014 figure of 190,000 is one of the more conservative estimates. As for the living, close to 3 million refugees have fled Syria, with millions more internally displaced.

How did we come to this? There is no better way to answer this question than to revisit The Independent's published accounts of the unfolding tragedy. Spearheaded by peerless and profoundly experienced correspondents such as Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Kim Sengupta, our coverage has led the world in its fearlessness and insight.

Syria's tragedy is not yet over. Perhaps it has not even reached its final act. One day, however, historians will ask themselves how an ancient and proud civilisation was reduced to ruins, a century-old regional settlement reduced to irrelevance and a generation of innocent civilians condemned to live in a vicious, desolate war-zone.

When they do so, the testimony and analysis in this volume could provide a valuable starting-point.

2011

th March 2011

PROTESTS SWEEP THROUGH SYRIA AS TROOPS OPEN FIRE

By Patrick Cockburn

SYRIAN TROOPS opened fire on demonstrators yesterday as protests swept the country on an unprecedented scale with tens of thousands challenging the rule of the Assad family. In the southern city of Deraa, where the protest movement started a week ago, troops shot at demonstrators who set fire to a statue of the late President Hafez al-Assad, whose son Bashar has ruled Syria since 2000. Demonstrators first demanded reform of the regime, but increasingly call for a revolution.

In the town of Sanamein, near Deraa, security forces are reported to have killed 20 people after Friday prayers yesterday as they protested against the regime and killings by the security services.

In Hama, north of Damascus, people ran through the streets shouting freedom is ringing out! - a slogan used in popular uprisings in the Arab world over the past three months.

Police with batons reacted harshly and swiftly in breaking up small demonstrations in the capital Damascus including one in the ancient Umayyad Mosque. Dozens of people who chanted slogans in support of the people of Deraa were dragged away by police. In Tel, near Damascus, a thousand people rallied, calling the Assad family thieves and there were rallies in most other Syrian cities.

The focus of the Arab uprising has switched to Syria over the past week after police arrested a dozen children in Deraa for writing anti-government graffiti on a wall.

Security services have tried to crush the protesters by force, killing 37 of them in a mosque on Wednesday. State television made the unlikely claim that the mosque was the headquarters of a kidnap gang and showed machine guns leaning against a wall and a table with neat bundles of bank notes on it.

The protests are the biggest domestic challenge to the Assad family since the early 1980s, when President Hafez al-Assad crushed a Sunni revolt centred on Hama where some 10,000 people were reputedly killed in 1982. The current protests are secular in tone, but Deraa and Hama are Sunni strongholds resentful of the influence of the Alawites, a Shia sect, to which many members of the ruling elite belong.

The government showed some restraint early yesterday during the funerals in Deraa of those killed by the security forces, but later there was the sound of gunfire. The police had dismantled many checkpoints and were at first trying to keep a low profile. Journalists were escorted out of the city.

Witnesses said that 50,000 people had rallied in Assad Square in Deraa chanting Freedom! Freedom! as they waved Syrian flags and olive branches.

Bashar al-Assad has offered concessions to the protesters such as ending the state of emergency that has existed since 1963, greater press freedom and promising a pay rise to public employees. Previously he had expressed confidence that the protests would not spread to Syria from Tunisia and Egypt, apparently believing that his familys nationalist credentials and confrontations with Israel and the US would immunise Syria from unrest. The Baath party has held power in Syria since 1963. The government said that all those arrested in Deraa since the start of the protests had been released, but at the same time a human rights agitator, Mazen Darwish, was arrested.

th March 2011

DESPERATE ASSAD TRIES TO BLUNT UPRISING WITH NEW PROMISES OF REFORM

By Patrick Cockburn

PRESIDENT BASHAR al-Assad is facing the greatest challenge to his familys rule over Syria since his father took power 40 years ago, as protests sweep through the country.

Yesterday the government deployed the army for the first time, in the main port of Latakia. Authorities admitted that 12 people had been killed and 200 wounded over a two-day period in the north-western city, but said all who died had been members of the security forces or their attackers.

Speculation was growing last night that President Assad would announce widespread political reforms in a bid to bring the disturbances under control. His adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, told Al Jazeera that the emergency law in existence since 1963 and hated by Syrian reformists for the far-reaching powers it gives to security services would be lifted, but did not give a timetable.

In another bid to placate protesters, authorities released the political activist Diana Jawabra and 15 others. They had been arrested for taking part in a silent protest demanding the release of a dozen schoolchildren, detained for writing anti-regime graffiti.

While Mr Assad may offer concessions such as ending emergency law, releasing prisoners, giving the press greater freedom and legalising political parties other than the ruling Baath party, such changes are unlikely to be seen as credible as long as the same people run the army and the security forces. And the ever-creeping death toll is increasing calls for an end to the regime.