Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (11 page)

Hassino joined millions of other Syrians in the uprising. He marched in demonstrations and participated in underground meetings. Dozens of gay men and lesbians were killed by security forces during the uprising, but most Syrians were unaware of their sexual orientation. Hassino eventually fled to Turkey because of his antiregime activism. He later got word that his Damascus apartment had been destroyed in a government attack. But he continued to write about his homeland in an effort to shine light on its gay subculture and to support the opposition movement.

Homosexuality remains a criminal offense in Syria despite promises of reform by President Assad when he took office in 2000. In March and April 2010, the government arrested groups of gay men who were having parties at private houses in Damascus. Three of the men were arrested on drug charges. Others were kept in jail for three months “until their families and everyone in the neighborhood knew,” said Hassino. After their release, “some had to flee Syria to other countries.” Hassino said that while gay men undergo harassment, lesbians face even more difficulties. When the family of one lesbian friend found out about her sexual orientation, they “forced her to marry an older guy,” recalled Hassino. “Now she's living like a maid, taking care of him and his children.”

In recent years, gays organized in an attempt to change the law and educate their fellow citizens. In 2009 some two hundred gays organized a group called I'm Just Like You. “I'm gay and I have a right to my opinion,” gays wrote in an appeal, as quoted by Agence France Presse.
“I belong to this society, and it owes me some respect. I'm gay—I don't come from another planet.”
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While homosexuality remains illegal and gays must lead double lives in Syria, a 2011 UN Office for Human Rights report noted that other Middle East countries are far worse violators of gay rights. Four Middle East nations proscribe the death penalty for homosexual acts.
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As a result, Hassino concedes, some gay men and lesbians still support Assad. They fear that if conservative Islamists come to power, they will face even more repression. Hassino wanted to reach out to gays who are pro-Assad or on the fence. He started an online, Arabic-language magazine,
Mawaleh
, which means “nuts”—a reference to the food, not a double entendre. The magazine attempts to reach lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Syrians regardless of their political views. “We all want a secular Syria,” says Hassino. And those who support Assad, he argues, “must have a backup plan” in case he falls.

But as the fighting intensified, the secular forces within the opposition were losing strength. And Hassino's views were very controversial, even among the secular opposition. Miral Bioredda, a secular leader of the LCC in Al Hasakah, a northeastern Syrian city, told me he personally views homosexuality as a private matter, “but Syrian society would say ‘no way' if gays rose to claim their rights. Developing a civil society will take time.”
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Others are less tolerant. Interviewed in Turkey, Nasradeen Ahme, who considered himself part of the secular opposition, told me: “If I was in charge, I would enforce tougher laws against homosexuals. If someone said homosexuals should be stoned to death as in Iran and Saudi Arabia, I would not object.”
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As extremist rebels seized control of some cities, persecution of gays intensified. Rebel leaders from Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, two groups affiliated with al-Qaeda at the time, made homosexuality punishable by lashing or even death. Some fifty gays were executed by those groups, according to Hassino.
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He had moved to the border city of Antakya, Turkey, but was forced to relocate to Istanbul after extremist Syrian rebels threatened to kidnap him. Hassino acknowledged that homosexuals face an intense challenge,
whoever wins Syria's civil war. “This is a bigger problem than the law now,” he said. “Social traditions are influenced by the religious traditions. Most people reject homosexuality.” Hassino argued that fighting against Assad and for the right to organize will benefit all Syrians and eventually help gays as well. “The intelligence services arrest people if they're discussing any kind of social or political change,” he said. “Without freedom of speech, we can't address these issues.”

People such as Hassino and the LCC leaders represented only one sector of the opposition in the early months of the uprising. A friend offered to introduce me to another kind of Assad opponent. He typified the shady characters who once supported the government and later joined the opposition. After a few hushed phone calls, we met in an outdoor Damascus café. We sat far away from other customers, and he positioned himself with his back to the wall.

He called himself “Bashar,” a pseudonym adopted to mock Bashar al-Assad. His demeanor was half-dissident, half-thug. He represented the opportunist opposition, someone who didn't initially support the uprising, joined it when it seemed about to win, and might just return to the Assad camp if the wind changed. With a thick neck and bushy mustache, Bashar looked like a bodyguard. That's because he used to be one. He was vague about whom exactly he guarded, but he bragged of close ties to Syrian security agencies and the police.

To prove his opposition bona fides, Bashar opened his camera phone and showed me photos of him with a very famous exiled Syrian leader. Other photos showed him at Damascus demonstrations. “I'm an agitator,” he told me proudly. When I pointed out the questionable practice of keeping a cell phone full of incriminating photos, he said, “I don't care.”
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Beginning in the fall of 2011, he said, some opposition activists armed themselves with hunting pistols and rifles, which they use when police come to make house arrests. He denied that demonstrators shoot during demonstrations: a foolhardy act given the superior weaponry of the army and police. Some sectors of the opposition were now carrying
out targeted assassinations of Mukhabarat (Military Intelligence Directorate) agents, informers, and government supporters, Bashar said during our interview in October 2011. Islamist forces in the city of Homs had set up roadblocks and created areas where the security forces dared not enter.

I obtained confirmation of the difficulties facing the Mukhabarat from an unexpected source. I visited a friend of a friend in Tartus, a city on Syria's western coast near Lebanon. One man turned out to be a member of the feared Mukhabarat. He was a staunch supporter of Assad but admitted that even eight months into the uprising, the security forces had lost control of some cities.

“We can only go to parts of Homs in large numbers,” he told me.
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He asked to remain anonymous, fearing possible reprisal by the rebels. He told me the conservative Muslim rebel forces controlled the Sunni neighborhoods at night. They knew where police and secret police agents lived and weren't afraid to assassinate them. He had been based in Homs and admitted that the opposition was so well entrenched it might take a year for the government to prevail. That was a stark admission coming from a member of the security forces. Two years after our conversation, the rebels continued to control parts of Homs.

The shift away from nonviolent protest and toward armed struggle took place gradually. Peaceful protest became increasingly difficult. Security forces surrounded mosques on Friday afternoons to prevent marches. Any attempt to hold a rally was quickly and violently dispersed. Some in the opposition accused the regime of intentionally releasing Islamic extremists from jail in hopes they would take up a divisive, armed struggle.

In July 2011, defectors from Assad's army announced formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Both sides began to engage in targeted assassinations. On October 2, 2011, the government accused extremist members of the opposition of murdering Sariya Hassoun, son of Syria's grand mufti, the country's most important Sunni religious leader. A few days later on October 7, a government hit squad murdered Syrian Kurdish leader Mashaal Tammo.

In November, the FSA attacked the Harasta Air Force Intelligence Base near Damascus, the first such major battle. By December armed rebels bombed an important security complex in Kafr Soueah Square in Damascus, killing both soldiers and innocent civilians. As armed struggle quickly replaced mass demonstrations, political leadership of the uprising also changed. Political Islam came to the fore. The uprising was becoming a civil war.

In current discourse in the United States, Islam is often equated with extremism and terrorism. “Not all Muslims are terrorists,” goes the often-repeated maxim, “but all terrorists are Muslims.”
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My, how we show our ignorance. Terrorist tactics have a long history that has nothing to do with Islam. The first modern-day suicide bomber detonated a hand grenade to kill the Russian czar in 1881. The assassin was Christian. The first car bomb was exploded by extremist Zionists fighting the British occupation of Palestine before 1948. The same group, known as
Lechi
or the Stern Gang, also had the distinction of mailing the first letter bombs in an attempt to kill members of the British cabinet.
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The list goes on. But you get the idea.

Islam is a religion of peace, as is Christianity, Judaism, and all the religions I know of. Some extremists in the United States have murdered abortion doctors or blown up a federal building in the name of Christianity, but we know their actions are anti-Christian. And so it is with political Islam. Opportunist leaders try to seize power quoting passages from the Koran, but their actions are anti-Islamic. To analyze Islamic extremists, we must focus on their politics, not their religious rhetoric. So I describe them using political terms such as
progressive
,
conservative
, and
ultra-right-wing
. I stay away from the term
moderate
, which in translation usually means “acceptable to the United States.”

For many years, the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to be the most influential opposition group in Syria. But during the first weeks of the uprising, the brotherhood was caught with its pants down. Its leaders had been jailed or driven into exile during the harsh government repression of the 1980s. The brotherhood was out of touch with the younger
generation, whose members spearheaded the events in early 2011. It initially opposed the uprising as being too provocative and likely to fail.

“At the start of the uprising, the brotherhood appeared hesitant to become involved in the conflict,” wrote Aron Lund in a publication by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This probably reflected doubts about the uprising's chances of success, an awareness of the brotherhood's own weakness inside Syria, and a deliberate choice to maintain a low profile while the regime was trying to portray the revolution as led by Islamists.”
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The brotherhood had transformed itself politically in the 1990s in an effort to reverse its isolation inside Syria and to gain international legitimacy. It wanted to show that it wasn't a terrorist group—particularly after the events of September 11, 2001. It called for Syria to be ruled as a Muslim nation under a modern form of Shariah (Islamic) law but emphasized the need for elections, human rights, and pluralism.
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Its 2004 program rejected a strategy of armed struggle and called for peaceful political change.

The group's leader at the time, Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni, cultivated a modernist image. For example, he disagreed politically with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood when it declared that neither a woman nor a Coptic Christian could become president of Egypt. And he rejected the idea of forming a religious council to determine if secular laws adhered to Shariah. At the same time, the brotherhood maintained conservative cultural views on alcohol, women's rights, and popular entertainment. As Arab nationalists, its leaders refused to recognize the rights of Kurds or Assyrians, two minorities with their own particular demands.

The brotherhood leaders hoped to return to Syria as a tolerated opposition group, which made them initially reluctant to endorse the uprising. As the rebellion gathered steam and appeared that it could topple Assad, however, the brotherhood shifted course. In March 2011, it published the Ten Point Pledge and Charter aimed at showing Syrians and the Western powers that it could govern Syria. It mentioned Islam only in the preamble as being a guide. It called for an
elected civil state, a pluralist political system, and no discrimination based on religion. Mohammad Farouk Tayfour, a brotherhood deputy, said, “The brotherhood will not monopolize power in the political arena and in managing the coming period.”
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Brotherhood leaders had cultivated extensive ties internationally, particularly with the Islamist government of Turkey. Those leaders became major players in the formation of the Syrian National Council based in Istanbul. The SNC, which had the backing of the United States and its allies, was supposed to be a civilian coalition representing the entire opposition. As the Assad regime continued its repression and other groups took up armed struggle, the brotherhood created an armed militia, the Commission of the Revolution's Shields, in May 2012. But they failed to gain traction inside the country.

Omar Mushaweh, a brotherhood leader living in Istanbul, told me that his group favored a moderate version of Shariah law. He said the new Syria would model itself on modern Turkey, which is governed by a parliamentary system and respects different religions. Minority and women's rights would be protected, he argued. “We will not force women to wear the
hijab
[head covering],” he said. “It will be by choice.”
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Some secular Syrians don't trust the brotherhood's rhetoric, however. Miral Bioredda, the LCC leader we met earlier, told me that the “Islamists say they want a democratic country, but I don't believe them.”
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But the ex-bodyguard calling himself Bashar typified the views of many when he acknowledged that the Muslim Brotherhood no longer called for a conservative, Islamic state as they did during the 1980s. “They favor a civic [nonreligious] state,” he told me. “People won't accept their old, extremist ideology.”
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The brotherhood continued to be a significant player in the Syrian opposition. Meanwhile, conditions were changing rapidly inside Syria as people took up arms. Let's take a look at some of the major armed groups.